* Not talking about a person, though Donald Sterling might qualify.

A friendly discussion/argument you can have nearly anywhere in the world?

Which is the world’s No. 2 sport?

Soccer is No. 1. The end.

But what is No. 2?

I am beginning to think it is basketball, which is played, to some extent, almost everywhere. A ball and a hoop is all you need. Also a game that can be played inside during inclement weather.

Anyway, “global basketball creep” was in full view tonight in Abu Dhabi at a 3×3 Fiba tournament, which The National covered with a story and with a photo gallery.

The two-day event was part of the Fiba Abu Dhabi 3×3 Challenger Series. Fiba being the acronym for the world basketball organizing body. (It’s French.)

The 3×3 series is based on the traditional American playground game. Three against three, half-court.

The rules are fairly simple. First team to 21 wins, and if neither side gets there, the team leading after 10 minutes wins.

A shot beyond the three-point arc is worth two points. All other field goals are worth one. Free throws come when a player is fouled in the act of shooting, or on any foul after the fifth, and all free throws are worth a point, too. Each team has four players, allowing for occasional subbing in and out.

As is the case on the playgrounds of the central city, this tends to be a rough game. Lots of banging and holding and pushing, and not a whole lot of calls from the officials, whose job mostly seems to be ruling on whether or not a shot was from beyond the arc.

The perfect 3×3 player is probably about 6-foot-5, with some quickness, who can shoot the three (the two, in this variety of the game) as well as muscle around under the basket, protecting the rim or putting away bunnies.

What prompted me, anew, to think basketball is gaining, globally, was the cast of players. Guys around 30, it seemed, from all over eastern Europe and from a significant part of Arabia, as well.

The final was four guys from Serbia against four guys from Slovenia. Earlier, we had seen Poles and Romanians and North Africans.

What’s more, these guys drew crowds.

The tournament was held inside Abu Dhabi’s newest mall, Yas Mall, on the same island as the Formula One track and Ferrari World, on an open space known as Town Square, quite big enough to hold half a basketball court as well as provide some “comfy chairs” around the court for Emirati sponsors.

Throughout the tournament, crowds gathered around the court, craning their necks to see the game, and far more spectators were up on the next level of the mall, watching over the rail.

The tournament had its own motormouth announcer, a powerful PA system and a big scoreboard. It was hard to get bored.

I arrived for the quarterfinals and stayed through the final, and hundreds of people were watching at any given moment, even during the circus-like entertainment during breaks in play. (Japanese guys on bicycles; young men from Italy doing acrobatics and dunking.)

And that crowd? Emiratis. Assorted Arabs. Pakistani guys out on their one night off, taking pictures of each other with the games as backdrop. Indian families taking video. A handful of Westerners who had heard the whistles blowing.

All of whom stopped at least for a while and watched the big guys bang.

Fiba would like to make 3×3 an Olympic sport. To that end, it has organized this global competition, with stops all over the planet, and a final back in Abu Dhabi, on the Corniche, in October.

What we saw tonight was pretty high-level stuff. The top players have been getting paid to play for a long time now, led by Dusan Domovic, ranked the No. 1 3×3 player in the world, who hit five consecutive long balls to lead the Serbs to victory in the final.

So, the argument. The second-most-popular sport?

Maybe it’s running. But is that a sport or an exercise?

Some would say cricket because India’s 1.3 billion people are mad about it. Others might suggest table tennis, because China’s 1.3 billion people are crazy about it.

But neither sport has the sort of global presence that basketball does. Check the NBA’s rosters, and note how many countries have at least one player in the world’s elite league.

China has produced a superstar, Yao Ming; India doesn’t play the game much but one of its sons, Sim Bhullar, joined the Sacramento Kings at the end of the season. Spain and eastern Europe, and right on in to Russia and the Baltic countries, are basketball hotbeds. The game is played in Africa. It is big in several South American countries.

Basketball, No. 2?

Several thousand people who watched the 3×3 tournament at Yas Mall tonight probably would say: “Yes.”