Spring Break
Basketball Fever? Turn to college hoops this season
Issue date: 11/20/08
As the leaves fall and the weather gets chilly, this can only mean one very important thing to sports fans - Basketball!
Over the next few months, on both weekends and weeknights, you will likely be given the option of watching an NBA game or a college one, and we are here to try to convince you to choose the latter.
The NBA is a player's game. Individuals effectively determine the outcome of the game, rather than the team. Look at teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers with LeBron James, Miami Heat with Dewayne Wade or the Dallas Mavericks with Dirk Nowitzki, where how a superstar plays on a given night will essentially determine whether a team wins or losses.
This is not the case in college basketball, where the team dynamic is in full force. For the most part, legends are not made in the college games, but instead, they are bred. Michael Jordan only averaged 17 points per game in college, a small feat compared to the digits he ended up putting on the board in the NBA. Teams make great players in the NCAA, not the other way around, like how Chris Wilcox never quite found his place in the most recent Maryland championship team until the team was already on the road to success, or how Juan Dixon would have never been able to lead had Steve Francis never left early for the NBA. Great players are born from teams' needs as they rise to unique challenges every year against diverse basketball programs.
In the NCAA, many teams with nameless players step up to the plate and beat out the big games, like how UNC's rookie team earned Roy Williams the Coach of the Year award after losing 96 percent of the 2005 championship squad's scoring productivity.
The NBA is saturated. For years, players in the NBA compete against each other and the game that you see levels out. There are few surprises and even fewer reasons to be excited. The NCAA is structured so that you see a spectrum of basketball at its finest.
The NCAA is broken down into many conferences, each of which has its own specialty, such as the ACC's mostly dominant inside game and the Big Ten's outside-the-perimeter play. The most interesting is watching the games of East meets Mid-West. In these games viewers watch a prism that reflects different strengths that merge together to match up to the challenges between the two types of games. A big man's posting up is answered by an elegant three. Because you see the entire middle meeting only once a year during March Madness, the actual championships and conferences are two very different ball games. College ball is continuously changing and evolving, for not only do teams change styles after their experiences on the road, but players also have a maximum four-year turnaround, which keeps freshness in the basketball.
Over the next few months, on both weekends and weeknights, you will likely be given the option of watching an NBA game or a college one, and we are here to try to convince you to choose the latter.
The NBA is a player's game. Individuals effectively determine the outcome of the game, rather than the team. Look at teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers with LeBron James, Miami Heat with Dewayne Wade or the Dallas Mavericks with Dirk Nowitzki, where how a superstar plays on a given night will essentially determine whether a team wins or losses.
This is not the case in college basketball, where the team dynamic is in full force. For the most part, legends are not made in the college games, but instead, they are bred. Michael Jordan only averaged 17 points per game in college, a small feat compared to the digits he ended up putting on the board in the NBA. Teams make great players in the NCAA, not the other way around, like how Chris Wilcox never quite found his place in the most recent Maryland championship team until the team was already on the road to success, or how Juan Dixon would have never been able to lead had Steve Francis never left early for the NBA. Great players are born from teams' needs as they rise to unique challenges every year against diverse basketball programs.
In the NCAA, many teams with nameless players step up to the plate and beat out the big games, like how UNC's rookie team earned Roy Williams the Coach of the Year award after losing 96 percent of the 2005 championship squad's scoring productivity.
The NBA is saturated. For years, players in the NBA compete against each other and the game that you see levels out. There are few surprises and even fewer reasons to be excited. The NCAA is structured so that you see a spectrum of basketball at its finest.
The NCAA is broken down into many conferences, each of which has its own specialty, such as the ACC's mostly dominant inside game and the Big Ten's outside-the-perimeter play. The most interesting is watching the games of East meets Mid-West. In these games viewers watch a prism that reflects different strengths that merge together to match up to the challenges between the two types of games. A big man's posting up is answered by an elegant three. Because you see the entire middle meeting only once a year during March Madness, the actual championships and conferences are two very different ball games. College ball is continuously changing and evolving, for not only do teams change styles after their experiences on the road, but players also have a maximum four-year turnaround, which keeps freshness in the basketball.
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