If the Los Angeles Lakers played in the Premier League this season, there would have been a whole lot more noise.
The Lakers – yes, the Lebron James and Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook Lakers, the formerly-Magic Johnson world-beaters and always home of the legendary Kobe Bryant – festered in what NBA experts and fans are dubbing simply an ‘historically disappointing season’.
The team finished 11th in the NBA’s shallow Western conference, trailed by a littering of tragic performances. The Lakers did not technically crack the ignominious 50-games-lost point, though they arguably only did so by not having one more game to lose.
The torrid season comes after being the No. 2 preseason betting favourites to win the NBA championship, courtesy of a star-studded line-up (did we mention Davis, Westbrook and James?), a championship pedigree and the sheen of a top contender.
Injuries did not help, but what is the Lakers punishment for such a woeful season? Barring the team's inglorious crowning as ‘good shout for most disappointing team ever’ from fans, not much. The Lakers will miss out on post-season play-offs for a consecutive season. James will nurse an ankle injury. Head coach Frank Vogel predictability fell into the managerial cross-hairs in the days after. Some more behind-the-scenes staff shaking is likely still to come and, if fans are lucky, some spicy player interviews.
All of which is why there hasn’t been that much racket on the international sports media Richter scale. The clangour is there, but only so. That is because not once during the Lakers’ abysmal run was there ever the threat that the institution might face a more severe punishment.
The Lakers could never be relegated.
Imagine it. A global goliath, the world’s most purchased basketball jersey, the Lakers , playing Barnsley on a blistering and rainy Saturday afternoon during a 3pm blackout for their sins.
Imagination, of course, is the only place such a spectacular fall from grace could occur in the closed-shop model of American sport. In this vintage, historically ‘big’ teams, such as the Lakers or the NFL’s New York Giants, are awarded a significant degree of cosy protection. Bad season? Fuhgeddaboudit. Take the L, box it up and move on. There is always next season.
That type of complacency is anathema to football die-hards around the world who have grown up on the religion of anything-but-closed-shop affairs.
A year on from the European Super League furore and the ongoing stoking of its resurrection, that sentiment still prevails. It is why persistent bids of any closed-shop competition will continue to fail – and should.
As an American growing up with closed-shop models, emotions were always qualified. The words “battle” or “fears” were never brandished across headlines to describe the NBA or NFL’s marooned teams. Romantic underdog stories never felt outlandishly fanciful. Rivalries were only so biting. Madcap seasons were only so madcap.
Instead, there was talk of next season, of rebuilding, of experiencing a year ‘focusing on academics’ as many universities cheekily refer to their underwhelming seasons. All of which were variations of the same theme: No matter how cack-handed and ham-fisted the bad teams were, always, there was next season.
The temptation arises to hover specifically around the issue of sporting integrity when it comes to closed-shop sport. But there is a particular unadulterated euphoria in watching a 16-year wait for a return to the Premier League come to a riotous end that a closed-shop model cannot breed. Or in a simple scalping from an unsuspecting middling club against a much larger, hairy-chested rival, a scalping that may or not prove costly to that rival’s bid for a European place or, lest one dream, a title challenge or relegation battle.
Despair, too, is felt more viscerally. An ignominious scrape down the league toilet does not just mean remodelling historic “worst” records in one’s own image and writing ‘ bad season ’ in the history books. It means owning up to very real, very dire consequences.
The jeopardy drives the madness. To the uninitiated, the relegation-promotion battles can risk feeling callous and rapacious. Rather, the argument goes, every club should have a fair whack every season. Existence should not be a currency.
Instead, jeopardy is confected through draft lotteries, and while the system stirs up its fair share of romance – the Cincinnati Bengals’ unpredicted run to the Super Bowl this year after 33 long, tragicomic seasons away was rooted in the draft – the romance was conditional. Never in those 33 years did the existential threat of never returning to such great heights truly prickle.
Paris Saint-Germain president, ECA chairman and vociferous ESL opponent Nasser Al-Khelaifi stated recently that the Champions League should feel like a bigger spectacle than the Super Bowl and was reportedly brainstorming ideas for better marketing of the competition with the American model as a blueprint.
The irony is that the 2021 Champions League final drew 700 million viewers and the 2022 Super Bowl had just 112 million viewers. The entertainment value of the Super Bowl as a spectacle is unrivalled. But strip away the pizazz and the cheerleaders and the flashing lights. The flesh is not much of a feast.
Of course, for all the arguments of integrity and genuine romance, football desperately needs to address the giant, fiscal elephant in the room it has been grooming for the last 30 years, or risk inadvertently devolving into a closed shop as results become more comically predictable on the biggest stages.
Because slash the open-shop model entirely, and the result is a hollowed-out shell.
Football, at its best, is entrenched in jeopardy and surprise, hinged on being the universal leveller. Teams can win, they can lose, they can ridiculously topple reputations and forge new ones. They will also, even the biggest and baddest, inescapably fail at some juncture.
Those failures make the successes feel all the more powerful, the near-misses all the more brutal. A closed competition does not foster that same sense of life. Rather, sport occurs in a petri dish, all contrived and made-for-television and TikTok videos.
Put it this way.
If Everton played in the NBA, there would be significantly less headless-chicken bellowing and positing over the 'state' of the club. There also wouldn't be the possibility of Nottingham Forest bidding for a resounding return to the top flight for the first time since the turn of the century.
All the noise would be significantly less noisy.
