Basketball in America

Basketball. I have grown up watching this game ever since I was a young lad. All throughout my childhood and till this exact point in my life, I have been a huge Laker fan. I always thought it was super exciting to watch due to the fact that it is very rapid paced and the incredible skill displayed in some of the amazing players and what they are doing on the court to win is so beyond me. But growing up I noticed something, I noticed that basketball was kind of in a slump. It had people like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Gary Payton and Michael Jordan fueling it throughout the years and making it more exciting to watch because these players were flat out amazing. After Michael left the league though, I think that something happened, i feel as if basketball in America became very overlooked and people started to not think to much of it. Baseball and Football seemed to just be dominating and fueling sports more than any others. 

As I watched basketball go in to this slump, I kept watching the Lakers, but it seemed as if no one wanted to every watch a game with me or every wanted to get involved in the exciting nature of it anymore. it astonished me but I was a little to young to really take this into account, I am just looking back on it. Soon after, a player who had been receiving a vast amount of attention, really jump-started his career and put a throttle on basketball, his name is Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers got teemed up with Shaquille O'neal, who had already been an all-star, and they pushed basketball to a new extreme. These two players would make history after playing in some of the most exciting series of games that basketball had every seen. These two players carried the Los Angeles Lakers to 3 back to back championships and made the league a lot more interesting to watch. After these golden years, Shaq would go on to get traded from the Lakers, but even though he had left and the championship run came to an end, more players started entering the league and making it become more exciting and the playoffs started getting very competitive. The San Antonio Spurs went on to win 3 championships from 2005 to 2007 which were very exciting games to watch also. 

Now basketball is very exciting and has regained its audience and has got itself out of this slump. Players in the league right now are becoming to big and so talented that talent is very widespread throughout the NBA and the league as a whole is very fun to watch. We have players like Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Carmello Anthony and so on, who are all on different teams who are all making the sport very exciting and thrilling to watch. Basketball has almost become sort of a culture shock to America in these past few years because so many extremely talented individuals are playing the game now and it has become so competitive that Americans are becoming fixated on it. I am glad to see this regain of faith in basketball and i hope to see it keep flourishing as it is right now.