One had rather hoped, perhaps foolishly, that certain institutions, even those primarily concerned with the extraction of revenue, might retain a shred of their original purpose. Clearly, one was mistaken. The National Basketball Association—or whatever corporate acronym they are operating under this fiscal quarter—has announced a 'revolutionary' new league where games are, if one comprehends correctly, entirely imaginary.
The 'NBA Predictive Analytics League', as this particular exercise in futility is to be known, promises to deliver 'guaranteed excitement and optimal wagering opportunities' by, and one must read this aloud to fully appreciate the lamentable irony, 'eliminating the need for actual players, courts, or even basketballs.' It strikes one as a rather novel approach to sport, primarily by removing the sport entirely. One covered actual sporting events in one's youth, which often involved a fair bit of mud, or indeed, the rather unpredictable movements of human beings. There was a certain charm to the sheer fallibility of it all.
This American penchant for 'innovation' often seems to involve finding ever more efficient ways to diminish any genuine human element, replacing it with a simulacrum of 'perfection' that is, to my mind, entirely imperfect. The pursuit of 'optimal wagering opportunities' seems to be the guiding principle here, a rather depressing admission of the organisation's true priorities. One can only imagine the boardroom discussions, devoid, one presumes, of anyone who ever actually enjoyed watching a ball bounce erratically or a shot miss the hoop spectacularly. Those moments of glorious, unscripted incompetence were, to some of us, rather the point.
One supposes the betting firms are quite pleased. Their models, one imagines, will be impeccably accurate, thereby removing the one fascinating variable from the entire enterprise: the delightful chaos of human endeavour. As for the viewer, one is left wondering precisely what one is meant to be viewing. A spreadsheet perhaps? A particularly animated set of graphs? I recall the 1983 budget debates; even those offered more suspense, and considerably more human error, than this sounds set to provide. Truly, a step into a future no one of any sense particularly wished for. One files this report, naturally, but not without a profound weariness.
