If you have already watched South Parkyou have already heard of “ blueberry memos » and their heightened nostalgia. While everyone is stressing about the upcoming presidential election, the residents of South Park start sharing these blueberry memos. Bunches of blueberries therefore, which have the particularity of only talking about things from the past, supposed to bring people together and comfort them. Nostalgia sets in.
If this article is unrelated to South Park, on the other hand, he has one with nostalgia. By seeing former players extolling their own merits in their time, seeing the same criticisms of the game over and over again NBA current and by dint of realizing that I myself was taking the path of an old fart, I ended up wondering about the influence of nostalgia in our following the NBA and its implications.
And since I’m probably the only one asking the question, it’s a good enough excuse to get back on the keyboard for a moment.
On the way to explore – humbly – the mechanisms of this nostalgia which shapes NBA culture, its history, but also its future more than it seems.
From primary emotion to perception biases
Nostalgia works on a simple principle.
On a daily basis, our brain is better able to remember negative events than positive ones. Yes, I know, not yours, like everyone else. But if we have succeeded in theorizing it extensively for many years, let us say that this argument is perhaps not the most relevant.
For memory, however, it is the opposite. It selects positive events more than negative ones. I will pass on the Freudian considerations of the subject and other debates, but the idea which will interest us here is above all that according to which memory selects even more and as a priority the events where the emotional charge is the strongest.
Very often, it is in childhood or in self-construction that emotions are exacerbated. The famous “first times” are always more anchored in us, fresher, more intense, than the third, fourth or twentieth times.
Memory and the feeling of nostalgia do not escape these rules in the field of sport and the NBA, and we find the same phenomena: youth idols, memories of the first matches, the first playoffsthe first time we saw him play JordanMagic, LeBron, Kobe, the first time we followed the Finals, the first images, videos,… All these first times will inevitably be more powerful and stronger than the images we could see subsequently.
The downside of this mechanism from which the feeling of nostalgia is born is that it precisely creates a sort of perceptual bias.
To this improvement of the past, we must in fact add the fact, again widely studied, that we are always more inclined to accept what we already know, and to accept with difficulty change, the new.
Mix it all together, and you get a very strong bias of negative perception of the present.
To move forward, let’s say that nostalgia gives rise to a distorted feeling in us, a bias of ” retrospective positivity », which pushes us to better consider the past by minimizing the negative aspects and glorifying the strong moments which gave us emotions that we will rarely find again.
The NBA, a factory of selective memories
Well aware of the value that its history can represent for it in terms of market (and yes, the NBA remains a private company), the Great League has multiplied initiatives to maintain this flame of nostalgia among fans.
The NBA is a league of stars, past, present and future, and it knows perhaps better than any other professional league how to honor them.
The 90s were a major turning point in this, providing the league with plenty of stories, stories and images to share to convey its brand image and promote its league. The Lakers duel Magic Johnson against the Celtics Larry Bird was the first stone, a dream scenario to begin to launch the machine, before the arrival of the icon Jordan, propelling the league into a new era of media coverage et internationalization.
We could also limit ourselves to these two examples to illustrate the memory factory that is the NBA.
Since the 80s and 90s until today, we can no longer count the number of books, films, documentaries, shows that have been shared, reshared, debated, told, brought to life or relived the smallest aspects of these episodes, so and so. so much so that we sometimes have the impression of knowing them more than the episodes we have experienced for real.
With the help of selective memory functions, some NBA fans are certain of having experienced a time that those younger than their age will not be able to experience: the golden age. An idealized age, construction of the mind, memory and nostalgia, fueled by the images and memories that we accept to see again and again.
And here you are one fine day, in front of the highlights of a regular season game where Tyrese Maxey scored 50 points, telling anyone who will listen that “ It was still something else before ! ».
The transformation has taken place: you are an old fart.
Even more recent examples illustrate this gigantic giant memory factory that is the NBA: Vince Carter’s dunk contest in 2000, that of Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine in 2016, the Redeem Team from 2008, he pulled Ray Allen in 2013, he chasedown block of LeBron in 2016, etc, etc,…
All these strong images, vectors of equally intense emotions, are used to the core by the Great League to continue to bring the NBA novel to life and continue to pave, in advance, the path of the old idiots who are announced in the next few years.
The idealization of one, the invisibility of the other
The problem with this feeling of nostalgia is the treatment it can cause us to inflict on the information we receive, and which we choose to consider or not.
Regarding the NBA, you just have to look at the treatment the NBA game of the 80s or 90s has received.
As a result of the memories and images transmitted, the stories that were made or shown, the – justified – idea of a game “ the hard way », rough and harsh has developed and settled. When this period is seen by some as the apogee of the NBA game, others, on the other hand, visibly less imbued with nostalgia, are more inclined to pass off the game of the era as an internship in CAP butchery and charcuterie.
This difference highlights one of the problems of nostalgia that threatens the NBA fan, and already mentioned slightly above: idealization and invisibility.
The idealization of an era, a player, a game, a period and the invisibility of what has happened since. Remember, we are always more comfortable with what we know.
How can we not remember the heated debates in 2015 and still current with the emergence of the latest revolution in the NBA game, led by Stephen Curry ? What followed were hours of criticism, questioning of the current NBA model and sometimes even the intrinsic abilities of the players. After all, are they really good or are they just benefiting from an era where everything is easier, more favorable for them? than before » ? Do they have as much merit as their ancestors?
And here you have served on a platter, an element which crystallizes the debates as much as it participates in the folklore of the Great League: the game of comparisons.
Was there ever a time when comparisons between NBA stars past and present didn’t happen? Prize list, abilities, achievements, game, everything is a pretext for comparison and ranking.
Nostalgia is the enemy of objectivity. It was never intended for that, but only to serve as a construction reference for the person who feels it. And yet, how many sterile debates has it fueled? How many dubious arguments, risky comparisons and truncated reasoning did she mobilize?
Are the exploits of Nikola Jokic, because they are not experienced with the same passion and emotions as the exploits of Vlade Divac, any less impressive? Of course not. But passion and nostalgia have their reasons that reason ignores.
There is, however, a risk of missing out on something. Not necessarily next to something better, since this would call into question the emotion felt itself, but something different.
The risk, ultimately, of missing out on a new “ first emotion ».
Nostalgia, a brake on NBA developments?
What if by dint of feeding some of these fans back to the glorious years of the past, the NBA was putting obstacles in its way?
The NBA, if it is proud of its past, is also and above all looking for new opportunities for growth. For this, it depends, like many companies and private leagues, on its ability to adapt to the demands of the times.
For several years, discussions have been going well on the necessary reforms that the NBA could need, one of the examples most crystallizing for fans undoubtedly being the now chestnut tree of the NBA calendar.
To make its product attractive, should the NBA return to the 82 annual regular season games per team?
To this, an army of activists respond in chorus no, often with the historical argument in their mouths, the teams playing 82 games since the 1967-68 season. At the time, 12 teams were involved in the NBA; in 2024, there are 30. The simple fact that the number of matches per team has not changed in 56 years while 18 teams have joined the league since then could appear totally anachronistic.
And yet the argument seems authoritative.
Could nostalgia thus be an obstacle to progress and the evolution of the NBA product?
Let’s hope not for her, but behind the counter debates about who is the best player in history, it is clear that the balance to be found between celebrating history and adapting to modern demands is more subtle to find what it seems.
Come on, in the meantime, I’m going back to watch the 2014 version of Spurs. What do you want, « it was better before » !