The X’s and O’s of basketball are of little concern in NBAE videos. It is a genre rooted almost entirely in emotion, its narratives driven by dramatic swings of fortune. When Jordan’s Bulls meet Magic Johnson’s Lakers in the 1991 Finals in Learning to Fly, for instance, the teams are depicted as nothing less than gods fighting on Mount Olympus as the fate of all mankind hangs in the balance. The prose is sometimes comically purple. A game is a “battle,” a playoff series is “war.” Defense and offense are “weapons.” Accurate 3-point shooting is a “devastating long-range barrage.” Victors leave their opponents “trampled in their wake.”
Watching the crappy VHS tape is nostalgic for people my age, and the corniness of some of it is endearing.
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