Hoops

Basketball a boring sport: Jim Maxwell

Isaac:

“Maybe after each bucket is scored, the in-bounder should walk very slowly back measuring their pace and then take a run up.

(That aside, after each over in cricket or goal in AFL, those sports are set up for brief sponsor ads which would help commercially.)”

Spot on with the commercial breaks. Kerry Packer only wanted the broadcast rights when he started World Series cricket. Until then the players had been amateurs. They jumped ship to make bank. Test matches in Australia used to have 8 ball overs before the Packer era. Shortening the overs made more advertising space available.

I also remember NBL refs calling “tv time out”s if no break in play had occurred for too long. (I think it was still The Apollo era in Adelaide).

In veeerry broad brushstrokes, sport in Australia has changed from promoting alcohol and tobacco to promoting sports betting. So maybe in the future sports will grow or wither based on gambling profits. Indian bookmakers offering spot bets on wides and no balls clearly adds to gambling profitability (and corruptibility). I guess basketball equivalent would be missed free throws wait, we already have cheeseburgers for that).

No, not at all.

It probably doesn't help that cricketers are completely unrelatable too. They carry on like a bunch of dickheads out on a buck's night in the Cross. Bunch of thugs. No characters either.

Times are a changing less people into cricket these days.
Move with the times J Maxwell far less VB drinking fellas nowadays.

How on earth can anyone say cricket is exciting, it’s akin to golf to watch, nothing happens

All I know is basketball is an Olympic sport. Cricket is not (skateboarding jumping over cricket at the next Olympics tells you all you need to know).

Crack down on pointless fouls or timeouts when there is a 15 point defecit with under a minute left.

Reduce time taken on video reviews.

Maybe after each bucket is scored, the in-bounder should walk very slowly back measuring their pace and then take a run up.

(That aside, after each over in cricket or goal in AFL, those sports are set up for brief sponsor ads which would help commercially.)

I heard this year they had a swimming pool / marquee type area installed at the cricket matches. Kind of adds to the perception that people go there for the event feel as opposed to the game itself. Melbourne cup style

Cricket is terrible.

Who wants to throw away a few days to watch a test? Then there is the Twenty 20 which is one of the most cringey sports I’ve ever watched apart from AFLX. Fireworks, motorbike jumps and neon wickets to distract you from how boring it still is.

Cricket is on its way out. Kids are moving towards basketball and AFL. Old fogeys are clinging onto cricket.

And yes I go to the Boxing Day test but that is just to get drunk like everyone else there.

"And a sport where the interesting bits are continually interrupted by long stoppages and by endless numbers of generally very boring free throws."

But in cricket there's a stoppage in action after every ball is bowled.

Harsh but true.
If Finn Delaney or Cameron Bairstow played cricket I would take more notice.

Jim Maxwell is a boring old flog, end of story.

Every sport can be boring that's why there is a spot for all of them.

I know blokes that have played cricket all there lives that think baseball is boring, and that the tour de france is exciting.

Some games of cricket are rubbish as there are basketball (NBA All Star game) so swings and round-abouts.

I'm not trying to stick up for cricket but using the outlier Boxing Day crowds isn't right. Have a look at the crowds they get for all the other Test matches, the Boxing Day Test is so traditional to practically be sacred Victorians (and others) always turn out in droves for the first 1 or 2 days play.

The biggest issue for cricket at the moment is T20 is cannibalising Test cricket so all the traditionalists are standing around stomping their feet and now the NBL has even come into the firing line. Only a good thing.

Even my Indian mates prefer basketball.

Serious question: Is basketball more popular than cricket amongst the youth of today?

He mentioned being outdoors during summer as a bonus with cricket. To be honest id rather be in an air conditioned environment during summer.

No disputing that 180,000 in three days is impressive, but so is 105,000 in two days at the Docklands to watch Australia v USA.

They got 80,000 on Boxing Day mainly because it’s in the Melbourne public physique and all the kiwis. Give the plugs cricket gets in every news broadcast on every free to air channels for basketball and see how it works out.

Basketball a truly international sport, cricket played in so few countries. West Indian cricket died after there golden era due to the introduction of the nba on local tv, it never got back as every decent athlete would rather run up and down a basketball court rather than spend days in the sun watching grass grow.

Easy to pick out the biggest cricket event in the calendar to refer to numbers. How about the Pakistan vs Australia test that got 4000 on a day.

Sure still more than the NBL but let’s be reasonable.

180,000 have attended the current test match after 3 days. NBL would take a month of games to reach that number. Cricket is australia's national sport basketball is made up of guys who aren't good enough to make it overseas

Wow.

Good to see so much passion about someone, who we’ve never heard of before, writing something we only know about because it’s been aired by the ABC.

I had to google JM too. He loves cricket. He lives for it. He dreamed of playing test cricket whilst still in his private school short pants. He even toured England in some kind of schoolboy tour (in 1973 I think, ain’t gonna google him twice). In the 1970s, I think David Hookes was the only SA Sheffield Shield player to go to a public high school. JM then dreamed of working for the BBC, and it took him a few tries to get a gig on the ABC. His AM was for his work with cricket. Of course he’s going to defend his livelihood and raise d’etre. I don’t take it personally, and neither should anyone here.

Cricket is very establishment, very conservative. The ABC radio commentary is catering for a small niche market, and that’s what JM does.

I think basketball has a relatively bright future in Australia. It’s easy to practice skills and play game variants with just a ball, the hoop systems you can put in your driveway or yard mean you can play pickup games at home. Lots of local parks have at least a small concrete area with a hoop.

We can sit back and enjoy the publicity produced by these sorts of statements. They will only help the game grow more.

Cricket is propped up somewhat by Australia’s media. You can guarantee that any media outlet, news or newspapers will be reporting on cricket all season long day in day out. Most of which will be shameless self promotion. Watch the news tonight: you will likely find a non story on cricket and a story promoting cricket in a positive light.

Very similar to the AFL although the demand for AFL is more so there.

All part of the marketing machine.

The problem cricket will face is that people are moving to different forms of media such as social media where you get choice on what you want to view.

Anecdotally I don’t see much of cricket highlights being shared on social media.

Old fart Maxwell trying to get his 15 minutes of fame.

Driving home at 8:30pm on a saturday evening and noticed that my local basketball courts are full of people, as usual. Indoor sport my arse. I should have taken a photo for Jim. Meanwhile I wonder how many kids are outside playing T-20 cricket right now.

Test cricket is dying although the ironic thing is its been other forms of cricket that have killed it off, not so much competition from other sports, although its contributing to its demise moreso than before.

The Brisabne and Perth tests were poorly attended (given the amount of media coverage it gets). Not sure about Adelaide but Sydney and Melbourne get the best crowds due to the so called prestige and historic appeal. Outside of those two, test cricket is obnoxiously overrated.

What is the average cricket crowd?

I do know that the New Year's Eve test etc in Adelaide packs out, but outside of that?

For the amount of media coverage the cricket gets there crowds are woeful. Give cricket the same main stream media that the basketball get and they would be broke in five years when all the sheep stopped following.

"Each to their own, but to purposefully encourage one sport over another especially for junior participation is a bit low and requires some justification or explanation other than his uneducated opnion of it being boring..."

Yeah, I somehow think the million-something kids playing basketball wont be too deterred by what some old fogey says.

And I definitely challenge him to tell us all the benefits cricket has over basketball for kids health and well being. For socializing, equal. For fun, well, probably equal if the kids play the sport they enjoy. For fitness? Not even close.


As has already been said though, they're obviously starting to feel threatened.

Believe it or not, but a kid can play many sports. In fact they actually do!

I used to play cricket and basketball as a kid and found both great fun to play and watch. Today though id have trouble watching a couple of overs on TV before tuning out. Its still a good sport to play though.

Each to their own, but to purposefully encourage one sport over another especially for junior participation is a bit low and requires some justification or explanation other than his uneducated opnion of it being boring...

Just out of interest, does there exist people who rewatch entire cricket matches? Or those who will watch a full match if they miss it, even if they know who wins?

I just cannot imagine the answer to those questions being yes.

So, while I can respect the "passive" aspect of watching cricket, and how it might be something people do as a bit of background action that facilitates a reason to yell at a TV and drink, pretending that it is as entertaining as basketball, or as lively, or as action packed, is frankly obscene.

Everyone has the right to like whatever sport they want to like, but basketball being "boring" compared to cricket isn't just a preference thing, it is objectively untrue.

I imagine if you brought in 100 test subjects from an untouched African tribe who have never seen basketball or cricket, had them watch a full randomly-selected game of either, and then have them tell you which they were entertained more by, that the vote would be unanimous. It is only because of our Commonwealth/Australian culture and upbringing and the history of cricket in this country that cricket even has a following.

Once again, I imagine to play cricket is a fun, passive, easy way to waste some time, and that maybe people enjoy watching it if they've had that experience, but to pretend it is objectively more entertaining than basketball? Bitch please!

Cricket is incredibly boring

How a proponent of cricket could call any other sport boring is beyond me.

And as for calling for kids to play cricket instead of basketball, can he explain the rationale behind that? One is a dynamic full body work out that incorporates sprinting, jogging, jumping, throwing, catching, bilateral movement, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, so on and so on, bringing kids heart rates up and shedding pounds. The other is either hitting a ball, or throwing a ball. It's perfectly possible to obese and a decent cricket player.

Jim Maxwell needs to find another sport to attack, because, in the words of my black bretheren, "this aint it, dawg"

Interesting topic. I think juniors and semi pro basketball is interesting to watch but top level basketball is so predictable and boring especially the nba. With sports science heavily involved players just go through the motions for 82 games

Bryce Cotton dedicates that one to Jim Maxwell

Had to google Jim Maxwell never heard of the old prick.

Wendy “Alannis Morisette” Byrd to you.

'Sport Y' is boring. That's a take?

Manu "Wendy Byrd" makes a good point

It is a bit ironic that test cricket is so slow paced that there's enough time to deliver a rant about how boring another sport is without missing anything in the commentary.

I know that the pace of the game isn't the only factor in whether a game is exciting or not but it's still ironic don't you think

This is actually pretty good news. If an old fogey cricket commentator is starting to feel threatened by the NBL it means the league is starting to make significant inroads into the Aussie sports pysche.

My old man is 70 probably a similar age to Maxwell never played or followed the game in his life until a couple of years ago and even he now watches most of the NBL games on TV. Christmas lunch and my old man is sitting their shaking his head in disbelief that I think Casper Ware is a better player than Jerome Randle lol

Loving it!

He doesn't hate T20, which makes him remarkably progressive for an old fogey

Old bogan indeed. Agree with my little bro.
Cricket is actually boring as batshit.

Spot the old bogan. It's nearly 2020 and he can't handle progress.

Ignorance is bliss Maxwell

I enjoy cricket, do not feel the need to defend basketball as is it plays in to the stupid narrative that it is all flash no substance.

I used to say there is more to it than you realise (basketball) but now understand it is embedded in our culture and others also understand that.

Both can co exist I do not feel the need to bag cricket

Wiki:

“Maxwell played cricket in Sydney at the Cranbrook School and once toured with an Australian Old Collegians team in 1972.”

AM too. He’s as establishment as they come. Eastern suburbs, old school tie. If Australia has an elite establishment, he’s in it.

I somehow think no kids play outside at all in his hood.

I would rather watch paint dry than watch cricket.

Cricket getting a little nervous about basketball's increasing popularity and profile hey. Jimmy clearly hasn't noticed all the people who play pickup ball on outdoor courts.

It's also posted on the ABC Sport Facebook page, and boy, does Maxwell cop some grief on there over it!