In Defense of the NBA

 Why the Quality of Basketball Is Better Than Its Critics Think

The NBA doesn’t need me to defend it. National broadcasts average nearly 4 million viewers — the most since Michael Jordan’s first title run. More unique viewers watched regular season games this year than at any point in the last 24 years. Its biggest stars are globally famous.

Still, I talk to a lot of sports fans who don’t like the NBA, and I find many of their criticisms remarkably ill-informed. The conversation usually goes something like this:

“I don’t watch the NBA because…”

…and then they say something so profoundly dumb that I’m forced to respond:

“Yes, it’s obvious you don’t watch the NBA, because you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

Now look, I genuinely don’t care what sports people like or dislike. In fact, I’m very much in favor of my favorite sports becoming less popular because, frankly, Knicks playoff tickets are so insanely expensive that I recently told my wife we may need a slightly less comfortable retirement if the Knicks make the Finals this year.

But some criticisms are so persistently wrong-headed that I feel compelled to respond.

Let’s start with my favorite.

“They Travel All the Time in the NBA and It’s Never Called.”

This is wrong on multiple levels.

Let’s do a thought exercise. Imagine you’re watching an NBA game with a notebook and pen beside you. Every time you believe you’ve seen an uncalled travel, you write it down.

I can virtually guarantee you won’t end up with a very long list. One? Maybe two? And even if you somehow get to three or four, there’s a very good chance you were wrong and simply don’t understand what actually constitutes traveling under NBA rules.

Put differently: there just aren’t that many uncalled traveling violations in the NBA.

But even if there were — so what? Why does this particular non-call inspire so much outrage, as though civilization itself is crumbling?

The average NFL game contains numerous uncalled holding penalties. Until this season, balls and strikes were routinely blown in baseball. In hockey, players constantly clutch and grab opponents in ways that technically constitute holding. Every sport has infractions that go uncalled.

Yet for some reason, this one drives people into a frenzy.

Why?

Partly it’s Selection Bias. If, instead of watching actual NBA games, you consume nothing but Instagram clips posted by outrage-farming engagement trolls, and those clips happen to feature missed travels, you’ll naturally conclude that traveling happens constantly.

Partly it’s Confirmation Bias. Once you decide uncalled traveling runs rampant, every borderline footwork sequence confirms your belief, while the other hundreds of possessions where players don’t travel completely disappear from your brain.

But mostly, it’s Cranky Old Guy Bias. (Or younger guys with a cranky-old-guy disposition.) The sort of people who reflexively believe everything was fundamentally better “back in my day.”

Either way, sorry: there simply are not nearly as many uncalled traveling violations as people think.

“They Shoot Too Many 3-Pointers”

They certainly shoot more threes. A lot more.

In 1979, when the three-point line was introduced, teams averaged about three attempts per game. Today? Around 37.

That is a lot more.

But is it “too many”?

When people say that, I’m never quite sure whether they mean:

• It’s strategically unsound to take so many threes 

• It’s aesthetically unpleasant to watch 

• Some combination of the two 

If you believe the first, I can assure you that no basketball team on Earth will ever hire you.

The strategic advantages of taking lots of threes are obvious:

1. More points. Duh. If you shoot 38% on 100 three-pointers, you score 114 points. To match that with two-pointers, you’d need to shoot 57%. 

2. Floor spacing. Defenses have to guard the perimeter, which opens up driving lanes and interior offense. 

3. Long rebounds. Missed threes often produce rebounds that are easier for the offense to recover. 

If you were my head coach and thought high-volume three-point shooting was strategically unsound, I would fire you faster than George Steinbrenner firing a Yankees manager after a 10-game losing streak.

As for aesthetics…

Outside shooting is a basketball skill. Alongside dribbling, it may be the quintessential basketball skill. It’s the thing kids practice more than anything else. The word swish was literally coined to describe the beautiful culmination of a perfect jump shot.

So why does it suddenly make people angry?

Did it make people angry when Larry Bird hit outside shots? I’d wager many of the same people who complain about today’s three-point shooting once treated Bird’s 20-foot jumpers like they were watching Michelangelo paint a ceiling.*

Outside shooting is far more of a basketball skill than using your 7'2" frame and Volkswagen-sized rear end to back into defenders before gently depositing the ball into the basket from two feet away.

For a long time, basketball was dominated by giants: Shaq, Moses Malone, Kareem, Olajuwon, Ewing. Great players, obviously. But none of them would’ve made their high school varsity team if they were a foot shorter. Coaches exploited size advantages because size wins basketball games.

You don’t really see that anymore.

Today, if a 7-footer can’t shoot - like KAT or Wemby - he’s probably getting pushed into a limited rebounding-and-defense role.

So the next time you see players raining threes, remember: you’re still watching basketball.

*To give you an idea of how good today’s shooters are: Larry Bird’s career three-point percentage was 37.6%. That would’ve tied him for 74th in the NBA this season, alongside Atlanta Hawks center Onyeka Okongwu. Bird’s best shooting season would’ve ranked 9th this year, between Cameron Johnson and Kon Knueppel. And Bird took far fewer attempts than modern shooters, meaning he was likely getting cleaner looks than many players today. Give even an average shooter a clean look today and you expect him to bury it.

By the way...

The same people who insist that “traveling happens constantly” also complain that “nobody drives anymore because everyone just hoists threes.”

Well… which is it?

How exactly are all these rampant traveling violations occurring if nobody is attacking the basket?

“They Don’t Play Defense Today”

This criticism usually comes from the “I prefer college basketball” crowd.

Here’s what happens.

Between September and February, many casual fans watch very little basketball. Maybe they tune into Duke–North Carolina. Maybe they catch the NBA on Christmas Day. But that’s about it.

Then March Madness arrives.

Suddenly they’re filling out brackets, memorizing rosters, and confidently discussing Alabama’s defensive rotations despite discovering roughly 36 hours earlier that Alabama is also good at basketball.

Then they binge college hoops for four straight days. There are 32 games on Thursday and Friday. Twenty-eight are blowouts. The other four contain multiple horrific scoreless stretches that resemble basketball being played underwater.

But there are also dramatic finishes, buzzer-beaters, and upsets, so everyone becomes intoxicated by the atmosphere and concludes that college basketball is “better.”

It isn’t.

These are players with substantially lower skill levels.

But here’s the thing that does make March Madness incredible: every game is win-or-go-home. For many seniors — or future NBA players who’ll only spend a year or two in college — it may literally be the last college game they ever play.

So yes, they’re playing with maximum desperation and effort.

People then compare that intensity to a random NBA game in January and conclude that NBA players “don’t care.”

But college players don’t go all-out every second of every November nonconference game either.

The difference is context.

Watch an NBA playoff game and you’ll see the exact same level of intensity, only with athletes who are bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, and incomparably more skilled.

Honestly, when someone says, “They don’t play defense in the NBA,” I immediately realize I’m talking to somebody who fundamentally does not understand basketball.

An average college team trying to score against an average NBA defense would look like a middle school orchestra attempting jazz improvisation. The speed, power, anticipation, and physicality of NBA defenses are beyond what most college players can even process.

Conclusion

So the next time you’re about to say, “I don’t watch the NBA because…” and follow it with one of the arguments above, maybe just finish the sentence this way instead:

“I don’t watch the NBA because I don’t enjoy basketball played at the highest possible level.”

Which is fine! People like what they like.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for Knicks tip-off. Because watching Jalen Brunson dissect defenses, Josh Hart fling himself around like a human wrecking ball, and OG Anunoby erase opposing wings from existence is one of life’s great pleasures.

The Johnny Bingo Awards - 2025

 The Best Books (Read By Me) in 2025

Welcome, Dear Reader, to the 2026 Johnny Bingo Awards, given annually to the best books I read this year.

By now you know the drill, but in case you don’t here are some things to know about The JBs.

1. Eligible books are anything I read this year, regardless of when they were written.  The oldest book I read this year was published in 1835, the newest in 2025.  So hey, even if you’ve been dead hundreds of years, it’s not too late to win a JB!
2. My categories are…inconsistent. 
3. While Nobel Prize winners receive over 11 million kroner, which is like a million bucks, winners of a JB win the pride that can only come with knowing some random guy with a blog likes your book.

 The full list of eligible books is at the bottom.  

On to the prizes!

Best History Book

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga toCharleston, 1777-1780 (Volume Two of the Revolution Trilogy), Rick Atkinson

Most of the history books I read this year were useful and competent, but few thrilled me. 

For example, Constantine the Great is arguably the most important historical figure most people don’t know, but Michael Grant’s somewhat academic treatment left me wanting more.  And Tom Standage came up with a fascinating way of looking at world history, through the lens of six beverages that changed the world (Think The Beer Age [ancient Mesopotamia] and The Coke Age [the American century]) instead of The Iron Age, The Bronze Age, etc.).  But this treatment cried out for wit, which was sorely lacking.

But one book did stand out.  Rick Atkinson is a modern-day Bruce Catton, a former journalist who is 2/3 through his second brilliant historical trilogy.

I gave a JB to Volume 2 of The Liberation Trilogy way back in 2007.  Atkinson has now turned his gifts to the American Revolution* and published Volume 2 this year.  I eagerly await Volume 3.

* Atkinson also has a fine turn in Ken Burns’ documentary, The American Revolution*, which I just finished watching this week.  I hope to write a sort-of review of that but need to finish this.  Mini-preview-review: 5 stars!

·      The title of Burns’ doc got me thinking about what to call that war, or that period.  Growing up, it was always called The Revolutionary War, but there are other countries with revolutionary wars, so that’s not descriptive enough.  The Brits tend to call it The War for American Independence, which is much more descriptive.  But it only describes the war itself, and not what came before and after.  So, The American Revolution is an apt name for the period.

Most Superfluous History Book

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, andHeroism, Erik Larson

 What?  You think we just hand out trophies and flowers here?  Sometimes our job is to issue warnings about what not to read.

Erik Larson has written some wonderful books, telling untold stories in Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts.  In The Splendid and the Vile, he turned to fields that have been tilled many times before, focusing on Churchill during the Blitz.  But even here, he found a unique angle, focusing on his family life.

But what was the point exactly of The Demon of Unrest?  Larson decided to write a book about the beginning of the Civil War, a topic that has been covered hundreds of times by many great writers.  And he brought nothing new to it.  It seemed at times like he was a high school book report writer who knew he didn’t have enough material to hit the required page limit, so padded it out with irrelevant stories and facts.  Mr. Larson, please, don’t tell us about D-Day and Pearl Harbor in your next book– find that unknown story.

Oh, and if you want to read a genuinely great book about the start of the American Civil War, I recommend Volume I of Bruce Catton’s trilogy, The Coming Fury.  You may love it so much you’ll read the whole darned trilogy.

 

Best Spy Series

The Gabriel Allon Series, Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon, the art restorer turned assassin turned master spy has been confounding Israel’s enemies and restoring renaissance paintings for a quarter century.

Silva pulls off the tricky balance of mixing glamorous European locales with the gritty horror of spywork.  More escapist than George Smiley but more realistic than Ethan Hunt.

He also manages to weave modern-day and historical politics – from the 1972 Munich Olympics to the rise of ISIS.    

Finally, he does something unusual in a series featuring a recurrent protagonist…time moves on.  Allon is aging, and in his latest book you can sense retirement coming.  I’m curious to see what Silva does with him next, especially as Israel is in a more perilous place than it has been in half a century.

 

The Book Most Likely to Make My Wife Kick Me Under the Table

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism,and Progress, Steven Pinker

If I may quote myself:

"There's a certain kind of book - non-fiction, well-written, a colon in the title, and a Big Idea at its heart  - that will make me talk about it for months afterwards.   Eventually, I'm out to dinner with other people and am rambling on for entirely too long about how ancient Romans used memory palaces to commit multi-hour speeches to memory and - thwack! - my wife will deliver a well-placed blow to my shin."       

For this year’s winner I would add this: I wish I could inject the ideas and the data that support those ideas directly into the brainstem of everyone on earth

We live in a cynical age.  We live in an age that rewards pessimism, embraces conspiracy theories, and fears for the future.  We live in this age despite the massive and overwhelming evidence that we live in the freest, wealthiest, safest, most comfortable age that has ever been.

Pinker divides this book into 3 parts.  In Part I he outlines the ideas of the Enlightenment; in Part II he showed their effectiveness over the past two centuries; and in Part III, he defends them against its enemies on the Left and the Right.

I’m not going to pretend it’s an easy read.  Pinker’s prose is clear and his arguments well-structured.  But there is SO much data to support his ideas, particularly in Part II, that it is a long journey. 

The most important part of the book is Part III.  Too many intelligent people fail to realize how important the ideas of the Enlightenment have changed the lives of billions of people, and how we need to defend these ideas.

Honorable Mention:  The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, David Robson

  

The Unexpected Pleasure Award

The Celtic World, by Morgan Llywelyn

Earlier this year I was reading a novel by Nelson DeMille called Cathedral. It’s a pretty good thriller about Irish terrorists taking over Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Saint Patrick’s Day. The charming rogue in charge goes by the nom de guerre of Finn Mac Cool.

I was vaguely aware of this name from Irish legend.  I googled the name and learned a bit more. I found an eponymous novel and saw it’s part of a whole series called The Celtic World.

I’m three books in and it’s a fine way to learn Irish mythology and some of the historical truth of the Celtic's journey.  The first book is called The Horse Goddess and finds the Celtic people in Eastern Europe.  The follow-up, Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish follows the Celts from Spain to Ireland.  And the third is the story of Finn MacCool himself. 

The characters are flesh and blood people who would eventually become the mythic figures of Irish legend, many of which are written about in one of the prize possessions of my library, a 17^th century work called Keating’s History of Ireland.

 

Best Mystery Series

The Peter Wimsey Novels, Dorothy L. Sayers

Everyone knows Agatha Christie.  But this year I discovered her wonderful contemporary, Dorothy Sayers, and her noble protagonist, Peter Wimsey.  If you like English mysteries that are charming, witty and intelligent, you should read the whole series.

Oh, and if you saw the new Knives Out movie, it mentioned the first book in the series, Whose Body?

             

Best Book Sent to Me By the Author

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, Pico Iyer

I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by Pico Iyer this year, and got to chat with him briefly afterwards.  I asked him if I could send him a copy of one of his books and have him inscribe it.  He agreed and sent this wonderful inscription back.

This short book is a reminder of the importance of doing nothing, something so rare in our helter-skelter world.

             

Best Music Book

The Uncool: A Memoir, by Cameron Crowe

I read biographies of R.E.M. and Tom Petty this year, and thoroughly enjoyed them both.  Though the Petty book left me a little sad…if someone as cool and accomplished as Tom Petty can’t find happiness, who can?

Perhaps the answer is being uncool.  Many know the movie Almost Famous is a roman-à-clef about Cameron Crowe, who toured with The Allman Brothers band as a teenager and wrote about it for Rolling Stone magazine.

In fact, Crowe’s story is far more interesting than this. While still in high school he wrote cover stories about Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, and more. He spent nearly a year with David Bowie. He lived with Don Henley and Glenn Frey as they wrote the Eagles' fourth album. He went fishing with Ronnie Van Zandt.  I enjoyed reading this book so much it should get its own category, Book I Was Most Disappointed to Finish.

Congratulations to all the winners!  If you each send me your Venmo, I'll send you 10 kroners!  

2025 Book Log

1 Camino Island: Camino Series #1 John Grisham

2 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War Erik Larson

3 Democracy in America: Volume I Alexis de Tocqueville

4 Camino Winds: Camino Series #2 John Grisham

5 The Book of Life (All Souls #3) Debora Harkness

6 The Dreadful Lemon Sky (Travis McGee #15) John D. MacDonald

7 The Fury Alex Michelides

8 The Golden Ocean Patrick O'Brian

9 Cathedral Nelson DeMille

10 The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.: A Biography Peter Ames Carlin

11 The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life David Robson

12 The Horse Goddess (Celtic World 1) Morgan Llywelyn

13 The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur Lev Grossman

14 Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish (Celtic World 2) Morgan Llywelyn

15 The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance Paul Strathern

16 The Long Lavender Look (Travis McGee #12) John D. MacDonald

17 The Wanted (Elvis Cole #19) Robert Crais

18 How to Stop Time Matt Haig

19 House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17) Daniel Silva

20 London Rules (Slow Horses #6) Mick Herron

21 Holmes, Marple, & Poe James Patterson & Brian Sitts

22 The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 (Volume Two of the Revolution Trilogy) Rick Atkinson

23 The Man Who Saw Seconds Alexander Boldizar

24 Finn Mac Cool (Celtic World 3) Morgan Llywelyn

25 Dark Voyage (Night Soldiers 8) Alan Furst

26 Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times Michael Grant

27 The Key to Rebecca Ken Follett

28 Razor Girl Carl Hiaasen

29 Whose Body (Peter Wimsey #1) Dorothy L. Sayers

30 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Charles C. Mann

31 Clouds of Witness (Peter Wimsey #2) Dorothy L. Sayers

32 A History of the World in 6 Glasses Tom Standage

33 Unnatural Death (Peter Wimsey #3) Dorothy L. Sayers

34 Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) Sarah J. Maas

35 The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Peter Wimsey #4) Dorothy L. Sayers

36 Stars in their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign Shelby Foote

37 Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg James M. McPherson

38 Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) Sarah J. Maas

39 The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War Michael Shaara

40 A Tan and Sandy Silence (Travis McGee #13) John D. MacDonald

41 Sharpe's Company (Sharpe #13) Bernard Cornwell

42 Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress Steven Pinker

43 The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere Pico Iyer

44 Petty: A Biography Warren Zanes

45 The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass prequel) Sarah J. Maas

46 Void Moon Michael Connelly

47 The Uncool: A Memoir Cameron Crowe

48 Espana: A Brief History of Spain Giles Tremlett

49 Lord Peter Views The Body (Peter Wimsey Short Stories) Dorothy L. Sayers

50 Sharpe's Command (Sharpe #14) Bernard Cornwell

51 The Mask of Apollo Mary Renault