Hoosiers lack hysteria

World Championships have been far from fan-tastic

INDIANAPOLIS -- Perhaps what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Right now this town is full of basketball people who think -- blasphemously so, a good Hoosier would say -- that the "Miracle of Milan" was some scudetto Simmenthal won back in the '60s.

But cultural differences alone don't explain why the crowds at the World Basketball Championship have been both meager and, except for a few clutches of non-American fans, restrained. Even as Dirk Nowitzki kept the Germans even for 29 minutes against the U.S. on Friday night, the home folks in the RCA Dome couldn't muster a single U-S-A cheer.

Peegs.com, the Bob Knight-is-always-right Web site, has more traffic than the Conseco concourses. Or as Marv Albert put it in his inimitable, understated way: "The crowd, not exactly elbowing its way to get in."

This despite two world-class venues, superb organization, the most fan-friendly downtown in America, and a range of promotions to goose interest -- including an adopt-a-team program for local kids, which grants them free admission to see in action a country they'd spent the school year studying.

Organizers had hoped for crowds between 15,000 and 16,000 for doubleheader sessions featuring the U.S. team, and in the 4,000 to 5,000 range for sessions without the hosts. Numbers have fallen short of those targets more often than not. And the one crowd that would have done Hoosier Hysteria proud -- the 22,000-plus who filled the Dome for the U.S. team's matchup with China on Saturday night -- didn't have a particularly Indiana flavor: I counted 24 Chinese flags, and only three Old Glories.

It's all been a disappointment to national teams from 15 countries who thought they'd be performing in front of connoisseurs, the most rabid, discerning hoopheads on earth. "I'm struggling with what people around here think this is," said New Zealand coach Tab Baldwin, a Floridian who went to a certain college in South Bend. "I think it's the World Championship. People need to come out."

If not for the ethnic fans who showed up -- often literally wrapped in the flag of their homelands -- the Dome and Conseco would have been tomblike. Thank goodness, then, for the New Zealanders who, reserved though they may be by nature, brandished signs reading SMALL COUNTRY, BIG HEARTS. And the band of Angolans who danced and drummed during the entirety of their team's game with Spain, even as the African champs were losing by 30-plus. And Turkish fans who, though they bought seats, never actually sat in them.

Even the Falun Gong practitioners, hoisting their signs of protest during China's first three games, did so with commitment. (To little effect, alas: In Beijing, China Central Television censors snipped out all the offensive placards and aired the games on tape, thereby earning Falun Gong only the enmity of Chinese fans who blamed the movement for their not being able to watch the Worlds live.)

Why the desultory interest?

Is it the end-of-summer, back-to-school blahs? Competition from the NHRA drag-racing nationals? Or could it be that the Hoosier love for hoops is shallow as a creek in August, extending only to the local high school, to IU if we approve of the coach, and to the Pacers so long as they're winning?

(One explanation I don't buy is that advanced by Yugoslavia's Vlade Divac, who tried to lay blame for the poor crowds on the refs. "I would not pay to watch," he huffed after the Yugos' loss to Spain on Friday. But then the Yugos were ready to blame the officials for just about anything.)

Herewith, a Hoosier's Cheat Sheet for the Worlds:

Brazil: Our Oscar was better than yours.

China: So Coach Knight broke some. You got a problem with that?

Turkey: I'll have mine with stuffing, gravy and persimmon pie.

Puerto Rico: No, we won't extradite him.

Lebanon: Hasn't been the same since Rick Mount graduated.

U.S.A.: Wake me up when Reggie's back on that ankle.

With a week to go, there's still time for the numbers to build. But as of now, Toronto, host to the 1994 Worlds, is outdrawing Indy.

Are Hoosiers ready to accept that their support for world-class hoops can't match that of a hockey town?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, available online and in bookstores everywhere. He can be reached at http://www.biggamesmallworld.com.

 

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