Baskeball "World Cup" gets no respect

Two quick hits:

1. Seems to me the World Championships are drwing progressively *more*, not less, interest, especially when one considers the quality of the US teams involved. No Shaq and Kobe here, but it still merits some pretty extensive coverage from ESPN.com.

2. Interesting to see the following article, another sport where the US is pretty apathetic about sending its best players. The IOC is basically threatening to drop the sport over it:

http://espn.go.com/oly/news/2002/0828/1423814.html

 

I don't know how much interest they're really getting. Just a lot of complaints about how the best players aren't showing up. As far as good, solid fan support, there hasn't been much. Indy has a great reputation for basketball fans and sports fans in general. The sports organization there is top notch and to date it's the only place to host the Pan American games and turn a profit (1987). In spite of all of this, overall ticket sales have been poor.


http://www.indystar.com/article.php?basketball28.html

 

A semantic point, maybe, but surely cricket is as global a sport as any in the world? It's played in Australasia (Australia and New Zealand), sub continental Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Africa (South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe), Europe (well, England, anyway), and the America's (West Indies). If that doesn't make your reach global (entirely regardless of how many people on each of those continents actually plays the game which is not, in fact, how "global" is defined) then I don't know what does.

Before anyone tees off, yes, I know cricket is not the most popular game on the planet and I neither expect it to become that nor care if it does. But it is, however, a truly global sport.

 

That's regional gerrymandering. You say it's played in "the Americas" but it's really only in one relatively small corner of them (you would have to then say there were three regions, NA, CA, and SA, where it is almost invisible). Ditto Europe. In Asia, it's played in one region, a very populous region, but still not representative of the entire continent (the combined population of those countries in Asia where the sport is not popular is greater than the ones where it is).

In general, circket has failed to go much of anywhere British colonialsm hasn't. In that respect, basketball (which has stable, pro-calibre leagues on every inhabited continent) has come a lot further in areas where the US hasn't had a lot of direct influence.

You can't hold a sport to the standard of having to be popular in every region (or else even soccer wouldn't have qualified only 15 years or so ago, with almost no base in North America or the Asia-Pacific region, two pretty significant regions), but there probably should be more regions in which it is popular than in which it is not (and those where it isn't should be the ones that strike the observer as 'exceptional' which is clearly not the case with cricket).

If basketball isn't global, then it's close, and seemingly getting closer before our eyes. I think Basketball and Rugby both have a claim cricket does not.

 

With all the weekday afternoon games, what kind of attendances were they expecting? You're just not going to get that big a crowd for Brazil-Lebanon on a Thursday afternoon. And Sunday is a rest day for some reason.

Compared to previous editions of the championship they seem to be doing well. Canada '94 had an advantage in that both the hosts and the US were a major draw.

 

Basketball isn't global? Basketball is more global than soccer. As of 2002, FIFA has 204 members, while FIBA has 212 members. There is no need to derive a conclusion based on "IF basketball isn't global" ...

http://www.fiba.com/fs_wm.asp

http://www.fifa2.com/infoplus/IP-108-A-NAs.pdf

Soccer still has to find 8 extra members to match basketball.

 

It's quite hard to get up for the Worlds' Championships in basketball, when you know that top NBA teams, like the Lakers, would crush all the teams in the tournament, including Team USA.

The true World Championships are the NBA playoffs. It's not like futbol, where country is superior to club, each has it own stars, and as the World Cup proved, there is basically a level playing field. The fact is, the US has the huge majority of world class hoops stars, and is the dominant force in the sport.

As said above, players like Shaq, Kobe, AI, and KG, will not risk their health, in a tournament that can't compare to winning an NBA Championship, and all the perks a title run can bring them.

But times are changing. Every year, more and more foreign players are being drafted into the NBA. A hooper like Dirk Notwitski, IMO, is a consensus Top 10 world class player. The European league continues to get stronger. On the world stage, basketball, is clearly behind, only futbol.

The day that a country other than the US wins a World or Olympic championship, against an all-pro US team, is alot closer than the US winning the World Cup.

It could happen in this World Championship.

The days of the "92 Barcelona Dream Team" (where coach Chuck Daly never called a timeout, throughout the entire tournament) are over. The world is closing, with a rush.

And when the US goes down in one of the two big international tournaments, you can guarentee, you'll see the players mentioned above, in the next one.

 

And, in terms of individual fans, basketball will have to find another 1.5 to 2 billion fans to match soccer.

 

Good point on Canada drawing well for both the US and Canada. Toronto is multiethnic as well, which can only help for those exciting Lebanon Brazil afternoon games, however:

Indianapolis has the RCA Dome, which at 32K is considerably larger than Maple Leaf Gardens. I think they were expecting to sell out both the semi session and the finals session for 64K. USA plays all three first round games in the dome, all games in the evening. Considering that the same venue (configured differently) held an exhibition game back in 84 between the collegiate Olympians and some NBA wash outs, and the game drew 70K, I think they were expecting to nearly fill the arena for the three first round games of an actual tournament in a more spectator friendly configuration--call it 90K total. While the US will not necessarily win the whole tournament, it is a safe assumption that the US will win their prelim group. You can by second group tickets for team C1 (assuming the US wins) right now. Lets say only 20K per game have taken the leap of faith that the US will win group C.

That is already 220K. That doesn't take into consideration people who purchase tournament package deals. It also doesn't consider people who would be interested in seeing some of the other top flight teams like the Yugos. It also doesn't consider that whoever may be interested in viewing a Brazil vs. Lebanon matchup most likely isn't worried about missing work in Beirut or Rio. They're probably visiting the city and therefore don't need to worry about the game being in the afternoon. Granted, there won't be a lot of long distance travellers, but I would think there would be a few hundred per team--hopefully more for the Germans, Canadians, and Yugoslavians.

The main ticket driver in Canada and the Olympics been the US team and their all-NBA squad. I think the Indiana Sports Corp is a little disturbed by the fact that fans aren't gobbling up the tickets because many of the best aren't playing. There isn't anything else to do in Indy in September, so I'm not getting it either. Right now, they're hoping for a lot of walk ups, wheras before they went in with the mentality the US would sell out and a few other teams would bring something substantial to the gate. It just hasn't happened.

 

I apologize for piling on another message. I grew up in Indy, which has always been a source of basketball pride as well as subject to some friendly taunts from my Chicago and NYC friends.............. Here are some interesting facts that probably shed a little more light on why the ISC is a little concerned. The link is really slow, so I'm just gonna post this.

INDIANAPOLIS BASKETBALL QUICK FACTS:
In 1940, the NCAA staged the Eastern Regional of its NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament in Indianapolis for the first time. The site was Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse). Since then, the city has been host to 14 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship events, including four Final Fours. Nine NCAA Basketball Championship events have been conducted at the RCA Dome since 1987. Two more subregionals are set for March 20 and 22, 2003 and March 17 and 19, 2005. The NCAA Women's Final Four will be in Indianapolis for the first time April 3 and 5, 2005, and the NCAA Men's Final Four will return April 1 and 3, 2006.

Indianapolis has set 21 attendance records for NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship events.

In 1984, the largest crowd ever to watch an indoor basketball game (67,596 fans) watched an exhibition of the men's and women's U.S. Olympic teams in the RCA Dome (then called the Hoosier Dome).

The NBA All-Star Game was staged in Indianapolis in 1985, while in 1994, a record 19,833 turned out at the RCA Dome for the NBA Draft. The city has been host to the NBA's Eastern Conference Finals five of the last eight years and hosted three games of the 2000 NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and Los Angeles Lakers.

In 1990, more than 41,000 fans packed into the RCA Dome (then called the Hoosier Dome) for the state high school finals, setting a world record for the largest attendance to ever see a high school basketball game.

The 2000 NCAA Men's Final Four marked the third time in a 10-year span Indianapolis has hosted the event, more than any other city. Additionally, Indianapolis was the first city to host three NCAA Final Fours in any 10-year span since 1965.
In 2002, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) brings its premier event, the World Basketball Championship, to the United States for the first time, and Conseco Fieldhouse and the RCA Dome will be the homes of the tournament. Teams from 16 countries representing five continents will play a total of 62 games Aug. 29 through Sept. 8.

 

Here is my ranking hehe:

1- Soccer
2- Basketball
3- Formula 1
4- Tennis
5- Cricket
6- Volleyball
7- Hockey

I dont know about the rest

 

Yeah, right!

In terms of number of fans, cricket is not behind formula 1 and tennis.

Get real, dude.

Cricket can probably compete with basketball for the no.2 spot.

 

The RCA Dome director said a couple days ago in the Indy Star that they were hoping to sell about 15,000 for each US game. I don't know if that was their original expectation or a revised one though.

Right now they're supposedly at 10,000 per US game--didn't look like there were close to that many in the stands tonight, but Algeria was the least attractive matchup.

The tournament schdule provides for the US to play their second round games at 8PM at Conseco regardless of where they finish in the first round.

From what I've heard, Turkey has the biggest contingent by far. Puerto Rico also has a decent one, and attendance for their game today was reported as 8,092.

Marca reported an attendance of 600 for Canada-Spain and 500 for Yugoslavia-Angola. Those are probably just estimates, but it doesn't get much worse than that.

 

How do you know? Do you think the entire population in India/Pakistan crazy about cricket?

You think so? I don't think so. So it's merely your opinion vs other people's opinion.

So besides speculation, what EVIDENCE do you have? Exactly how many cricket fans are there?

 

You also are making an implicit claim that basketball, not cricket, is no.2.

How are you so sure about it?

Did you count the exact number of basketball fans there are in the US or China or the world?

All I am saying is that in terms of the number of fans cricket can PROBABLY compete with basketball for the no.2 spot.

 

Yea considering that India has a billion people maybe we should make it #1 huh. Who said my assumption was on the # of fans, maybe you should get real. I was making the assumption of the # of countries that these sports were popular in. So how many countries play cricket man?

 

Wow. Looked a bit sparse in the RCA Dome last night. Remember '92 when they could have sold probably 100,000 tickets if they had them to see the original Dream Team?

You think Game One of the WNBA Finals kept everybody home?

 

Easy, because I know basketball has a presence in 212 countries/colonies in the world, while cricket is only played in very few countries. Your major argument is simply it's a #1 sport in a big population country, thus it has a shot at #2 globally, which is a flaw argument to begin with. I mean, the population of India+Pakistan would easily be dwarfed by the total global population outside of these two countries.

Besides, as late as the 80s, basketball was still the #1 sport in China. It might have changed to football in the past 2 decades, but the root in basketball is enough to give it a strong number, comparable to cricket in India.

I can use an argument of

"only 15% of the world population follow basketball",

that translate to 900M people, and that would easily crush cricket's #.

I mean, if Brazil only gets ~50 million viewers out of a population of 150M for a World Cup game (against Belgium), there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you have any basis to count the whole Indian/Pakistanian population for cricket. I have no reason to believe India's zest on cricket is better than Brazil's craziness in soccer. Cricket is a religon in India? so is soccer in Brazil, so what other argument do you have?

 

Official attendances are in for Day 1:

Conseco Session 1: 3,332
Conseco Session 2: 3,549
RCA Dome Session 1: 8,092
RCA Dome Session 2: 8,576

Total: 23,549.

 

Indians' and Pakistanis' passion for cricket is, in my opinion, greater than Brazilians' passion for soccer (based on first-hand experience of the respective situations in India and Brazil).

Brazilians only care about their own national teams (WC and otherwise) and their own players. They rarely give a damn about a match between, say, two European countries unless it is the WC final.

On the other hand, a huge number of Indians, for some reason I have yet to understand, passionately follow cricket matches between, say, Australia and New Zealand or West Indies and England. It is a fascinating thing to experience first-hand.

Based on my above first-hand experiences, I firmly stand by my contention.

 

Then you should make your assumption clear in your original post.

In my post, I have clearly stated that I think cricket is a strong contender for the no.2 spot based on number of fans.

 

I tried to read throught the whole thread, but stopped at Seagroves going off on the non-Yank about football. Whatever, Mike, this was originally a thread about the basketball championships, and then someone posted their WORLD list, and someone corrected it to be, at least a little, more accurate. For the purposes here, the NFL and America's opionions don't matter that much.

Ok. Being in Indianapolis, I can tell you that there's been SOME hyping of these games, but not much. Reggie Miller (a Pacer) is playing, but I think he got hurt and might have missed yesterday's game. Heh, notice that I have no idea, even though I'm in the city the games are played in?

Here's why I, and a lot of others, personally don't care. We have 2 brands of basketball, college and pro, to choose from. A lot of people here prefer the college game because the pro game has drifted away from a team thing to an individual game. Certain players routinely get away with things against the rules, because of who they are. Also there are WAY too many games. 82 freaking games to the regular season, then 16 teams make the playoffs, which are 5 or 7 game series', meaning a team could play 26 MORE games, for a total of 108! That's crazy. I think it hit a lot of people in Indy when the Pacers were having their good seasons and started making the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, thus playing on Race Day. That just never happened in the past and a lot of people then started talking about how the season is too long.

Plus, here in Indiana we have the Indiana Hoosiers, the Purdue Boilermakers (and lesser, in a basketball sense, Notre Dame, Butler and Ball St), which are more 'reasonable' in terms of season-length.

All that, combined with the fact that the stars aren't here, and the US 'should' win even without it's 'whining' stars, and the negative perception around the city about the whining stars (and owners) of baseball and you have a lot of apathy.

I know personally I'd be more interested in the games if either the US wasn't in it, or we were still sending college players. The 50 point wins don't help, either. I really should see if Reggie played, though.

I do wonder how the rest of the world sees these games, though. I remember, as a teenager, watching the Pan Am game when the US lost to Brazil, and it was a GREAT game, and I know Oscar Schmidt is here in town. Hope he's getting treated well, but like a lot of the town, I'll probably not know.

All that aside, the extension of ALL professional leagues' seasons is NOT having a positive effect on the general public's view of pro sports. I'm sure in cities where teams make it as also-rans, it grows, but not a casual fan. Of the US leagues, I really only follow the NFL anymore (along with MLS, but 8 of 10 making the playoffs is just STUPID), and even then I rarely watch the wildcard games. I could go on and on, but I won't. But I don't pay to see professional teams anymore (barring the occasional trip to Chicago for a Fire match, though not this season), and doubt I will anytime soon.

 

Please choose:

1. Pathetic
2. Move Indy
3. I was there and it looked like more to me because the parking lot was half full
4. All the people were on the camera side.



Sachin

 

After posting, I decided to find out if there were games going on right now, and if so, if there was one on TV.

Turns out US-Germany is on ESPN2, so I check it out. It was early in the 4th quarter, and in the first 3 minutes I watched I saw 4 missed or incorrect calls. Super! 2 travels by the Germans not called, one 'block' by the US that was really a foul (unless you can block THROUGH the back of the hand in international rules) and an over and back by the US that wasn't called.

We have better refereeing in high school basketball here in Indiana than this crap.

Also, while I don't mind the changes, I bet a lot of casual basketball fans don't like seeing the larger lane and hearing about 'international' rules in the sport.

I wonder if futbol ever had rule changes that went contrary to England's rules, and if they were later adopted? Or how would England feel if, their game, being played in the World Cup, in England, used a slightly larger penalty box and a closer penatly spot? Not that it's an accurate comparison, but you see where I'm going with regards to your average American.