Kurosuke No Baske is a top 5 sports anime and I loved that shyt, but I can't place it over Ippo and I love basketball too. (not as much as boxing tho)
shyt was too unrealistic. nikkas were playing ball like it was NBA Jams from back in the day. nikkas shooting lights out from anywhere on the court. Super powered passes and moves. The drama wasn't even that deep because it mostly consisted of nikkas just trying to find ways to get better. Ahiru No Sora kills it in the drama department and was way more realistic. Its just that its animation cant hang with Kurosuke or Slam Dunk.
Slam Dunk makes a better case cuz it had drama, showed the technical aspects of basketball, animation was good (not Kurosuke level, but better then Ahiru No Sora) an overall was just more balanced an realistic. Its just an older series, so some might not check it out, but its truly a masterpiece.
even then Hajime was just way more inspirational. That shyt would hit you in the feels and you'd be like
Akashi was my favorite character from Kurosuke tho.
I loved how they broke down the zone too. That's prolly the best explanation of it that you'll ever get in team sports. They did that perfectly.