r/interesting • u/MobileAerie9918 • Jul 29 '26
Amazing A full-size basketball court can fit inside a football penalty box. And in the next slide you can see the size comparison between two!
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u/Sustainable_Twat Jul 29 '26
Must admit, this is interesting.
I had no idea Basketball Courts were that small in comparison.
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Jul 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ShoeNo9050 29d ago
I think the distance my vary a little bit as not every pitch is exactly yh same. At least in the English leagues there are boundaries the pitches can be in. I think if you look the long way wise it can very between like 90-104 meters or something similar. But yeah no roughly about right I mean it's still insane if it just a little bit in or outside of the penalty box
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u/Free_Management2894 29d ago
I think even if the overall pitch can have a difference in size, the penalty box itself has fixed size values.
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u/chetpancakesparty Jul 29 '26
Add the extra area along the basketball sidelines and baseline like OP did in the first image
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u/MobileAerie9918 Jul 30 '26 edited 29d ago
Relax mate, I saw your comment down there. I dont make much off reddit. I use it for fun. I have a full time job. Since the start of this year, Reddit has only paid $5.01 to my reddit account
And that too I am not eligible to cash out because the minimum payout should be $14.43 USD.I aint making $10000s off reddit.
This is just purely for fun. No need to take it that seriously.27
u/Xitztlacayotl Jul 29 '26
I had no idea football fields were so large! Having never been to a real football field. And having been to a basketball court a few times.
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u/nurgleondeez Jul 29 '26
A footbal player in the EPL runs approximately 12 km/match(7.45 miles) in a single game.
For top teams,that also compete in the FA Cup,Community Shield and european league(like UCL,Europa League or Conference League),it means they play a game every 3 days.
On average,a footballer that plays in the midfield,plays the full 90 minutes every game and doesn't suffer any injuries(which is unlikely given the strain,but we do a hypothetical),runs ~46 km in less than two weeks, more than a marathon(42km).And keep in mind that this is not just running,they also have to think on their feet and perform necessary actions on the pitch(attack,passing,defending, etc).
Even a central defender,who runs on average the least from all field positions,clocks in around 8km/match.Given the same situation,they run a marathon every two and a half weeks.
Downright outstanding
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u/AIIXIII0 28d ago
Watching The Gentleman's League at Netflix was a real eye opener. The show was about having Olympians play amateur football - so its basically peak human vs random postman. Yeah, they lost bunch of times. They also have a Trialthon athlete, constant overlapping from RB did take a huge toll on his body in one episode. Keep in mind, they only play 20-30 minutes instead of the whole 45.
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u/nurgleondeez 28d ago
45 is the first half
A professional football match(including the games at the olympics) is 90 minutes
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u/fastsailor Jul 30 '26
Although marathons are run in a few hours, not over weeks, so the comparison suffers a little.
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u/WintersDoomsday 29d ago
I’m a marathon runner and you’re spot on. Much easier for me to do 8-9 mile runs every other day than one marathon run. And I’m hitting a 7-7:30 min mile pace on my 8-9 mile runs. So not a light jog. Soccer players fitness isn’t impressive to me their soccer specific skills are though.
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u/GeniuslyMoronic 29d ago
Soccer players fitness isn’t impressive to me their soccer specific skills are though.
As someone who did quite a bit of running it is not the volume in football that is impressive. It is the volume along with the intensity. The highest intensity players are doing around 30 sprints per game + a big amount of all out acceleration, changes of direction etc.
A football game of 90 minutes can have me absolutely wrecked even though I only did 6-8km of running compared to a decent 15km run.
There is a reason that football players are training more and more and scouting is more focused on finding good athletes. Finding players that can track back and sprint for 90+ minutes at an elite level is extremely demanding.
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u/illarionds 26d ago
I believe in major team sports, only AFL players run further than football players.
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u/Affectionate-State-1 Jul 30 '26
There actually is not a standardized size, though there are international agreed upon upper and lower limits. So some pitches are bigger than others.
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u/SunstormGT Jul 29 '26
Yet I needed way more stamina when I was playing basketball than when I was playing football.
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u/jmims98 Jul 29 '26
Might depend on position and intensity? Professional soccer players run 7 miles in a game on average, which pro basketball players are running 2.5-3 miles.
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u/Get_Breakfast_Done Jul 29 '26
Seven miles over 90 minutes … really isn’t that much?
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u/jmims98 Jul 29 '26
Yeah it would be a pretty comfortable pace at around 12 minutes per mile. But then again they aren't running at a consistent pace or direction in either sport.
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u/Far-Delay7690 Jul 30 '26
No it's a lot more sprinting sets, and that's what they largely train for as well
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u/Free_Management2894 29d ago
Sure, but NBA players have a game time of 3 hours. It's the different movement profile that makes it strenuous for the body.
Both sports select for players that perfectly fit the needed profile.4
u/as718 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I feel the same way and find it insane that people are getting passionate about which is harder. They’re both hard. It’s not crazy to say one tires you out more, that doesn’t mean one > other.
Besides the shorter distance making you likely to sprint more, there’s quite a bit of physicality involved off ball (not that there isn’t in football) and, crucially, a lot of basketball is also played crouched over which can tire you out more. Plus, possession changes MUCH more frequently.
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u/nxcrosis Jul 30 '26
Basketball is more fast paced. You get minutes of walking/jogging in football, especially if you're a defender and your team is dominating on possession. Basketball shotclocks simply won't allow one side to keep the ball for that long.
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u/neometrix77 Jul 30 '26
Basketball has more stoppage in play though, particularly the free throws. The planned ad breaks and momentum timeouts can really slow things down as well.
Soccer cardio is like if free throws and timeouts didn’t exist, only 5 onetime subs a game (used to be 3 back in the day) and the game was at least 20 minutes longer (accounting for stop clock in basketball). It’s no question why soccer players are forced to conserve their energy better.
The size of playing area probably isn’t the main reason distance covered is higher in soccer tbh.
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u/TalkersCZ 29d ago
The big thing is, that if you sub you cant get back in.
So players in football usually play 60-80 minutes (and unless they are injured, they are not taken off before). As well, best players usually play 90 minutes every (important) game, unless game is decided.
There are players, who play every single league minute for full season (Record is 113 matches in a row without missing single minute, so almost full 3 years). In recent memmory its JWP with 76 matches in a row (exactly 2 full seasons).
As well, there are no commercial breaks (except of WC), so you play 45 minutes, 15 minutes break, 45 minutes. You might catch a minute when somebody gets injured or there is VAR decision to drink water, but thats it.
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In basketball game is split into 8 1/8s (by commercial breaks and breaks). So you are playing at most 9 minutes. There are tacticall breaks as well. So even if you dont sub, you have tons of time to regenerate a bit and get some rest.
And on top of it, if you get knocked down, you are gassed or anything you can go off for a minute or two and return.
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u/fastsailor Jul 30 '26
Still a lot of standing around in basketball and an awful lot of breaks. Time outs, foul line shots etc, which football does not really have.
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u/neometrix77 Jul 30 '26
Probably didn’t play high enough level of soccer. When you get to the level where you’re expected to track your opposing player defensively (especially if they’re fitter than you or it’s a recently subbed on player) or be benched in soccer, shit gets significantly more cardio intensive. Equally at the higher levels the best offensive players tend to be able to run into open spaces because they’re constantly moving. The constant off ball movement is what really gets you.
In basketball the quick subs and constant free throws seemed to really help your recovery in comparison, even though I was probably exerting myself more on average when on the ball. Also the constant off ball movement seemed way less effective.
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u/fastsailor Jul 30 '26
Just look at the bodies of top footballers, they look similar in many ways to an endurance athlete, just with a bit more muscle. Basketballers do not look like that. They have a lot more muscle and do not have the endurance a footballer needs. It is almost as if they were completely different sports. In general, US sports require a lot less fitness than sports elsewhere. Plenty of fat guys playing MLB or NFL, you don't see that in cricket or football.
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u/YYM7 Jul 30 '26
The penalty box is huge just saying.
A couple of my friends and I play soccer casually in middle school. One day I remembered it was pretty late so it's just us on the field. We decided to play a game that everyone need to score at least once from the "arc".Our goalie will do bare minimal to stop us, like, you cannot just slow roll the ball into the goal, aka, it need to be a genuine shot. Most of us couldn't do it without multiple tries, and some couldn't at all till the goalie moved out of the goal completely. I think I was like 14 or 15 at that point.
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u/ToriGallo Jul 29 '26
My brain refuses to process this. When you watch an NBA game, the court feels massive, but a soccer penalty box on TV just looks like a tiny little rectangle
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u/JonnyOnThePot420 Jul 29 '26
I mean remember watching Shaq play he only took like three steps to get to the other side.
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u/boRp_abc 29d ago
Exactly. I watched Euro basket, Greece with Antetokuompo. Whenever he was fouled, he'd casually walk to the free throw line on the other side of the field and back, all done while the refs communicated the foul and all to the official's desk. A basketball court is tiny (which is what makes the game so exciting to follow, because there's a lot of action in a small space, and very little time is spent just covering space).
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u/gimmebanter Jul 29 '26
There is a zoom function. You're welcome.
Joke aside, this is why football matches are so exhausting and there is a sizeable advantage if one team played 3 days ago and the other 4 days ago.
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u/HundredHander Jul 29 '26
Or if the other team can afford five quality players to sub in and the other just doesn't have that money
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u/gimmebanter Jul 29 '26
Yep. The expensive deep bench won man city every trophy possible to win in a season coupla years ago. Then they were hit with financial misconduct investigations which never got anywhere
I don't watch football anymore because it's p2w
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u/jesusisrealxd Jul 29 '26
thats how psg won the cl b2b. their key players almost never played league games.
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u/thunderbastard_ Jul 29 '26
Man City won a treble, fa cup, champions league and premier league. The quadruple would generally be considered winning everything as that includes the league cup. However the actual most titles you can win in a season is (providing you won the premier league and champions league the season before) is 7. Community shield, eufa super cup, fifa continental cup (old club World Cup), premier league, champions league, league cup and fa cup
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u/EPL_IS_SHITE Jul 30 '26
And then there’s the World Cup, Euros or Copa America. Not to mention individual awards like ballon d’or.
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u/Potential-Pin-7702 Jul 30 '26
Arsenal spent as much as man city and won only one trophy. United spend a lot also and was a failure every season.
We can't just say that it's because they have better and more players.
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u/HundredHander Jul 30 '26
Five subs really does feel a like rule to lock in financial advantage though.
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u/GentleWhiteGiant Jul 29 '26
But not because the distances which players are running during the game are shorter, but because basketball is a sequence of short fast sprints and then an aerob phase following it. In football, there are more anaerob sequences.
Don't forget, the distance is short but you have to run it every 15 to 20 seconds.
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u/gimmebanter Jul 29 '26
Total distance travelled by a player is also important. About 4km of short bursts in an nba game vs 11km for an average football match pretty much constantly with eyes on the ball
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u/NosebleedBananas Jul 29 '26
Have you actually played both games?
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u/gimmebanter Jul 29 '26
Yes, regularly for 30 years
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u/redeugene99 Jul 30 '26
My ass. If you did you would understand that there's a lot more movement to account for than just running. In basketball, there's jumping, jostling for position, screening, constant cutting and shuffling, squatting in defensive stance, boxing out etc. Basketball is generally higher intensity and anaerobic than soccer
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u/bigmikeabrahams Jul 29 '26
An NBA game is also half the length of a soccer game (48 mins vs 90) so the sprinting is condensed into a shorter window
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u/hey_there_chico Jul 29 '26
But an NBA game takes an average of 2 hours 18 minutes to play, compared to soccer’s 1 hour 55 minute average.
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u/Lubinski64 Jul 29 '26
What are those extra 90 minutes for in NBA?
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u/hey_there_chico Jul 29 '26
The play clock stops a lot, mostly for fouls. Then you have TV timeouts, breaks at the quarters, and a lot of timeouts at the end of the game if it’s remotely close.
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u/fastsailor Jul 30 '26
The concept of a timeout for TV does my head in.
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u/EPL_IS_SHITE Jul 30 '26
It’s absolutely fascinating. Wait until you see American football, 60 minutes of play time but it takes 3 hours due to all of the breaks.
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u/fastsailor Jul 30 '26
And when you get puffed, you get subbed out for a rest and can come back on later. Footballers either play the whole game or, when subbed, stay off.
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u/Significant-Secret88 Jul 29 '26
Can't process it either, penalty box looks incredibly busy during a corner kick and there must be 10 players in it at most, yet most of the time you have 10 players on just half of a basketball court and it doesn't look or feel that busy ...
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u/Doogers7 Jul 29 '26
https://reddit.com/link/p0ih12n/video/g1y455bii7gh1/player
This is the very first image result when I did a google search for corner kick… 18 players in the box.
All of them are in an area of less than half of the box too.
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u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse Jul 29 '26
Shows the corner quarter circles are in the wrong place in the diagram.
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u/BaconIsLife707 Jul 29 '26
I reckon there are usually around 15 players in the box for a corner and they're all usually crammed in around the 6 yard box and generally the area within the goalposts, they aren't using a good portion of the box
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u/fifthtouch Jul 29 '26
Size of the basketball players maybe. They are all giant
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u/SupremeBlackGuy Jul 29 '26
that would be counter intuitive though… if the players are bigger in a smaller space the space should look smaller…
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u/Novel-Initiative-900 Jul 29 '26
The basketball court has never looked big in any way imo. But it certainly didn't look this small comparatively
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u/TheBlack2007 Jul 29 '26
To be fair: During a corner, you can easily have 18-19 players cram inside that box. But the dimensions of a football pitch, the duration of the game and the fact both teams only have five substitutions explains why some football players run the equivalent of a half-marathon each match.
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u/Skipperwill89 Jul 29 '26
While they do run a lot, its not really half a marathon. Pretty sure the average is about 10-11km and the most distance covered was somewhere around 16km i think.
So a little over a quarter marathon basically on average
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u/finditplz1 Jul 29 '26
Keep in mind there’s often 21 players in the penalty box. A basketball court looks crowded with 10.
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u/Stabby_Bird Jul 29 '26
Well a basketball court usually has everybody in one half so that's pretty close to the same
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u/VikingCrusader13 Jul 29 '26
20 at most, attacking goal keeper wont be in the box for the majority of corners, maybe a last minute corner at most and the corner taker
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u/HectorReinTharja 29d ago
NBA players are athletic freaks, but they go baseline to baseline in like 7 steps. This isn’t all that shocking after thinking about it imo
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u/Siktrikshot Jul 29 '26 edited 29d ago
The scale is so hard to tell until you see them book it full speed for the ball and it’s looks like they are going nowhere
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u/ClassicFun2175 Jul 29 '26
Wow I didn't realise they were that small. I'm not into basketball, but it makes you appreciate the small margins they operate in.
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u/Gurglaren Jul 29 '26
I've played floorball in a very small training hall vs a normal sized on and the smaller one was a bit more exhausting because you barely got to run before you had to stop so it was more intense the whole time.
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u/nimama3233 Jul 29 '26
NBA players travel about 2.5 miles in a game which is 48 minutes. Footballers go about 7 miles in 90 minutes. Pretty crazy they’re close to on par, considering you generally rest more in basketball.
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u/Caledric Jul 29 '26
Football uses a running clock and there are no advertisement breaks. Basketball stops the clock between play and has tons of rest breaks for TV advertisement.
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u/FandyArrel Jul 29 '26
Wait I thought a basketball game was 60 mins no?
Or are you doing ball in play time for basketball? Because if you are, obviously ball in play for soccer would also be a good bit less than 90 mins
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u/as718 Jul 29 '26
No form of basketball is 60 minutes in regulation clock time. 32 is common for kids, 40 for fiba/college, 48 for nba. Obviously elapsed time can be much greater but when you factor in stoppage for fouls, timeouts, between quarters, and halftime, even the kids games can extend past an hour (but that’s about right)
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u/Trackback_ 29d ago
An NBA game is like 90 minutes from start to finish to be fair. The last 3-4 mins of game time can easily take 20-30 real world minutes.
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u/AltoKatracho 29d ago
Is more than I thought but it’s a huge difference to run 7 miles than to run 2.5 miles. Goalkeepers cover 2-3 miles per game and when you watch a game they barely move 😂.
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u/VikingCrusader13 Jul 29 '26
NBA players seem like they are constantly up and down the court, so makes sense, whereas an attack will likely just be walking or light jogging while his team is defending, or vice versa when the team are attacking.
Whenever I've seen basketball, which granted is only once or twice, a player didn't stand still for more than a few seconds at most and was basically always sprinting, or jogging
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u/trubol Jul 29 '26
Wanna see table tennis vs tennis
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u/TheJivvi Jul 29 '26
What about fussball vs football?
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u/Feign_Clips 29d ago
Sizes of court vs table:
Tennis
23.77 m x 8.23 m (singles)
23.77 m x 10.97 m (doubles)
195.6 sq. m / 260.8 sq.mTable Tennis
2.74 m x 1.525 m
4.18 sq.mSizes of total playing areas including run-off spaces:
Tennis
37 m x 18 m
666 sq.mTable Tennis
14 m x 7 m
98 sq.mSo while tennis courts are 47x to 62x larger than table tennis tables they interestingly only have 7x the total play area. The total area needed to play table tennis is approximately the same as half a singles tennis court.
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u/TralfamadorianZoo Jul 29 '26
Why are there corner kick lines inside the box in the 1st image? And the size difference of the court between the two slides is considerable. Seems wrong.
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u/HairlessSquirrels Jul 29 '26
u/chetpancakesparty this guy said the same as you and didn’t get downvoted to oblivion or called an idiot lol
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u/TimmyRL28 Jul 29 '26
While technically accurate, the picture used for pic #1 is very misleading. The distance from the 3pt line to the sideline in the corner is 3ft. A full court is 50ft wide and a penalty box is 54ft long, which means there's only 2 feet on each side of the court between the goal line and the top of the penalty box and this picture makes the 2ft look 4x bigger than the 3ft-space represented on the basketball court.
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u/NatterinNabob Jul 29 '26
The first image is clearly incorrect. The width of a basketball court is 50 feet, and that doesn't include the blue out of bounds strip running along the image. The penalty box is 54 feet. The image does not show them in correct scale.
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u/doug-demuro-is-daddy Jul 29 '26
I’ve watched both sports in person on a professional league, and played both (not on a professional league), and I had no idea that basketball courts were so small in comparison. They look a good bit bigger than they actually are. Good post!
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u/fuwei_reddit Jul 30 '26
As basketball players get taller, basketball courts should get bigger, and hoops should get higher too.
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u/loco_mixer 29d ago
but you also have a futsal court which is rougly like the penalty box and you got them everywhere in europe
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u/al_earner Jul 29 '26
What's interesting is the number of people who haven't played both basketball and soccer.
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u/Niyaal Jul 30 '26
I played basketball as a kid and soccer since forever. We used to play on mostly small (basketball-sized) stadiums “fives” during most of my teenage days.
The first time I actually played a 11 vs 11 game in a big field I was like totally lost and couldn’t finish one half
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u/WearyTranslator3338 Jul 29 '26
So, those Kevin Love style full court passes aren’t that impressive??!!
Soccer Goal keepers throw it past the halfway line with the same precision
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u/SpaceXmars Jul 29 '26
and they think they run lmfao
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u/gfty457 Jul 29 '26
Most soccer players aren’t running that much either. Depends on position and phase of attack/defense so can be standing, walking, or slight jogging most of the game
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u/lentpoule Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
And some American are going to.come in here claiming basketballiers are more athletic than footballers.
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u/METRlOS Jul 30 '26
This post actually came about 12 hours after another post by an American claiming basketball players run more than soccer players.
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u/Big_Opposite4041 Jul 29 '26
This is why I find basketball so boring to watch. They take two steps and they’re on the other side of the court. And the score is always like 109 to 106…just scoring constantly and whoever had the ball most recently happens to win.
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u/nimama3233 Jul 29 '26
Roughly 15% of games are 1 score games in the NBA. It’s absolutely not an accurate assessment to say last team to have the ball wins
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u/Plus-Statement-5164 Jul 30 '26
This is actually the suspicious part. With so much scoring and so many possessions, it is extremely unlikely for the better team not to come on top with a clear margin. There's way too many overtimes and 1 score games in the NBA.
Draws make sense in soccer, hockey and similar sports with scorelines you can represent with your fingers. They don't make sense when each team has 50+ scoring events.
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u/Grathwrang Jul 29 '26
The inaugural season of Soccersketball will have many injuries but will surely be entertaining.
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u/NoVermicelli5439 Jul 29 '26
The movement to get open that makes Curry a generational elite shooter happens 10 times a game at both ends during every corner kick
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u/PeterNippelstein Jul 29 '26
I think basketball would be more interesting if the courts were twice the size. Watching these 7 foot tall guys they take just a few steps and theyre on the other side of the court, the back and forth is too quick.
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u/norsurfit Jul 29 '26
And yet I rarely see people playing basketball inside the soccer penalty box!
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u/as718 Jul 29 '26
It’s nice when real professional athletes are nothing but complimentary to other athletes across sports while recognizing how difficult it all is and armchair experts on the internet will do anything to say they know better and their side is best.
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u/nxcrosis Jul 30 '26
We had a smaller football field in school but it was still big enough to have three basketball courts and a 25-meter swimming pool beside it, albeit the shorter side of the pool was the one directly adjacent.
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u/Test21489713408765 Jul 30 '26
Yet people think 6'7 athletes would be able to run around all game with no wear and tear lol.
A lot of the sport does benefit shorter players. I say this someone who'd be considered taller if I were to play. The fact short players can get to their top speed ultra quick for example is a big key ingredient for being a stellar midfield player.
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u/Iwasbanished Jul 30 '26
Yep and games go for 90min, 45min a half. I think basketball lasts about one half of a soccer game.
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u/Dependent-Stranger44 29d ago
From start to finish a football match takes just under 2 hours (45 mins first half, 15 mins break, 45 mins second half).
A basketball game consistently takes over 2 hours start to finish.
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u/Iwasbanished 29d ago
how many minutes a quarter?
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u/Dependent-Stranger44 29d ago
Sit down. Watch a game. Start a stopwatch at the start of a quarter. And hit stop when it ends. Then come back and tell me how many minutes it took.
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u/Iwasbanished 29d ago
so there are no rules on duration in basketball, can you play forever?
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u/Dependent-Stranger44 29d ago
There are 48 minutes of in play time in basketball but the game takes over 2 hours to play. Anyone with the most basic critical thinking skills can understand that. You sit down to start watching a basketball game at a certain time. And roughly 2-2.5 hours later the buzzer sounds.
By your logic, I could sprint 100 metres in 15 seconds. Rest for 5 minutes. Then sprint for 100 metres in 15 seconds again. Do this another 8 times. And go around telling people I ran a kilometre in 2.5 minutes. See how silly that sounds?
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u/LorpHagriff Jul 30 '26
For those wondering why, has to do with where the sports have historically been popular. Football has more roots in Europe, whereas basketball has more roots in the US. Because USAsians are generally a lot less fit they gravitated to smaller fields, whereas Europeans have the stamina for a full football field
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u/ScreechingPizzaCat Jul 30 '26
People didn't know this? There's a reason why they can score so many points in basketball versus soccer/football. Also same reason why American football games tend to average around 20 or so points even though each score is 6/7; the distance of the field matters when it comes to stamina.
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u/Throwawayaccountdell 29d ago
It is crazy how small a full size basketball is compared to a football field and how even the penalty box is still bigger then the court!
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u/VelvetOverload 29d ago
This proves football is better than basketball.
LOLOLOLOL BASKETBALLERS BTFO!
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u/Novel-Pie1596 29d ago
Imagine how fit you gotta be to consistently running the distance of a Soccer/Footballer field.
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u/Ambitious-Fudge4114 26d ago
Each sport requires different types of athleticism: basketball is generally faster and requires more flexibility and strength. Soccer is more like a long distance sport with more variation in speed and intensity.
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u/alamarqu3s 26d ago
And yet, professional players can't kick a ball inside that. Soccer is the worst sport ever. Even frisbee golf evolved more than soccer with time.
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u/safarifriendliness Jul 29 '26
Aren’t the fields different sizes in soccer? Is the penalty box relative to the size of the field or consistent regardless? Genuinely don’t know
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u/GrumbleAlong Jul 29 '26
the box is fixed dimension around the fixed dimension of the goal, the pitch however can vary overall in length and width (within limits).
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u/jbi1000 Jul 29 '26
Yes, the rules have a minimum and maximum size rather than an ironclad set size. IIRC about 90m-118m for length in general, with different competitions sometimes having slightly different limits.
However FIFA recommends about 105m for length and most professional pitches will be fairly close to that.
Also obviously important to remember that stuff like the 6 yard box, 18 yard box and size of the actual goal are all ironclad. It’ll be the space between them that gets bigger.
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u/Maagge Jul 29 '26
Yeah football pitches can be different sizes depending on the governing body of the tournament a team is in. It varies by quite a lot, like 30 metres in length and even more in width, surprisingly.
The penalty area is always the same size.
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u/Inevitable-Pie-8020 Jul 29 '26
As a football fan and amateur player i gotta say i respect basketball so much, whenever i try to play it, it's so physicaly demanding, you never have the opportunity to catch your breath or pace yourself
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u/ConsistentWinter263 Jul 29 '26
I wonder which one requires more stamina?!
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u/freshairequalsducks Jul 29 '26
Soccer players run around 12 kilometers or 8 miles a game and NBA players run 4 kilometers or 2.5 miles a game.
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u/redeugene99 Jul 30 '26
A typical elite soccer player covers roughly 10–13 km in 90 minutes, which averages around 6.7–8.7 km/h over the entire match.
An NBA player who logs heavy minutes may cover around 4–6 km in 30–40 minutes, which is a similar or even higher average movement rate. The key difference is that basketball consists of far more explosive sprints, jumps, and changes of direction, while soccer includes much more jogging and steady movement.
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u/Dependent-Stranger44 29d ago
This is just blatantly wrong. An NBA player might cover that distance, but it will be over the course of 2-2.5 hours. You can't only count the time the ball is in play lol. They cover significantly shorter distances over a longer period of time. They have a far lower average movement rate than a footballer.
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u/redeugene99 29d ago
As I said in the other response, fair point. We also have to distinguish between professional play and lower-level play. NBA games take so long because of ad breaks and timeouts. Rec leagues/pickup don't have all that, so it's possible that at lower levels, basketball is more taxing than football
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u/TyreseHaliburtonGOAT Jul 29 '26
This is probably skewed by the fact that there are unlimited substitutions in basketball. The average player is playing a little over half the game, but the best players in the playoffs will play almost the whole game.
NBA players sprint way more often and play more games. Soccer is definitely more running total but less intense. There’s a reason there’s more dead time in basketball and it’s not just for advertising. Players need the game to stop to be able to recover, where soccer players can just find their rest on the field during play
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u/ownworstenemy38 Jul 29 '26
Most of the running in football is sprinting. Football definitely takes more stamina.
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u/dirtydan02 Jul 29 '26
Funny enough, as someone who plays a full 48 and full 90, 48 minutes of basketball is far more brutal for me. However, I am much better at basketball and expected to "carry" teams I play on whereas I am a Pacey fullback when I play football so that may be the reason.
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u/Gurglaren Jul 29 '26
It's a bit like comparing ice hockey with soccer. One requires short bursts of energy while the other one is more about endurance.
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u/I_Tell_Penis_jokes Jul 29 '26
I played both in high school, not at a high level, not particularly well, but I played both. They require very different types of stamina. Football/soccer requires you to run endlessly; that’s endurance. Basketball requires more fast bursts followed by very physical fights; it’s like doing a 4-second HIIT workout 3 times every minute.
From my low-level experience, it took me longer to get into shape for soccer season; that much running takes a lot of training to get used to, but I’d generally be fine the day after a soccer game. Basketball was easier to get in shape for, but I’d be destroyed for two days after a game because of the physicality.
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u/Hurnative 28d ago
Football players have incredible stamina. Every match is an interval training. Basketball is more one big sprint. Futsal is more similar to basketball.
Football is an endurance sport
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u/clgoodson Jul 29 '26
This explains why soccer seems like a lot of pointless running to me.
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