Pics: The NSFW posters that Italian basketball fans use to distract the opposition

It mightn’t be very sporting but we bet it works.

There is a long tradition of trying to distract the opposition in basketball, especially those at the free-throw line. In the US they use all manner of devices to try and upset the NBA stars and at college level a barrage of noise and waving placards will attempt to put the player off his shot.

In Italy, they have taken it up a level and started to use slightly naked, or totally naked pictures to distract the players on court.

These snaps come from Brescia but what we want to know is how do they only distract the players on the opposition? Surely their own team will be momentarily lured away from the action too. And the very large picture of a granny giving a one-finger salute is pretty distracting too.

As we don’t know the opposition, or the result of the game in question, we may never know.

Hat-tip to Italian journalist @tancredipalmeri for the pictures.