My Bias:

NBA vs NCAA

There’s nothing like March Madness. The teams, the stories, the buzzer-beaters and the cinderellas. People (including me) go crazy trying to fill out the perfect bracket and debate taking work off on Thursdays and Fridays in order to watch the 32 games in 2 days. I absolutely love it.

You can probably already tell that I prefer NCAA more than the NBA. However, that isn’t to say that I’m trying to convince people everywhere that college basketball is better than pro basketball. They are two different entities that provide different forms of entertainment.

I had a debate with my coworker about which league is more entertaining. Obviously we disagreed, but I felt like it was interesting to reveal what each league has to offer and what makes them as entertaining as they are.

Early Interests

I grew up loving the NBA. When I started understanding the game and playing it myself I followed the Pistons religiously. This was when they had Billups, Hamilton, Prince, Rasheeeeed Wallace, and Big Ben Wallace. Those guys were my favorite players and my family watched almost every game, eventually seeing them win an NBA Championship.

Things changed towards the end of middle school when I started paying more attention to the College Basketball scene. I grew to like the style of the college teams, the diversity and abundance of games and content that the NBA simply didn’t have. The variability in the styles of play and sloppiness appealed to me. I began to fade away from the NBA.

Enter NCAA Basketball

The Long Tail

The concept of the long tail is fairly straightforward: there is an economic and cultural shift from mass markets to millions of niches. Take a look at Amazon or iTunes to better grasp this concept: there are hundreds of thousands of albums that one can download, but the vast majority of the downloads are for the Taylor Swifts, Beyonces, and the other popular artists that everyone loves. However, without the rest of the artists available on iTunes, the marketplace becomes saturated and static. This concept translates very well to basketball. Consider the best college basketball teams and place them within the graphic below.

In the “Head” section you have your powerhouses: Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Villanova, Kansas, Louisville, and probably a few more teams that are consistently good every year. Apart from that you have teams that are generally good…these are your Michigan States, Wisconsins, Georgetowns, and more teams that belong towards the right hand side of the red. They get a lot of attention and national coverage throughout the year due to their historic success. Beyond that you have the rest, and the rest is a lot. There are 351 division 1 college basketball teams today. That number is almost 3 times the number of division 1 football programs, and about 6 times the number of division 1 hockey programs. The more teams = more potential for suprises and cinderellas, as well as more potential for players to be noticed.

From Nothing to Something

The NCAA Tournament is where the “Long Tail” teams prove themselves. 68 teams make it, seeded 1–16 based on how a team has performed throughout the season. Seeds 12–16 in the tournament are generally composed of the mid-major conference tournament winners. This is precisely the moment where most of the country asks “Who?”. This year’s group of mid-majors in the tournament include the schools: Hampton, Valparaiso, Northeastern, Coastal Carolina, Wofford, Georgia State, Texas Southern, Lafayette, UC Irvine, Albany, Belmont, East Washington, UAB, and North Dakota State. I’ve heard of some of those, and mainly because of sports in the first place.

While most of these teams that end up making the tournament will fall to the much better, higher seeded powerhouse teams, there are certain runs that give players exposure that would have hardly been looked at otherwise. Whether it’s a player carrying the team (Steph Curry and Davidson 2008 Elite 8 run; Gordon Hayward and Butler National Championship National Championship run) or a team itself coming together to pull off a major upset (Florida Gulf Coast 2013 Sweet 16 run), there are moments that you just don’t get to see in the NBA.

Same Game, Different Mold

In the NBA there are upsets, but not in the same sense. The players are established and teams are the teams. The teams, at least to me, appear to have similar systems with similar players in each of the positions. There is variability, but not a whole lot of adversity. What I mean by that is a team that is an underdog in the NBA is one that has coaching issues or problems with team chemistry. The talent from one team to the next is generally the same. Of course this isn’t always the case, but these teams have similar money and access to these players.

In the NCAA there are teams that play different strategies and redefine the game because the talent gap is so wide. Mid-majors don’t get major prospects, so they have to play the game with the players they do have and find a way to make it work. For example, Stephen F. Austin (a school, not a person), a 12-seed in this year’s tournament, doesn’t start anyone over 6'7, and only has one other person on the roster taller than that. However, they’ve found a way to go 29–4 this year and only one loss since the end of November. You would never find a team in the NBA roll out with a 4-guard starting lineup and a 6'7 forward. It’s not practical. That strategy is worse than that, it’s straight up dumb. But that’s what they’ve had to do this year because of the recruits they’ve been able to gather, and it’s been working. Also, pick them in the first round, because 12-seeds have beaten 5-seeds 6 of the past 8 times in the past 3 tournaments. Stephen F. Austin also did it last year, so yeah.

Proving Yourself

Okay okay, by now I’ve said enough things for the NCAA and you may be tired of me advocating just for the NCAA, but this is the most important difference to me. At most the players in the NCAA have 4 years. It’s the longest job interview of their lives. They’re trying to sell themselves to the NBA. Pro scouts, owners, coaches, etc. are constantly watching the players in the NCAA to determine if they warrant a draft pick for the upcoming year. Not only that, but you’re playing for your school and fellow students. You have school pride and an actual connection to your biggest fans, which is powerful. In the NBA you have a contract that guarantees money. You’ve already made it to the end goal, the highest level, and at this point you’re mainly playing for yourself and to prove that you deserve maybe a couple more hundred thousand or million dollars when your contract ends in 5 years.

The nature of desperation in the NCAA shows every game…the defense is clearly better in college ball than the NBA and the individual games mean more since there are under 40 games per season in the NCAA compared to 82 in the NBA. How many times do you see an important player on a team sitting out for a few games for “rest” in the NBA? It’s not always the case, but I get it if you’re safely in the playoffs and want to rest some players, it makes sense because it’s a business. I hate that it makes sense. I hate that it’s a plausible decision. It’s a big reason I don’t like the NBA.

But I don’t hate the NBA

I said I don’t like the NBA, but I don’t hate the NBA. The NBA is entertaining and good at grabbing an audience. The style of play is different, due to the high shooting percentage of most players as well as the short shot-clock. This leads to less passes per possession and more points / less defense. In turn the scores are generally into the hundreds or at least closer to that figure. So yeah, the game is just different than college basketball, and in some ways it’s better.

Level of Talent

If you want to see extraordinary basketball in the sense of people making the sport look easy, that’s the NBA. I have no doubt that I think it’s boring because most players in the league make it look just that easy. They’re great at what they do and can complete a play while making it look like they could have been yawning while doing it. I can understand why a lot of people want to see that because it’s the ultimate level of competition. It doesn’t matter what team you’re watching, there’s going to be at least one or two players who can make the game look that easy, which is an incredible thing.

The NBA is a motivator for most of the great college players. If the NBA didn’t exist then I’m sure that most athletes would still compete and want to win (who likes to lose), but maybe they’ll be more focused on their social lives or classes rather than their jump shot. While that seems like a more healthy approach to a student-athlete’s life, would they go for that loose ball or hustle down the floor just as hard? The NBA gives college players another reason to play the game, which is obviously better for the NCAA and fans of basketball in general.

Individual Effort

If you want to see someone drop 81 points in a game, good luck finding it on a D1 college basketball court. The NBA is fantastic for seeing people like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose (heal up buddy), or as of late, Russell Westbrook absolutely go off in a single game. As I noted in the last section, the NBA is suited for more shooting and more points per game. This allows single players to deliver extraordinary performances, which are no doubt entertaining and awesome to watch.

Playoffs = Best Team

There’s no doubt in my mind that the playoffs for the NBA find the best team and the playoffs for the NCAA do not. The structure of the NBA playoffs have teams play a series of games against one another, which I feel is a much better indicator of who is the better team than one game. A team can beat a team once any given day, but can they win 4 out of 7? I am much more confident with finding the better team using a “best-of” system than the “one-and-done” system that the NCAA uses. The team that stands as NBA Champions at the end of the playoffs is the best team, more often than not. The team that stands as NCAA Champions at the end of the tournament may be the best team, but it could also be a team that caught fire and found a way to advance.

I’m cleary not trying to claim that the winner of March Madness is the best college basketball team of that year, but I feel a lot of defenders of college basketball versus NBA fanatics do believe it. It doesn’t bother me that the “hottest” team may beat the best team in the NCAA and be crowned as the better team. The structure of the tournament is amazing to me for many reasons, but fundamentally a worse playoff than the NBA, which I respect.

End Rant

This whole thing went on for a lot longer than I expected it to, and I obviously favored talking about the NCAA and bashed the NBA more than I wanted to. At the end of the day I love the scrappiness and emotion in the NCAA that I feel the NBA lacks. The high scoring and high level of talent don’t entice me nearly as much as the desperation and upsets of NCAA basketball and March Madness.

I’m sure as time goes on I will develop a new love for the NBA and I’ll be able to love both the same for what they are. But for now, I’m going to tend to my 11 brackets (yes, I filled out 11 brackets, I’m still not sure why) and cross my fingers that I picked the right cinderellas this year. Either way, I’m confident I’ll find a way to enjoy the madness.