To College Or To NBA

The differences between college basketball and the professional game are undeniable. In the NBA, athletes are bigger, faster, stronger, and even the white guys can dunk. In college, players are smaller, slower, and most of the white guys major in business for a reason. There are thirty teams in the NBA, and most teams have twelve players in their rotation. Those 360 players are the 360 best basketball players in the world. In college there are teams with 6 foot 1 guys from River Falls, Wisconsin who made the team because they show up to practice on time and provide a boost to the teams average GPA. No NBA team owner is going to pay somebody millions of dollars a year because he gets A's in Biology class. Some people think this makes the NBA better than college basketball. For some basketball fans, the fact that guys in the NBA play so much better makes it a better game to watch. For me, it just makes it different.

Random Average College Basketball Guy has one advantage over every star in the NBA -- he knows his days are numbered. He knows he's got four years, and after that he will never play another meaningful game of basketball again. He knows he can literally count the minutes he has left until his dream is over and the hourglass runs out. So every minute of playing time he gets, he plays as hard as he can. He works himself to the point of exhaustion every time his feet touch the floor, because soon, there will be no more work to do (that doesn't involve a time-card). He plays his ass off because if he tries hard enough, the dream may stay alive. That drive, that passion, that effort, and the emotion that comes from it, is what makes college basketball so good. When college players show emotion it connects them to fans, and we are reminded that they are real people. They are college kids eating Spaghettios and frozen pizza who care just as much about the game as we do. And as fans, that's something we care about, that's something that matters.

For some, it may matter too much.

College basketball isn't good because guys make every shot, it's good because players miss a lot of shots too. It's exciting when a shot goes up and there's no telling where it will fall. When players really care you can see the pain with every miss and the joy with every make. In the NBA, players get paid millions of dollars and play 82 games a year. If a player screws up, it doesn't matter because there is always another game, and he still gets paid more than the GDP of several countries. Watch a close game in college and a close game in the NBA and it's impossible not to notice the difference. The players play differently, and the fans cheer differently.

Being so different allows the NBA and college basketball to both be great. In the NBA, guys do make every open shot. In the NBA, athletes make plays that seem to defy what a normal human can do. We watch the NBA to see something incredible and some players are so good they hit every big shot, make every big play, and almost never disappoint. That's why a lot of fans (finger pointed very aggressively at my self) only root for players in the NBA. That doesn't make watching the NBA wrong or worse or better, just different. And in college when a player's emotions get the best of him and he plays poorly, or he rides the feelings of the crowd to victory, that doesn't make college basketball better or worse than the NBA, just different.