Pro vs. College Basketball?

[North East Goon]

I hear from many people that say the College game is much more entertaining than the professional game? Why and how does this happen?

[transplant99]

I would say the single biggest reason is that the effort and the intensity of the kids is so much more obvious than the pros. For 99.9% of them this will be the last stop in their organized/high level playing days and they tend to leave it all out on the court because of that.

[VladtheImpaler]

What transplant said. I hate basketball, but I can actually stomach watching a tournament game once in a while... Plus in college, we can cling to the illusion that the white kids are just as good.

[worth]

March Madness.

Mush easier to get into an enjoy for anyone. Make a bracket and cheer for teams. You don't have to know where either team is. Just pick one and cheer for them.

Plus their kids. Most of them will not make it to the NBA, but the heart they put into is is far more than most NBA players do.

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by worth

March Madness.

Mush easier to get into an enjoy for anyone. Make a bracket and cheer for teams. You don't have to know where either team is. Just pick one and cheer for them.

Plus their kids. Most of them will not make it to the NBA, but the heart they put into is is far more than most NBA players do.

That and I love how they stagger the games the first couple rounds of MM. And if the main game CBS is covering becomes one-sided, they'll flip to a closer game. So basically its just the last 5min of a close game, all day. Awesome. I'm not even really a basketball fan, but as a sports fan how can you not appreciate that?

Count me in as someone who loves March Madness but couldn't give a rip about the pro game (though I'm enough of a sports fan that I check out the standings every so often and watch some of the highlights on SportsCentre. I know whats going on, I just don't really watch it).

[CaptainCrunch]

I think that college bb is a fundementals game. you see more passing and more movement, and I think the three point game is a bit more prevelent.

The NBA is almost like watching a track meet, with lots of great individual efforts and less fundementally strong team play.



Ok boys, we're gonna run the picket fence.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Plus in college, we can cling to the illusion that the white kids are just as good.

As a sidebar, I had some good seats for the gold medal game in Beijing. I was amused by all the large overweight white people congratulating & high fiving each other yelling - "WE did it! WE won the gold!"

(I think Kidd was the only white guy on the entire team.)

[IliketoPuck]

Basketball is a terribly boring game of who can jump higher.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by IliketoPuck

Basketball is a terribly boring game of who can jump higher.

No it isn't.

[YYC in LAX]

I have heard that college basketball has a greater emphasis on defense and effort...for what it's worth. I don't watch either NBA or NCAA so I wouldn't know for sure.

[IliketoPuck]

Originally Posted by transplant99

No it isn't.

Sorry, I meant to say: "Basketball is a terribly boring game of who can jump higher for 45 minutes. Then the last 3 minutes can be less boring, but if womens curling is on I will watch that instead."

[BigBrodieFan]

The greatest thing about College Basketball is the heart. You have kids in College playing their very best for a spot at a tournament- which really is a HUGE deal in the States- as big as the Superbowl really (especially over time), but not as big world-wide of course. These kids play as hard as they can, knowing full well that most of them will never ever make it to the NBA. Some may make it to the farm, but this IS their NBA, big time, time of their life, etc.

The heart and soul of the kids in College ball is what makes upsets happen. Almost any team can beat another at any time, during the regular season or in the tournaments. The tournament is full of buzzer beater games that are sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat fun.

It's very hard to resist once you become addicted. You just have to watch a few games, a real sports fans won't be able to help themselves.

NBA is all about individual players, whereas College is about the team coming together as a unit, in my opinion.

[jergreen]

I pretty much agree with what everyone has said. I will watch March Madness but cannot stand the NBA. One other thing is the fact that not everyone in college is 6'-10" or taller. It seems like even the best teams only have 1-2 big men which makes it more of a team game I think.

[blankall]

The problem with NBA is the stars themselves. None of them have any charisma and they all seem obsessed with themselves.

How many times can you watch lazy stars exercise their own sense of self-entitlement before you lose interest. There are a few exceptions but the majority of stars these days seem more concerned with the rims on their escalades than the game. They play totally unsinspired for the first 50 mins and then decide to wake up with 10 mins left.

No to mention the total lack of parity in the NBA. How many times do we need to watch Lebron or Kobe run train on awful awful teams.

These guys can't even be bothered to represent their own countries in the olympics.

Long gone are the days when Jordan or Barkley approached the game with charisma. These guys inspired their own movies and television shows. People wanted to hear and watch them. Good luck getting a simlar result out of Kobe.

NCAA is entirely different though.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by blankall

The problem with NBA is the stars themselves. None of them have any charisma and they all seem obsessed with themselves.

How many times can you watch lazy stars exercise their own sense of self-entitlement before you lose interest. There are a few exceptions but the majority of stars these days seem more concerned with the rims on their escalades than the game. They play totally unsinspired for the first 50 mins and then decide to wake up with 10 mins left.

No to mention the total lack of parity in the NBA. How many times do we need to watch Lebron or Kobe run train on awful awful teams.

These guys can't even be bothered to represent their own countries in the olympics.

Long gone are the days when Jordan or Barkley approached the game with charisma. These guys inspired their own movies and television shows. People wanted to hear and watch them. Good luck getting a simlar result out of Kobe.

NCAA is entirely different though.

[CofR]

College basketball is a about love and passion for the sport. Young men not playing for money, or necessarily fame, its about playing for a chance to achieve something great. Leaving it all on the court for your school and for your teammates, trying as hard as you can for a National Championship. It is about the team, and the collective effort. Watch a team like VCU play and succeed, there is something pure and beautiful about it, they aren't doing it for paycheques, they're doing it for their school and for each other.

I find it comparable to the race to the Memorial Cup, or even the WJHC... Athletes being driven by their pure love for the game.

[octothorp]

There are a lot of small rule differences that I like in the NCAA: most importantly, fewer timeouts, which leads to a better pace, particularly late in games. No sport kills any feeling of urgency in a close game as much as the NBA basketball. In the NBA, defenses tend to be man-on-man with situational doubling, and occasionally a team will drop a zone; the man-on-man focus is perfect for a game that hypes its superstars. Full-court pressure and half court pressure are rarities. But in the NCAA, defenses are much more complex and varied, and it feels a little like a football game, with coaches working hard to get the match-ups they want. At the same time, a much longer shot-clock allows a team to work hard to exploit potential weaknesses. NCAA players are allowed only five fouls before they foul out, one less than the NBA. This may sound like a small difference, but applied across the whole team, this means a team with sloppy defense can get into foul trouble much sooner in the NCAA, again forcing an emphasis on smart D.

And then there are the issues that others have pointed out: the relative parity, the lack of superstars, the fact that a lot of these guys will never play on a higher stage than the NCAA tournament.

All that said, I do like NBA basketball. But there are so many things that NCAA does better.

[troutman]

I think the big difference is the shot clock. In the NBA it is 24 seconds IIRC.
35 seconds in the NCAA. This makes the tempo a lot different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_clock

Related to this, coaching has a larger effect in NCAA, as there are fewer possessions.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Rodman despite being flashy was still very down to earth. You simply cannot say the same thing about today's stars.

Shaq is the oldest player in the NBA right now, once he is gone, even more character will be gone.

[Regorium]

I can't stand college basketball. They are just...so... bad at the game.

It's unfortunate that the NBA stars are all basically seen as thugs in today's game, but otherwise, their fundamentals, their technique and team play is FAR better than that of the college game.

Obviously, heart and passion in college ball is unmatched, but I don't see too many people saying how much better the Memorial Cup or WJHC is "better" than the NHL.

Also, the March Madness format pushes people to make a bracket and bet on games. Whenever there is money on the line with a lot of people, it makes it more entertaining by default.