A few thoughts about basketball and the body, from someone who admits to watching basketball occasionally at best:
It’s not a collision sport, like football. You can play pro basketball for 15 years with the full expectation that you’ll have your full complement of functional brain cells, and you’ll be able to do the everyday things that most other people do.
It is unquestionably a contact sport, despite not being one in theory. There’s a lot of pushing, shoving, and bumping in each game between guys weighing well over 200 pounds, for 82 games a season, plus a good chance of more of the same in the postseason, not to mention the occasional time when you hit the floor with some force. I’d expect all that to take some sort of toll on the body, just like my father-in-law’s lifetime of crawling around in, around, and under food processing and refrigeration equipment took a toll on his body.
Ditto all that start-and-stop running, and the perpetual motion. Windsprints are good, up to a point; you don’t want to be doing them for two hours a night, 82 nights a year. That just has to be hard on the legs, especially on the knees.
I’d expect the effect of all that wear and tear would be to shorten a basketball player’s life, and of his ability to enjoy life.
ETA: Getting back to my personal poll choice, I certainly wouldn’t want to put up with all that pounding over the course of an NBA career. That’s enough reason for me to choose baseball over basketball.
I had to vote football because it is far and away my favorite sport. I’d rather have a shorter career that I was really enjoyed than a longer career in one I was less passionate about. However, if one is more interested in money or fame, basketball is probably the way to go. Baseball seems like it would be the least physically demanding, but as others have said, the long minor league process along with the fairly brutal travel schedule, not to mention often weeks without a day off would get old quickly.
Baseball, then at the first oppurtunity sign a free agent contract with the Yankees. Just so I can say I played for the Yankees. The money will be there for whichever sport I choose (if spent wisely, invested, yada yada). To be able to say I legitimately played for the Yankees, well, that can’t be purchased.
The coinflip would be to play basketball (preferably point guard) or quarterback. Of course I say this mere months after Peyton gets his neck snapped and mere days after Derrick Rose tears his ACL but those are risks that I’m personally ready to take.
I probably would respectfully decline if I was drafted to play any other football position though. Physically I might be able to make it through more or less intact given modern medicine but to take hits like that so consistently requires a certain “don’t give a fuck” attitude that I just don’t have any more.
A healthy hell no to play running back or linebacker though (ironically my high school positions). You’ve got to be a tough, mean, and probably troubled SOB to play those positions in the NFL.
I don’t care how much talent I have been magically given. I’m 5’7". I’m playing baseball and that’s it. If I’m also magically grown another 7" or so, it still wouldn’t change my mind. Hockey sucks, football is stupid, and basketball is just silly. The money doesn’t matter as much as having fun at what I do and a nice, long,* safe* career.