Mark Bradley: College basketball stinks

Why is the bold part important in determining college greatness? Was Tyler Hansbrough a great college basketball player?

 

If you follow them for three years in college you are excited to see how they do as a pro. Ewing, Sampson, Jordan were all examples of this.

As soon as the NCAA tournament is played to half empty arenas and do not sell out, for every game, and TV ratings nose dive, then I think we will see the NCAA push back against the NBA. I don't know how they will do it, but I think they will try. I also think that day is not too far away.

 

Right school, wrong guy. All these years later, I still don't see how the Hawks passed on Chris Paul.

 

Haven't we already started seeing less than capacity at NCAA Tournament games? Wasn't it last year when this became an issue? Or maybe the year before? I swear I remember hearing talk about this recently. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

I think it is already happening, but not quite to the point where the NCAA is in holy crap mode.

IIRC, I think VCU went on that run in front of some pretty empty arenas, but it does not mean that those tickets were not sold. It just means people don't care enough to stick around once their team is out. I don't think that used to be the case. Once Kansas or UNC or Ohio State is knocked out, those tickets leave with their fan base. I think they used to resell them, or stay, but I don't think there are any buyers anymore.

 

I can say this very same thing about the NFL, MLB, college football, NBA.
New York Giants, anyone?
So all sports stink and should be ignored until the playoffs. I'll get right on that.

 

Recent four-year college players David West and David Lee have had a better NBA career than Ralph Sampson.

And if we're lumping juniors into the discussion, you can't forget Deron Williams, Dwyane Wade, Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Stephen Curry. All of those guys went from starring in college to being a top-10 NBA draft pick to becoming legitimate stars on NBA teams. It's pretty easy to imagine Evan Turner and Damian Lillard joining them.

And how important is that third year? Blake Griffin only stayed for two, but he was a star for those two years while Michael Jordan was in the background on James Worthy's team as a freshman (until the shot to win the title).

 

OK, so what to do first to improve the game?

 

The very first thing I'd do is cut down on the number of time outs. As has already been noted, there is no reason for there to be eight "media" timeouts in a game. Completely ruins the flow of a game. I'd have two, one for each half on the first stoppage of play after the 10-minute mark.

I like the 3-point shot, but I'd also give serious consideration to moving the line back to NBA length, make it a tougher shot.

 

I could see either cutting the timeouts given per team or requiring each team to use one at a certain spot (first half), like the NBA does.

You have to have some stoppages in play in the first half for commercial purposes and to try to balance the length of the two halves. (Few things more frustrating than arriving 10 minutes late to find you've actually missed 1/4 of the game time.)

The worst-case scenario is when coaches save all their timeouts and then use then in sequence in the last two minutes. That makes the game ending too long. I can see a rule requiring each team to use one in the first half or lose it. And no team can take more than three into the last five minutes of regulation. No carryover into overtime.

That might help a little, but still doesn't address the underlying problems.

I wouldn't argue against moving the 3-point line, but that basically takes the shot further out of the normal offense and makes it a come-from-behind weapon.

 

It's a broadcast timeout. Radio broadcasts use it, too.

 

Bill James had a good essay in one of the "Abstracts" (or maybe it was "The Baseball Book") about 20 years ago, about how the inexorable natural course of strategic evolution in all sports always moves toward defense, unless and until countered by significant changes in playing rules, equipment or player acquisition sources.

Some sports (such as the NFL and to some extent the NBA) have continually countered this tendency with rules changes, but almost always momentum returns to the defense.

Soccer of course is the ultimate example of this phenomenon: at the very highest levels, offense has disappeared almost entirely, and playing for a scoreless tie is considered to be great strategy by many "experts."

James speculated as to the reasons, but basically he came up with: Defense has always been presented by almost all coaching authorities as "morally preferable" and "more admirable," the definition of unselfishness and team play, while offense is considered greedy, selfish and egocentric.

In basketball almost all coaches, especially at higher levels, usually have deep-seated persecution complexes -- the "us against the world" mentality -- and most work under the assumption they are always operating at a desperate talent disadvantage to their big bad opponents (who have probably acquired most of that talent through underhanded methods of course), so the main philosophical objective of their coaching mentality is to remove the factor of playing talent from the equation, boil the game down to an utter minimum of key possessions, keep the game close so their own strategic brilliance can be decisive, go into the last 30 seconds of the game with the ball, two time outs, and a two-point lead.

This mentality has soaked through the game all the way down from the NBA to biddy basketball. Every single player who plays basketball at anything higher than junior high level has played the vast majority of the basketball in his or her life with a clipboard-waving coach on the sideline screaming that he wants 10 passes before every shot or the shot clock milked down to 5 before a shot can be taken, or they go berserk and the offending player is yanked.

Whenever I read any old fart grouching, "these kids today, they play nothing but streetball," I just have to laugh -- they are literally as wrong as it's possible to be.

Go to YouTube and dial up basketball games (NBA, college or high school) from the 1960s and 70s. The one thing that will INSTANTLY leap out at you within a possession or so is that it will appear BOTH teams are playing absolute helter-skelter streetball -- they come down the court, make a pass, and SHOOT. They don't stand around on the perimeter milking off 18 seconds of every NBA shot clock, they don't stall around for 30 seconds of every college possession playing dipsy doodle on the perimeter. They come down, get an open shot, and shoot the goddamn ball.

The combination of the 3-point shot and the shot clock in tandem has generated a couple generations of coaches who literally DO want nothing but dunks and 3-pointers. Any player who takes an open 14-footer with 18 seconds left on the shot clock gets his ass scorched by Clipboard Boy on the sideline.

So the game turns into a sludgeball-fest with both teams taking turns milking the shot clock down to 3 before firing up wild jumpers. Then we walk back down court and do it at the other end.


The morality-play angle of the whole dynamic also serves as a HUGE disincentive for any coaches to try to buck the trend and play uptempo, especially at youth levels.

If you play sludgeball and lose, you can wave your clipboard in the air and say, "well at least we are sticking to the fundamentals;" if you play uptempo and lose there is nothing more certain than a half-dozen hecklers will come out of the stands yelling "you have to play defense and control the ball. FUNDAMENTALS!!"