I think baseball players are probably the least educated, most dick-ish of the players in all the team sports. Half of them never even went to college at all, and at least in the US baseball tends to skew very suburban and upper-middle-class. That reads like a how-to manual for creating a dickish professional athlete.
(Baseball players also skew more conservative than athletes in the other major sports for some of these same reasons, but I would like to emphasize that I am not correlating dickishness and conservatism.)
I don’t watch much TV and what I do watch is seldom sports, but the above is my attitude towards watching basketball. It’s too easy for the male pros, they look like they’re putting their socks away in their sock drawers.
Ditto. I actually prefer the somewhat slower pace and below-the-rim nature of the women’s game. I’ve only recently started trying to watch the occasional NBA game again after a long hiatus, mainly as a result of homerism ( the Warriors are once again semi-respectable ). But I’m still not a big fan of the modern pro game anymore and I don’t watch it much.
I added my vote of a 9. I like NBA playing a lot: the entire NBA “product”, however, not as much. I voted 9 because I like my team, watch all the game, go to several a year, but I won’t watch any other teams. Can’t stand WNBA or college. Too slow.
I also needed to vote to balance out the expected anti-Bball SD bias. The SD “cool kids” have determined Bball sux and will not be considered a legitimate sport. There are some of us out here that do like it.
Gave it a 9. Don’t quite enjoy it as much as baseball and (American) football, but it’s right there with hockey on the next tier. I always liked to play, even though I’ve never been particularly good at it. Still enjoy watching both NBA and NCAA, despite the fact that I’m a fan of a 76ers team that’s currently threatening to break the NBA record for consecutive losses and my alma mater (Temple) just completed the losingest season in program history!
I’m a solid 5. Living in Chicago-ish, I watched The Bulls all the time when Jordan was playing. After Jordan, I hardly watched at all. The past few years (last and this notwithstanding) with Derrick Rose making things exciting, I’ve been watching again.
I’m a basketball fair weather fan, I guess.
Want to address the basketball players being the biggest dicks in sports. Started my tv career working for the company that broadcasts the Raptors (literally performs setup and records, not sends over the air). The job had me recording pre game interviews in the home and away dressing room and thus probably met every player in the league over that span. (05-07). I can’t think of a single bad experience with a single player.
The best example was Rasheed Wallace. Based on his on court actions I was a bit apprehensive when the pistons came to town as I and the interviewer needed an interview (used to do a little camera, not anymore). When we went into the room he had music blaring and was dancing around the room. He was nice and friendly during and after as we talked for a while. Great guy.
I watched one game with interest, when the Blazers won the championship on my dad’s birthday. Only because it was the big game. Really, I think there is waaay too much scoring, they should make the hoop two inches bigger than the ball, invalidate any play where an offensive player touches the rim at all, and legalize goal-tending. Then it might be remotely interesting.
I used to watch basketball quite a bit. But once these things happened: 1) Michael Jordan retired, 2) Shaq became such a huge star, 3) basketball games, especially close ones, became a sequence of fouls, free throws, and timeouts at the end, and 4) so many college players decided to become “one and dones,” I pretty much lost interest in the sport. I’ll catch as much Olympic basketball as I can 'cause I’m a sucker for tournaments involving national teams (for many sports, but not all. Cricket being a notable example) but I watch hardly any “March Madness” anymore and the pros? Ha! I might watch a little bit of the deciding game in the NBA Finals (depending on which teams are involved in it) but that’s about it. The only reason I didn’t vote “1” for basketball is because there are “sports” that I care about even less, such as the aforementioned cricket and any “motor” sports you can name.