The National Basketball Association has been around since 1946 and has had many amazing basketball players in the league through the years. Basketball was originally invented in Canada by a man named James Naismith at a YMCA in Canada and originally used peach baskets for hoops. It once started off as a very simple game to teach kids the importance of teamwork and humility. What started off as such a simple and fun game has now turned into an overhyped and extremely prideful event thanks to a group called the NBA.

Let me start off by saying that I love basketball. I live in a climate where the month of March brings about the worst weather, but watching the NCAA March Madness event makes it bearable. I live in Syracuse, N.Y. and was brought up going to Syracuse University basketball games. I love watching college basketball. They work as a team to pass the ball around to score and it is never just about a single player. But for years now the NBA has only glorified players instead of teams. Everyone knows LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Dwyane Wade and several others. For years, the same teams have been making it to the finals the Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavilers, and the Golden State Warriors. This is because they have one player whom the media and then America overhype, and the teams don't even seem to work together to score, but just get it to the major player who seems to score the most.

Whenever I watch an NBA game, it is usually only in the finals. The announcers almost never make it to the team, but usually just about two different players. For example, this past finals series it was the Golden State Warriors versus the Cleveland Cavilers. To the announcers on national television, and most of the America, it was LeBron James versus Stephen Curry. All of the emphasis was based on those two players, and really that is all. All season long I saw posts all over Facebook and other social media sites about how Stephen Curry was leading his teams to one of the greatest seasons in all of the NBA's history, and how he was suddenly comparable to Michael Jordan. Then once the Cavaliers started to come back from the 3-1 deficit in the finals out of nowhere, everyone started to worship LeBron James again.

Nowadays you will almost never hear these star players in the NBA be anything close to humble. LeBron James has said many times, "I am the greatest basketball player to ever play the game." Many would argue that this is true, but I'm going to argue that you can't really measure something like that because it depends on what day of the week it is and who is even playing against him on that day. Even if this could be a fact, as a major star player, he should be a much better example than that to the youth of today in America, and help them learn the importance of humility. Everywhere you go today you see kids wearing these Nike shirts with sayings like "believe the hype" and "greatest there ever was." This is because there really is no humility in the NBA anymore, and so many of the American youth want to be just like them someday, and "ball is life."

I believe the NBA is so overhyped and that the star players can be a bad influence on children. I think all that the NBA cares about is money, and I say this because the make the playoff series last so long, giving them two-day breaks in between games, which allows for higher ticket prices to be charged and much more merchandise to be sold. The NHL gives their players one day of rest in between games in their playoffs, and hockey is much harder on the body than basketball. The NBA has made me much less interested in watching and even playing basketball, and I think they need to start bringing the focus onto the teams more than they do the players and lower the salary cap so these "dream teams" can't be made to dominate the NBA for years.