There seems to be a few people puzzled in this thread about the lack of people who actually watch (and like) basketball.
I’m one of them, since my neighbor is constantly watching it and follows it closely…so hearing that it’s seemingly not as well liked in other places was a surprise to me.
Now I know a lot of people here watch college basketball and follow that along fairly closely, but I’m not talking about that right now. I’m talking about the NBA (or WNBA even), pro basketball, which is what seems to be the thing many people don’t care for on here.
Do you watch pro basketball? If so, how closely would you say you followed it?
Pro basketball is what you’d get if a guy who thought soccer was boring decided to fix it by doing a find-and-replace of “not scoring” with “scoring”. Problem is, not only does that not improve anything, it actually makes it worse, since in order to accomplish that you more or less have to illegalize playing defense (which the NBA has quite handily done) and ignore any offensive rules violations (which they’re steadily working on). As I’ve said before, when it’s not uncommon for both teams to score over 100 points with a primary scoring increment of two, something pretty much has to be wrong.
While I watch college basketball fairly regularly, I haven’t paid much attention to the NBA since the Seattle Supersonics moved to Oklahoma City. I may glance at the NBA Championship Series a bit but that’s it. If the NBA deems Seattle worthy enough to have another team, I may start watching the league again.
I really don’t follow it at all. I’ll watch some during the playoffs but not much at all during the regular season. Here in Alabama college football is king, followed by the NFL. From what I have observed from friends, sports talk radio, etc. NBA basketball doesn’t have a large following here.
I do a quick glance to see if the Nuggets, Lakers or Knicks won, but that’s the extent of it. My mother was a huge pro basketball fan and took her to several games before she passed away. For me? Not so much.
I used to be a very big fan of 76ers, during Dr. J.'s heyday. Somewhere along the line artistry, teamwork, and fundamentals went by the boards, replaced by raw physical spectacle. Every time I’ve tried to watch it during the last 10 years I’ve been bored out of my skull by the simplistic play, and couldn’t watch more than 30 minutes of it.
I used to, when I had cable TV, but now that I only have over-the-air reception, there is barely any opportunity to see the NBA. I don’t miss it much. I enjoyed NBA ball in the 70s and 80s when it had more free-wheeling play and a more balanced league, but with the advent of defense-first coaching coupled with Stern’s ‘stars-get-all-the-calls’ refereeing, NBA ball became a very very boring game.
On occasion, I listen to snippets of Bucks games on the radio, or follow on Sportsline’s game tracker while doing other things.
I’m from Portland. I grew up going to Blazer games as they were the only game in town. We’re the largest market with one major league team (although we have MLS now!) I’m still very much a Blazer fan. I started a similar thread last season.
This pretty much describes me except I was a Lakers fan. A wild and crazy Lakers fan. Once Kareem retired I started drifting away. Then the officiating began to deteriorate. Then, well, let me just say “Kobe Bryant” and leave it at that. Those Charles Barkeley commercials for Weight Watchers have made me nostalgic for the good old days of the NBA. Sigh.