J-basketball: 'I wanna be sedated'

[Taro Toporific]

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[SIZE="3"] Basketball: Not so big in Japan[/SIZE]
International Herald Tribune / August 29, 2006
SAITAMA, JAPANThe World Basketball Championships may be the biggest sports event in Asia since the 2002 soccer World Cup. Yet the hype does not appear to be working.
As quarterfinals started Tuesday in Saitama, the latest attempt to import a sport to Japan has been unable to outdraw school baseball in the host country.
Some second-round games drew 9,000 fans to the 21,000-capacity Saitama Arena, in suburban Tokyo. In the first round, even China's Yao Ming and America's new Dream Team could not fill Sapporo's 6,400-seat arena, where the DJ played the Ramones' "I wanna be sedated," and some fans left their seats to watch baseball on TVs in the corridors...more...

[ichigo partygirl]

A friend of mine took her brother (a basketball nut) who had come from Russian for a holiday to a quaterfinal in Saitama yesterday. They had tickets for the first game only but because of the poor attendence they were allowed to watch the 2nd quater final at no extra cost. Good for them but its gotta suck for FIBA and the players to be playing to such poor crowds.