Kavekkk wrote:
Basketball is the only American sport that's not pure, unadulterated misery to play.
Small pickup games? Sure. Not sure I'd agree with regard to organized play. And are we defining "misery" as mental or physical? Because basketball has the advantage that when you're playing, you're playing. The whole time. So it's fun in that regard. But from a physical point of view, it's arguably the most demanding (and thus, can be "misery" to play), for the same reason. For a casual game, it's not a big deal. But for league play (even amateur leagues)? Brutal.
Softball's where it's at if you want something that can technically be called a "sport", but isn't terribly physically demanding. Which, I suppose, is why there are so many amateur leagues around. You want low key and fun and more social, play in a softball league. You want people yelling at you because you missed a shot, go play basketball.
Now, if you really want a game that's just an excuse to drink and socialize, play OTL. Hahaha! Not sure you can really call it a sport though.
Almalieque wrote:
As a person who is not a fan of sports, the NBA is the most exciting.
Honestly, I'd put college play above the NBA in terms of excitement. And frankly, I don't rank basketball very high in the excitement category anyway. It's too far on the other extreme from sports like golf and baseball (which are *really* slow). Constant motion and action gets monotonous after a while. Points just accumulate through the entire game, so it's less about dramatic plays, as slow steady "better play" by one team over the other. Most of the endings are anti-climactic, since the scores tend to be more a rate over time thing, and the losing team rarely catches up later in the game (although, sometimes it does happen). I kinda see basketball as a couple hours of boredom, with an occasional game having an exciting last 5 minutes or so. You can usually just watch the highlights and you've effectively seen the game. It's one of those sports that unless you *really* follow it, you're bored out of your skull the whole time. Because it's not really about the rules of the game, or the specific actions at any given time, but about seeing a team's strategy over the course of the game, and matching it up with the other team's, comparing to past games where they used different plays, player rotation strategies, etc. Unless you follow a team enough to spot those subtleties, all you see is a bunch of guys running around, and the ball occasionally going into the hoop.
I speak as someone who played basketball through high school. It's a ton of fun to play, and there is a lot more to it than just randomly running around, of course. But honestly, it's just not terribly exciting to watch IMO. Games like football have "big plays", that dramatically shift the course (and sometimes result) of the entire game. Basketball has highlights, of course. But then you realize that awesome dunk only affected the score by 2 points out of say 80-100 or so that were scored in the entire game by that one team. There's just so rarely that one play that makes a difference. I suppose the occasional 3 point buzzer shot, but that's rare. And again, only made possible because of 20x more points scored earlier in the game. Gradually. Over time. So yeah... boring.
That's just my opinion of course.