Will Ulrich: America, democracy, basketball

Although I've spent almost my whole life in the temperate Northeast where winter usually doesn't fully surrender until around Tax Day, my springs begin in March. On a Thursday in the middle of the month, I invariably park myself on a convenient couch, bracket in hand, and feast my eyes on the fury of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The blooming of cherry blossoms and tulips may signify the changing of the seasons just fine for some, but I prefer my rite of spring to unfold on the hardwood.

The flowering of this hoops festival may not quite pack the aesthetic punch of a garden illuminated by the soft light of early spring, but it suits me just fine. The two-week, 65-team event represents America's most democratic sport at its most

democratic.

Yes, basketball -- both college and professional -- has its share of problems. Yes, the lives of many of these student-athletes are basketball-heavy and classroom-light. Yes, the marathon telecasts are just as much about revenue as they are about amateur excellence.

Still, none of that erases the power of a spectacle that pits Davids like Siena and Winthrop against Goliaths like Duke and Kansas. None of that can overshadow the sight of world-class athletes playing a beautiful game in a one-loss-and-you're-done tournament before the eyes of millions.

Basketball in 2002 is the sport that best captures the American moment. With its superstars, thugs, greedy agents, wannabes and precarious racial politics, basketball best encapsulates the promise and problems that characterize our affluent society.

For two weeks in March, the Big Dance allows us to lose sight of the complexities and see what it is that we find so simple and compelling in the game itself.

Growing up, I often rooted for the underdogs in the tournament. I can clearly remember sitting in the basement of my Aunt Dot's house on St. Patrick's Day, an unenlightened 8-year-old cheering for Princeton as the 16th-seeded Tigers came up just short of up-ending mighty Georgetown.

Once I got to Penn and became a avid supporter of the Quakers basketball team, I got a full sense of what pulling for the little guy was all about. Each of the three times Penn has made the Dance while I have been a student, there's been a night in between selection Sunday and Thursday when -- just before I go to sleep -- I have a fleeting vision of Penn winning it all.

Each time, I knew that a loss in the first round was the probable outcome, but that still didn't stop me from hoping. I suppose that somewhere in the back of my head lurked the vision of the Hickory Huskers, the Gene-Hackman-led team from a tiny Indiana farm town that improbably wins the state championship in the 1986 classic Hoosiers.

The idea of the Hickory Huskers, the idea of a team from nowhere that shocks the world, walks hand-in-hand with basketball's democratic ethos.

Hoop dreams are so easily formed because anybody can play basketball. Whether you grow up on an Indiana farm or on a bombed-out block in North Philadelphia, all you need is a pair of sneakers and access to a ball and hoop, and you can play for as many hours as your heart desires.

In pickup games on playgrounds, you get the clearest sense of how basketball mirrors jazz, that other great American invention.

People play some defense, but the emphasis is on the other end. Like jazz, the way you run an offense is improvisational. You need to play together -- setting screens, passing and moving without the ball -- but then the spotlight moves to the individual. Isolated, you have to rely on you game -- your chops -- to see you through.

When played well, basketball is a beautiful game, and its popularity reached a kind of apotheosis in the early- and mid-1990s. Buoyed by the appeal of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and then Michael Jordan, the NBA became the preeminent professional sports league in the U.S.

In the past five years or so, there's been a sense that basketball has fizzled somewhat. Fans and commentators have complained of sloppy play in an NBA that lacks compelling stars. Moreover, some of the stars that have risen -- notably Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers-- have proven too hard-edged and (bluntly) too black to fit into the wholesome marketing niche that folks like Jordan have enjoyed.

Observers of the college game have decried the number of talented high schoolers who either forgo college entirely or play on campus for just a year or two.

Basketball has its problems, some of which involve the difficult issues of race and class. That said, I can't help but think that the game -- simple and compelling -- will work things out for itself.

Will Ulrich is a senior Philosophy major from the Brox, N.Y.

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