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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

> There's a noticeable emphasis on creating the most exciting and intense spectacle for the audience.

Honestly, and I say that as someone who loves basket ball and often stays up during the night to see the NBA playoffs, basketball is often far from the level of tension and excitement you can get in (European) football. In football, most of the time a single goal is a game changer even when you have some margin (let say 2-0 and the opponent team is now 2-1,they have regained the momentum now and the match is totally different). In terms of adrenaline, the entire football game is like the fourth quarter of the seventh game and every single goal feels like a buzzer beater!

The scarcity of goals is invaluable.

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Basketball captures the tension and momentum in a livelier way. A team coming back from being down 15 is so much more exciting because it requires a sequence of offensive plays and defensive stops. You can feel the momentum shift as the team who was up suddenly can’t buy a basket.

The problem with basketball is last two minutes. What should be the most exciting part of the game becomes a drag with timeouts and intentional fouling.

Agreed on the last 2 minutes of play.

The fouling is usually by the team trying to mount a last-moment come-back (stop the leading teams momentum, hope they miss the free-throws, and then get possession and shot to close the gap). Making penalties more costly would prevent this and likely just allow the leading team t to win. Though maybe they generally do anyways, so no real loss? I'd have to look at past game stats.

TOs - We could probably do without them in the last moments. That would shift focus from the coach to the team captain to coordinate play. Less set plays, more fluid teamwork. Possibly a net gain for the viewer with no real impact on the teams?

They should adopt for regular games what they’ve been doing for the all-star game the past two years, no clock in the fourth quarter, it’s a race to 24 points past the highest score when the quarter begins.

I was initially a fan of the elam ending, in theory. After watching the all-start game endings, I am staunchly opposed to it. The lack of a clock removes most of the tension in the end of a close game. Thinking further, it also removes the entire concept of the last shot / buzzer beater, one of the cornerstones of excitement in competitive basketball. When a shot goes up as the clock expires in a game that is within 1 or 2 points, you have the suspense and excitement of knowing that if the shooter hits that shot, his team wins. If he misses, his team loses. With the Elam ending, there is less excitement because the consequence for missing is that the game just continues & the other team now has a chance to score and possibly win.

I think it depends on how invested you are to the game. When you don’t care about the teams, low scoring games lack the tension you’re talking about

Tennis is at the extreme end of high scoring and even watching matches you don’t care about between average players can be entertaining though not memorable. Longer term it’s only the truly exceptional games of any sport you’re going to remember anyway.

“low scoring games lack the tension you’re talking about”

I think that’s cultural/an acquired taste.

One could argue the outcome of high-scoring games is more predictable, making them less tense.

If, say, on average party A scores a point every minute and party B scores one every 40 seconds, party B will win almost every one hour game against party A (the expected outcome is 90-60), and each individual score is only marginally important. So, why would a spectator be enthousiast about a (missed) score after 20 seconds of play?

If, on other hand, party A scores a goal every 30 minutes and party B one every 20 minutes, party A has a much higher chance of beating party B in a one hour game, and each missed opportunity becomes a potential game changer.

In soccer, some of the most tense games end in 0-0, 1-0, or 0-1 (especially at major tournaments, where, often [1], each result counts)

[1] for one where that wasn’t the case, watch West-Germany against Austria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gijón).

In this regard, the most notable feature of tennis is that every match is a mini-tournament. It doesn't matter whether you lose the game 40-0 or after the 5th deuce point, you still just have to make up one game. Similarly, the score of the first set doesn't matter; only who wins. This periodic levelling of the score seems to make it more engaging somehow.

Personally, regardless of sport I only feel tension when I care about the winner. The game could be tied with seconds left to score and it’s no more intense than a pickup game between friends.

I feel the same. I watched (and enjoyed) lots of college basketball when I had roommates that were heavily invested in games' outcomes but never again since.

I much prefer NCAA basketball to the NBA. Perhaps it's the greater variation in team skill (with a bit more variety in playing style), the occasional Cinderella story, or maybe just the marketing around March Madness.

I’m not a huge basketball fan, but there seems to be a lot less ego in the NCAA too. It’s mostly about the game, not LeBron/Wade/well-known celebrity players.

It seems that there is more of an emphasis on defense in the NCAA vs the NBA. Makes for a more interesting game.

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