In fact, anyone who knows anything about auto racing would know that the individual and team skills required to compete at the highest level of NASCAR make those of basketball seem, well, pedestrian by comparison.

Athletic or not, I refuse to waste my time and money on the NBA. Gangsta-ball indeed.

It doesn't help that the playoffs drag on forever. Who can maintain interest for so long? They should only let the division champs compete in the playoffs, it would make the regular season more meaningful and competitive.

In the last two weeks before the playoffs the good teams are on autopilot, secure in their berths, while the bad teams have givenup, so it seems that all the interest is in which teams will qualify for the 7th or 8th spots.

That time period should be about the top teams fighting it out to see which one goes home first, in effect extending the playoffs back into the regular season. But basketball (and hockey and football and soon, baseball) want to do the opposite, and have made the first rounds almost irrelevant.

(And I think if you compare the total timespan, the NFL's playoffs are just as long, but because its only one game every week (or less), it just feels shorter.)

And right now that seems to be a problem that only basketball has. Expanding baseball's playoffs didn't dilute them much - the excitement is still about winning the pennant, not getting the last wildcard spot. Hockey has the same playoff structure as basketball (in fact, that's where the NBA got the idea from). But the NHL, in addition to the scrubs fighting over the last spot, you also have teams caring about the President's Trophy, for the team with the most points - so the games in March aren't wasted time for the teams that have already clinched. And while football could potentially have the same problem as the NBA, there the season is so short that, depending on how the last week goes, the same team could either win its division or be out of the playoffs entirely.

You can legitimately say that the playoff chase offers excitement for all sports throughout the season - with the exception of basketball. Others have the mystique of the Stanley Cup or the Lombardi Trophy, the only major sports awards non-fans know by name - I can't tell you the name of the NBA's championship trophy. Other sports have similar problems with drugs (football, baseball), respectability (boxing, auto racing) and TV exposure (American soccer; for years hockey had no American national TV contract) but basketball has all those problems and seems to have no clue how to get itself out. Until it does, the casual fan (and non0fan) are not likely to care.

It's worse than that, the NBA will also drag down college bastketball, with the drafting of the best High School talent.

Actually, it was one of the Knicks off the 1973 championship team -- Earl Monroe -- who through no fault of his own began the current downward spiral. His flasy spin moves and shots while playing for the Baltimore Bullets was really the beginning of the "highlight reel" of spectacular offensive plays that are now the backbone of ESPN's nightly sports news shows.

The arrival of Julius Erving in the New York market a few years later really set the wheels in motion for spectacular individual plays to take prominence over team play, but for the next 15 years or so, the flash didn't overwhelm the fundamentals. But with the growth of cable TV and younger players entering the league, you have more and more players who can make Top 10 highlight plays on the 11 p.m. SportsCenter broadcast, but who screw up in so many other ways you end up with one spectacular play amid 10 minutes of turnovers and missed open shots (the 3-point line also hurt here, because no one even tries to learn how to hit a mid-range jumper off the dribble anymore. You either take it to the hoop or pass it outside for the open 22-footer behind the line).

The Chuck Daly-Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" style of thuggish defense that Pat Riley then refined into true ugliness was the finishing touch on a problem that remained partially hidden until Michael Jordan's retirement(s). But grip-and-grab defense isn't just the NBA's problem, as anyone whose watched a New Jersey Devils' game for the past decade can attest -- three Stanley Cups and as much fun to watch for the average fan as sitting in front of your stove waiting for the water to boil.

Granted, I'm not in the least a fan of pro basketball, but still the question has to be asked: if training and teamwork really do make a better team, why hasn't some team focussed on it and created a dynasty?

Actually, there was such a team: the late '50s/ early '60s Boston Celtics. Bill Russell probably made less in his entire career than Lebron James has in his rookie season; Lebron might have more just from his commercial endorsements. You show a kid the money and the attention and the starlets and all else a first-round pick brings and you see what he spends more time on - the flash or the fundamentals. You know the answer already.

Actually, the NBA is growing in popularity outside the US (which is a good thing, given that its a far larger market than the US). Which explains why so many foreign players are now in the league. As I recall, in the 2003 draft, 1/3 of the players drafted were from overseas.

John Barrett, Jr.,

Lebron James would school him as much as Wilt Chamberlain did. Russel may have more rings than Chamberlain did, but Chamberlain consistently kicked Russel's ass.

The NBA will ruin college basketball unless those that sign a letter of intent to a college are REQUIRED to sit out of the NBA for at least 3 years regardless of what occurs in their college career. You can blame the NCAA for a lot of what is going on. What I mean is that they are recruiting kids that should never have been in college to begin with.