How Would Fan Controlled Basketball Work?

In my two previous articles in this ‘series’, I looked at what soccer and baseball would look like as FCFL sports.  Now I’ll take a look at basketball.

Like soccer and baseball, basketball has the advantage of being a sport with a somewhat global following.  One of the advantages of the FCFL format is that, with all teams playing in the same location, coverage of the league will be designed for a global audience anyway.  Any sport that can capitalize on that is likely to be more successful.

One disadvantage of basketball is that the game is continuous (like soccer), but some of the more interesting choices may come up too quickly and continuously to work as decision points for the audience.  Where most soccer league limit substitutions to an easily manageable three per game, basketball subs go in and out fairly quickly, so teams may need to share control of subs between the coach and the fans.

Maybe the coach would decide on most substitutions, but the fans would have the ability to vote a player off (and choose his replacement)  if they felt he wasn’t performing.

That said, there’s still plenty of opportunity to give the fans a say in running basketball franchises.  Decisions that could be left up to them include all of the following:

• Selecting players on the team
• Selecting the coaching staff
• Choosing the starting lineup
• Choosing a preferred offensive style
• Choosing a preferred defensive style
• Designing plays for the team to practice

One of the interesting things about fan controlled sports is that each sport may have a different ‘feel’ to it, depending which aspects of the league and teams the FCFL leaves up to the fans.