Lately, when I watch a competitive game event, someone's always complaining about the commentary on stream chat.

"They're not passionate enough."
"There's no analysis. He's a Silver League/1200 ELO/1500 BP player."
"I don't like his voice."
"He doesn't know what he's talking about."
"He's always wrong."
"She's just there because she has boobs."

But you know what?
Sports (real sports, not this E-Sports crap) has been a hotbed of horrible commentary for as long as I can tell.



Everything I've heard out of Skip Bayless suggests that he doesn't anything about what he's talking about. He has no idea and speaks in dramatic fashion. The difference between the analysis of Cuban and Bayless is immense, especially near the end when Bayless ignores the question of why zone defense is played.

The thing with sports commentary is that it's mostly designed so that the audience feels like they're smart. That's why you always hear crass one-dimensional comments if you watch games in a crowd. "Pass the ball to Kobe." "Just throw the ball to Megatron and he'll catch everything." "All the QB has to do is handoff to Peterson, win game easy."

Take Peyton Manning. He's constantly praised as a mastermind who makes a billion adjustments at the line, and that's why he's so successful. But what do we really know about his adjustments? How does he read the defense? What is he looking for? People fidgeting? The way people line up? How is he commanding his troops better than the defensive captain? Why can't the defense adjust to his adjustments? Are they really being read on every play?

I've always felt basketball was the sport that deserves much more analysis than we get. I don't want to hear about Lebron and Hunger Games. Even the statistics we use to evaluate are flawed. I've never been a big fan of the Rebound statistic, since you can have 2-3 guys successfully box out their man but only one guy can get the rebound so you can't account for the other guys's performance. Things like that.

So, with that said, I'm not entirely sure great analysis or even great commentary in general is really needed. Perhaps it's just people complaining like usual and I got annoyed at it. Either way, I wish people would focus more on the game and their own analysis instead of hanging on words, especially dramatic words or soap opera drama like playing the instant replay 50x throughout the game of Kobe Bryant shaking Shaq's hand at the start of the Heat/Lakers game and being critical of it.