WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT BASKETBALL
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The lesson of basketball is that strategy is an adjustment waiting to be necessary.
There is not a coach alive that cannot be made more conservative by a shoe contract.
A long term contract is a technique for making sure a coach will never have to work as hard as he did to earn it.
An OAD is a player with a low foundation and a high ceiling playing 3/4 speed 1/2 the time.
Throwing 9.5" diameter balls 20’9” into 18" diameter holes ten feet in the air for three points still makes more sense than driving a 1.68” diameter golf ball 250 yards into a cross wind with a gob of aluminum at the end of a graphite stick, so help me god.
A basketball coach is someone that dedicates his life to doing what the inventor of the game said one should not do, and wishing after every loss that he had not.
When a person karate chops someone in the temple, he is said to have assaulted someone. When a player karate chops someone in the NCAA Finals he is said to play for Duke.
Naismith invented the game to keep track athletes fit and uninjured before track season. Now track players do not play the sport and half of everyone that does play gets hurt.
Naismith required players to pass the ball and not run with it to minimize injury. Dribbling was added out of some deep resentment of father figures.
Naismith used peach baskets with the bottoms in them and raised ten feet to keep players from guarding the basket. Now we use AAU ball.
If you talk about basketball long enough, you will doubt coaches know what they are doing. If you talk about it too long, you will think you do.
Time outs are where coaches give players new strategies that do not survive the first pass.
Naismith tried to make the game as slow as possible, and those that have followed have speeded it up to the point that if anyone slows it down they are said to be wrecking the game Naismith invented.
When you play an opponent, you play the game of basketball. When you play Duke, you play the referees.
Raymond Carver would have understood the temptation KU fans feel to drink after early exits, and would have made a fine collection of short stories about the pain.
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@jaybate-1.0 I think we can add Kentucky to the list Duke is on by themselves. Major major bias there.
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Seems like it.
All of March Madness felt like a banana republic.
I hope I live long enough to see the appearances end.
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Often, we try to think what would Self say? Or what would Roy Williams do? In the case of Duke, it isn’t “what would Coach K say”, but rather: what would Coach K say…to the refs!
