Mark Cuban writes about the true business of basketball. The purists are the minority, and in order to survive as a business you must provide entertainment value. The purists hate the arena crew shooting t-shirts and music over the loudspeakers.
I am a soccer purist. I attend a game and detest the constant barrage of marketing. If basketball purists are a minority, soccer purists are an even greater minority. I see the kids stretching out their hands for an autograph from a player they do not even know. They try to figure out who he is from his signature. At the end of the night they feel like they were close to a star, and part of a roaring crowd, and that’s what sticks.
“[T]here should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the business of basketball is not, and will never again be basketball, it is fun.”
Reality is that basketball is not the business of the NBA. Entertainment is the business of the NBA. Every single night of the week we battle movies, books, restaurants, TV and Cable programs, talking a walk, everything and anything that is an alternative to going to or watching an NBA game.