Talking Basketball

Opinions on basketball range far and wide.  Some people prefer a fast-paced, offensive-oriented game, while others like precision, half-court offenses, and still others feel offense is a minor part of the game compared to defense.  Some folks like the college game, while others like the pros, and still others think that it's more fun to watch high school or even youth basketball.  And of course, coaches make questionable decisions, players do stupid things, and some folks just plain don't understand the game.  And, of course, there are the folks dedicated to a specific team.

This makes for a wonderful backdrop for discussion, debate, and sometime just general contrariness.  It can become just as heated as any political or religious discussion.  Some folks don't like that;  I, however, think it's fun.

Here are a list of places where you can find good (or, perhaps not so good) basketball opinions, basketball discussions, and information.

Bulletin Boards - Discussion Forums

• PhillyArena - Derek Bodner's basketball board is a refuge for posters who posted on MSNBC's board before it was shut down.  Although it's a smaller community, it features some lively discussion, which is, for the most part, well-reasoned and intelligent.  It also includes an area for dicussing the fantasy NBA league I'm in as well.  I post under my own name.

• Scout.com's NBA Forum - formerly the site called FanHome, Scout's discussion board range all over the place.  This is a larger community than PhillyArena, but not quite as tightly knit, and the opinions go wildly across the spectrum - sometimes to the point of absurdity.  I post under the alias "Genghis, the Polar Bear."  (Imagine a reasonably well-spoken, reasonably intelligent, species-proud polar bear with a bit of a chip on his shoulder as to why his species isn't the dominant one on the planet talking to foolish humans, and you get the idea.)

• The Score Boards - this is another offshoot of FanHome.  When Scout.com and FanHome split, this was where many of the folks went.  I never particularly cared for the layout and such, so I didn't go along.  However, I still see a few friends are out there, so I included a link to it for their sake.

• Joe's Basketball Forum - I set up my own area here, so that if I ever want to host a basketball forum, I can.  No one really uses it though - not even me.

• Joe's Basketball Blog - Probably the nicest benefit of playing with technology is that you can set up whatever you want.  The downside is that way too often, you don't use what you set up.  I've got a blog out here, but currently, it's way out of date - and that probably won't change.

Basketball Information and Resources

If you want to talk basketball, and talk intelligently about it, you're going to need to stay current on basketball, and have some historical perspective as well.  And it never hurts to have some stats to back you up.  Here are some good resources to help you with that.

• Basketball-Reference.com - a wonderful statistical site that puts the NBA's own web site to shame.

• ESPN.com's NBA site - ESPN covers pro basketball pretty well, and their site isn't bad.  The big downside is that some of the more interesting stuff is "Insider" content - which you have to have a paid subscription to.

• NBA.com - so why am I listing pro basketball's main web site last?  Because it's pretty awful and has limited content, and it's hard to find what you want.  But it is pro basketball's web site.