I think what attracts people varies widely - I grew up watching Michael Jordan, drifted away from basketball in the late '90s and early '00s (although I loved A

I think what attracts people varies widely - I grew up watching Michael Jordan, drifted away from basketball in the late '90s and early '00s (although I loved Allen Iverson), and came back to the game in college. I still like the things I liked when I was a kid - NBA players are at least in the conversation for "most athletic human beings on earth", and the physical acts they can pull off are amazing. As I got older, I also started to appreciate the strategy better. The overall level of strategy on offense and defense has also dramatically improved in the last 10 years or so. And the advent of some new technologies has made it easier to notice interesting facets of the game - breakdowns like this: https://cleaningtheglass.com/lebron-reads-the-defense/ https://cleaningtheglass.com/lebron-reads-the-defense/ weren't widely available even a few years ago. Once you start to see the little things like that, the game gets a lot more interesting. The easy way to know some of those quirks and tiny elements is to grow up playing the game, which is where a lot of people's fandoms come from. But I think sports leagues/announcers/media could make more of an effort to highlight those games within the games, rather than shooting for the lowest common denominators, which they frequently do.