I follow both sports religiously, all be it football a lot longer. Honestly, I don’t get the same excitement and the do-or-die intensity with basketball as I do with football. Few reasons I can think of:

  • Football fans live and breath with the sport. It has to do with the history of the sport, the fans, the culture, etc. If you look at the Premier League, you will never see a match that has empty seats, no matter how bad the team is doing. On the other hand, some teams in the NBA stuggle to fill even half of the arena.

  • Team rivalries in the NBA are boring. The problem is that team rivalries in the NBA are driven by the players, not the teams. Again take a look the Premier League. Manchester United and Leeds are a classic matchup but since Leeds have been playing in the league one tier below the Prem, they never meet each other. Last season Leeds got promoted to the Prem and when they met each other for the first time in 16 years, even though they are extremely lob-sidded, it was still like they battled it out in the old days.

  • The biggest reason is that there are way too many games in the regular season right now. 82 games in a season will result in a lot of meaningless games. The “real” NBA season for me doesn’t start after the All-Star break.

All of those problems will be addressed swiftly with a very simple solution: reduce the number of games in the regular season. This will result in more meaningful games, better culture since fans will have to pay attention more and just generally, make the NBA more entertaining. Screw it, have the number of games cut in half and see how many players can keep pulling the load management bullshit before it really hurts their teams. Of course load management can still happen but a very good way to counter-measure this is too have reduced games but still happening in the same time frame that it has always been. That leaves more rest in between games.

Another thing is the Playoffs. It is the best time for basketball anywhere on the planet but I think it could benefit even more with the same principal that I applied to the regular season problem. Instead of a best of 7, let’s do best of 3. I was originally thinking of straight up elimination but that’s kinda hard to do since OTs exist.

I do see several drawbacks with this though. Less games meaning organizations possibly have to increase ticket prices and everything else to make up for the loss revenue. Companies also will need to pay double for ads and product placements and who knows how many companies are willing to do that. That could result in a loss of money for the league and could decrease the quality. Or the league will try to squeeze in as many ads as possible, making the current ad situation even worse.

That’s my take and my rant. What do you guys think?

    • JenniferLopezFan2@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Agree. I’ve tried to get into soccer but I was brought up on sports that are either high-scoring or full contact, so just don’t find it interesting.

      I also like the amount of games in the regular season and playoffs. Having basketball basically every day is great. If we try to make every sport have the same structure then it gets homogenous and boring.

  • Rich1926@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    For me as a mostly college football/NFL fan…so many things can happen in a football game. It’s exciting! It’s completely unpredictable as to the things that may happen during the game.

    ​

    With basketball, if you have watched one basketball game…you have watched them all. The only thing different are the jersey colors, team name, players, and if someone has to try and foul to get the ball back in the last few seconds. It’s all the same movements and outcomes.

    Plus, ref stoppages in basketball are INSANE. Players can’t accidently caress each other??! I understand yeah, not pushing into someone but two jerseys touched…FOUL! I hate that.

    I mostly pay attention to basketball during the tournaments (both college and NBA).

    ​

    Same for MLB, I only watch if the Braves are in the world series finals.

  • igby1@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I disagree with everything you said except the conclusion that they need to have fewer games. Unfortunately, the 82-game season nets them all a certain amount of revenue that nobody wants to reduce by having fewer games.

  • nevermindthatyoudope@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    That’s my take and my rant. What do you guys think?

    I think so little of soccer that I won’t even bother with a rebuttal to some of your more inane takes. You like soccer better than basketball, some like basketball more than soccer, but it takes a special kind of ding dong to posit that an entire sport should change to bend to the preferences of an individual.

  • TheLastSecondShot@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    As a fellow football/soccer and basketball fan, I think there are pros and cons to each. Football fans definitely take the sport a lot more seriously, which can be good (stadium atmosphere, intensity of matches) and bad (people literally killing each other over dudes playing a sport).

    One thing I do like about the NBA is the salary cap and parity. In football, the richest clubs almost always win, which is really boring and lame

  • kzapwn@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Soccer is the most boring sport on earth. Football is exciting but there’s so many breaks, it’s really only entertaining when there’s more than one game on at once

  • Fxp1706@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Football is insanely overrated and the main reason why it’s so popular all over the world is because it’s one sport that poor people of all sizes can play. . .

    Basketball is objectively more exciting to watch and you don’t need to be plastered af to get into the game.