Which is better, the NBA or College Basketball?
In any sport, the professionals are always more fun to watch than the college athletes. In the NCAA, you get ugly basketball and have to watch teams like UCLA go deep in March Madness. The NBA has stars like Kobe, Lebron, Wade, Nash, plus many more who are fun to watch. The NBA always has the best team as a champion, and upsets are not flukes. The Warriors were a great upset team and deserved it. In the NCAA, you get fluke teams every year that just get hot in the tourney like George Mason a few years ago. Plus the college players never stay long, so you never really get to see a team grow and develop. In the NBA, rivalries are established with the same players battling each year. The choice is simple, the NBA has better athletes, that are far more skilled, and more fun to watch. The level of play is so much highier it is a joke to say NCAA is better. Before anyone offers the competitive basketball arguement, ill say high school b ball can be competitive as well.
Why do some people like watching college basketball more than professional basketball?
As someone who has watched hundreds of hour of both college basketball and the NBA, I must admit I prefer college basketball. The reason of the competitiveness shown by college athletes is definitely a factor. You can see the noticeable difference in passion amongst both the players and fan bases in college basketball compared to the NBA. However, there is a primary driving factor that makes following college basketball far more exciting than pro basketball: unpredictability.Every year in college basketball rosters are almost completely flipped, especially in the one and done era, which adds new excitement to every single season. No one knows how the season will turn out. Currently (Week 17 of college basketball) the top 10 teams in college basketball by the AP poll includes schools such as Xavier, Miami, Oregon and West Virginia. The AP poll didn't have a single one of these teams even ranked in the top 25 in their preseason poll. Some teams ranked in their preseason top 25, most notably LSU, might not even make the NCAA tournament for the top 68 teams in the country. Every year the face of college basketball changes, and every year the teams on top has a different story.On the other hand, the NBA has been incredibly predictable. If someone had told me before the NBA season started that the top teams in the league would be the Warriors, the Cavaliers, the Spurs and the Thunder, I wouldn't have blinked twice. For the past 10 year the face of the NBA had been Lebron James. Now the face of the game is shifting toward Steph Curry, and this monumental shift of the unofficial title of "best player" creates excitement, but this happens in college basketball practically every single year.The term "march madness" is often used to describe the unpredictable nature of the NCAA tournament, and that is what makes it so exciting. The unpredictability is an element that the NBA sorely lacks, and the main reason why I find it less interesting to follow than college basketball.
Is the NBA or college basketball better to watch in terms of increasing basketball IQ?
That’s tough to answer because the play styles of each one are so different. I would say that for most people college would be better, because most people will never make it to the NBA.Also college plays a lot of zone defense, which the NBA doesn’t. So watch college to learn some good zone D. Furthermore college is a lot more passing and less iso.So essentially for all intents and purposes watching college is better to help someone develop skills and basketball iq. But NBA is better for watching people who have mastered said skills. It’s just they are so common in the NBA it’s harder to notice them without the contrast of developing players.
Can nba players go back to college and play college basketball if they never went to college?
Once you are paid to play, or higher an Agent, your collegiate days are over. Think about it, High School and College players get in trouble for accepting Gifts or money now i.e. LeBron and the jersey he accepted in High School caused a big uproar. I run Tournaments in the summer, College bound players can not accept CASH prizes for winning a 3 on 3 tournament. A T-shirt or sports bag is acceptable.
NBA vs College Basketball?
The NBA has all these stars and the same teams always make it far. College is much more exciting, yes cause of continuously new players, but all the NCAA tournament is very fun to watch and times there are upsets that no one would ever think of (George Mason). Also in the NBA, the refs let more stuff and, and its a whole lot slower of gameplay, where as in college, they run the floor a lot more.
College Basketball vs. NBA?
College kids play about 30 games while NBA guys play 82. Its impossible to give maximum effort EVERY night in the NBA. I still prefer the NBA because I don't even know the names of hardly any college players anymore cuz they leave after a year.
Is college basketball more physical than NBA basketball?
Only if you think getting punched 3 times by your big brother is more painful than getting punched once by a professional boxer like Mike Tyson (NOTE: If your big brother is a pro boxer, all bets are off).NBA athletes are some of the biggest and strongest men in the world. It's as obvious as the color of the sky that these guys are brutes compared to the average NCAA player. That's part of the reason great NCAA players don't get drafted - even if an NCAA player is highly skilled, he has to be big enough to play in the NBA.Now, could it be that some college players dish out physical punishment more frequently than their NBA counterparts? Sure. But frequency isn't the same as force. Size is what counts here. Remember high school physics?F=maWhere:F = forcem = massa = accelerationAs you can see, the force of impact is proportional to mass (size of the person hitting you) and strength/quickness (their ability to accelerate themselves and/or a part of their body into you).Since NBA athletes are unequivocally bigger AND faster, the force of impact is higher. Period.What's more, NBA teams can and do beat on one another, but they often wait until the playoffs to really dig in. College teams, which play far fewer games, may be able to put more emphasis on physicality because their season is so short...but that doesn't mean the NCAA is more physical.When the hits in the NBA are delivered by guys the size of LeBron, Dwight Howard, etc., the force is significantly higher.In other words, I say "hell no." College teams might hit you more often, but NBA athletes hit much, much harder. If that's not "physical play," I don't know what is.
Why do Caucasian basketball players play well in college, but then flame out in the NBA?
In general, college is a terrible minor league for the pros. You do what your coach says to do, and he’s mostly interested in winning. If player development can help him win, fine, but you wind up playing a game that you don’t play in the pros.Case in point: Pete Carril. Great college basketball coach. Prepares his guys to win. Usually his teams play better than their talent. But he did nothing to get his guys ready for the Association.Not just white guys, either. The reason you see a lot of Euros in the NBA is because they didn’t play college ball, they went right into academy and then played for their club. A high percentage come out with tight, Association-ready game. Pete Maravich had a brutal adjustment coming out of a system designed for him at LSU. Eventually, he was able to relearn his game and apply his prodigious talents to the vastly different level in the NBA.And you see a TON of black McDonalds all-Americans come into college with a ton of talent, only to have a college coach ruin his game for the sake of a system that guarantees wins but doesn’t focus on player development.In general, superstar talent probably doesn't get much from college. Once in a while, a player will develop so well in college that he goes from decent to great (Michael Jordan is a great example). But mid-tier and bench talent are the ones who suffer the most from languishing in a college coach’s system. Until the NBA scales D-League into a real academy/minor league system, AND you take billions of dollars out of college athletics, the broken system will remain broken.
Why is the US basketball team so much better than the other countries' teams?
Basketball was invented in the U.S. (albeit by a Canadian man), so the U.S. did get a head start on the rest of the world. But the U.S. invented baseball, too, and the U.S. has not remained as dominant over the rest of the world whenever an international baseball tournament of some kind is held. And in any case, after 125 years, other countries should have had a chance to catch up, right?I think the U.S. men’s basketball teams has maintained its hegemony for so long - with a few off years - for a few reasons:The NBA and NCAA are by far the most elite professional and amateur basketball organizations in the world. This means that all of the world’s top players - especially professionals and a great many amateurs - already play in the U.S., even if they aren’t Americans. Since so much high quality basketball takes place in front of U.S. audiences, and since it makes so much money, talented young American athletes can see that basketball is a potentially lucrative career path, meaning that:The U.S. is able to steer many of its best athletes into basketball at an early age. A career in baseball or hockey pretty much requires years of minor-league toil with no guarantee of success; a top-level career in soccer means heading to Europe. Basketball and American football have a straightforward college-to-major-league pipeline, and basketball is the only sport in which a young American athlete can legitimately be signing an eight-figure contract when they’re 19 years old. Economic incentives strongly favor top American athletes heading into basketball, meaning that there is a huge pool of talented basketball players for the U.S. team to choose from, which is good because:Americans expect their team to not only win, but to win easily against everyone. The 1972 loss to the Soviet Union was a scandal; the failure to win gold in 1988 led directly to the use of professionals in 1992; a bronze finish in 2004 was a national embarrassment. Americans don’t mind if their soccer team gets bounced in the World Cup Round of 16 - hey, we did okay just to get that far! Americans don’t care about the World Baseball Classic. The Ryder Cup is a niche-interest event. But if the basketball team loses, or even has a few close games? Hand-wringing and navel-gazing ensue, and then, like in 1992 or 2008, the U.S. digs deep and ensures that the next team out is one of the best ever assembled.