Why the Quality of Basketball Is Better Than Its Critics Think
The NBA doesn’t need me to defend it. National broadcasts average nearly 4 million viewers — the most since Michael Jordan’s first title run. More unique viewers watched regular season games this year than at any point in the last 24 years. Its biggest stars are globally famous.
Still, I talk to a lot of sports fans who don’t like the NBA, and I find many of their criticisms remarkably ill-informed. The conversation usually goes something like this:
“I don’t watch the NBA because…”
…and then they say something so profoundly dumb that I’m forced to respond:
“Yes, it’s obvious you don’t watch the NBA, because you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
Now look, I genuinely don’t care what sports people like or dislike. In fact, I’m very much in favor of my favorite sports becoming less popular because, frankly, Knicks playoff tickets are so insanely expensive that I recently told my wife we may need a slightly less comfortable retirement if the Knicks make the Finals this year.
But some criticisms are so persistently wrong-headed that I feel compelled to respond.
Let’s start with my favorite.
“They Travel All the Time in the NBA and It’s Never Called.”
This is wrong on multiple levels.
Let’s do a thought exercise. Imagine you’re watching an NBA game with a notebook and pen beside you. Every time you believe you’ve seen an uncalled travel, you write it down.
I can virtually guarantee you won’t end up with a very long list. One? Maybe two? And even if you somehow get to three or four, there’s a very good chance you were wrong and simply don’t understand what actually constitutes traveling under NBA rules.
Put differently: there just aren’t that many uncalled traveling violations in the NBA.
But even if there were — so what? Why does this particular non-call inspire so much outrage, as though civilization itself is crumbling?
The average NFL game contains numerous uncalled holding penalties. Until this season, balls and strikes were routinely blown in baseball. In hockey, players constantly clutch and grab opponents in ways that technically constitute holding. Every sport has infractions that go uncalled.
Yet for some reason, this one drives people into a frenzy.
Why?
Partly it’s Selection Bias. If, instead of watching actual NBA games, you consume nothing but Instagram clips posted by outrage-farming engagement trolls, and those clips happen to feature missed travels, you’ll naturally conclude that traveling happens constantly.
Partly it’s Confirmation Bias. Once you decide uncalled traveling runs rampant, every borderline footwork sequence confirms your belief, while the other hundreds of possessions where players don’t travel completely disappear from your brain.
But mostly, it’s Cranky Old Guy Bias. (Or younger guys with a cranky-old-guy disposition.) The sort of people who reflexively believe everything was fundamentally better “back in my day.”
Either way, sorry: there simply are not nearly as many uncalled traveling violations as people think.
“They Shoot Too Many 3-Pointers”
They certainly shoot more threes. A lot more.
In 1979, when the three-point line was introduced, teams averaged about three attempts per game. Today? Around 37.
That is a lot more.
But is it “too many”?
When people say that, I’m never quite sure whether they mean:
• It’s strategically unsound to take so many threes
• It’s aesthetically unpleasant to watch
• Some combination of the two
If you believe the first, I can assure you that no basketball team on Earth will ever hire you.
The strategic advantages of taking lots of threes are obvious:
1. More points. Duh. If you shoot 38% on 100 three-pointers, you score 114 points. To match that with two-pointers, you’d need to shoot 57%.
2. Floor spacing. Defenses have to guard the perimeter, which opens up driving lanes and interior offense.
3. Long rebounds. Missed threes often produce rebounds that are easier for the offense to recover.
If you were my head coach and thought high-volume three-point shooting was strategically unsound, I would fire you faster than George Steinbrenner firing a Yankees manager after a 10-game losing streak.
As for aesthetics…
Outside shooting is a basketball skill. Alongside dribbling, it may be the quintessential basketball skill. It’s the thing kids practice more than anything else. The word swish was literally coined to describe the beautiful culmination of a perfect jump shot.
So why does it suddenly make people angry?
Did it make people angry when Larry Bird hit outside shots? I’d wager many of the same people who complain about today’s three-point shooting once treated Bird’s 20-foot jumpers like they were watching Michelangelo paint a ceiling.*
Outside shooting is far more of a basketball skill than using your 7'2" frame and Volkswagen-sized rear end to back into defenders before gently depositing the ball into the basket from two feet away.
For a long time, basketball was dominated by giants: Shaq, Moses Malone, Kareem, Olajuwon, Ewing. Great players, obviously. But none of them would’ve made their high school varsity team if they were a foot shorter. Coaches exploited size advantages because size wins basketball games.
You don’t really see that anymore.
Today, if a 7-footer can’t shoot - like KAT or Wemby - he’s probably getting pushed into a limited rebounding-and-defense role.
So the next time you see players raining threes, remember: you’re still watching basketball.
*To give you an idea of how good today’s shooters are: Larry Bird’s career three-point percentage was 37.6%. That would’ve tied him for 74th in the NBA this season, alongside Atlanta Hawks center Onyeka Okongwu. Bird’s best shooting season would’ve ranked 9th this year, between Cameron Johnson and Kon Knueppel. And Bird took far fewer attempts than modern shooters, meaning he was likely getting cleaner looks than many players today. Give even an average shooter a clean look today and you expect him to bury it.
By the way...
The same people who insist that “traveling happens constantly” also complain that “nobody drives anymore because everyone just hoists threes.”
Well… which is it?
How exactly are all these rampant traveling violations occurring if nobody is attacking the basket?
“They Don’t Play Defense Today”
This criticism usually comes from the “I prefer college basketball” crowd.
Here’s what happens.
Between September and February, many casual fans watch very little basketball. Maybe they tune into Duke–North Carolina. Maybe they catch the NBA on Christmas Day. But that’s about it.
Then March Madness arrives.
Suddenly they’re filling out brackets, memorizing rosters, and confidently discussing Alabama’s defensive rotations despite discovering roughly 36 hours earlier that Alabama is also good at basketball.
Then they binge college hoops for four straight days. There are 32 games on Thursday and Friday. Twenty-eight are blowouts. The other four contain multiple horrific scoreless stretches that resemble basketball being played underwater.
But there are also dramatic finishes, buzzer-beaters, and upsets, so everyone becomes intoxicated by the atmosphere and concludes that college basketball is “better.”
It isn’t.
These are players with substantially lower skill levels.
But here’s the thing that does make March Madness incredible: every game is win-or-go-home. For many seniors — or future NBA players who’ll only spend a year or two in college — it may literally be the last college game they ever play.
So yes, they’re playing with maximum desperation and effort.
People then compare that intensity to a random NBA game in January and conclude that NBA players “don’t care.”
But college players don’t go all-out every second of every November nonconference game either.
The difference is context.
Watch an NBA playoff game and you’ll see the exact same level of intensity, only with athletes who are bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, and incomparably more skilled.
Honestly, when someone says, “They don’t play defense in the NBA,” I immediately realize I’m talking to somebody who fundamentally does not understand basketball.
An average college team trying to score against an average NBA defense would look like a middle school orchestra attempting jazz improvisation. The speed, power, anticipation, and physicality of NBA defenses are beyond what most college players can even process.
Conclusion
So the next time you’re about to say, “I don’t watch the NBA because…” and follow it with one of the arguments above, maybe just finish the sentence this way instead:
“I don’t watch the NBA because I don’t enjoy basketball played at the highest possible level.”
Which is fine! People like what they like.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for Knicks tip-off. Because watching Jalen Brunson dissect defenses, Josh Hart fling himself around like a human wrecking ball, and OG Anunoby erase opposing wings from existence is one of life’s great pleasures.
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