Football is America’s Game, but basketball curries favor with the whole world

Any time you hear someone refer to their favorite sport as the best one, the opinion never comes with proof.

A lot of golfers say theirs is the best sport. Once running, jumping, passing and catching become elements of golf, we’ll revisit it. I have yet to see a tennis player use a cart to get from shot to shot.

All sports — real sports, not break dancing or cow chip tossing — are good sports. They all have merits or they wouldn’t exist.

American football is America’s pastime. According to the Nielsen ratings, 93 of the 100 most-watched telecasts in 2023 were NFL games. The NBA topped out at No. 120, baseball’s World Series at No. 140.

That’s more than a phenomenon. Is it a cult? Is it a religion? Is it simply the game that lends itself to television better than any other and also happens to be the overwhelming favorite of gamblers? Maybe, possibly, absolutely.

But football doesn’t mean much beyond American shores. Not even with the NFL staging games in Brazil, Germany and England this season.

That was amplified Saturday in Paris, a city with no more use for American corner blitzes and cover twos than our cheese, crepes or croissants.

The shot heard ‘round the world Saturday was Stephen Curry’s nearly-impossible fallaway 3-pointer over two defenders. It locked up the U.S.’ 98-87 men’s basketball title game win over France in a game closer than the final score indicates.

The shot in itself immediately became the best in Olympic history. It also was the fourth 3 that Curry made in just over two minutes and eighth in 12 taken against the surprisingly competitive French.

That was two days after Curry drained nine 3s in the American’s 95-91 semifinal comeback win over Serbia.

Both were truly dramatic, high-level, great games. The losing teams were sensational, and showed how basketball has swiftly risen in quality around the world.

Football suffocates the U.S.’ sports scene, and that’s what Americans prefer. The world, much smaller than many realize, has other ideas. It loves its soccer more than any other sport, yes. World Cup television ratings make the Super Bowl’s audience look like that of a Big Ten Network football rerun of Indiana playing Purdue.

Basketball, though, keeps ascending on every continent but Antarctica. The NBA is the most popular sports league in China. The sport is loved in Australia, Brazil, Spain. It gets bigger in Canada all the time.

Greece, Serbia and Slovenia have given us Giannis Antetokounmpko, Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic, respectively. They can play a little. Luckily for the U.S., old salts Curry and LeBron James were born in Akron, Ohio.

You can be in a seaside village in Italy or a city in Tanzania with mostly dirt roads, and it’s not hard to spot people wearing James or Curry jerseys, or knockoff jerseys, or shirts with those two players’ names and numbers that people made themselves.

When there’s a great Super Bowl finish, our country buzzes. The world’s sports fans went nuts when Curry went nuts Saturday.

Is it because basketball is the best game? We’ve been over this. There is no best game. Still …

When you combine the artistry of the very best players and display it in a team structure in a relatively intimate environment where you can actually see the players’ faces and emotions …

Well, that’s not telling Caitlin Clark fans anything they don’t already know.

In four years, the Summer Olympics will be in Los Angeles and Clark will be regarded as the best player in the world if the current holder of that designation, U.S. center A’ja Wilson, shows any decline at age 32.

We’re starting to see the same thing happen in the women’s game as we’ve witnessed from the men. The women’s game has just begun to blossom globally, and blossom it will. France nearly shocked the overwhelming-favorite Americans in Sunday’s gold-medal contest.

Football is America’s sporting obsession, but it doesn’t translate across any ocean. Basketball also was born here. It has the world not just watching it, but playing it beautifully. It fit nicely in Paris alongside the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com