I do not understand something, why is it that in many of the tutorials, the instructor builds a shape using NURBS, and then converts the NURBS to Polygons?

It seams to me that it would be more efficient to just build your object in polys in the first place, its not like there is no sphere in poly primitives, and a smooth seams to have a NURB-like effect anyway… I know I am new at Maya, but I just don’t get the point of NURBS if you want to always convert to polys anyway.