How long is a piece of string?

The fact that the NBA is already popular in Australia compared to other countries is the reason why NBA teams do not have to travel here and promote it.

I only watch if the Aussies are playing- Spurs, GSW, Cavs are on Foxtel - otherwise I prefer NBL.

Dont have any stats by the eye test says in the last decade I have met plenty of people who are nba fans who but have never met a single nbl fan. That is not an exaggeration either.

Sooooo youd watch a cavs game but not LBJ versus KD? I feel for you guys, have no idea what you're misisng out on.

It's good to watch, but I never feel like I have skin in the game, so it doesn't get me as excited as watching the Wildcats, despite the fact the Wildcats would get thrashed if they played whatever NBA team I happen to be watching.

Popular compared to what? Compared to Australian sports?

Popular compared to Madonna?

We may have league pass sales because the games aren't on FTA and many can afford to pay for LP. But while they might humour us with an exhibition game one day, we don't have the population to be worth a great deal more.

A lot of people wear buy and wear the NBA merchandise because it's trendy, not because they like basketball. My 17 year old nephew has about 20 NBA snapback hats. I was going to get him an Iverson 76ers jersey but when he couldn't tell me where the 76ers were from I thought better of it.

Just my little world I guess, but I do know quite a lot of teenagers who are into hoops and almost all of them follow the NBA in some form or other, usually on their mobile phones or online via youtube.

Conversely, most of them can't even name an NBL player, but they can name the top 10-15 NBA players immediately if you ask them...

Just how populare is the NBA here, well, watch the local news and it will be revealed to you!

Sports highlights during our summer season will include cricket, football (yup, always ther), snow boarding or X-games, soccer, the NFL or college ball and NBA highlights. Usually nothing at all about the NBL, unless you are very lucky and get a 10 second mention of it...

Personally I like the NBL product at the moment, I also like the NBA, but let's face it we don't promote like they do, do we?

Cheers, that's my take on the subject...

adelaide's asian community is mad for basketball and the nba. its quite amzing how few of them seem interested in the nbl though. i dont quite get it , maybe its the hype of the nba they love. its also shocking i cant name an asian in the nbl outside of darren ng. what are all the good australian asian athletes doing? down at my local courts there are 40 asians for every white guy but the nbl is full of white guys...? is it a culture thing that they don't take it seriously and are more about family? there has to be a reason?

actually its quite interesting that with an influx of greeks/italians/croatians etc to australia how much they became a part of the sporting landscape and participated in sports at high levels here but we have had a very high influx of immigrants from asian countries for a long time and they have a miniscule presence on the national sporting stage (im not saying we measure an immigrants worth to society in sports as a value but noting something out of the ordinary). right through aussie rules / basketball soccer etc we have plenty of sons of immigrants who play those sports to a high level. plenty of asians are quite good athletes. i would struggle to think of ten asian national athletes in any sport but could name ten european heritage stars in probably each sport.

Although the wildcats are very popular here in Perth one of my younger workmates (early 20s) can tell you who won each NBA game but can't name half of the Perth wildcats. Media coverage of basketball is very limited.

would be stretched to find a kid who doesn't either have league pass, nba 2k14 and/or an nba jersey. as far as avidly following the sport - yeah certainly in my circles and have found most people I meet have a solid understanding of NBA or some of its major players. in my view it is certainly the most popular in Australia of the big 4 american sports - maybe because junior basketball is one of the biggest sports in Australia.

adelaide's asian community is mad for basketball and the nba. its quite amzing how few of them seem interested in the nbl though. i dont quite get it , maybe its the hype of the nba they love. its also shocking i cant name an asian in the nbl outside of darren ng. what are all the good australian asian athletes doing? down at my local courts there are 40 asians for every white guy but the nbl is full of white guys...? is it a culture thing that they don't take it seriously and are more about family? there has to be a reason?

As an Asian from Adelaide, I started off watching the NBL and suppporting the 36ers but then eventually became a Denver Nuggets fan because of Carmelo Anthony while playing NBA Live 05. Any how through interaction with fans on NBA forums, I became a pretty big Nuggets fans and slowly the passion in the 36ers faded, while I became quite passionate for the Nuggets. So now I can name most players on all 30 NBA teams but outside of the 36ers I would really struggle past 1 or 2 players for other NBL rosters. Heck I can't even remember how many teams there are in the NBL right now.

I don't know about you guys, but the quality of basketball matters. It's obvious but being used to the NBA doing everything better including the level of basketball played, the production, TNT/ESPN half time shows, American TV commercials, etc now makes it very hard for me to sit through an NBL game when I watch it on TV.

I will admit though, NBL and 36ers were really fun to watch when we grabbed Julius Hodge and when he was the best player in the league until you know what happened.

"Ok we have the 2nd highest league pass subscribers (2nd only to the USA)."

Interesting, I didn't realise that. I suspect we're propping up India's numbers quite a bit as well. Everyone I know who has ILP just happened to be passing through the sub-continent at their time of purchase. Go figure.

It is hard to measure popularity as the NBA has merchandise, computer games, Tv games, Internet coverage etc to measure its popularity. I will say however that in last years finals there were old blokes who I had no idea who knew anything about basketball betting on or talking about games. I think it is very popular but like many sports people only follow it at certain times. If the NBL could somehow inconspicuously use the NBA to promote that NBL that'd be great.

@Curtley, you have a point about the NBA being a particular brand that is followed during its season, however the sport of basketball here in Australia almost has no season.

It is interesting that our sport is actually played all year 'round (NBL in summer and SEABL etc... in Winter), plus junior competitions and senior domestic is also played all year (maybe having December/January off).

So, while it is clearly more popular during the NBA season, the sport as a whole should in fact be in the public eye all the time, at least within local communities, in their papers and other promotions, if not national news worthy...

Anon^^ I don't think the thread was actually looking at comparing the world game in Europe, it specifically asks about us here in Australia and about the NBA, which is what people are posting about.

No doubt that Euro basketball is huge and is getting very entertaining too, but that would be another topic, now wouldn't it..?

very popular

Very popular

From my experience the majority of people who play basketball in Australia dont follow basketball.

People in teams Ive been involved in rarely talk about the NBA except at finals time or if there was a particularly nasty play, and they might mention an NBL game they saw on TV but the conversation very short.

The NBA and its clubs do very little in Australia as there doesnt seem to be any financial return, and the TV stations here dont appear to be interested due to poor ratings. The EPL certainly seems a lot more popular in Australia by those two measures.

I think there is certainly a very devoted core, and always a bubbling interest because of the highlight plays that appear occasionally on the news, but amongst the general population I think very few people would be able to name any NBA players other than the megastars.

Hopefully Dante Exum can get it back into the mainstream again, because that will only help all levels of basketball.