I posted this a few years back in a thread dealing with the rising popularity of basketball in Canada, but I think it is still appropriate today in this discussion about minor hockey registration is Canada.
Unedited:
To my mind, the rising popularity of basketball is not hard to figure out.
Nearly all of the top NBA basketball players today have highly compelling personal backstories. So many of the players are genuine “success stories,” guys who pulled themselves out of the muck and mire of inner-city poverty, broken homes, and sometimes even horrific crimes and violence to achieve success.
Kyle Lowry is from the Streets of Philly (and a horribly broken home) to your city. DeRozan grew up in gang-infested Compton and had 2 uncles murdered. Lebron James is from an impoverished single-parent family; his mom was just a 16 year old girl when she gave birth to him.
Kawhi Leonard was a teenager when his father was shot dead in a drive-by murder. The Greek Freak’s journey to NBA stardom is a case study in overcoming unbelievable odds. Good Lord, he was literally Stateless for the first 18 years of his life.
Pro basketball provides just one personal underdog story after another. As an old-school sports fan, those stories just grab me by the gonads and make me want to tune in and root for those athletes.
To the underprivileged kid today, those underdog stories say that anything is possible. That’s priceless, truly a gift.
The same underprivileged kid looks at Crosby, MacKinnon or McDavid and thinks, “you’re joking, right? They aren’t at all like me.”
Hockey once had stars who beat the socio-economic odds and inspired kids. Richard, Howe, Hull were all born into huge lower-class families and had to scratch and claw their way to success, push through the Great Depression or WWII or even having very little food on the table.
Not today. Those days are long gone from the hockey world and as economic inequality in Canada increases, so too will the popularity of sports, like basketball, where the best of the best frequently had to overcome profound challenges and circumstances to reach the top.
To dig a little more deeply, consider how youth hockey in Canada is packaged as a “family affair.” Moms with Dodge Caravans and Dads with hot Timmies double-doubles on a Saturday morning in Smalltown Canada. Off to the rink we all go for some wholesome family fun, with Dads who coach and moms who coordinate fundraising and grandparents who clap and cheer.
After the game they take the kids to Scotiabank to learn about saving money for college.
Where’s the drama? The conflict? What adversity are these kids overcoming? Apparently, life is nearly perfect.
So why isn’t youth basketball packaged as a family affair like youth hockey?
Because it’s not.
Basketball is the game kids play all day Saturday with other kids of all ages in the schoolyard or at the Y without hovering parents trying to turn the kids’ fun into some family outing of cultural significance.
Youth basketball today is what youth hockey once was. A few years ago when Bobby Orr was pushing hard for hockey to return to its roots and offer kids more unstructured opportunities to just play, basketball people didn’t need to pay attention to Orr’s plea. Their sport is already built on unstructured play by kids for kids.
Unless hockey can turn back the clock, I’d put my money on basketball’s future.