(Good) Kuroko's Basketball

Series in one sentence:
A boy with neon-blue hair somehow manages to be invisible.

Series in more sentences:
A young team of high school basketball players dream about becoming the best team in Japan, but their opponents consists out of legendary players known to never lose a match.
Luckily for them, an American-Japanese boy with the stamina of 5 people signs up to their team, as for one of the lesser known legendary players, who's talents are unlike anything they've seen.
 

It was an exciting ride, though slightly overdramatic when you allow yourself to think about what it is these kids are getting themselves worked up about.
No matter how cool and serious things got, we're still talking about a bunch of high school babbus throwing a ball around. So. Why're some of these people acting like Dragonball Z supervillains? It's just a game -not even a professional or international one- damn boys, relax.

But yes, I can't deny it made for good entertainment. The talents of the players are portrayed and described as superpower moves, which is a fun way of making basketball interesting for those who generally don't care for it. I contentedly binge-watched this and would recommend the show to anyone, but still, it did lack something for me.

The story gets to the point and pretty much has no filler episodes, but I think it would've benefited from it. There were very little everyday moments; everything these kids do and have done in their lives revolves around basketball, even when they meet up outside of the gym or school building they're drooling on about it. It's a bit pathetic. Again, when you allow yourself to think about it.
I would've liked to see more scenes of them visiting each other at home, because they're friends, not with the intention to talk game strategy. I wanted them to prove to me they're actual people, not these sports obsessed kids stuck in a fantasy world. What else do they even do at school? What do they do at home? There were 2 hardly explored romances going on and it was noticeable how pointless they were.
The series doesn't care for building up relationships that have nothing to do with the love for basketball. The "cute" puppy they found is a testament to this; he was a pointless addition. I still don't even know who his owner is, he's always in the arms or bag of another character

When the anime started, I thought the bluehaired Kuroko and redheaded Kagami were going to be the main characters, but they really weren't. In some episodes you hardly see either characters in action at all, and the show thinks to fix this by having another character mention them.
Now, this anime didn't fail at making the other characters interesting, it did a good job actually, but it still feels a bit like false advertising. I wanted to see Kuroko and Kagami and know what they were doing every time the camera wasn't giving them screen time. They didn't talk or hung out as often as I wanted and they don't seem to be more friends than with the other team members, while the show tried to claim this at some points.

Kuroko's Basketball also had the tendency to "insert convenience". It keeps inventing basketball skills at the spot, just so a character can win a game he was majorly failing minutes before. These players always have a "2nd" or "3rd gear", and when their last gear fails, a "4th gear" is suddenly claimed to be a thing. Convenient plot points define the show and strategies are always explained at the last second, it's very lazy.
But alright, our heroes still meet with hardships and there's a fair distribution of strength, so we're not dealing with Gary Stus, by any means.

All in all, Kuroko's Basketball presented a creative way of making basketball appealing. While the normal social/human interaction was lacking, the games themselves were really cool to watch.