BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Keeping the Crowd Hyped Up, Yo
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Keeping the Crowd Hyped Up, Yo
When I watch basketball highlights (which I do fairly often, since I semi-follow the NBA and don't watch TV, hence online replays are the way to go) one of the things I most enjoy is when a player makes a great play at the end of the floor that his team is sitting on. It's fun since the bench leaps up and celebrates, especially if the play involves someone on the other team getting "posterized" with a huge facial dunk, or there's a huge collision, or someone on the other team gets humiliated, faked out, knocked sprawling, etc. (Or all three, as in the example below.)
I'm often disappointed in highlights when the vagaries of the game flow (teams switch ends at the half) result in a great play taking place on the wrong end of the court, where the excited teammates can't be seen.
I thought of this, and the general phenomena of the guys on the bench getting hyped up by a great play, while watching this collection of great Michael Jordan dunks that NBA.com put together for his recent election to the basketball hall of fame.
Amazing dunks, but there's one big difference between those and ones from the modern era. His teammates on the bench hardly react. Apparently back in the 80s and early 90s the guys on the bench weren't demonstrative? Look at #4 and #3 especially. Both unbelievable dunks, massive contact and crushing finishes, right in front of Chicago's bench... which reacts as if someone had missed a twenty-footer. In today's NBA those guys would be up and screaming, slamming down towels, chest bumping, etc.
For the other extreme, watch the Lakers leap up, throw towels, and literally fall all over each other laughing when Kobe leaps out of the building to drop this one on Ben Wallace.
This was from about 1997, so clearly something had changed in the culture of the NBA in less than a decade. Or perhaps Jordan was so intense and scary that his teammates were afraid to leap up and celebrate for fear of breaking his concentration and getting killed in practice the next day? There are also extenuating circumstances. That Lakers game is a preseason exhibition, so the bench is relaxed and looking for something to be amused by. They'd have celebrated that great a play in a regular season game, but there would have been an intensity, rather than a jovial "hanging at the barbershop" type of vibe to their reaction.
