Sports you just don't get

[Gangster Octopus]

Basketball. Utterly tedious game played by people too tall to do anything else.

[Diable Rouge]

ODI cricket seems vaguely tolerable, but the Test format does appear to be "organised idleness", as it was famously described. For similar reasons, I've previously described personal bafflement with baseball.

[WOM]

Basketball. Utterly tedious game played by people too tall to do anything else.

Seconded. Make the court larger and the basket higher to bring some challenge back to the game (and no swinging on the fucking rim). There's a reason the games all end up 118-119...it's dull.

[Antepli Ejderha]

The four major US sports, particularly baseball. I'll watch some ice hockey but I can take it or leave it, basketball can be watchable at times but I'm not fussed. I can watch football and get into it but baseball, nope.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I've only ever been swept up by enthusiasm for ice hockey or basketball when I've been in a crowd in a bar in Europe. The Baltic lads are mad for the former, Lithuania and Greece the latter. Basketball's almost a religion in Vilnius, and Greek clubs like PAOK and Panathinaikos seem better supported for their basketball teams than their soccer ones.

Sports I don't get - 3 day eventing. It always seems sorted out by the dressage on day one, the dull make your horse trot on the spot bit. The only actually exciting bits - the cross country and the show jumping - seem to make no difference whatsoever to the eventual outcome.

[Ray de Galles]

Agreed on basketball, been to NBA games three times to give it another chance but always feel underwhelmed by it. The best time was when I took my still pre-teen children who were swept along by all the whistles and bells. I’ve found Netball a better spectator sport.

I don’t get rugby league (despite again repeatedly trying with it), any motor sport (speedway isn’t one, it just isn’t) or anything reliant on judging (boxing aside - and I am happier when they aren’t needed for the result) like figure skating, diving, dressage or gymnastics (I attended a session of Artistic Gymnastics in the 2014 Commonwealths and one World Cup event since with my daughter and admire their skills but it doesn’t grip me as a sport).

[San Bernardhinault]

Yet another for basketball, here. It just seems like there's no reason to watch until the last two minutes. You might as well start with a random spread of around 5 points between the two teams and just play those 2 minutes, which are the only interesting ones. Except those 2 minutes might take 10 or 20 minutes given the amount of fouling.

I think that's the one I find hardest of big spectator sports.

And, like Ray, all sports that have subjective scoring don't - to me - seem to be sports as such.

There are loads of sports I'm not a huge fan of - horse racing, or darts, or ice hockey, or rugby (and obviously some of the more obscure things you see at the Olympics are obscure for a reason) - but I mostly get the point of them

[E10 Rifle]

but the Test format does appear to be "organised idleness", as it was famously described

You say that like it's a bad thing

[blameless]

Despite being the second-most popular sport in the world, cricket's appeal has completely passed me by. But then as someone on here once rightly said, why would the Scots bother with a game that you have to stop playing every time it rains?

I'll stick up for basketball though, on the grounds that it's a lot more fun to play than it is to watch.

[San Bernardhinault]

Isn't "more fun to play than to watch" true of almost every sport doesn't involve getting hit, and that you're fit enough to do?

[Janik]

Isn't "more fun to play than to watch" true of almost every sport doesn't involve getting hit, and that you're fit enough to do?

No, I don't agree with that. Many of them are extremely hard to do well, and therefore rather frustrating to attempt. Golf and anything involving Ice Skates would be prime examples of that.

Basketball probably also has that difficulty element to it, and yet it's great fun to play even as something approaching a novice. And it also breaks down well into mini-games and one-on-ones and so on, which is true of far from every team sport. But then, I'm biased in it's favour as one of the schools I went to was well into Basketball as a sport, unusual enough in Britain and highly so in the very white and suburban area I grew up. So everyone played a lot. There were basketball hoops scattered around the playground, which trumped jumpers for goalposts at break and lunchtimes.

[Janik]

The ones I don't get the point of doing are Cycling, Swimming and Running. I'll go for about 5 seconds and then stop, feeling completely bored by the idea. I think of myself as an anti-Triathlete.

My guess is that for many people the attraction is that you are mostly competing against yourself. Well, for me, I think that is the drawback. Give me someone else to measure myself against and I'm interested. Self-improvement for it's own sake? Not my cup of tea at all.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I've tried really hard to get into ice-hockey, but I can neither fathom where the puck is and who's on the rink at any particular time.

[Third rate Leszno]

I'm another one who gets most sports, but there's a few I'm not a fan of - golf, snooker, american football, rugby union, electric car racing.

[ursus arctos]

Watching even a single game in person can help measurably with one's ability to follow the puck in televised ice hockey

[WOM]

Agree with ursus (autocorrects to Jesus) on the puck.

Also, watching golf is much more interesting if you've played a few rounds and can appreciate the relative difficulty.

[blameless]

edit: double post, ignore.

[blameless]

But then, I'm biased in it's favour as one of the schools I went to was well into Basketball as a sport, unusual enough in Britain and highly so in the very white and suburban area I grew up.

Was there any particular reason why your old school is so basketball-focussed? I only ask as I went to an otherwise unremarkable comprehensive in Lanarkshire that had an inexplicably impressive array of field hockey pitches, kit and expertise, despite it being far from Scotland's no.1 participation sport. The mystery was solved when I found out that 2 of our 4 PE teachers were retired Scottish hockey internationals...

[Lang Spoon]

Despite being the second-most popular sport in the world, cricket's appeal has completely passed me by. But then as someone on here once rightly said, why would the Scots bother with a game that you have to stop playing every time it rains?

I'll stick up for basketball though, on the grounds that it's a lot more fun to play than it is to watch.

It must have been some weird wurld when the masses of Glasgow would watch cricket in big numbers. Supposedly it’s the Cathcart Circle amd other suburban lines (and the spec housing built along them) on old fields and meadows that did for cricket. Much easier to play a game of football in the now limited green space. Think fitba’s dominance is really only from 1870s-1880s (and loads of the first football grounds were cricket clubs beforehand).

[Gangster Octopus]

Basketball probably also has that difficulty element to it, and yet it's great fun to play even as something approaching a novice. And it also breaks down well into mini-games and one-on-ones and so on, which is true of far from every team sport. But then, I'm biased in it's favour as I'm reasonably tall.

Fixed that for you...

[Lang Spoon]

But then, I'm biased in it's favour as one of the schools I went to was well into Basketball as a sport, unusual enough in Britain and highly so in the very white and suburban area I grew up.

Was there any particular reason why your old school is so basketball-focussed? I only ask as I went to an otherwise unremarkable comprehensive in Lanarkshire that had an inexplicably impressive array of field hockey pitches, kit and expertise, despite it being far from Scotland's no.1 participation sport. The mystery was solved when I found out that 2 of our 4 PE teachers were retired Scottish hockey internationals...

Our school was an old 60s comp, very mixed in socio economic terms, the vast bulk of boys anyway being football fans and lower middle class at best. But we had no full size football pitch in the grounds, just a handsome rugger pitch with a running track around it in a natural amphitheatre. Had to play football in the school’s horrrible rugby shirts (on shite public park pitches), got twice as much eggball throughout the years. Between the richer parents having the ear of the school and the head of PE being a Kirkcaldy RFC Old Boy, we were fucked.

[elguapo4]

My secondary school was big into basketball when I joined in 1976 for the same reason, we had no P.E programme and one of the few teachers who cared about organising something for us was an ex Ireland international (we also had a basketball court in the middle of the playground) those of us who couldn't play or didn't want to were loosely organised in Gaelic football teams and sent over to the public pitches across the road.
In the 80s there was a brief period of popularity for basketball and my school actually entered a semi pro side in the top flight complete with American imported players
Sports I don't get, rugby union, motorsport, anything with someone on a horse

[Me Old Flower]

Finnish baseball (pesäpallo) and volleyball for me.

The former is just odd. The latter's short phases of play are just infuriating.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I don't get the Basketball bemusement. It's basically continuous end to end action, and it's relatively easy to follow what is going on.

[Lang Spoon]

If you had to play it when about 4 foot 10 in a class where just about everyone’s at least 5 foot 2, you mightn’t be so enamored with it either.