Playing basketball can be related to handwriting. Everyone shoots the same way. Or so it appears. Everyone has the same moves or is capable of learning these moves. While it may seem boring if everyone does the same thing, you will not notice as everyone has their own way of doing it. While the difference may not always be noticeable, it is definitely there. Everyone’s shot looks similar, but there are small differences which make that shooting form unique to that person. Everyone has a specific role when playing which is what makes everything work.

While playing basketball can simply be called a workout or a sport, there are unique aspects of the game which make it different from all other sports. For starters, basketball is the only sport where two teams can combine to score over two hundred in just forty-eight minutes. Basketball, while one of the four major sports, is the only major sport, primarily played indoors and always played indoors by professional teams. Basketball can be classified as just running up and down a court and putting up shots. While this may be true, as some teams are putting up about eighty to one-hundred shots a game, it does not compare to where half of those shots are going in. 

While all sports are considered forms of entertainment, basketball is different as there is always something happening. If you miss two minutes of a baseball game, there is a slight chance you may miss a home run or a strikeout. More likely than not though, if you miss two minutes of a baseball game, all you missed was three or four pitches and the same person is still at bat. If you miss two minutes of a basketball game, you are missing out on at least a few shots by each team which could have resulted in you missing about six to nine points by each team, provided they made those shots and depending on where the shots were taken from. While six to nine points may not seem like much considering each team is going to put up a minimum of one-hundred points a game, you could be missing nearly five to ten percent of the points scored by each team. While this may not seem like much, there were still six opportunities for a highlight play and in basketball, if you turn away for a second; you could be missing out on the highlight play of the game, whether that be a crossover, a posterizing dunk or a buzzer beater. 

Unlike other sports, basketball is a fast paced game. While you can make the claim that a basketball game takes about two and a half hours to finish, which is similar to most other sports; you can’t make the claim that those other sports involve just as much action. While football and soccer are similar to basketball as you are constantly running, they are not the same as basketball. In football very little progress is sometimes made as you can be tackled five feet from where you last started from. In soccer you are constantly running and passing the ball and eventually you shoot the ball, with the goalkeeper most likely preventing the goal or you missing the goal. In soccer there is sometimes only one highlight as only one goal is sometimes scored in the entire match. Sometimes there aren’t even goals scored in the entire match. Basketball is very different as there are always points scored by each team. 

The scoring in basketball is very different from other sports and as a result it allows things to happen, which you could rarely see watching or playing another sport. While you may see a team overcome a five run deficit in baseball or a ten point lead in football, you will never see a team overcome deficits of over twenty points. In basketball leads are never safe no matter how big they are or despite how much time is left in the game. A twenty point lead can become five points in less than five minutes. When playing the game or watching you never know if someone is going to go for fifty points. When this happens, it is nearly impossible to stop them no matter how good of defense you are playing. Some players are putting up more points on their own with regularity than there are points in a football game sometimes. Most of the time there are more points scored in the first three minutes of a game than there are in nine innings of baseball. 

In the end, basketball can sometimes be in a league of its own as it never contains dull moments. You never know when something spectacular may happen and you certainly never know the outcome of a game until it is played.