Is KC one of America’s worst basketball cities? This survey says yes

NBA Finals starting Thursday, Cleveland vs. Golden State, who ya got?

According to WalletHub.com, a number-crunching website, you probably don’t care if you live in Kansas City.

KC ranks 203th out of 293 U.S. cities when it comes to basketball interest — NBA and Division I college basketball combined — based on 17 key metrics in a survey called “Best and Worst Cities for Basketball Fans.”

Coming in at No. 202 was Springfield.

The top 10 basketball cities: Los Angeles, Boston, Oakland, Calif., San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Miami, Chicago and Orlando, Fla.

Lawrence (31), Columbia (235) and Manhattan (246) were also part of the survey.

This is all pretty silly. Cities get dinged for not having an NBA team, having few Division I programs and for social media numbers. Tsk, tsk for teams/programs with low numbers of Twitter followers or Facebook likes.

This led to Kansas City having some of “least engaged college basketball fans,” according to the website.

Not part of the formula were TV ratings, and those proved in 2016 that Kansas City was more engaged than this survey suggests. The Kansas City market ranked second nationally in NCAA Tournament viewership on CBS and Turner, third in college basketball on ESPN and 52nd in NBA regular-season telecasts.

It doesn’t add up to No. 1 or even top 10. But it sure as heck isn’t No. 203.

Kansas City fared much better by the same outlet, WalletHub.com, when it came to fan rankings for football (12th) and baseball (13th).

This story was originally published May 31, 2017 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Is KC one of America’s worst basketball cities? This survey says yes."