After watching Slamball return for the fifth time in the past 20 or so years, you couldn’t help but think why. Why is this back? Why can’t we just leave things in the past? Why would anyone invest money in this nonsense?
I watched the O.G. version of Slamball on Spike TV back in the day and let’s be honest, it wasn’t good. I mean, it was mildly amusing as a spectacle from time to time. But when you sat down and watched an entire episode, and make no mistake, there are no games, only episodes, it got boring and repetitive within the first five minutes.
Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t changed some two decades later. In fact, there was far more downtime and inactivity watching it live on ESPN than during those Spike TV episodes which had to do some heavy editing to fit a 20-minute game into a 22-minute episode slot.
At its core, Slamball is people you don’t care about on teams that don’t matter, jumping on a trampoline with a basketball, hoping to win a game no one will remember. It’s certainly not as good as basketball or football or anything else on TV at the moment.
And before you start with your comments about the Rumble/Mob rivalry, you could go to any Sky Zone in America and find rivals bouncing on trampolines in some sort of contest. That doesn’t need to be on television either.
Also Interesting: Nepotism lands failed pop star role as NBA G-League GM
We brought back Slamball, but why?
This brings us to why ESPN and a group of investors brought back Slamball in the first place. I suppose I have myself to blame. Not me exclusively but there is a portion of millennials that like to make outlandish statements as a joke and then keep pounding that sarcasm into the ground.
The entire #bringbackslamball movement started as absurd comments. It was some of us highlighting something stupid from the past. Unfortunately, we don’t know when to stop. Occasionally one of these terrible ideas goes mainstream and people not privy to the original context begin to take it literally.
The next thing you know, there are new episodes of Murphy Brown, people are spending money to save Choco Tacos, the Tampa Bay Lightning dusted off their stupid third jersey from the 1990s as a Reverse Retro and people brought back Slamball.
And why? Because some jerk like myself thought it was funny to say out loud, someone heard the statement and decided to take the idea literally. Look, it’s okay for things to die. Especially when our memory of them has been degraded by 20 years of other things.
Sure, those viral clips of vicious Slamball dunks may seem cool but what you didn’t see, and what no one saw because of Spike TV editing, were the minutes of dudes aimlessly bouncing around on trampolines or standing around on defense.
Maybe we shouldn’t have brought back Slamball because it’s definitely not nearly as good as anyone remembered. Of course, this won’t stop folks from being excited about the 10th incarnation of Slamball coming to a television near you in 2040.
Keep Reading: Meet the basketball player who didn’t shoot jumpers
