Welcome to another Five Out, this time a silly one. Or sillier, anyway. You have been warned. If you don’t like silly stuff, only want the hard hitting content I’m not known for, well, sorry. Not much going on in NBA world.

We’re still a month away from the majority of NBA training camps opening (some open a bit earlier for teams playing overseas preseason exhibitions). October first will mark the return of the NBA. Until then? We have each other.

We also have the giant spider egg sac that is American Football starting to burst open in the corners of your bedroom. Today the student athletes of the NCAA burst forth in their NIListic glory, but the NFL isn’t far behind. Between the two it should be possible to watch a football game every single day of the week, if you can manage the subscriptions, or streaming, or just whatever it is they’ve made of the old order.

Honestly I don’t hate football, though I don’t have the insane love that many Americans, particularly fellow Texans, have for it. I’m excited for the Texans, specifically the Houston Texans for the first time, maybe ever? They now seem like a team capable of outsmarting an opponent occasionally, which is admittedly a low bar, but they’ve spent most of their existence well below that bar.

As for other footballs, Association Football, Australian Rules Football, and probably some other footballs I don’t know, or recall, I like them, too. I enjoy soccer, and have to have some regard for any sport that has a guy in a suit and a great hat making cryptic gestures.

Nonetheless, I like basketball best, over the footballs of the world, and here’s why.

ONE – DURATION

Basketball games don’t last forever. One could get caught in a four hour plus NCAA football game. I know this because it’s happened to me. That’s not a game, that’s a life commitment. Even the most exciting contest can lose luster when extended that long. By contrast, most NBA basketball games last about two hours and fifteen minutes. If you are committed to watching basketball, two games in a sitting are quite possible, without devoting the day to the prospect.

The other duration, the length of the season, the number of games, is also something I personally like about NBA basketball.

There are indeed a lot of basketball games in a season. I am not in the “reduce the season length!” camp. The length of the NBA season in terms of games played is really only a problem if you’ve accepted the premise that only the playoffs matter.

If you believe the regular season is not only worthwhile, but in fact the economic engine that powers the whole endeavor, then it’s hard to see how it’s such a problem.

If it really IS such a problem for player health, and well being, and whatnot, then fine, everyone can take 20%-50% less money, and we will have fewer games. The players’ extremely well-compensated risk of injury will (possibly, but not necessarily) be reduced (but most likely only in a linear fashion). Then everyone will be happy. Right?

(I honestly never, ever, want to hear a media member complain about the length of the basketball season again. It sounds like whining about having to do work wrapped in a specious appeal about player health to me.)

TWO -SCORING

There will be scoring. I’ve written this before, but basketball is almost unique among sports in the question it asks. A sport like soccer often ends in the dreaded nil-nil draw. It’s possible to not see much scoring in football, or baseball. Scoreless ties in a regulation amount of play, time or innings, are possible, if less common than they once were.

Basketball instead proposes that teams will score, they must (modern basketball anyway), and no one can totally grind the clock away, or keep the ball away from the opponent. Teams will score. But who can score enough?

For me at least, this is a more interesting question in terms of the experience, and the entertainment on offer. It’s very difficult to bore an opponent into submission, as it is with soccer. The equivalent of a negative, time wasting, “low block” in basketball means “you lose”.

THREE – INJURIES

Basketball certainly has injuries, but it rarely has the sort of permanent life-altering injuries one sees in football. Players may retire from basketball with creaky, bad, knees, but generally they can walk. I grew knowing the family of a former NFL player, a fringe defensive star. By his mid fifties this big, tough, powerful, man couldn’t walk a city block, or climb the stairs of his home.

Then there are the concussions of both football, and soccer. This simply doesn’t happen in the NBA, with anything like the frequency of those sports. Apparently everyone decided concussions weren’t a problem in football anymore, for some reason. I’m not sure why, and the NFL does seem far more serious about treatment, but still behind a sport like Rugby Union.

Anyway, basketball doesn’t leave most players physical wrecks, and that, to me, is a good thing.

FOUR – FAIRNESS

As a result of negotiated agreements between the NBA Players Association and NBA ownership, the Association pledges 51% of all BRI or basketball related income to player salaries. The salary cap is based off that number, and the players will get more than half the revenue of the NBA as a whole. This is good in my view. I’m not really concerned with billionaire owners saying a few million. Remember, the difference between one billion, and one million, is roughly one billion.

Moreover NBA contracts are, in most circumstances guaranteed. There’s not the funny money, bonus-driven, won’t see half of the deal, non guaranteed stuff like the NFL. Baseball has this too, but basketball has lead the way in this sort of thing. Unlike soccer, basketball salaries rarely can threaten the financial health of a team. With both basketball the related income rule, and now, an almost real salary cap, teams are protected from being forced to compete with wildly spending owners, and no sovereign wealth fund can skew NBA finances out of recognition.

FIVE – COOLNESS & DRAMA

The NBA is, still, after all the decades, all the money, all the success, and mainstream acceptance, cool. One reason is, basketball itself is cool to watch. The stars of the NBA seem like no sports stars anywhere else. Their feats sometimes seem the furthest away from ordinary people of any team sport. Unexpected feats of athleticism and on-court drama are common. The players literally are larger than life, or at least ordinary life. That makes the game cool.

Off court, and on court, drama still exists in the NBA, as well. It’s not always buddy-buddy AAU stuff. Players still have beef with one another. Rumors of unhappy stars wanting out, the possibility of remaking a team’s fortune in the form of just one player, rarely happens in other sports. Sure, a key striker, or starting pitcher, a quarterback, can change a team’s fortune, but those players simply move around less than NBA players, in general.

I do worry that the trend of “NBA Families”, long expected, and scouted, AAU stars, and the general decline of streetball players, or play styles, in the NBA may really cut into this cool factor, but we aren’t there yet. James Harden can still call Daryl Morey a liar. It’s hard to imagine a top NFL QB doing that sort of thing.

The NBA in inextricably linked with American street culture, fashion and music. There’s nowhere in the world that isn’t influenced by that culture, music and fashion. It’s cool. And walking side by side with all that Black culture and worldwide coolness, is the NBA.

Another couple of things that help the NBA are the long careers of the top players compared to many sports. Lebron James is still a top player at 40. We’ve seen him play for two decades. Most of the other stars are the same. The NBA doesn’t destroy of the bodies of its top players like some other sports, and skill can carry a player for a long time in the NBA. This means people get to know the great players, their stories, their drama in a way few other sports can match.

Finally, you can see the faces of NBA players while they’re playing. They can’t hide their expressions and reactions.

SIX (Bonus!) – MORE WAYS TO WIN

Unlike the NFL, where a team without at least a very good quarterback has little chance of great success, an NBA team can win via different routes. Yes, the NBA requires, more than most sports, superstar talent, but consider how different the styles of those superstars can be.

Here are the key stars of several recent NBA title winners – Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Lebron James, Giannis Antetenkoumpo, Jason Tatum.

Yes, those players are all stars, but none of them feature games much like the others. The shooting and clever quickness of Curry and the battering ram style of Giannis are wildly different. Jokic and LeBron are miles apart athletically, but not intellectually. Despite the rise of three point shooting overall, when one considers the very different games of the recent title winners, it’s easy to see the NBA offers a true variety of successful stars that can capture a title.

In many other sports the best sort of players, and the paths to victory, can feel very similar. Not so much the NBA. The NBA is driven by its superstars, but those superstars are very different from one another.