Wow, its a good thing I decided to browse through the old threads. Now I can post about my fav sport, Basketball! 😁

Basketball is a team sport with 5 players on each team. In the USA, the playing field is a court with dimensions of 94 feet long and 50 feet wide (roughly 29m x 15m) and for international games, the official dimensions are 28 X 15 m. The aim of the game is to throw the ball into the opponent's basket, that is suspended 10 feet (3m) from the ground. The size of the ball is about 25 cm in diameter. The basket consists of a ring and a net with a hole for the ball to pass through.

Players can freely roam around the court. The player who has the ball can only move by bouncing it on the court, which is known as dribbling. If he has stopped dribbling, he cannot bounce again and must pass to a team mate.

The there are 5 different positions in Basketball. They are Point Guard, Shooting Guard, Small Forward, Power Forward and Center.

The guards are usually the fastest players in the team. The PG would be the one who organizes the attack and seek out the right player to pass the ball to. The SG, as the name implies, attemps to shoot a large number of shots.
The forwards are usually bigger and attack closer to the basket. They also attempt to grab the rebounds, which happens when the ball misses the basket. The center is the tallest in the team. They use their size to attack the basket and also protect their own basket in the defensive end.

A team can have a combination of positions with the limit of 5 players on the court depending on the tactics chosen. For example, if the coach feels that more faster players are needed, he can put 3 guards and 2 forwards.

The the amount of points worth for each sucessful shot depends on where the player shot it from. There is an arc that surrounds the hoop that can be as far as 7m away. If a player shoots inside this arc segment, a shot is worth 2 points. If a player shoots outside the arc, it is worth 3 points. If a player is fouled while a shot is attempted, he is awarded 2 shots worth 1 point each. This penalty shot is unobstructed (that is, there is no "goalie") and is taken perpedicular to the basket about 4.5m away.

Alright, thats it about the basic technical stuff 😛

There are a number of basketball leagues around the world. The most famous is the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the USA. There are 30 teams which are geographically spread around the country, including 1 in Canada. The NBA is split into the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, with each having 3 divisions. All 30 teams play with each other. The rankings after 82 games in the regular season within their own division and conference determines their standings in the playoffs. Only the best 8 teams from each conference can participate in this playoff, which would determine the NBA Champion. The 8 teams play each other in 3 rounds, knocking each other out with a best of 7 games series. The final showdown would be the winner of the Western Conference versus the winner of the Eastern Conference. The recent NBA Champion is the San Antonio Spurs, who resides the West after beating the Cleveland Cavaliers of the East.

In Europe, there are 2 different leagues in which in which clubs from different European countries compete. One is the Euroleague in which consists of 24 clubs. The other is the Eurocup, which consists of another 30 clubs. The Euroleague and Eurocup were created by FIBA, the international federation for Basketball. Euroleague was then taken over by 24 of the richest European basketball clubs. The leagues are sometimes overshadowed by the NBA, but the fact remains that European countries usually dominate the international basketball competitions, usually wiping out Team USA 😛

Other leagues exist too. Countries usually have their own basketball leagues such as Australia with their NBL. In South America, there is a league called Liga Sudamericana.

FIBA also organizes world championships split within each of the 5 continents.

Anywayz, my favorite team is Houston Rockets, from the NBA.

Phew.. thats quite a lot to type. Theres a lot more info, but you guys can check the links out 😉

<a href="https://www.nba.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">NBA.com India | The official site of the NBA</a>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroleague" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">EuroLeague - Wikipedia</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">FIBA - Wikipedia</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketball" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Basketball - Wikipedia</a>