Why are Basketball players made of Paper Mache these days?

[HaShev]

It's like they take months off for hang nails and a year off for pinky toe sprains.
Is it all that guaranteed money?
In my day when I broke my big toe & lost a nail while wearing a half cut 0ff
sneaker my gym teacher still made me run the half mile run.
WE Played basketball ALL GAME no subtitution, football all game both sides of the ball no pads, Hockey I played goalie no mask no pads with a rubber hardball that left the baseball stichmarks on my arms from slap shots.
We played buck buck with knees slamed into our backs, we played football in the winter without gloves to deaden the sting of swating the ball as a pass defender.
We plaued wall ball and rocketed a hard rubber ball at each other each time we missed a catch.
NEVER got injured, never missed
a game.
Except for Hockey players coming back from 20 + stitches to return to the game, or the pounding of football, When did we turn into such broken down wusses?
-signed a frustrated Sixers fan tired of all these injury prone players in the NBA.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

It's the same in the NFL. But a point to ponder,athletes have become way bigger,faster and stronger than ever before which leads to more injuries not just because of the size and strength but also the bodies inability to stand the extra strain on joints and tissue.
I do agree however that they have become more pussified.

 

[HaShev]

And sometimes it's the agents involved.

 

[Abishai100]

Those Awesome Mets!


IMO, this 'split' between style and substance or glamour and grit (that you arguably see in all sports) came during the Gooden-Strawberry era of the NY Mets (MLB).

Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry were in their high-point during the Reaganomics 1980s when consumerism (McDonald's, Apple Computers, etc.) was becoming truly global and Hollywood (USA) was making films such as Wall Street and Working Girl.

Today, the legacy of the Gooden-Strawberry 'dynamite' style of media attention on sports trickles down to the free-agency problem, when players feel less and less 'loyalty' for their teams which not surprisingly has coincided with a rise in steroids-use allegations.

It's all about the camera...