Question for the British members of the site (Tez3 read this please).

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

I live in New York, outside of college, and am a huge Knicks fan. They just played a game in London, that literally all of my NY basketball friends are talking about, and the press here seems to think that the same things going on in London. I have no idea if the press is just trying to fool itself into believing other countries care about the NBA as much as we do. So..those of you who live in England, do you care about the game played in London, or if you're not interested in basketball, do people you know care about the game/does the news there care about the game at all?

 

[Sukerkin]

I think I can only really speak for myself on this, KD. I have very little interest in most sports outside of motor-racing and tennis so 'netball' {} does not register on my radar .

 

[Tez3]

I have to say that the press here isn't covering it much if at all. There's plenty of basketball fans here and I expect they are excited but the general public, not so much if at all. The main story we've got from America is about Lance Armstrong. I haven't seen any of the main channels news covering anything basketballish either. I found only two mentions of the game, one in the Guardian and the other a London newpaper that both had as the story that Spike Lee flew in to watch the game! I guess the answer as far as I can see is that it made no impact here at all.

 

[Tez3]

If it had made any sort of impact on the news here both Mark and I would have noticed even though we don't do basketball. I've asked my other half and he didn't know anything about it, actually said 'who', which tbh was what I thought.

 

[Steve]

What's up with Lance Armstrong?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Thanks, had a feeling that was the case.
And steve-he finally admitted in an interview to oprah that he used "performance-enhancing drugs". Go on CNN, there should still be a video about it on the front page.

 

[Tez3]

The Armstrong case is big here because of the popularity of British cycling (the Tour de France starts here nest year literally on my doorstep yay!) it's on the main news bulletins and the front pages not as a sport article. The sports pages here are always dominated by football,horse racing, rugby and cricket when each is in season. Other sports only get small mentions. A foreign sports team coming here in a minority sport isn't going to attract any attention other than in the local papers...perhaps.

 

[Steve]

Thanks, had a feeling that was the case.
And steve-he finally admitted in an interview to oprah that he used "performance-enhancing drugs". Go on CNN, there should still be a video about it on the front page.

Ah... I thought that it was common knowledge. They all dope. I expect that it would be a lot easier to find pro athletes who dope than not.


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[arnisador]

They're expecting the Lance Armstrong thing to be a serious blow to the sport--even though everyone already knew!

 

[Tez3]

They don't all dope, that era has passed. There's teams now that will not have dopers on and allow transparency in what they do. Doping was dangerous anyhow, riders died because of it so it was a risky business for not actually a lot of gain, much of it was more psychological than actually real.

 

[Tgace]

When you are a professional athlete competing with others all looking for the edge over their opponent of course doping is going to be rampant. Armstrong made the fatal error of being too good at it. The nail that sticks up for too long is bound to get pounded down.

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[Tez3]

To use the doping methods Armstrong and some of the others used really is trying to win at all costs, the side effects of some of the stuff they were taking were life threatening to say the least ie blood thickening into sludge etc.

" As with steroids and hGH, doping with EPO is often injected in supernormal doses that could cause increased blood viscosity, deep vein and coronary thromboses, cerebral thromboses, pulmonary embolism, arrhythmias, stroke and death. It has been estimated that 20 European cyclists have died since 1987 due to abuse of EPO, making it one of the most deadly doping agents"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219897/

 

[Big Don]

What's up with Lance Armstrong?

He finally had the ball to come clean

 

[senseiblackbelt]

Thanks, had a feeling that was the case.
And steve-he finally admitted in an interview to oprah that he used "performance-enhancing drugs". Go on CNN, there should still be a video about it on the front page.

Everyones doing performing enhancing drugs these days.