On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) how much do you like basketball?

The Game Room
21

This question is too broad, since basketball is played over such a broad area in many different ways. But since the question stands as is, I’ll vote axcordingly.
I gave it a 3.

I loathe the NBA and would five it a negative score if I could. The fact that the NBA is starting to dip in popularity right now makes me smile, because I hate the NBA product. I’m amazed that it is still as popular as it is, but when Stern resigned, it was a signal to me that he sees the writing on the wall. The next decade will be painful for the NBA, and at the best, there will be flat growth. Stern got out while the gettin’ was good. He was a rat that bailed on a sinking ship.

However…

College basketball is still a great game to watch, and I can stop and watch just about any college game on TV, and iI enjoy it enough to not immediately look for the remote. I enjoy March Madness, and I don’t really care who wins the tourney. Of course, if my team would win, that would be great, but since they never do, it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the tournament.

It is also a great game to play in the summer or when growing up, so the game has a lot of appeal to me from a personal level.

The NBA, though, where the highest level of basketball talent plays on a daily basis, is a lousy league that has permitted the game to get too sloppy for my tastes. There is rarely a traveling call any longer, and 3 seconds is more like 6 or 7 seconds, if it is called at all. Many of the rules learned when I grew up playing in high school have been erased in the NBA to make the game “better”. However, I personally disagree that the NBA game is the best product out there. The NCAA game, to me anyway, is where the game reaches its best level, even if the talent level is much less in college.

I like certain players in the NBA, like LeBron James and Kevin Durant. However, I don’t care about the Heat or Thunder at all. I can appreciate the skill of some of these guys, but the game is a bastardization of what it was and I simply don’t like what it has turned into.

ETA - forgot to mention the WNBA, which is an abomination. I can’t watch it at all, and yes, I know these women are great players. However, the game they play is too slow, too error-filled, and this game wouldn’t have survived this long if Stern didn’t connect the TV rights of the NBA games to the WNBA. This is a horrid product.

22

Types of basketball I would enjoy watching: wheelchair, donkey, celebrity or women’s HORSE. (Not on horseback, but spelling the word)

23

I just can’t stand the screeching halt the pro games come to in the final 30 seconds with the fouls and time outs. It makes the whole thing anti-climactic.

24

Gave it a three. Now, if I win the billion dollar bracket, it’ll got up to, well, a billion.

25

Love it.

Played it growing up, and continued to play recreationally into my 40’s. I went to all the games in college, and now am a season ticket holder at a PAC-12 school. My team was ranked just outside of the Top 10 when their best player tore his ACL and their best freshman tore his MCL minutes later. The team collapsed emotionally after their leader went down, losing four of their next five games. But then, something amazing happened. The younger and lesser players picked up the slack, and managed to right the ship. Instead of leaning on one guy, they started to get contributions from all over the floor, and ended the season winning eight of their last 13 games and making the NCAA tournament for the third year in a row.

By the way, the popularity of the NBA is not waning. Attendance is holding steady and while TV ratings have dropped, that is true for any sport except football, and is not indicative of a decline in popularity, just a reflection of the glut of options on TV these days.

The pro game is growing by leaps and bounds all over Europe, in China and Africa, and you have robust domestic leagues in places like Australia and various South American countries.

In the PAC-12, there are about 145 scholarship athletes in men’s basketball, and just off the top of my head there are players from Australia, Canada, Iran, Egypt, Sweden, Netherlands, Russia, and Cameroon, and I’m sure there are a bunch more.

26

Professional sports? That’s where you sit in your living room and watch a bunch of other guys play a game? It’s just a fad; it’ll never catch on.

Personally? I suck at it, last time I tried.

Who am I kidding? Every time I tried.

27

I gave it a 3. I enjoy playing it, but I definitely find it the least interesting of the major North American sports. And the constant shoe squeaking noise drives me crazy.

28

Before the Summer of 2002: 10
After the Summer of 2002: 1

Very precious few people in this world are able to make you “see” a game on the radio…this guy was one of the forerunners.

29
  1. I used to like watching NBA from the 1970s through the Bird-Johnson-Jordan years up until the Rasheed Wallace Pistons. Since then, I don’t find it compelling to watch or care at all who wins, and I no longer play the sport either.
30

I went with 3. I enjoy filling out a bracket for the whole March Madness thing, and I’ll watch a few of the games, but a little basketball goes a long way.

31

I would watch a 3v3 playground pickup game of 5 eight year olds and a dog. I would stay up late to see who won. I would gladly spend every afternoon watching pregnant women with swimming fins on play basketball. I wish to Bob there was a 24 hour basketball channel, like I wanted to create back in the early '90s; I’d finally get cable and become a TV junkie.

BTW, I gave it a 10 in the poll.

32

I gave it a two. I’ll shoot baskets at home once in a while, but don’t care for the sport much. My objection is that the officiating is far too big a factor in the outcome. Some games it just seems like the zebras have it in for one team or the other and they wind up shooting about 40 free throws to the other team’s 5. Plus the whole idea of free throws bothers me- in no other sport do we allow people to attempt to score with not defensive pressure (well, there’s that rare time in football where you can fair catch a punt and kick a FG from that spot). But we don’t hand a batter a ball and say “toss this ball up in the air and if you can hit it out of the park, you get to score”. Plus the players seem to be the biggest dicks in team sports.

33

Gave it a five. I mostly hate pro ball. And I really only like watching college ball in March. I love it in March, but the rest of the season I follow it by reading about the games online.

34

Not a football fan, then, I take it.

35

I don’t know- QBs are a bunch of whiny entitled prima donnas, but the linemen, defensive backs, and such seem to come off pretty reasonable in interviews. I’ve always thought of the four major team sports in the US, hockey players seem to be the most decent, followed by baseball, then football, then basketball.

36

I said 4, but that’s not really accurate.

Until March, college basketball gets a 2 from me. During the big NCAA tiurnament, a 7.

The regular NBA season gets a 2 from me. The playoffs get a 6.

37

I went with three. Just not a big fan, but I’ll go to a Cleveland Cavaliers game now and then. Any sport where there’s a perverse incentive to commit fouls has a strike against it, in my book. I also don’t dig all the tats and gangsta culture.

38

I can watch pretty much any sport and gain some sort of enjoyment out of it. Well, all except basketball. I’ve chatted about it at length with friends and the only reason I can come up with is the speed of scoring, it seems to make NOT scoring more important than actually scoring.

Edit:
I went with a 1. I would have gone lower if I had the option.

39

5

I like basketball, but there’s something about the current state of the NBA that’s off-putting to me.

I think I just don’t like Lebron James (probably because of the constant LBJ teabagging on TNT and ESPN), and I live in DC so I don’t get to see too many Western Conference games, which are much more compelling.

On the upside the Wizards seem to be much improved, but OTOH I find watching sports much more stressful if I actually care who wins.

40

Zeldar likes his lists. I have a picture in my head of an apartment somewhere with lists and statistics plastered on the wall like wallpaper. But I’ll play along and leave my data point.

I put down 2 but the question is overly broad. Watching live is much more enjoyable. Even with little interest in the current sport I would go to a game if offered. I have not been to a pro game in many years. College games are even more fun to watch live.

In the Bird/Magic era I was interested in the sport but my interest waned. For some years after that I would say I was a Nets fan but that stopped being true. Now that they moved that will never happen again. I still look every now and then to see how my college teams are doing but very rarely watch a game. During the tournament I may watch a game or two. Or I may not.