Few weeks in the wilderness without Internet.. so only seeing this now
For basketball - as you know
@Chipper (and I am sure we've chatted many times in Worcester...) variety of lenses, gives variety of results.
Personally - fixed prime isn't what I love to go with in basketball. Too much movement around the court... but, having said that. There are times when I do love a prime to get certain results.
Without a question - the 70-200 is my go-to-lens in basketball.
Never leave to game without it.
When choosing a Prime lens - go through your own images and see in the EXIF info what sort of focal length your images mainly come from.
This helped me when I needed primes for some work..
For me - I found that the 135mm was too long, for what I liked/photographed.
So I went with 105mm f1.4 ... and that gave me versatility with both vertical and portrait orientation working nicely.
On the other end - I do have the 200mm f1.8 from Canon... so that gets and outing every now and then
Then .. as I forgot a certain lens (70-200) when going for a photoshoot, I needed to get a lens that morning (what better way to justify a new lens.. forgot something.. need a new one!!)
So I bout the 85mm f1.4 (I use Sony) ... and that is quite nice as well...
@KIPAX mentioned the 50mm ... and of course we all are individual photographers and use different lenses .. but for me, I just never got used to the 50mm range in basketball.
But that is more of a personal preference and stuff...
So me.. I'd go for the 85mm - 135mm range.
I know it leaves you too tight for shooting nicely under the basket... but you can't have it all when going with a prime.