Basketball continues to baffle. What’s with this apparent obsession with letting star shooting guards do whatever they want? Is it the legacy of His Airness and Magic? Last year in the Finals and again in the Miami-Detroit series wilful egomania by Bryant and Wade, respectively, clearly cost their teams dearly. I find it hard to believe that, in the last two minutes of game seven of Miami-Detroit the highest-percentage play would not be to feed the Big Man. Yet Wade decided he was the new MJ and was going to win it on his own. By professional sports’ standards in general and basketball’s in particular, Wade is not an egomaniac. What was going on? Is this what commentators mean when they say that the coaches have lost control? What about the team-mates of the Bryants, Iversons and Wades? I find it hard to believe that they really approve of seeing all their sweat and toil go down the toilet.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the angst that seems to have gripped the NBA about “entertainment”. It’s not that entertaining to watch Shaq power to the hoop. But it’s much higher percentage scoring. It’s not even close. Shaq scores above 50% of his attempts, regular season or playoffs. None of the would-be Jordans shoots anything close to that (nor, in fact, did Jordan himself). This wouldn’t be quite so compelling if Shaq were not so obviously skilled at feeding out passes when he’s double and triple-teamed. But he is. Surely anyone wanting to win would feed Shaq “down the stretch”. I don’t know much about hoops but I do realise that over a full game there’s bound to be a variety of plays. The point is that if the game is close towards the end and there’s very little chance of an easy basket surely you just pound the ball into your best shot? Shaq’s low-percentage free-throw shooting doesn’t help but he still shoots about 60%, which is better odds than Kobe et al (bearing in mind there’s a mixture of two-point and three point plays that result from hack-a-Shaq).

This leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that teams in the NBA, on the whole, are prepared to sacrifice their chances of winning on the altars of the egos of star guards. The most amazing example was Iverson a few years ago. He shot for a much lower percentage than his teammates yet everyone would yammer on about how he’s so willing to “step up” to take the shot. Don’t get me wrong, Iverson, Bryant, Wade, James are amazing athletes; but if someone could just get them to rein in their egos they’d win a lot more as well as entertain. They’re not that much better than Ginobli, Parker, Billups and Hamilton, on display in the current Finals, and these guys, because, presumably, they haven’t been labelled “superstar”, are a whole lot more effective at winning playoff games.

I suspect that it is a question of a new generation of players and their expectations, which will ultimately end up as a labor dispute to restore a new equilibrium. MJ and Magic were stars but they were all-round pros. Magic was all about coolly assessing the percentage play, not showboating. MJ was as much remarkable for his fierce defence as his offensive repertoire. The Bryants et al inherited the money and the flash without paying their dues. The core of any sport is the discerning fan: each sport ebbs and flows as the latest fad of the corporate set (and the media take their cues, accordingly, from them), but any sport that insults the intelligence of the core for too long is heading for trouble. It’s likely that the NBA as a whole will have to pay the piper, soon.