I guess The King of Basketball is now the King of Pickleball. LeBron James has teamed up with fellow NBA stars Kevin Love and Draymond Green, along with a few high profiled businessmen, to establish a brand new pickleball team into the MLP, the Major League of Pickleball.
First off, I had to Google what pickleball was before writing this. Before today, I don’t think I have ever in my life heard the words ‘pickle’ and ‘ball’ being used in the same sentence, let alone them being combined to describe a real sport.
How did the people who invented this sport even think of calling it ‘Pickleball’? The name itself is honestly a creative masterpiece.
Anyway, back to LeBron James, he must have been a huge fan of pickleball during the COVID-19 lockdown as he, along with Draymond Green, Kevin Love, and others, have officially entered a brand-new team into the Major League Pickleball, the professional North American league for the sport (and probably the only professional league around the world).
Now, for those who don’t know (like me about half an hour ago), Pickleball is the combination of tennis, ping-pong, wiffleball, and badminton, the purpose of pickleball is to hit a green, wiffleball over a centralized net and onto your opponent’s side of the court. Only when the ball bounces out of bonds or twice on the opponent’s side is when you would get a point.
And, the first person/team who gets to eleven (and has a two-point advantage) wins.
So, essentially, it’s like tennis, wiffleball, ping-pong, and badminton combined into one.
Personally, I think it’s kind of silly to have a professional league for a ‘gimmicky’ kind of sport (please don’t hate me pickleball fans, but it’s true) as I’m not sure what distinguishes this sport from sports like the Home Run Derby in baseball, wiffleball, flag football, kickball, or a five-a-side game in soccer/European football, etc.
Sure, they’re all really fun to play, but do they really need to have a professional sports league with big-time investors?
Though, I guess you could make that argument with every sport being played today all the way back when they were first invented.
Plus, I didn’t realize this, but this game is beloved by millions of Americans and people around the world, and especially more so during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like I said with LeBron, millions of people decided to play the sport in 2020 and 2021 because of its relative ease (it has a much smaller court size than tennis) and its generally accessibility for people of all ages (the ball is light so power and stamina is not required to win as it would be for tennis and baseball).
So, I don’t know, maybe this league will work out. Or maybe it won’t and LeBron James, Draymond Green, and Kevin Love’s investment into this new league will end up floundering.
Only time will tell if pickleball can really become a popular sport in North America.
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