The 2025/2026 competitive season has concluded—we want to believe, unless we’re missing something—and now all basketball players have entered off-season mode. Naturally, all sporting interest has shifted to the World Cup, which is being held in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
The times may be odd, especially for Europe, but the World Cup continues to capture everyone’s attention, and the whole world moves to its rhythm. Poor… basketball has been relegated to the back burner. What’s left for us, basketball fans everywhere, is a sweet memory of the… true round goddess.
Basketball is a sport with a very different philosophy from football, which is why the ‘football or basketball’ dilemma constantly exists. I think you’ve already figured out the preferences of this article’s author. But that’s not our topic here.
In any case, as we, the last faithful and romantics of basketball, are… swatting mosquitoes and eating watermelon, forced to watch Curaçao – Brazil at 02:00 a.m., certain questions arise in our minds as we gaze blankly at the screen:
What would basketball be like if it were played with football rules?
We’ll answer you right away! It’s easy to imagine, because there are certain rules that if they ALSO existed in basketball, we’d have… a real party!
Just imagine if there was offside in basketball. Almost every fast break, every alley-oop, every chasedown block, every spectacular behind-the-back assist from… midcourt that has ever been recorded would simply not exist! It’s that simple. And this reinforces the widely held view that—at least as the rule is currently formulated—it’s a buzzkill!
Let’s look at it from another angle. Imagine for every foul, a free kick was taken from where it occurred, with a regular shot, facing a wall of hands! And if it happened inside the paint, a penalty with a free throw, but… with a goalkeeper in front of the rim. No question of goaltending, then.
And since we mentioned a goalkeeper, imagine if there really was one in every five-player lineup. Or, now that we think about it, in every eleven-player lineup, if we stick faithfully to the concept of this text. Twenty-two crazy people running up and down, but on a hardwood court (or glass floor), with the only difference being that they play with their hands.
Oh no. Forgive us, football, but you will never become basketball!