What Basketball Can Learn From The NHL

Published by Austin Kent on June 13, 2008

In the hallowed halls of one of downtown Toronto’s most legendary auditoriums, a particularly sport-minded buzz fills the presumably stuffy air, people in rarely-worn fancy clothes wade through huddles of fellow hockey fans searching for their seats before the curtains are drawn and the show begins. Whispers of who should win what and why occupy most of the auditorium, while any lapses in conversation are easily satisfied with talk of the National Hockey League’s most recent season.

This is the NHL Awards Ceremony; the one night where toothless barbarians with an enviable knack for firing hardened rubber up and down frozen battlefields drop their gloves for a nobler reason than punching each other’s helmets off. It’s a night where the latest chapter in the sport’s picture book is officially drawn to a close.

Before you change the channel, wait, the hockey part’s over. Chances are, if you’re reading this column, you’re visiting this site, and, if you read this site, you more than likely spent your Thursday night watching the Boston Celtics slap the Los Angeles Lakers in the face with the oily fish of impending doom. For that reason (and that reason only), you’re excused for having missed the latest edition of the blueprint from which David Stern should model his own yearly awards presentation.

If I didn’t lose you with the fish analogy, let me make myself clear: … Actually, first, I probably did lose you with the fish analogy. I lost myself. I don’t even know if it’s a real cliche. In fact, I know it’s not a real cliche. I just made it up, for this I apologize.

Fish aside, the moral of this story is that professional hockey does very few things right these days, but the Awards Ceremony is one of them. Stop for a second and think about how excitedly you would turn your TV on if it were late June, a week or two removed from the NBA Finals, and the 2008 NBA Awards Ceremony was scheduled to begin in the next five minutes.

Now think about all the sponsorship opportunities we just opened up by shamelessly copying a league that had the right idea all along. Think about how disorganized, unpredictable and borderline random the current awards presentation format is. Now, while you’re at it, think about how boring your life is while you wait for the NBA Draft. Would you make an effort to be home and tuned into whichever channel airs the ceremony? Yes. Would you then go out and buy every single one of the products advertised during commercial breaks? Absolutely. Now think about how nice David Stern looks in a tuxedo.

Though the attempt to build suspense in the weeks leading up to the presentation of league MVP is admirable, the fact that Stern and his band of league representatives has to fly all over the map to present awards day by day and week by week seems rather anti-climatic. Instead of having the process take from April 3 (Sportsmanship) to May 6 (MVP), why not sum it all up in one, much more easily presented (and sellable) night?

I’ll be the first to admit that the sporadically assigned schedule the league uses to announce its winners has led to my own indifference towards many of the awards and I’ll venture a guess that I’m not the only one. I mean, awards are cool and all, but not cool enough for me to anxiously await the winners over the course of an entire month. Does anybody clear their schedules for a chance to refresh NBA.com in hopes of seeing the latest recipient of the Sixth Man of the Year Award? It’s obviously a rhetorical question, but the point remains; people would clear their schedules to watch all of the awards presented at once.

As for the ominous fire-breathing ghost horse of corporatization that haunts us whenever we sit down to watch hoops, if the NHL can make a presentation ceremony work with tradition-rich awards like the Frank J. Selke and the William M. Jennings Trophy, then surely the NBA can make their sponsorship money presenting the Kia Defensive Player of the Year and the T-Mobile Rookie of the Year awards. Think about the commercials they could run.

The fact of the matter is this, the current format for presenting NBA award winners is kind of dull, the potential is there for so much more. If the league were to hold off on unveiling recipients as the results come in, it could then package them in a much more appealing manner, one that gives basketball dependents like you and me something to do with our lives after the NBA Finals ends.

What else are we going to watch? It’s not like we at least have hockey.

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This article was written by:

Austin Kent - who has written 45 posts on Hoops Addict.

As both contributing writer and assistant editor of HoopsAddict.com, Austin Kent has enjoyed covering the NBA game from behind the scenes since 2006. Additionally, he is currently the sports editor of The Brock Press and has written for a number of basketball websites and newspapers throughout Ontario.

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