Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Wednesday, May 22, 2002 Sportsblog - Sorry Well, my beloved Sacramento Kings evened the playoff series with the Lakers with the greatest offensive foul machine of all time complaining he was cheated. This is going to be a tough series for us if we lose, and for the country (so much depends on this!). Why? Because in the Dallas/Sac series, we finally got to see basketball played as it was meant to be played. The series in the East looks like fun, too; what with Jason Kidd pushing the ball like crazy and the Celtics shooting from all over the court. But the Lakers illustrate two aspects that ruin the game for me and will explain why the Kings really aren't beloved to me, and why I am getting disgusted with B-ball. One) Shaq O'Neal is an amazing athlete for a man of his size, but his strength has ruined the low post game since there is hardly a play (I watched and counted one night) when he expects the ball that he doesn't throw an elbow, knock a defender back, then move into the vacated spot as the ball arrives. He then turns around and shoots an embarrassingly easy two foot shot or dunk. The variation of this is to simply lower the shoulder into his defender, create space and shoot. He is then in position to get his rebound should he miss. For the ten to twelve times he does this, he gets called for an offensive foul maybe twice - and only for those times when he has used his shoulder. He is never called for the foul he always makes just before receiving a pass in the low post. What this does to the game is to weight it on the side of the Lakers. O'Neal, already a formidable athlete, becomes unstoppable. Two) I watched Kobe Bryant make an offensive foul nearly every time he got the ball. (I'm picking on these two because I was paying such attention to them, of course, but I'll make up for it later.) Kobe is doing what many before him have done to ruin the game - foul or violate so often that it can't be called anymore. And so things like walking, palming, carrying the ball, changing your pivot foot and so on become a part of the game. What Kobe does is this: he uses his off arm (the one not bouncing the ball) to fend off defenders and/or hook them to get around them. This happens for one reason, when guards started to get bigger than six feet, they also became slower since bigger men are always slower than smaller players. No one was ever quicker than Calvin Murphy or Spud Webb. These guys could run circles around Magic Johnson, for example. So the new guards of size needed to fend off quicker and smaller opponents who could easily steal the ball from the high dribblers. They did this by sticking their arm out and blocking the defender - a clear violation. But not called now, and everybody does it, even the smaller guards. Just as Chris Webber seems to like lowering the shoulder a la Shaq in the low post. So now you see Kobe (or Doug Christie) always throwing out an arm to block the defense from reaching and stealing the ball; with the defender called for a foul more often than not if he actually does knock the ball away. What happened to the game is that as size became more and more essential, the rules became more often breached until the way to win becomes a kind of slugfest. Basketball was never meant to be a game of power, but of skill. It is now both, but it's not as much fun for the spectator, especially when it's your team getting pummeled and beaten into defeat - ground down by non-call after non-call. Soccer fans might understand this if tackling the player with the ball became more like body checking in hockey (allowed anywhere on the field toward any player) with no one carded for a penalty. Imagine what soccer would become then? Like hockey and football - not the same sport it once was. You end up with great athletes playing a lousy game. posted by Mark Butterworth | 1:44 PM | |
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