I prefer both to the NFL......

The NBA is endlessly entertaining as a soap opera. The off the court stuff and team dynamics and trades and salary cap stuff and super teams are all great for podcasts and stories. It is smarter, more progressive and its players aren't under playing under the fear of a giant hammer held by an all-powerful commissioner like NFL players are. A guy like Zach Lowe can explain to me in five minutes what a team is doing X's and O's wise and it enlivens how I watch the sport. Doing that with football would take hours.

I love the NBA.

But it's tough to watch an entire NBA game from tip-off to end. There are just long periods of time where the benches are on the floor and it's a slog.

So I think the NBA will become enormously popular, but it will be watched like people are starting to watch the NFL, with a Red Zone mentality, except instead of the red zone, people will watch only the fourth quarters.

It's a strange watch in that you only need to see the final five minutes of an NBA game. Big leads disappear in minutes. Coaches are managing minutes to get to that final push at the end.

I love the NBA, but it's a strange TV watch.

Vastly prefer the NBA to the college game. Putting aside my personal feelings about the NBA, the on-the-court product is just vastly superior in the NBA. Obviously the talent level's much higher, but the game is also played at a much better pace with better spacing.

The inherent advantage to the NFL is the importance of each individual game. There are only 16, so it's not a crazy commitment to follow. Then, in the playoffs, the fact that it's one and done adds suspense to each play. It's the same way that the NCAA Tournament has us on the edge of our seat for teams we don't even care for. The NBA being 80+ games with a postseason that lasts for two months is just too exhausting. It's also hurt by the fact that the past couple years have felt like the playoffs are just a delay of the inevitable on who will get to the finals. Without competitive balance, I think the league suffers.

This^

No continuity. That may be exactly why people like it. Every year in the NBA, it is Cavs-Warriors. As a Cavs fan, I like that. I can see why others don't. There's nothing in sports like March Madness. You can't have a bad game the entire tournament. You have to win at least 6 in a row to win the title. Any other sport require that?

However in college basketball, as was said above, you don't have to have an advanced degree in the NFL rulebook to understand what a catch, fumble, pass interference, or personal foul are. The NFL is killing itself practically every weekend with something new. While December college basketball isn't traditionally compelling, November is, and January to March has at least a dozen really good games a week.


For me, the NBA feels more like entertainment in the regular season, and less like sport. Its like basketball + MTV + reality TV, and it doesn't work for me. I can't bring myself to watch games until April unless it's a social setting. I'd rather watch regular season hockey or baseball over the NBA.

One of the things that grabs my attention with college hoops that I don't get with the NBA until games start to matter for the playoffs in April is the atmosphere at a game. On TV, the NBA has all the manufactured, and metallic sounding stuff from the PA system trying to get cheers going. It sounds awful on TV. College basketball, in maybe half the games played in a week, is simply better in the atmosphere department in my opinion.