Is basketball a sport or a game?

Or, is this simplistic question a distraction?

Can a game be a sport? Are all sports games? Although it lacks the physical demands of athletics, are there ways that chess exhibits the essence of what we call sports?

Basketball is a sport and a game. In my opinion not every sport is a game, because for example climbing is a sport but not a game

SCUBA Diving is a sport, and a profession, but can it sometimes be a game? There is competition wayfinding and underwater sport fishing.

Chess imo, is a sport that exercises mental "muscles"

Yes.

All sports come from games. Some sports are more physically demanding than others. Those sports are often also equally or more demanding mentally. Chess has a world championship, so that alone should honestly make it a sport.

Basketball "steals" from chess.

Chess invented the clock, as far I know, back in days of sand glasses, hourglasses, who knows when.

Basketball only adopted it in 1954.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_clock

Running is not a game. It's just running.

Running is a sport.

Soccer is a game, making running a game.

Basketball players pretend to be chess players. Not the other way around.

Prestige goes to chess.

sports are games

The orgin of chess, dates back to antiquity.

Basketball started with this guy.

Put the ball into the basket.

Depends what your definition of a game is, and what kind of running we are talking about.

Also, I feel compelled to ask considering the fact that you seem to contradict a lot of things practically everyone posts here, is that what you are in forums to do?

Chess is a game. Here's Chinese chess.

The "King" cannot go outside the Palace.

Now does that look like soccer or vice versa?

Stallone sure knows how to make movies.

Against the back drop of a real modern highly technological war, ancient stuff wins.

Put the dead goat in the circle is ancient.

I'm not talking about this kind of running.

I'm talking about this kind of running.

Horse running.

Not the kind of horse running in Secretariat or Seabiscuit.

The kind of horse running in Rambo III.

pretty much every single "is chess a sport?" thread devolves into one side saying "chess is a sport because some federation said so" and another side saying "chess isn't physically demanding, so it's not a sport by definition" with neither side coming to any sort of resolution.

But not all sports are games, no? Is running a game? I think we would call cross country a sport. Similarly, mountain biking is surely a sport, but we would not say that it's a game of any sort.

Most sports involve some sort of competition, whether against other people, or against yourself (but mostly the former). Chess surely exhibits this aspect. Sports also generally demand some sort of coordination between mind and body. A nice example would be esports. Although it may not appear physically straining, being able to coordinate what you see on screen and how you move your devices physically is an example of coordination. Lots of competitive players spend a lot of time training their aim for this purpose. I do not see chess exhibiting this sort of thing at all. Perhaps if you are playing online in a 3 minute game at longest, you will have to occasionally demonstrate a little bit of coordination. But hardly enough to make it competitive.

Another pattern you'll find in sports is that you will have bursts of speed. For example, if a midfielder lobs a nice pass to a striker and suddenly you have a chance on goal, after many minutes of passing to hold possession. In chess, this is quite backwards. The instances of nothing happening usually pass by quicker than when the instances when the game tenses up. Obviously, since you have to think more when critical positions appear.

Perhaps online speed chess can be called a sort of "sport". But generally besides the competitive nature of the game, chess doesn't really have much in common with other sports whatsoever.