Why the NBA Has Become the Most Interesting League in American Sports

The NFL might be the most popular league in America. Major League Baseball might be the most historic. I’ve enjoyed my fair share of both, no question about it. But for my money, the most interesting league has to be the NBA.

For starters, basketball has an inherent advantage—there’s wall-to-wall action.

In a baseball game, the average amount of actual action is 14 minutes. The rest of it is pitchers spitting, batters grabbing nether regions and fielders standing around trying to not get bored (yes, I’m talking to you, Manny!)

Football is better, right? Nope. With all the time ticking off the clock, the average time left actually playing the game is 11 minutes.

In the NBA, though, you have 48 minutes of action. If the clock is ticking, the ball is in play. If you count the free throws, it’s actually more than that.

Additionally, the fact is that the NBA requires more athleticism than any other sport. The best of athletes in the NFL—the wider receivers and running backs, or the linebackers—aren’t on the same level as the NBA player. They may be stronger, but they aren’t more athletic. They don’t have the agility of the NBA players.

As far as the majors, we don’t even need to go there. On the athleticism scale, with “bowling” on one end of the spectrum and basketball on the other, baseball is closer to the bowling end than the basketball end. Certainly, it takes some amazing hand-eye coordination and as a skill, it is the hardest to learn, but in terms of athleticism, it’s a distant third between the three sports.

The actual game has always been better, but there are reasons that it has surpassed the other sports in watchablitiy.

Furthermore, not only has it  surpassed the others because it has the most athleticism and the most action, but it is also the league which has benefited the most from HDTV. Certainly, the other sports benefit, too. Even cartoons look better in high definition. However, as sports go, nothing has the same boost as the NBA.

In part, that has as much to do with the wide screen as it does with the improved resolution. You’re able to take in more of the court and in a more natural way. You can foresee the play rather than just follow the play, the way it was before with the standard-definition, 4:3 TVs.

The larger screens and the higher resolution also plays into it. Formerly, the camera either had to zoom in to show you the nuances of the game—such as the ball—but now you can take in the details without losing the overall impact. The screens are larger, clearer and wider, and that has more of an impact on the NBA than the other leagues because the half court of the NBA lends itself nicely to the widescreen view.

Football fields and baseball diamonds are much larger, so you don’t get the same impact. You still get perhaps more detail and size, but you don’t have the same ability to follow a play from start to finish without changing cameras or angles. In football, you’ll see a quarterback throw the ball, then the camera zooms out, then you find the receiver and then it zooms in.

Certainly, that’s better than it was, but it’s still not as complete as in the NBA.

Next, the NBA has just been marketed brilliantly. More than the other sports, they’ve marketed their athletes. Yes, there are huge celebrity athletes in the other sports, but they aren’t on the same level as the NBA. They also don’t have the same persona as in the NBA.

The NBA has brilliantly marketed “heroes and villains.” On the one side, you have the likes of the young, humble, superstars in players like Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant. On the other side, you have LeBron James and the Miami Heat. In this sense, you could even argue that they borrowed a page from the WWE.

Now, the WWE script their winners and the NBA doesn’t (although some question that). At the same time, the basic marketing strategy the WWE uses is that you can’t just have heroes—you also need villains. The average fan right now has their favorite team and their second favorite team. Their second favorite team is whomever is playing the Miami Heat.

That’s why this year, the nation’s 16th-largest market, Miami, and the nation’s 45th-largest market, Oklahoma City, are according to Hoopsworld, helping the NBA to the best finals ratings since 2004. That this comes in a year which started off with everyone touting that no one cared during the strike is telling.

That’s an improvement over the yesteryear events of watching annual Lakers vs. Celtics finals. Certainly, those two teams have two of the largest audiences, but that was like cheering for Darth Vader or the Emperor for the rest of it. There was no Luke Skywalker.

Now we have a true villain that the haters love to hate, and an anit-LeBron in Kevin Durant. Regardless of whether everything is based in reality, the way it’s portrayed is irrelevant. Just like Rock and Brock, there’s an image that’s sold, and the fans eat it up.

The NBA is more interesting than the other sports. It is more visibly stimulating than the other national sports, and it’s more action-packed. That is magnified by the high-def age of TV. Then it’s all wrapped in a package that gives us heroes and villains, which gives us something to cheer for and a reason to stay interested after our own teams are gone.

Because of all of these things, the NBA right now is the most interesting league on TV. The NBA, more than ever, is where amazing happens.