The Guardian does some psychoanalyzing of the NBA
I’ve played basketball since I was about 12 years old. I fell in love with the game initially watching my older brother play in junior high. When I started watching NBA games, it was the Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird era. I come from Ohio, but have been a Los Angeles Lakers fan since the 80s Showtime heydays.
Every once in a rare while, I think it would be cool to study sports psychology. But alas, I content myself with reading the odd article about it from time to time.
This piece from April 2024 by The Guardian is not particularly in-depth. It does feature some armchair analysis of a player who was once one of my personal favorites, namely Ben Simmons. His mental health became a high profile issue around 2021, and I think he’s gotten a bum rap over it all.
After winning rookie of the year in 2018, Simmons was named an NBA All-Star in 2019, 2020, and 2021, as well as All-Defensive First Team in 2020 and 2021. I loved his overall game, especially his passing. He couldn’t shoot, but he helped his team win in many other ways. He wasn’t just a young player with potential, or a rising star, he was a bona fide superstar on a fun and exciting team.
All that began to devolve by the end of the 2020-21 season, when his reluctance to shoot (and his poor percentages when he did), became a much talked about issue. His fall from grace culminated in a moment when he passed up a sure dunk right under the basket late in a playoff game that resulted in a season-ending loss for his team.
Fans and media pundits have long trashed Simmons for what they’ve labeled a lack of toughness, or weak confidence, or quitting on the team, or reluctance to put in the hard work to improve, or a variety of similarly related character flaws. They often overlook that Simmons battled genuine physical injuries throughout his career, starting in 2017 when he missed the entirety of what would have been his rookie season. After waging a promising comeback at the start of this current season, a recurring back injury knocked him out of play once again after only 15 games. I feel for the guy.
What irks me the most about the Ben Simmons’s story, is how fans and pundits have invalidated his mental health from afar, without knowing the guy personally let alone ever having evaluated him for any mental health diagnosis. Such criticisms have often been leveled in some very nasty character-flaw-based attacks that are unfair, and unfounded, and frankly, ignorant.
In the irrational world of sports fandom, players can be character-attacked for physical injuries too. That’s victim blaming of the worst sort, in my book. If someone comes down with cancer, we shouldn’t blame them for that. Right? If they are struck in the middle of a hard-fought game by a torn Achilles, that’s just bad luck. Not their fault.
Likewise, if someone – in the world of sports of elsewhere – is beset with mental health challenges, have some empathy first and foremost. Strive to understand and show support. Build up a guy, don’t break him down.