Summer Quandaries: Soapbox; The Isolation Play

http://celticsgreen.blogspot.com/2014/08/sq14-27-soapbox-isolation-play.html








Don’t get me wrong, the cobra’s dance of Kobe, or Michael, was a fascinating display of individual dominance.  To many the beauty is that they operated best with all of their teammates beyond the arc on the other side of the floor, the star taking their defender mano-a-mano and imposing their will on the hapless victim, the rest of the team taking the play off.  My problem is exactly that--they operated best with all of their teammates beyond the arc on the other side of the floor.  I am of the opinion that the real beauty of basketball is that it is a team sport and that the intricate dance of bodies, and ball, is the essence of basketball.  Obviously, I find myself in the (probably minority, perhaps tiny minority) camp of those who find ESPN symptomatic of what is wrong with sports today.  

To reduce baseball to the three-second flight from bat into the outfield bleachers, football to the soaring leap and deft toe touch inside the back of the end-zone, or soccer to the ball zipping past the outstretched arms of the horizontal goalie and settling into the net--sadly misses the full tapestry of a complex series of personnel battles involving many teammates over one or many minutes, and leveraging any number of individual and group conflicts to arrive at that “Kodak” moment.  But, just as our news and politics get reduced to the sound bite that is all that the power brokers figure the gullible and simple-minded public can comprehend, so too the sports pundits feed their followers highlights so they don’t tax the mental capacity and attention span of what they must feel are a herd of barely sentient lemmings.  Who knows, perhaps they are right, but it still angers me.  I want to hear Paul Harvey’s “the rest of the story.”

It is not that the Celtics have not had their own individual stars.  Give Bird the ball and the last five seconds of the game and he would befuddle his defender and laugh at him as the ball nestled into the net as the time expired--often having told his prey exactly what he was going to do to/in-spite-of anything the poor chap could do to interfere.  Or watch McHale turn to face his fall guy and put him through the wringer with a series of pivots, feints, fakes, reversals until the poor stooge leaned just a little too far to recover as Kevin leaned up/around/over/under/away to deftly flip the ball into the basket.  However far more often, whether in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, or the early part of the PGA window, defenders heads appeared to be on a swivel as the ball whipped around and the Celtics found the open man for an easy open shot or a lay up.

To me this was true beauty.  If you want to fight a two-man duel, play tennis, or arm wrestle, or vie in the MMA arena, or argue with your girlfriend or wife (or both ;>).  Isolating a star by sending his teammates home (well, to the far reaches of the half court) may make for dramatic TV but for me it misses the mark, and lacks the deeper interest of the chess game of basketball.

The changes to the rules allowing a “zone” defense, at least for 2.9 seconds per player at a time, have actually made the game better, at least for me.  Since the defenders don’t have to go into exile along with the Iso Man’s teammates, it makes it much harder to one-on-one effectively.  I don’t think that was the primary intention, but I see it as a serendipitous side effect.

I’ll still watch the home-run derby, and maybe even the dunk contest, but I’m oh so glad that pro basketball is fostering more complex approaches than “Hey watch this” (coincidentally, also the phrase most often associated with accidental death in Arkansas [or the rural area, preferably mountainous, of your choice--here in Texas we would just say A&M]).  We’ll now return you to your Ten Best Plays programming and your Barcalounger, the keg is on the deck.

Only 38 days until training camp.




bob




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Bob,
Thanks for the article.
Unfortunately, it's very true that much of the coverage of, in our case, basketball and all other team sports reduced to dunk and/or 3-pointers review. There quite a few reasons for that. For one of them I blame media. Besides replaying that dunk over and over again from different angles majority of announcers don't even think about explaining, however briefly, how this dunk became possible. They don't educate the audience about the game even on "Basketball 101" level.
It's one of the reasons I cherish games with Tommy, Hubie et al behind the mike.

AK

I've been hearing about the good old days ever since my Grand parents, back in the mid 40's, were raving about how great the baseball players were back in the late 1890's. Bragging about the good old days is the national pastime.

swish

There are many things that are better now than in the good old days.  I enjoy being able to be in Paris within seven hours.  For that matter, I enjoy being alive, and I probably wouldn't be without the vast advances in medical science.

I appreciate being able to enjoy my favorite singer (oh wait—he was a product of the old days) on demand in my car.  The car itself if a dramatic improvement over the 48 Ford that I had to nurse around snowy corners and push to a gas station if I ran out of gas (with no AAA available).  I'm sure there are many things that today's society appreciates or enjoys or benefits from that weren't available many years ago.

But there are also many things that actually were better in the old days, and to ignore them is a sad form of blindness.  The feeling of pulling together as a nation during World War II will always stand in stark contrast with the way so many people treat one another in what has become pretty much a dog eat dog world.  The imaginations that were honed by 1930s-early 1940s radio broadcasts rather than television spoon-feeding were undoubtedly responsible for many of the advantages we have today.  And please don't even attempt to tell me we're not a more hedonistic country now than The Greatest Generation was.

The question should never be which is/was better—today or the good old days.  The important thing is ones ability to be discriminate in contrasting the two.  There are very few absolute truths in life, and being a past-basher is just as ill-advised as claiming everything about the old days was better.

In terms of basketball, I choose to select what I saw with my own two eyes on the basketball floor during the mid-1950s through the 1960s of the NBA as the best basketball I'll ever witness.  I believe the game was intended to emphasize on human interaction based on the concept of teamwork.

Early generations of the NBA succeeded in adding the element of speed without diminishing the importance of teamwork; in fact, the speed game actually added to the productivity of the teamwork.  Those generations also revolutionized basketball defense.  And still the basic importance of teamwork remained alive and well (and fortunately living, in particular, in Boston).

Since that time the NBA has more or less kept pace with society.  If society has become more hedonistic, the NBA has strived to be more entertaining.  The three point shot entertains many people.  Showtime and its aftermath entertain many people.  Free-lance offense entertains many people.  Athleticism entertains many people.  The so-called skills contests of All-Ster Weekend (or Week), and their emphasis on individual achievements, entertain many people.  Chest-pounding and taunting entertain many people.  But the concept of teamwork has taken a noticeable hit in the process.  When something as mesmerizing as the Spurs' team performance in the Finals occurs, it's a major shock that's the subject of amazed conversation for a long time after the event.

So, yes, I'm firmly in the camp that feels the intrinsic beauty of the game has deteriorated over time, being replaced by the increased emphasis on entertainment.  It started in the 70s, accelerated in the 80s (but was largely mitigated by the genius of Magic and Bird); and has roared largely unimpeded since then, with the advent of Michael Jordan being the linchpin.

None of this means I believe anything about today's game should change.  The league and the owners have the right to take whatever legal courses they feel will make them more money; and they also have the right to claim that societal values have changed and people like me are in a tiny minority.

But being in a minority has never fazed me and has never once prevented me from speaking out about both today's Celtics and yesterday's Celtics as I see fit without being lumped into some trite "gold old days" stigmatic category.  

My original reason for joining BDC was because I saw Celtics history being rewritten on that forum, and I vowed to act against that practice.  Notwithstanding the pleasure I get out of interacting with board members and discussing today's Celtics, preservation of Celtics history would still be my greatest motivation to post; but it seldom becomes an issue on this board, where the prevailing sentiment seems to be respect for the past, the present and the future.

Sam

The most impressive thing about the Spurs this past year was their ability to integrate old school basketball into the current style of play.

dboss

ditto on dat dboss