I keep seeing stuff like “the NBA is unwatchable and boring” nowadays.
Is it really? I was born ‘91 and supported the San Antonio Spurs since 2001. I never felt bored and I even follow FIBA basketball. I only follow three sports: basketball, tennis, and soccer
Is it because too many teams take 3 points and don’t play defense due to the rules?
43 comments
I don’t.
Since I dropped cable television, I have been unable to watch most NBA games to actually ever get invested with.
Flopping entitled millionaire athletes. One of the best players scores half his 25 point average at the free throw line because he just tries to draw fouls.
The college product is immensely better.
I’ve been watching the NBA since I was a kid in the 1970s. It’s fine. The level of talent is as high as it has ever been, and the games are just as good. There is a lot more outside shooting from 3, and there are fewer dominant centers, but that doesn’t make it unwatchable. You’re likely just hearing the usual Internet nonsense from people who think having a negative opinion makes them important.
My favorite team is the hornets and they are terrible
It’s become a non contact sport where launching threes has become a replacement for driving to the lane. I’m tired of seeing these guys whine at the slightest foul and thrown tantrums I expect from my children.
Give me college basketball over the NBA any day.
They could cook teams from previous eras. Everyone is way more skilled and athletic now.
I just want to see the Bulls do well man. I was too young to see Jordan and I remember the hype about 15 years ago when Derrick Rose was our golden child but I’ve still yet to see another championship
1. The NBA is slightly more boring compared to the past. Regular season games are low stakes and stars rest more. There’s not really a big narrative like there was in the Lebron Heat or Lebron Cleveland era.
2. There’s a lot more content now because of steaming and competition.
3. The trend is for shorter forms of content (ex. Tik Tok), and NBA games take too long at the end with timeouts.
4. I’m older and have less free time than 10 years ago.
I just can’t justify taking the time to follow the NBA closely. They’re not putting our a compelling product that beats the competition (including non-sports) that I should be watching. I’ll watch the playoff games but it’s not a priority.
I love watching the NBA, great sports league
I love my nuggets. Loved them when they won 15 games in a season. Love them now. Jokic is the most humble superstar there is
It SUCKS. College ball is 10x better
I just never found it as fun to watch as college ball in the first place.
I don’t watch as much anymore but I like it because it’s easy to follow.
Haven’t really watched since Jordan’s 2nd retirement.
I mean, I still like and watch the NBA whenever I can, can’t say I have any strong opinions about today aside from “this NBA star did xyz” (Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, etc) but then again when hasn’t an NBA star been in “everyone’s mouth” when they do something stupid?
I’m only a casual observer and I stay in tuned bc I have friends who care about it. But its not fun. You can say its talent….but when I watch 3 guys faint half steps towards the player driving the ball in the paint its laziness. And I hate lazy athletes.
I know the players are more skilled than ever, but they are also far more soft bc the game is designed around scoring for entertainment.
The skill in each player top to bottom is through the roof at the expense of a bit of toughness and physicality.
I was a huge NBA fan growing up. I was in Indianapolis during the Reggie Miller era. Tons of fun.
It is still great to watch games but it has become kind of a no contact sissy sport with much more shooting from the outside rather than aggressively driving the lane. It isn’t the same as when I was young.
I prefer college ball these days.
In terms of the actual gameplay, I sort of feel like in many ways the NBA is in it’s golden age. So many different players, styles, teams.
The 2 things that are a problem for me are
a) Players forcing their way off teams but even more importantly…
b) anyone who watches enough of it knows the refs are corrupt. They are there to make the NBA money, not to be fair arbiters of the outcome.
I love what the players are doing but this super fan is checking out because of the rampant corruption in how they call the games.
NBA is the best it’s ever been, and the trope hasn’t made much sense since 2010. We’re post dead ball era and teams have players who can use the entire floor
I like today’s NBA. The game has definitely changed but I don’t think it’s any better or worse than before. Just different. People tend to have rose tinted glasses when looking at the past.
I wouldn’t call it boring but it’s not the same league I grew up watching. I still support my team and watch marquee lineups but i don’t follow the league anywhere as close as i did in the 2000s.
I really only watch the NBA finals but I do enjoy it.
I don’t know enough about it to offer much of an opinion on it other than to say I don’t watch basketball and I don’t know anyone who does either, for whatever that’s worth
There a whole lot of traveling happening, and it seems like the majority of current players are good at distance.
The NBA has been rigged for decades by the league via officiating so I prefer college. TBH today’s three point shootouts are much more pleasant than the previous era’s “drive the lane and throw up a prayer when the whistle blows” style.
As a Knicks fan, I’ve had a really hard time getting into the NBA until the past couple years and I still get bored watching any non-playoff game before the last 2 minutes of the game.
Also, this stupid in-season tournament is probably gonna keep me from watching even more now.
No one plays defense or even runs until the playoffs.
With so many games, who really cares?
I never really cared for the NBA or basketball in general. I always thought “nobody plays defense anymore” was just something complainers said until I finally saw an NBA game. They really don’t play defense. At least they didn’t when I watched.
I find college basketball to be much more exciting but I only loosely follow my alma mater and nobody else. But I hate watching teams like Duke flop all around the court. Same reason why soccer is so hard to watch. You could have been helping your team defend that goal but instead you were laying on the field, pretending to be hurt.
I dont. I only pay attention to NFL but I havent watched a game in 5 years there either.
I think gameplay in the NBA is at its peak tbh
That’s the one with the sticks and pucks on ice right?
Definitely boring. But I think that’s more about me finding the sport less interesting as I get older and gravitate towards other sports.
I think fundamentally, basketball is a very boring sport to watch and follow. Too much low stakes scoring going on. I prefer sports with more tension and importance involved throughout the game.
Watching centers launch threes is unbearably boring. The NBA should get rid of the 3 point line entirely.
Honestly? I don’t. I used to follow it casually, but I don’t really anymore.
The game is very redundant. There’s so much scoring that lead changes and whatnot don’t really mean much. I can miss an entire quarter of a game and sit down for the next and ended up not having missed much of anything. That’s how breakneck, flip-floppy, and same-y gameplay is.
The off-court drama between both the players and the fans and the endless “WhO iS thE bEsT SF of AlL-TiMe” type debates that crop up on Twitter and lead to funny player or fan exchanges are the only things that’re semi-interesting to me, but even then it only serves to make me dislike the players, fans, and pundits more than say NHL or MLB players, fans, and pundits.
College basketball is far more tolerable to me, although I loved it more when I was younger, not so much anymore.
More talented and parity than ever. Old heads mad that the game has changed.
If we had 90s rules with todays players we would be in the golden age of basketball. But the refs and league gotta soften up the game apparently
I’m 38 and I was a big NBA fan in the 90s-early-2000s. I haven’t watched it in years and I don’t really see that changing.
I’m not really sure why, though. I guess I just lost interest. In general, I don’t really care about pro sports anymore.
It may not be true but for me it feels like the play have become less continuous. It feels like almost every single drive attempt is a whistle. It has the flow of being in stop in go traffic or hitting every red light on the way home.
I stopped watching around the the time the Raptors won the championship.
Of the Big 4, probably the healthiest League for both players and owners.
I came up watching the Magic-era Lakers, Jordan’s rise, the end of Larry Bird’s career, then watched dominant frontcourts make every game a brutal contact sport. Hack-a-Shaq was a real strategy because the best low-post player in history couldn’t hit a free throw to save his life.
Somewhere after Jordan retired and before Kobe developed, marginally above average players like Tracy McGrady were considered top-level stars. This was a problem and the NBA knew it. That led to the rule changes that made the NBA feel like a completely different sport.
I know 3-point shooters are the most skilled they’ve ever been. But it’s the whole isolation offense for an entire game that make it unwatchable for me. I want to see ball movement, backdoors, picks, screens, trap defenses, press defenses, crossovers, Dream Shakes, Mount Mutombo, etc.
Growing up watching 3 of the top 5 defensive players of all time on one team (Bulls with Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman) set a lot of people’s expectations about stopping the other team. I just don’t see that in the modern game.
To me, the modern game seems like 8 guys watching 2 guys have a face off until the shot clock winds down, then they either take a 3 or pass for a 3.
e: also I cut cable a few years ago and I’ve watched maybe 3 games in the last 4-5 years. I don’t miss it.
The game is constantly evolving. in 25 years people will be complaining about how the game is not how it used to be back in the day (the 2020s)
I’m all for player empowerment, but the players are taking advantage of it. It needs a stronger leader, David Stern would’ve at least pushed back on the NFL for taking over one of their most important days (Christmas)