In his 1984 hit song “Basketball,” rapper Kurtis Blow details his favorite aspects of the sport of the same name. Blow raps with a bouncy, childlike enthusiasm. However, there’s something about his delivery and word choice that makes him seem a bit phony. It almost sounds as though he’s trying to prove himself, as if someone said, “Hey, Kurt, you’re more of a baseball nerd, right?” and Blow started steaming. “Basketball has always been my thing!” he exclaims in the song. Blow is determined to convince the listener that he is a big fan of roundball. He name-drops superstars like Magic and Bird and rattles off well known moments in NBA history, like Wilt’s 100 point game. He mentions popular plays like the pick and roll and the alley-oop, and how certain players are “mean” or “tall.”
These vague details has led me to believe that Kurtis Blow has never seen a game of basketball. My skepticism is cemented by the first line of the song:
Basketball is my favorite sport, I like the way they dribble up and down the court.
Listen, there’s a lot to love about this sport. The drama of game winning daggers. The surprise of free agency moves. Charles Barkley mispronouncing European players’ names. When I was growing up, the NBA’s slogan was in fact, “I Love This Game,” and in a commercial that featured the Friends cast, Rachel, Phoebe and Monica watch a game just to gawk at John Stockton’s short shorts.
But I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone saying that they’re favorite part of this sport is dribbling. It is by far the dumbest reason to watch basketball.
If you ask me, Kurtis Blow may just be a Reptilian trying to pass off as human by listing various aspects of a popular sport. During an instrumental break, he is heard muttering, “Oh yeah, I like this basketball.” This basketball? Does that sound like a man who knows what he’s talking about? Or does it sound like a fucking alien who is trying to pull a fast one on you?
The music video consists of many wild scenes that further prove this point. A pickup game is interrupted by kung foo fighters. A chicken mascot surrounded by cheerleaders sticks its beak in the face of an overweight man who is putting mustard on a giant hot dog. There are random moments in which players on the same team are all simultaneously jumping towards a rim while one of them dunks. It is legit batshit
The aspects of the sport that Blow raps about are merely surface level. As a true fan, I have dug deeper into the sport to highlight stats that only real ballers understand. Hopefully, Kurtis will find this one day and expand his knowledge of the sport he claims to love.
As basketball has evolved into the modern era, so have the names of its players. Recently, players named James have eschewed the use of Jim, and although Mikes are around we’ve started to see a few more Michaels in the league. Bob, a popular truncation of Robert, was once a common name in the league, but now has completely vanished.
Maybe if they were playing today, John Stockton would go by Johnathan, Bill Russell would prefer to be called William, and Wilt would only answer to his government name, Wiltholomew.
Fuller names became popular in the 90’s and 00’s. I find this interesting because around this time, the length of shorts grew as well. Perhaps the extinction of short shorts forced players to consider lengthening other parts of their personas.
In “Basketball,” Blow drops the names of twenty two players, listing them willy nilly in an attempt to prove that he knows NBA stuff. I’m not buying it.
The Lakers are purple and gold and the Warriors are gold and blue and the Knicks are blue and orange, orange like a basketball. But colors also show up in the last names of NBA stars.
This graph compares the total points per season of players named Green and Brown. There seems to be a generational shift every 15 years. The early 60’s were dominated by Johnny and Si Green, then Fred Brown took over in the mid 70’s. Lakers star A.C. Green brought back the grass-colored dominance, until Dee Brown came through for the dirt boys.
We are currently in the strongest era for Greens, led by Draymond, Danny, and Jeff, but we can predict a rise of Browns in the coming decade with young talent like Jaylen.
Before every game, Sir Charles Barkley ate two Filet-O-Fishes, french fries, and a diet coke. That’s 1260 calories! Players need to maintain a balanced diet, but some players are cursed with unhealthy names.
Here, I graphed each baller’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER), which is an advanced statistic that is popular amongst fellow brainiac stat mongers. It sums up a player’s accomplishments (assists, rebounds, etc.) and subtracts their failures (fouls, turnovers, etc.). What is left is a per-minute rating of a player’s performance.
I have compared this rating with the amount of calories within a cup of the foodstuff each player is named after. Although none of these food could be considered “fowls,” you may see them as ingredients in “turnovers”! How’s that for wordplay, Mr. Blow!!
The music video for “Basketball” features a cameo by the Fat Boys, a rap trio of portly gentlemen who made songs about being rotund. But where are the fat boys of round ball?
In the third verse, Blow asks the listener if they remember when “Willis Reed stood so tall.” First of all, Reed was 6’9”, which by NBA standards isn’t that big. Secondly, what kinda sports fan says, “Hey, remember that guy, like how tall he was?”
Not gonna fool me, Kurt!
I could go on and contemplate more conclusions for curious correlations, but I believe I have proved my point. You see, Kurtis, this sport we all refer to as “The Orange Ball Jamboree” is a complex dance. In order to truly show your appreciation for it you must find a way to dig deeper into its depths and think outside the box score.
If you are going to limit yourself to the simple act of dribbling, ask yourself, “How many dribbles does each player take? Do Leos dribble more often than Geminis? Which early 2000s bubblegum pop hit matches the the tempo of their dribble?” This is the mindset of a true b-ball aficionado.
*This originally appeared as a zine I made for txtbooks which was sold at the 2018 New York Art Book Fair. For this project I taught myself R, a data-driven programming language, to produce ridiculous graphs using NBA datasets. Needless to say, this is satire. Kurtis Blow is a rap legend, and “Basketball” is one of my favorite songs. And yeah, I know that the Willis Reed line refers to the fact that he played 5 even though he was only 6'8". I guess Kurt does know a thing or two about roundball.
