Comparing the NBA, Division 1 and Division 3 Hoops

[billyjack]

Within the last month, I've been to a handful of games with the kids at 3 different levels in the basketball world. Each level provided a completely different game experience for me and the kids as fans. Thought I'd give a rundown of each experience.

SUMMARY:
In my opinion, Division 1 college basketball is the best experience.
Div 1 Big East ---> a bunch of Friars games at the Dunk. Great experience for hoops fans. No nonsense, comfortable.
Div 1 A-10 ---> Rhody Rams vs St Joseph's. Great experience for hoops fans. No nonsense, comfortable.
Div 1 Ivy ---> Brown vs Princeton. Solid experience, low intensity, close to action but a little less enjoyable.
NBA ---> Celtics vs Magic at the Garden. Out-of-control circus atmosphere, in a bad way. The basketball action is 4th in line of importance, behind deafening music, blinding lights, and a combination of dancing, food, souvenirs and trampolines.
Div 3 Commonwealth Coast ---> Salve Regina vs Curry College in Newport RI. Like a high-school game experience based on crowd make-up and intensity.

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PROVIDENCE FRIARS:
Div 1 - Big East hoops at the Dunk in downtown Providence:

Bryce Cotton:


I first got hooked as a kid going to Friars games at the Dunk in the 70's. Park near the State House, walk under the rusty railroad overpasses on Francis Street, with slush all over the sidewalks. For the most part, the experience is pretty similar to today (parking still is a pain in the neck), except the sound system is better and the concession stands offer more. But still, the crowds are fantastic. Fans follow the action and are very knowledgeable and pay attention. If I have to run to get a popcorn for the kids or take them to the restroom, when I come back the fans around me can easily fill me in on what I missed. The game action is the focus of the experience at Friar games. The fans know all the players.

Billy Donovan:


The crowd is made of both PC alums and regular non-alum Rhode Islanders, and is not dependent on the students for noise, though some games the students are great (a lot of times they don't show up). Not a ton of bells-and-whistles or nuttiness, and the halftime and timeout entertainment is pretty sensible... cheerleaders, dance team, local CYO league plays short game on court, quick contest where fan tries to hit half-court shot, t-shirt cannon comes out at final tv timeout. Seats are sensible, with 12-bucks getting you some nosebleed seats.

Kadeem Batts Dunking:


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Friars-Rams Rivalry from the 70's:


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RHODE ISLAND RAMS:
Div 1 - A-10 hoops:
at the Ryan Center at URI in Kingston:

The Ryan Center:


URI games provide a very similar experience as Friar games, just on a smaller scale. URI is in rural South County, in an old New England village, around 45 minutes from Providence. Very easy to get to, and parking is easy and free. Gorgeous 10-year-old on-campus arena, which holds around 7000. The crowds are typically also made of older alums, of which there are tons in the area. Fewer "townies" will trek down to Kingston like they do to the Dunk. Decent student section shows up. Fans are also very passionate and knowledgeable, and follow every second of the action and care about the team.

URI had a good 10 point lead vs a good St Joe's team, but couldn't pull the game out in the end. Dan Hurley is a good coach and is pretty entertaining on the sideline. Definitely a great experience for basketball fans. No bells-and-whistles, comfortable and enjoyable. Nosebleed seats are sensible, at 12-bucks.

Old Keaney Gym, Former Home Court of the URI Rams:
Frank Keaney was a pioneer in fast break basketball from back in the 40's:


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BROWN UNIVERSITY BEARS:
Div 1 - Ivy hoops at the Pizzitola Center at Brown:

View from Camera Area at Brown:


So, I try to get to at least one Brown game a year. They used to play in awesome old historic Marvel Gym, which was a little off campus to the north. About 20 years ago, Brown built a new gym with tennis courts upstairs, right next to their on-campus hockey rink. The soccer and baseball fields are just to the east.

So, the experience at Pizzitola was much different than the Dunk and the Ryan. Brown's gym only holds maybe 3000 and is pretty small and utilitarian. Most seats are just bleachers. We can always grab a seat about 4 rows behind the visiting bench. We could hear the Princeton coaches in the huddle. The crowds are way less intense that PC-URI, and are made of mostly students, along with a smattering of some ancient Brown alums in tweed jackets. I think the student fans go to games to get a break from constant studying and schoolwork. They don't have the intensity or care as much about the game play. I once saw a high (guessing here) Brown student walk around 12 feet from the Dartmouth bench and jab a finger at the Big Green players and state loudly, but calmly and clearly (and to be funny of course), paraphrasing "I want to tell you that Brown is a good team, and that at the end of the game when time has expired, I believe that Brown will have accumulated more points than Dartmouth will have accumulated..."

Concessions are sparse, few cheerleaders if any, very basic and no-nonsense experience for fans. Very convenient though, and solid talent on the court. Sightlines aren't the best, because most of the seating is in two endzone bleachers, whereas the sideline seating is relatively narrow and low, and the rails protecting you from falling 4 feet tend to block the view. Tickets used to be 5-bucks for adults and they'd wave my 7-year-old in for free (hockey used to be 3-bucks!)... nowadays, it's 10-bucks for everyone, including my now 11 year old. Marvel Gym was better for game watching, while Pizzitola is closer to campus and restaurants.

Now-Demolished Marvel Gym at Brown:


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BOSTON CELTICS:
Professional - NBA hoops in Boston in 1989:

My first Celtics game was in around 1989, with the Larry Bird Celtics vs Karl Malone's Jazz. What I remember was that the game was intense and the crowd followed the game in detail from the opening tip til the final buzzer. At the old Garden, the seating and aisles and concourses and all were a total jigsaw puzzle. I had a lower bowl endzone seat in the back, and had to duck my head around a hanging heating unit to see the baskets. Great atmosphere and a packed house. Air quality was pretty bad. Floors were sticky. Celtics and Bruins championship banners and retired numbers hanging from the rafters. I went with my brother, and our seats were both on the aisle with him sitting right in front of me. The Garden sold us tickets like that. But a good, no-nonsense experience.

Professional - NBA hoops in Boston in 2014:
Wow, so I took the kids to the new Boston Garden to see Orlando play the Celtics. For starters, Steven Colbert once described the "Speed Racer" movie as being like climbing into a laundry dryer, shutting the door, turning the thing on, and then setting off fireworks inside the dryer for 2 hours. Take that, and multiply it by a thousand.

Celtics In Random Game Action:


We sat in the upper deck end zone seats. The Garden is enormous. The court looked like a postage stamp. About 10% of the fans around us were actually following the game. I sat on the aisle and must have stood up 60 times during game action to let people by to get drinks, popcorn, nachos, pizza, and probably for them to go to the bathroom, holy crap. The ring around the upper deck facade was filled with blinding LED lights that would alternately change during gameplay, with advertising colors of neon orange (for AT&T), green (for Sprite), yellow (can't remember), black (the only relief, for T-Mobile I think)... being in the upper deck meant the lights were between us and the action.

Timeouts were a circus, with blasting music, Celtic dancers, a halftime show featuring Lucky the trampoline acrobat... this was 24/7 non-stop Las Vegas style entertainment on steroids. It didn't help that neither team was that motivated to win, because both want a better lottery pick. Brad Stevens looked good and calm, but was the size of a gnat from the nosebleed section... man, he should still be at Butler instead of this circus show. And remember, this is the home of the Celtics, the most stoic, storied NBA franchise. I cannot imagine the experience in other NBA cities.

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SALVE REGINA SEAHAWKS:
Div 3 - Commonwealth Coast hoops at Salve Regina vs Curry.

Salve Regina Action... Note The Packed Bleachers In Background:


So, I needed a basketball fix, and noticed that the Division 3 Salve Regina Seahawks were hosting Curry College today. So I took my 11 year old. The campus is perfect. A half mile south of the International Tennis Hall of Fame (worth checking out), amongst the Gilded Age Newport Mansions. Salve actually uses one of the mansions as an admin building. Maybe the Marble House...? Not sure. Basically, it's alongside the famous Newport Cliff Walk, on the bluffs about the North Atlantic, where America's Cub Yachts used to race.

Salve's gym is pretty nice. From the outside, it's designed like an old New England weatherbeaten building, nice shinglework. Inside, the court has high wooden bleachers on one side of the court. The place was actually packed and we squeezed into a spot. The crowd was probably 98% Salve students, 1.5 percent parents of players, and then the two of us. So a packed house, but it was a lot like an annoying high school type crowd... 90% of the crowd was not paying attention and just talking and facing sideways and looking at their phones. So it had the sound of a high school cafetaria of a constant buzz, but not a lot of it was focused on the game.

The gameplay was actually better than I expected, which was cool. In a different setting this would've been a good take, but I didn't feel like being in high school again, and our space was cramped, so we left a little early and got something to eat nearby. Newport itself is a great town... in the winter it's cool because the crowds are pretty thin.

Anyway, was wondering if these experiences were similar to others here...?

[BillikensWin]

Your photojournalism skills are top-notch.

I've got some D2 teams around here, and the environment is pretty similar to what you saw.

[senditinjerome]

I like Rhode Island's old gym...looks like the floor has about 100 coats of varnish. What's the seating capacity?

[marquette]

Great write up, cool pictures. I always love reading about the experiences at other gyms/stadiums. It might not be something you'd be interested in, but there's a website called stadiumjourney.com that reviews arenas and teams from pretty much all sports pro, semi-pro, and d1.

[dmac80]

Nice writeup. I suspect most of us here are biased towards the college game. For me it's no contest. I can watch any NCAA game and get hooked into it. NBA for the most part is almost unwatchable to me. I find the college game to be more fun, more fan involved, more "pure" in terms of just basketball being the entire focus, and the games are so much more streamlined to me, with the two twenty minute halfs. One thing is I do think there are too many timeouts in college.

College atmosphere is night and day better. As the OP noted the atmosphere at college D1 and even lower is almost entirely focused on the game, and the excitement electricity is only witnessed at nba playoff games. Also gotta love the band and student sections in college. The nba is boring by comparison. That doesn't stop them from turning a game into a circus atmosphere of distraction which generally works at distracting. But for me the opening Thursday and Friday of March madness are the best two days of sports.

Then March Madness is my favorite time of the year for sports, and just in general it's such an awesome time....March Madness to me (starting with conf tourney week) has it over any other American sporting event in terms of national interest. Now I realize a lot if it is people just doing brackets, but I still think it pulls in more casual observers than just about anything except probably the nfl playoffs.

And this is totally anecdotal, but it seems to me that so many college games throughout the season are much more competitive and much more likely to be decided in the final 5 minutes. I rarely see an nba game come down to a few final seesaw possessions....am I wrong?




Ps: I'd gather the OP was looking for live experience, my post includes reference to both the live experience and watching on TV.