Moue Magazine

I’m not a huge fan of professional sports, to put it mildly, but I’m a fan of good writing, and a ton of good writing is done in that particular field. So I like to look in on what various folks are doing from time to time, and the Olympics have provided a deep well to draw from.

Sometimes.

Dear Lord, Adrian Wojnarowski makes me want to vomit. This is the absolute worst kind of fanboyish, the-league-above-everything mentality that makes me NOT be a sports fan.

Here he is on Olympic basketball:

As the worst nightmare for an NBA dynasty unfolded on the floor – San Antonio Spur Manu Ginobili crumbling with the agony of an ankle hurt all over again – the world witnessed one more window into how an Olympic basketball war of attrition threatens to deepen the gap between the United States and its reeling rivals.

Ginobili is from Argentina, and plays for his national team, as do a number of other NBA stars. Wojnarowski’s basic beef here is that these NBA stars are hurting themsleves playing for their national teams in the Olympics, and therefore wasting their value as NBA stars. Because, by allowing them to compete for their national teams,

the NBA is slowly, surely decaying multi-million dollar assets.

…which, of course, every human being in the world should want to be, right? An asset? That’s what we all aspire to, I’m sure.

Make no mistake, here: Wojnarowski does indeed express some heartwarming concern for the players themselves, and conjures up the right amount of OMG-is-that-really-happening-to-these-poor-people anecdotes of injuries. But his agenda becomes a little bit too clear a little bit too soon:

Whatever you want to say about national pride, your responsibility is to the team that signs your check.

No, your responsibility is to yourself. If your own heart and soul dicatate that you serve the interests of the nation of your birth rather than the people who have bought you as a show pony to make some cash, then so be it.

Professional athletes know all too well that the mere specter of an injury is all that separates them from the top ranks and oblivion. Yet they choose to compete for their home countries in the Olympics anyway. Are they really the hapless pawns Wojnarowski portrays them as? Seriously, walk up to Ginobili and ask him whether he’d rather have the remainder of his contract money from the Spurs or another Olympic gold medal for the country he’s from.

My God, sports freaks like Wojnarowski really disgust me. He feigns interest in the players, but his real interest, poorly hidden, is in the massive-dollar agenda of the NBA — and, not coincidentally, his own gravy train as a sports writer.

I really have enjoyed what I’ve seen of the USA basketball team this time around — not the brash, in-your-face “dream teams” of years past, but a bunch of guys who seem genuinely interested in the experience of being Olympians and, as corny as it may sound, not just interested in winning but also interested in representing their country well. That’s kind of what the Olympics is supposed to be about, right?

But leave it to hacks like Wojnarowski to reduce it to the profit margin.