NBA vs. NCAA: Every Hoops Fan’s March Dilemma

By David Arnott
As the NBA playoffs approach and the NCAA Tournament builds toward the Final Four, you, Joe or Jane Basketball Fan, may find yourself in a quandary. After taking care of all your work and family obligations, you can’t stay up late watching Tivo’d sports, so there’s only enough time to watch one set of games on Thursday night. Do you choose college hoops or the pro game?
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This was more dramatic than anything that’ll happen in the NBA this month.
The popular choice is to watch the college game, and to my mind, even the most devoted NBA connoisseur will be hard-pressed to choose the Association over the Tourney this week. You’d have to grasp at straws to come up with reasons to ignore the NCAA’s signature event in favor of regular season pro matchups, even in this extraordinary NBA season.
While the NBA is far and away the more skilled level, and its athletes are able to perform with greater competence, it faces a severe problem: We know in advance who will win. In fact, I’ll tell you right now that even though sixteen teams will make the playoffs, one of five teams will win the title: the Celtics, Pistons, Lakers, Spurs, and Suns. If you’re feeling generous, you can make it one of nine by adding the Hornets, Rockets, Jazz, and Cavs. And that’s the playoffs! We’re still in the regular season, when pros openly coast so that they can bring more intensity later.
Compare that to the sixteen teams left in the NCAA Tourney. Western Kentucky is the only team that everyone believes definitely will bow out before the Final Four, and if you stretch, you can include Davidson, Villanova, and even Washington State with them. Sure, UNC, UCLA, and Kansas are the favorites, but 15 of the remaining 16 teams wouldn’t be total shocks to win their next games, and 12 of the 16 remaining teams clearly have the pieces to go the distance. You don’t know who will win.
If you choose the NBA at this time of year, it means you’re choosing cold skill over a potential adrenaline rush the pros won’t be able to deliver until May. It means you’re choosing the thump thump thump of a PA system instead of thousands of involuntary gasps and yelps washing over the court. It means you don’t care about the stakes; pros who lose their games simply walk off the court and straight to the showers, secure that they will play another day, whereas college kids hold each other up and sob. Most important, if you choose the NBA, you’re choosing to watch inevitability play itself out, instead of plunging into an uncertain future.
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David Arnott works in Member Services here at SportingNews.com and is the author of Rufus on Fire, the definitive (and only?) Charlotte Bobcats blog.↵