My interest in American sports: Basketball

How has the interests in the four sports: Baseball, basketball, Ice hockey and American football evolved through my time here? I will go through them all, and will start with a favorite: Basketball. Much like with any other sports in the US, Boston has a top team in Basketball and NBA. The Boston Celtics is one of the great prides of Boston sport.

I have personally been to three matches now, and I have found it very entertaining to watch it live, but not so much watching it on TV.

The entertainment

Much like other sports in USA, the highlight is not necessarily the game, but a lot of the things in between. However, unlike in American Football, there is continuous non-stop entertainment in Basketball. With four quarters, each lasting for 12 minutes, there are a lot of brakes in between. Especially the longer half-time break after the second quarter makes the big difference between TV and live. While the TV-brakes consists of long advertisements with approximately 7/10 advertisements being from Geico, the insurance company, you avoid this during the live show. Not only do you avoid the advertisements, but you also get a full show that keeps the entertainment levels on top.

The game

The game never seem to be over, until the whistle blows. One team can be 15 points up, but 12 minutes later they could be equal, or lose. I can be so honest to say that I get very few of the rules, because people can have, what looks to be, the same amount of physical contact, but one piece of contact will give a foul to one team, but have a completely different outcome the next time. The fouls seems completely random to me, but apparently it does make sense to those who knows the game.

As a spectator it is all about the entertainment, more than the social. I believe Basketball is one of few sports you can have fun looking at, without any companions. You can turn up half an hour early, and the entertainment have already started: Either the cheerleaders have started, some wild basketball tricks are being performed or someone is being honored. Then the intense game start.

There is no thing like time-stalling, as you have a time-limit. There is little filming, and the players are big and physical, ironically since it’s not supposed to be physical contact. When you get to the breaks, where you on Tv gets spam’ed by Geico, the entertainments continues with more entertainment from cheerleaders, trick players and people from the crowd trying to win prizes by hitting baskets or other objects. All in all, a fun sport I would advice anyone to watch.

Fun fact: Avatar is the, by far, highest grossing movie in history with its 2,788 billion dollar in box sales, crushing Titanic at second with 2,188 billion dollars.