Saying what I'm thinking, part deux

As you can see on the left, Mark Cuban has a blog now, and it's becoming one of my favorite reads. He posted last week on a topic that has always irked me watching basketball games, the charge. The situation happens all too often: a crucial momentum swing in a game is determined by a referee debating whether contact warranted a foul on the offensive or defensive end. The calls are even more important considering how foul situations affect the context of games. And what it has caused is the players defending in a manner that is likely for them to coax an offensive foul rather than simply keeping his man from scoring.

This new style of defensive play seems to me counterproductive to the flow of a basketball game. But not only is it not discouraged, it's lauded by commentators around the country as a great hustle play. How often have you heard a color analyst talk about 'heart' and 'basketball smarts' after a guy slides under someone while he's driving to the hoop. Luckily there's someone like Cuban to question the establishment:

why in the world do we allow secondary defenders to take charges? What is the point of just stepping in front of a guy as he is going for a layup or dunk? Or for that matter, if he is dribbling up court and a defender just steps in front of him, all for the sole point of taking a charge?

Think about it. Is throwing your body in front of another player you are not guarding — solely for the purpose of seeing if he will run you over — a basketball play? I don’t think so.

Exactly, if the sole purpose of the play is to draw an offensive foul, then that's not basketball. Cuban Continues:

Not only do you put both players involved at risk for injury, but it takes away some of the most exciting and watchable plays in basketball. Rather than going at the rim looking to make a spectacular, athletic play, guys are looking at the floor to see if someone is going to be there to undercut them. Rather than a tomahawk jam that gets the crowd in a frenzy, we get 2 guys laying on the floor taking an inventory of bodyparts to make sure they are ok, or we get a guy going to the rim trying to stop or avoid a guy who just stepped in the lane, resulting in an ugly shot or pass. How in the world does that help the NBA or make the game better for fans? It doesn’t.

Off the ball defender charges should be eliminated. It should ALWAYS be a block.  It would mean we could get rid of the half circle under the basket since that only applies to off the ball, 2ndary defenders, and we would speed up the game and add highlight plays to every game and reduce the number of injuries suffered by our best players every year.

Well, this rule would definitely benefit the Mavericks, who certainly would like anything to enable them to keep their all-offense style. While I completely agree with his reasoning, I'm not sure this rule would be fair to the defense. In the NBA, its nearly impossible to guard anybody one-on-one. The guys are just to big and athletic. Most of the defense is done on a team basis. Secondary defenders are a key part of that. Now what happens if you have a point guard like, say, Stephon Marbury, who has an ability to get past nearly any defender. Is he then awarded a free pass to the basket since no secondary defenders can make contact without it being a defensive foul? Well, not exactly says Cuban:

we would see the return of the blocked shot. Teams would have to play someone who is willing to contest those drives to the basket and not only would we see highflyers going in for a dunk, but we would get to see Yao,Shaq, KG and the other bigs coming across the paint to stop them. Which woud you rather see, a shotblocker rejecting a shot or getting dunked on, or a guys falling on their butts under the basket. Its a no brainer to me

 I still think secondary defenders should still have the right to stand their ground between a player and the basket and not allow an out-of-control guard to just run into him recklessly with no repercussions.

While I'm not sure Cuban's method would work, I do see the need for something to be done to eliminate the need for a defensive player to purposely try and take charges. My idea is for the referees to be able to call a technical foul on a defender for purposely trying to take charges, i.e. flopping.  This should be considered cheating in the game. These techinicals could occur in many typical situations:

•  If the player is purposely sliding under defenders in the air trying to take a charge, not only is he called for a foul (since he was moving at the time of contact), but also get hit with a technical.
• If a player is part of a previously legal play where he stands there with his hands folded in front of him and then lunges backwards at contact, there would be no offensive foul, and the player would get a technical for not trying to guard the man (hands up, son! Stand your ground!)
• Any time where there is significant acting involved when guarding your man, like flailing backward when a post player backs into you, that would be a technical on the defender.

Now obviously the rules cannot be written like this, all decisions would be left up to the official, completely discretionary. Not every situation can be called the same, but this would give the referees power over those who are out there simply trying to dupe them into calling fouls. A technical would not be any more damaging to the flow of the game than calling an unnecessary charge, and it would serve as a deterrent. Those defenders who make a living on coaxing officials would be found out after a few T's being called on them, and soon they will never think of flopping. Vlade Divac would have to change his whole game.

This type of rule is not unprecedented, in the game of soccer players are recipients of yellow cards (2 and you're gone) for pretending to be fouled, i.e. 'diving'. Not only that, but some leagues can suspend a player after the game if they see something on tape that a referee missed. Such a rule in the NBA would enable defenders to worry about stopping the other team, and not simply how to get hustle points from the coaches from stepping in front of someone and closing their eyes.

It's like he's saying what I'm thinking...

On Tuesday I was stuck in a computer lab at school, and during one of my internet-surfing breaks (which occur about every ten minutes), plastered on the front page of ESPN.com is a picture of Candace Parker, who in case you didn't know, is the High School senior who won the McDonald's All-American Slam Dunk contest. A real live girl. I actually knew who Candace was beforehand, since she's a prep star in the Chicago area (Naperville Central), but I had never seen her play. So after seeing her picture on the *front page* (like, it took up the whole headline section and everything), I was really intrigued to see how these dunks looked, considering that not only did she dunk, she won the whole contest.

So that night on SportsCenter I saw the highlights, and was dumbfounded. The dunks were barely made, and the last one where she did her Dee Brown imitation was as good as me doing my Dikembe Mutumbo impression. They showed the crowd and judges giving her '10's simply because of the impressiveness of a woman performing a dunk at all (and it IS impressive, I'm not saying otherwise). But even without seeing the other dunkers, I could tell right away she did not objectively deserve to win the whole contest. I considered myself duped by the hype, and was mad at myself for not figuring that would happen. I mean, simply look at the Annika Sorenstam hoopla, which had national media salivating over her finishing about 45 strokes out of the lead.

I wasn't really going to talk about it, although I did comment on Eric McClain's post. And I'm glad I didn't yet, especially since the point was articulated much better by a real live journalist, Jason Whitlock:

No disrespect to Ms. Parker, but she was handed the title. Her dunks were unspectacular. She won because the boys in the contest failed to complete their dunks.

Her participation, in fact, undermined the credibility of the contest. Why take it seriously? The people running the all-star game didn't. Eventually, neither did the judges.

Hey, I don't want to sound as intolerant as Vijay Singh. But this is different than Annika Sorenstam visiting the PGA Tour. Sorenstam has the necessary skill to compete with the men on the PGA Tour. Parker has almost none of the skills it takes to compete with boys her age in a dunk contest. I'd rather see Parker compete in the men's game than the dunk contest. She'd have a better chance competing in a game than a dunk contest.

Seriously, Parker dunked as well as an old Larry Bird -- when he had a bad back.

I realize that Parker was being used to drive interest in the event. I realize that sports -- even high school sports -- are nothing more than a vehicle to drive TV ratings. It's all entertainment. I was just disappointed with the unrealistic news coverage of Parker's victory. It was condescending and patronizing.

Her pedestrian dunks didn't advance equality or women's basketball. The judges and the crowd treated her like she'd performed with a disability. Seven judges gave her a perfect 10 on her final dunk. Had a healthy boy completed the same dunks in an all-star dunk contest, he might've been booed off the court.

Is that the equality we're looking for?

Now, unless you have a short memory you can imagine how I feel about his Annika Sorenstam comment, but besides that this selection is EXACTLY what I was thinking after watching the highlights. "The judges and the crowd treated her like she'd performed with a disability." It's just another example of ESPN trying to go beyond the barriers of even common sense to seem progressive. This is completely unrelated, but  let us not forget when they put Women's Basketball scores on the ticker. who hasn't watched and saw Penn St. beat Duke and get all excited....only to see that it was a women's score. Curse them :)

Back to Whitlock's article. He starts out so well, but then falls into the predictable "men are stupid" trap, just to not seem too chauvinistic by daring to criticize such a defining moment for womankind:

There's a strong, militant and active segment of our population that too often measures women by the same standards as men. And who says that's a good thing? Because of the dunk craze TD's [Tim Duncan] game is often overlooked. Think about it. Men's basketball has overdosed on the slam dunk. American players don't have fundamentals because, among other reasons, they spend too much time working on dunks. There are many people who would argue that the dunk has been slowly killing American basketball.

But we see the dunk as an advance for the women's game. Why? Because some women -- in the name of equality -- are dead set on doing every dumb thing we do. The women's game shouldn't be played above the rim. That's not where women excel. It's not what they do best. Their game is different. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

 Oh, those damned men, always entertaining us with those awful dunks. How dare they practice them. If you want to read on, the article then goes on to question why women would  aspire to do anything men do, since men are nothing to be proud of. It gets quite ridiculous, but anyway....

I don't understand why the dunk is looked down upon like this. I often hear Tyson Chandler get criticized for getting all of his points on dunks. Well if that were actually the case, let him try and dunk all the time! It has nearly 100% chance of going in the basket. That's what I call a high percentage shot. Women should be learning and evolving to play above the rim. *That's* progress. It may not be what old-timey Bob Cousy fans enjoy, but I would say that most basketball fans don't mind a Darius Miles' throwdown or two. But I won't get to carried away,  they would also like to see him learn a jump shot....