Basketball can’t hold my attention. It’s not because I didn’t grow up playing it or because I’m short (I am short though, but taller than Brian Gionta so whatever). I enjoyed playing basketball as a kid, and although I haven’t played it in forever, I’d probably enjoy it now too. However basketball is a boring ass sport, and I’m going to tell you why.
- They score too often. Think about when you’re at a hockey game, when your team scores, you go nuts. When the other team scores, it’s a travesty. Scoring is always a big deal. Now watch the NBA for 10 minutes. In those ten minutes there are going to be tons of points put on the board. It may even look thrilling. What does the crowd do? They politely clap from their seats. The dynamics of basketball make scoring SO commonplace, that it’s no longer exciting. That. Is. Shitty.
- One of the biggest reasons basketball sucks is also one of the biggest reasons hockey isn’t huge in the US, it’s entirely about stars. Basketball may have a whole roster of players on each team, but the game has little to do with them. Basketball is about Michael Jordan, it’s about Kobe Bryant, it’s about LeBron James. One player can make a team. One player can break one. That’s lame, especially for markets that can’t attract or keep that player, ask Cleveland or Toronto.
- Say what you will about the corporate shilling that goes on in hockey, but that’s nothing compared to basketball. It seems like every major player is in a new commercial every week. Talk about sensory overload.
- Remember in gym class when you’d bounce the basketball at the wrong time and you’d jam a finger? Pro athletes being paid millions of dollars sit out games for injuries like that in basketball. Could you imagine Steve Yzerman missing a game because his elbow is a little bit sore (Looking at you, Lebron), hell no, he’d keep playing until his arm fell off and probably win the Stanley Cup, because he’s a hockey player.
- Because of how high scoring the game is, most of the game doesn’t even matter. Basketball goes back and forth with both teams trading points until the last few minutes of the game, where things are actually on the line. Could you imagine if it was so easy to score in hockey that the first and second periods didn’t even matter? Why would we have those periods?
- The Dunk. Possibly the stupidest thing in pro sports, a dunk is essentially an empty net goal in hockey, involving little skill outside of a vertical jump, yet it is the single most glorified play in basketball. Last time I checked you can get more points with a long shot from outside the aptly named “3 point area”, shouldn’t that be the skill most players focus on?
- The 3 point area. What kind of joke is this? Imagine if hockey awarded 2 goals for a point shot that went in. How amazingly stupid would that be?
So there you have it. Basketball is stupid and boring.
