I'm watching the YouTube highlights of the 2011 slam dunk contest at the NBA all-star game in Vegas. Maybe it's something built into my Y chromosome, but I just like sports. I like visceral physical engagement, I like competition. I like a challenge, and overcoming it. There's another track running, though, and it's a desire for fairness. I want the playing field to be level. In baseball, where there is no salary cap, six of the seven highest-payed players are on one team. That never sits right with me. But I wonder if parity is an illusion alltogether. Every team has a different talent level of ownership, direction, vision, strategy, chemistry, geographic appeal... LeBron James went to Florida arguably because no other good player wanted to join him in Cleveland. Without having some bizarre sports version of communism, professional sports teams will never really be on even footing. And if they were, we wouldn't get amazing records like Jordan's Bulls or Brady's Patriots. Every team would be .500 and no one would watch.
At the heart, I like the contest. All the attempts to put rules around it and make it "fair" are well-intentioned, but inevitably flawed. So I try to just enjoy the moments of great personal skill and shrug off the rest.
- J
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