I was the first one called a racist in this thread, yet I am a die-hard Dodgers fan. Jackie Robinson, anyone? Magic Johnson was one of my heroes when basketball mattered to me. Watching Laker games was one of the things my father and I bonded over.
People who think the NBA’s problems are because the sport is “too black” are…less than accurate.
then what is it? the 3 point shot was instituted in '80. you can’t say that allen iverson single-handedly destroyed the white interest in the league?
If that last bit was indirectly directed at me, I’ll just point out that it was his play-style which greatly turned me off (along with a healthy dose of obnoxious personality), not his race. Julius Erving is my favorite basketball player ever, BTW.
not really. it’s just that in this thread, i’m reading much of the same reasons that most of my friends give for not liking the NBA and really i have no idea what any of most of these reasons even mean.
1 - post #2 says that the games are either blowouts or close games. i don’t find this a viable argument at all
2 - others have said that the showboating and selfish nature of NBA stars turn them off. however, the NFL doesn’t seem to lose fans because of their showboating, arrogant players. moreover, there are plenty of classy teams such as San Antonio, Utah, Portland that have down-to-earth, humble players.
3 - people prefer the college game. why? also, why is this so prevalent in basketball and not in football? there are far more people who say “i prefer college bball to the NBA” than “i watch college football but i hardly watch any NFL action.”
4 - people who complain about the rule changes. the 3 point line is a rule that’s 30 years old. it’s 1 year younger than the hockey-helmet grandfather clause went into effect and you NEVER hear about people saying “well i used to watch hockey until they made them wear helmets”.
5 - end-game time-out situations. do people not watch FOOTBALL? HUGELY LONG stretches of dead ball, timeouts + 2 minute warnings, all the while stuffed full of commercials. you can’t compare a 3+ hr football game with a 90-120min basketabll game in terms of time stoppage.
i still maintain that race is an issue, whether consciously or subconsciously. Even if the NFL is 2/3rds black, the NBA is blacker (75%ish), and more importantly, the stars are black. if we didn’t have peyton/brady/brees and had to discuss the merits of vick/young/mcnabb? you’ll probably see white flight in the NFL fanship too.
I consider myself a bit agnostic on this issue, but I think the issue (if there is one) is not “the stars are black” but “they’re not covering their entire body with gear.” You get to see all their tattoos, muscles, and (gasp!) dark skin. With all the stuff football players wear, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between white and black players.
Although I grew up in serious college basketball country, for whatever reason, that interest just did not extend to the professional ranks. I didn’t do much more than keep an eye out for which pro teams drafted area players. I suppose it didn’t help that my hometown isn’t really in any particular NBA team’s sphere of influence – the Pacers are the closest franchise, and I was only dimly aware of their existence – but that didn’t stop me from becoming an ardent NFL fan.
These are not my opinions, but I can take a crack at it.
Football fans are similarly tired of the infamous WRs who love to showboat and act selfish. Ochocinco, TO, Randy Moss, the list goes on. The perception is that there are more of those personalities in the NBA.
I prefer the college game because each game is more meaningful and, frankly, the NCAA tournament is perhaps the most exciting postseason in all of sports. Plus, there are fewer games which I think leads players to play hard more often.
I don’t know much NHL, so can’t comment on that. But some people think the 3 pointer took out some of the flow of set plays in basketball.
True, but in hoops you’ll get a series of intentional fouls and break for free throws and then timeout and it just seems to drag on more.
I think you’re right about this. It’s sad, but there would probably be some resentment among some white NFL fans if every star QB were black. I do not think this applies to a majority of white NFL fans, for the record.
Yeah, and it sucks there, too.
However, the way the clock moves in football and basketball is different. Football is designed to be a stop-and-start kind of game. There are structured stoppages built into the play, when everyone stops, regroups, huddles, lines up, ANDTHENEVERYONEMOVESFOR10SECONDS and then everyone stops, regroups…
The pace of basketball is more akin to that of hockey. Hockey has long stretches of action with few breaks (aside from intermissions) from start to- more notably here- finish. Basketball, at its core, is like this. Not to say that basketball’s pace should match hockey’s (and it really shouldn’t), but basketball is “supposed” to be a fast-paced, back-and-forth game, and it’s really goddamn annoying to have all these 0.4 seconds bursts of action between 1-2 minute breaks, right when the game should be reaching its apex. And if someone is just mildly interested in basketball, having the end of the game drag out like that can be a killer.
I’ll respond before reading the thread to my reasons are untainted, but I’m guessing a lot of repeat.
NBA basketball was the first sport I had any interest in. I grew up in Vancouver, WA, so the Blazers were the only pro team around and my first long term girlfriend in high school was a season ticket holding family so I got to go with some regularity, combine that with catching this interest just as the Drexler era was really hitting its stride and I had a six or seven year love affair with basketball (and not just Blazers, for a while I was happy to watch any games involving any teams).
But now I pay so little attention that when I happen to see a standings table I have to pause to realize that I actually did know that Memphis, Okalahoma City, and New Orleans have teams now.
Why did I lose interest? I think:
A) No matter how amazingly athletic the players are, and it is amazing, I eventually grew accustomed to it, blase even.
B) Most of most games don’t matter. It feels like if you watch the first five minutes you’ll know who’s going to win and when that’s not true, just watch the last two and you’ll see all the excitement.
C) Most games in the season don’t matter. With more than half the teams making the playoffs there’s very little “pennant race” type excitement. You’re generally way out of contention or easily in even if the exact place isn’t known.
D) The playoffs take forever (though this is increasingly true of MLB as well which I don’t like), it is just too hard to maintain playoff excitement for what feels like five months.
E) As the icons of the game when I first got interested began to retire their successors just never really captured my imagination. Don’t know why and that isn’t necessarily a reflection on them.
F) I moved to the SF area which, near as I can tell, hardly gives a flying leap about the Warriors and so there is no real community vibe around it.
Many of those apply to baseball to some degree but I still love that game, but somehow they combined in a way with the NBA that just turned the switch completely off. I suppose that if the Warriors went deep in the playoffs I would get into it for the run but it would be a pure bandwagon thing, I couldn’t currently name even one player.
To me this sounds like the sports equivalent of “but some of my best friends are black!”
I’m not even saying it’s such a bad thing to feel this way. The hip-hop thug culture is obviously not for everyone and I don’t really fault anyone for being a bit turned off by it. Erving was a little before my basketball fandom but from what I understand, he and guys like Clyde Frazier weren’t as threatening as more recent guys like Iverson et al, with their tattoos and scowling and whatnot.
Commissioner Stern has recognized this and has been trying very hard to clean up the NBA’s image. Pushing for more (“fundamentall sound”) European players, ever tighter rules regarding unsportsmanlike conduct (technical fouls for clapping too much on court?), dress codes for players’s non-uniform courtside clothes or engaging in any NBA business. And I do believe it’s working somewhat, the NBA is making a little comeback from what I understand.
pancakes3 makes a legitimate point tho, in that the NFL, while it has its share of arrogant thuggy guys, the people who get the most adulation are still the golden-boy white quarterbacks. If 3/4 of the QB’s suddenly became Rasheed Wallace, what would happen? It’s a fair question.
FTR, I agree with many of the points about the relative pointlessness of the regular season, playoffs too long, etc.
I’ll note this:
I’m not a fan of hip-hop culture. I will readily confess that I’m a middle-aged white guy who grew up in a mid-sized town in Wisconsin, and my musical tastes probably stopped dead around 1990. 
To me, as a casual observer, it does certainly feel that hip-hop music and hip-hop culture do seem to be a big part of the NBA now, moreso than other sports. It’s probably a contributing factor to why I don’t watch the NBA, though I doubt it’s the primary factor.
I’d also note that I don’t really care for the fact that it’s a (probably smaller) part of the NFL now, as well.
Does that make me racist? Gads, I hope not. (For comparison, I’ll say that I’m also not a fan of southern culture or country music, and they seem, to the casual observer, to be a big part of NASCAR. I don’t follow NASCAR, either.)
That’s probably the main reason I don’t like watching basketball, combined with the fact that with only 5 players on the court per team, it’s very star-oriented. So much so, that some players are so dominant that almost any team with them would be excellent (Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Julius Erving, etc…)
I also think that ** pancakes3 ** is onto something with the lack of white stars. Not because of overt bigotry, but just because a lot of white fans may have a hard time identifying with young, cocky black guys with a lot of tattoos and strange hairstyles any more than they identify with tall amazonian women playing basketball regardless of race. Conversely, that probably explains a lot of the attraction of televised golf.
What exactly are you trying to imply? Trying very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt, even tho you obviously aren’t willing to do the same for me.
To me it a league that has gone way to far in the style-over-substance area. Guys like Dr.J and Jordan brought a whole new popularity to the sport by adding flash to the fundamental skill play. But then the league started taking it to an extreme and started changing rules, and ignoring others to allow for big stars to make flashyshowy plays. But it lost the integrity of the game. It’s closer to an exhibition like WWF then it is to pure sports competition.
And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, the NFL has done millions in research and take huge efforts to curb showmanship and extra-curricular crap because it turns a large portion of the fan base off.
If you don’t like basketball you don’t like basketball. Heck, I’d agree with many statements in this thread (subjective fouls, end of game situations). But as always, some of the given reasons are funny.
The “thug” thing is interesting because the current era is and has been ridiculously squeaky clean. Who’s a thug right now? J.R. Smith? Melo? I’ll give you those two, and they’re on the same team. But J.R. Smith isn’t exactly a household name. And the Nuggets haven’t exactly made waves. Are you gonna tell me Garnett is a thug because he curses a lot?
Magic cheated on his wife and got infected with HIV. He fucked groupies in the locker room. He ran a coach out of town and was booed for being a locker room cancer. Bird was a notoriously arrogant trash talker who got into several famous oncourt fights. Jordan was one of the cockiest athletes of the last 50 years. Barkley got into bar room brawls, but everyone still loves him. Hell, he went to jail like a year ago for DUI and came back as an analyst right away since no one cares because he’s awesome. The '90s had a lot more thugs and wasted talent than the last 10 years. The '80s were filled with druggies – real druggies doing coke and heroin and ending their careers or actually dying, not toking some weed.
LeBron is a douche, but he’s one of the most disgusting corporate PC robots you’ll find in the sports landscape. Who’s a thug bringing down the sport? Kobe? Wade? Shaq? Duncan? Manu? Parker? Dirk? Nash? CP3? Durant? Love? Howard? Kidd? Westbrook? Yao? Billups? Bosh? Gasol? Rondo? Griffin? Roy? Rose? Noah? Boozer? Williams? Carter? Milsap? Amare? Nene? Chandler? Ray Allen? Pierce? Rondo? Scalabrine?
No one can ever identify all these thugs ruining the sport. And Sheed wasn’t a thug, he just liked to complain a lot. And he was an entertaining provocateur, like Rodman (well, no one can be like Rodman, but the point is no one cared if he seemed “thuggish,” because he was really a teddy bear hollywood actor).
The Jail Blazers were a bunch of actual unlikable thugs who did some actual crimes…like 8 years ago.
I also found it interesting that several people don’t like emotional outbursts from players. NBA fans right now seem to be, on average, hating the new tech rules. I guess more people than I thought want to watch emotionless robots play a ruthlessly efficient game. Which is why Duncan was always such a ratings magnet! Wait, no…
Look at the crowd of any NBA arena. Lily white dorks holding up embarrassing signs. I’m also not sure what hip hop has to do with anything whatsoever, although it always seems to mysteriously come to the forefront in these discussions. Maybe AI really did kill the NBA with his cornrows and baggy clothing. PRACTICE?!
clearly marshmallow’s a fan. non-fans are probably scratching their heads over “cp3”, if they had bothered to read that far.
The NBA’s season runs nearly parallel to the NHL’s. Why watch basketball when I can watch a faster, tougher sport? Basketball players may embrace thug culture but the highlights on Sportscentre routinely make them look like sisses; NBA players out 4-6 weeks with a torn hangnail. </hyperbole>
Also, being from Ottawa, the only NBA team in Canada is the Raptors, and I don’t want to cheer for a Toronto Sports team. I boo the Maple Leafs and the Argos every chance I get, and it took 5 years after the Expos left for me to (begrudgingly) start following the Blue Jays.
Plus there’s too many points for my taste. There never seems to be enough defining, exciting moments in the game for me. Hockey and baseball have been a nice balance between Soccer (90 minute 0-0 draw, anyone?), or Basketball (sometimes nearly 100 baskets in one game). I would challenge the OP and ask him why he doesn’t watch the Portland Pirates, instead.
That was a great post, marshmallow.
J.R. Smith is my favorite player right now. He probably has 2 of the greatest dunks I’ve ever seen. Anyway, he’s got a lot of tattoos, but he’s not even the biggest thug on his own team. That would be the Birdman Chris Andersen…a white guy. For the record, I am a big fan of the Birdman, too.
Not sure what all this talk about “hip-hop culture” in basketball is. My roommates and I watch a decent amount of basketball, and I don’t remember seeing any hip-hop culture in basketball. They wear matching uniforms, for chrissake. Unless this is referring to tattoos, which white people have been getting for years, and continue to get.
That’s one thing I actually find really strange about the Warriors. They have big crowds all the time, even when they’re awful. Plenty of talk on sports radio, etc. But you really don’t see that many Warriors shirts or hats out in general. Good crowds, but you could never call Oakland or San Francisco “a basketball town.” My theory is that everyone’s favorite team is the Giants/Raiders/Sharks/49ers, and their second team in the Warriors. People follow them, but not many really invest in them. Except for…
Untrue. Mainly because they had a playoff run that got everyone onto the bandwagon. That’s what got me interested in basketball, and I’ve stuck around. I think you officially Don’t Care At All. 