 |
By Christopher Witflee
|
Take a map of the United States. Cut out the section with Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. There you have the Basketball Belt.
Other sections of America claim a kinship with basketball. The game was invented in Massachusetts by Dr. James Naismith, then transported to the University of Kansas, where he taught for many years, sending many early acolytes to Oklahoma. New Yorkers took to it in the 1940s, when the city's universities assembled good teams that did business with gamblers. The Big Five, Wilt Chamberlain and Julius Erving have thrilled Philadelphia. A North Carolina team has gone to the Final Four all but four times since 1976. Los Angeles cheered multiple championships and individual greats for the Lakers and UCLA, even if no NBA team has won more titles than Boston's Celtics.
For all that, basketball is still its best the most often in the Basketball Belt. Out of 62 Final Fours, the Belt has been represented 44 times by 55 teams, winning 18 championships. Throw in the bordering states of Iowa, Tennes-see, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia and you have another 21 teams and five titles.
High school state championships in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois are the holy grail in thousands of towns, large and small. It's pointless to argue whether Kentucky or Indiana is the true seat of the Basketball Belt. Cincinnatians are best off leaving that argument to their brothers and sisters in Kentucky and Indiana.
Basketball is next to religion in some portions of the region, even though the NBA championship was a late comer to the basketball belt. Before Michael Jordan matured, taking the Bulls to their first title in 1991, the last Belt team to play for the NBA championship was the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1956.
Now the Indiana Pacers are playing for the NBA title after bidding for most of the 1990s. Among basketball passions in Indiana, the Pacers have always run a distant third, behind the high school game and Indiana University.
So desperate were the Pacers in 1977 that supporters put on a telethon to reach 8,000 season tickets, insuring the team's survival. But the Pacers opened their new Conseco Fieldhouse this year, Reggie Miller finally has the June stage and Larry Bird now has gone to the end of the line as a college player, an NBA player and an NBA coach.
No one sensibly expects the Pacers to prevail. They held their home court with a 100-91 win over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 on June 11, but they still trailed, 2-1. The Lakers played two games without Kobe Bryant, and the Pacers have no answer for Shaquille O'Neal, other than sending him to the free-throw line.
No statistic has been more often bandied in connection with the NBA Finals than this: Since the Finals went to the 2-3-2 format -- meaning the team with the home court advantage plays the first two and the last two games at home -- the team with the middle three games at home has never won all three.
That's why Miller's first two outings in Los Angeles -- his one-for-16 shooting in the first game and his fourth-quarter disappearance in the second -- are so damaging. Even if the Pacers win two of three at home, they would have to win the final two games in Los Angeles.
It's unfortunate a player so dynamic as Miller lost the stage just as soon as he found it, but that's what makes the NBA championship so difficult to win. Miller is right in that the Pacers are his team. The Pacers will go as far as Miller can take them. And he took them out of it right as it started. His 33 points in Game 3 were encouraging, but tinged with futility. He'll need the greatest individual performance in finals history (this reference to "history" is courtesy of Bill Walton) if the Pacers are even going to make it close.
But the important development in all this is the NBA's legitimization in the Basketball Belt. Before the Detroit Pistons and Jordan's Bulls started racking up titles, the NBA title was contested between a metropolitan eastern team and a California team almost without fail for 25 years.
Until recently, then, we didn't really know if fans in the Belt largely ignored the NBA because they don't like the pro game or because the region didn't have competitive teams. Maybe we're about to find out.
Now the NBA could become a force in the Belt and, perhaps, not a moment too soon. The college game is deteriorating, probably for the right reasons, now that the best players are calling the charade and turning pro at the first opportunity.
True, the NBA game isn't as good as the college game used to be, but neither is the college game. With this year's new rules, the NBA game isn't even as physical as today's college game. But it won't be long before the NBA game is the best to be found, and it's heartening that it's being played at a high level in the Belt.
Coincidentally, perhaps, the Houston Rockets and the business community in Louisville are playing peek-a-boo. Though the Rockets have won the only championships ever known to Houston, voters have denied them the public funding mechanisms for a new arena. It's a clear case of stadium burnout suffered by Houstonians, who couldn't stomach another athletic expenditure right after approving new facilities for the Astros and the NFL expansion team set to start in 2002.
So Rockets owner Leslie Alexander, attempting to create some urgency, has courted Louisville, along with St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans. For Louisville, the possibility of an NBA team poses a difficult and interesting problem. Once again, it's the breathless value decision between major league status and economic scarcity.
The Louisville business community loves the idea. An NBA team would stimulate the private economy, vitalize downtown, increase visibility for the city, deliver an audience to the city's leading advertisers and make the environment more attractive to a higher-quality work force. It goes without saying the business community would realize these benefits virtually for free, because the $200 million-plus arena necessary to make it happen would be funded, one way or another, by ordinary consumers and taxpayers.
The cost to taxpayers wouldn't be trivial, especially by Louisville standards. The city's entire budget for the next year will come in around $250 million. The grand total Louisville has spent recently to redevelop its waterfront, expand, expand its convention center and build Papa John's Cardinal Stadium totals $190 million.
Furthermore, only so much can happen in a city the size of Louisville. In other words, it would be necessary for the arena to open for additional events to make it viable and such openings would probably endanger Freedom Hall, which is now the home to those events.
That said, Louisville faces stiff competition in the region. Indianapolis built the new field house. Cincinnati is bankrolling two new stadiums. Cleveland has two new stadiums and a new arena. Most harrowing: Nashville has moved into the big leagues with a football stadium for the Titans and a hockey arena for the Predators.
These are days of difficult decision in Louisville. Sports fans, a sizeable portion of the population, are well aware of two developments. One, the University of Louisville basketball program no longer is the happening of Denny Crum's peak in the 1980s. Two, the Pacers, right up the road, are delighting their Indiana neighbors.
It's hard to believe Louisville has the market power or the resources to support an NBA team. Then again, it's hard to believe Nashville has the market power or resources to support the NFL and NHL. But it's impossible to put a dollar figure on the gleeful buzz that ran through Nashville when the Titans went to the Super Bowl or Indianapolis as the Colts and Pacers have contended for similar glories. It's also difficult, if not impossible, to gauge the social costs to be paid by raising public funds for sports teams, meaning those funds aren't available for more basic needs.
These are decisions every community makes. The temptations in Louisville must be very strong. In every direction -- in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Nashville and Indianapolis -- Louisvillians see that certain something that makes daily life just a little more fun for millions of people. Now, the NBA is courting Louisville, right in the middle of the Basketball Belt.
If Louisville plays it smart, it will wait. It will take a few years to find out if the surrounding cities really benefit from their expenditures on stadiums and arenas. It won't half-bake the matter by trying to figure out if it can build an arena on its far outskirts to entice customers from Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Louisville must figure out if it can support and be supported by an NBA team, all by itself.
A great basketball tradition runs through Freedom Hall, where the Final Four first became a big event, where the U of L has known some great teams, where the Kentucky Colonels still inspire an ABA memory. That tradition makes Louisville and the NBA a good match. But it's not a slam dunk, not even as the NBA finally looks attractive in the Basketball Belt.
