FAVORING ONE STYLE OVER ANOTHER
Dumars put together a Pistons team that won an NBA championship in 2004 and made a return to the Finals in 2005. That team would have a harder time playing its defensive style in today’s game, Dumars said.
“We could still compete, but it would be a lot tougher.”
As one of the top executives in the league, Dumars is hesitant to criticize the changes. He articulates his misgivings cautiously, but he makes it clear that the new rules may not allow for much diversity of play.
“I think the game is best played when everyone is allowed to play to their strengths,” he said. “I don’t think any one style should be elevated over another style.”
He said the league was at its best back in the late 80s and early 90s.
“There were different styles. The Lakers had their Showtime style, getting out and running. We had our physical style as the Pistons. The Celtics had their style, as did the Bulls. There wasn’t anyone pushing for one style of play. That made it entertaining. When we played the Lakers, it was a battle of styles, their running against our physical game.”
Dumars said that clash of styles made for great basketball, great entertainment for the fans.
His comments beg the question: Has the league eliminated a defensive style with its new format?
OVERREACTION
Hall of Famer Rick Barry, a keen observer of the game, said he would love to see players of the past getting to attack the basket under the new officiating.
“They’d score a lot more,” he said.
Barry called the new rules interpretation “on overreaction by the league to the low scoring teams that have arisen over the last 15 years.”
Actually the league was perhaps trying to remedy the wrong problem, Barry said.
The problem of low scoring is that coaches with less talented teams, beginning with Mike Fratello back in the 80s, put “an emphasis on ball control, on keeping down the number of possessions. That was the way Fratello kept his teams in ball games. It was the smart thing to do to win.”
Soon other coaches, who needed to win to avoid getting fired, began copying Fratello’s approach.
With that slower style also came the rise of muscular – some say illegal – defenses, such as Dumars’ “Bad Boy” Pistons and Pat Riley’s New York Knicks.
The combination of a slower tempo and the muscular defense turned the NBA’s running game into a half-court battle.
Rather than calling touch fouls, the NBA really should have considered shortening the shot clock to 20 or even 18 seconds, Barry said. “That would speed the game up.”
Still, Barry, a prodigious scorer, admits to being angered by hand-checking defenses back in the 70s. And the modern game had become dominated by hand-checking and other physical ploys.
“With the way the game was being played, how much skill does it take to hold and push and shove and grab excessively?” Barry asked. “Now, with the new rules, the athletic players are much more exciting for the fans to watch.”
THE ADJUSTMENT?
Rod Thorn concedes that the increased foul calls were a negative last season because a parade of free throws ultimately slows the tempo of a game and subtracts from the quality of basketball.
“Once the players get used to it, they’ll adjust,” he said.
The changes will not bring the end of defense as we know it, Thorn said. “The good defensive teams are still good. It’s just more difficult to cover those wing players, there’s no doubt about it.”
It does, however, raise questions about the style of defense. Teams that like ball pressure are already rethinking their approach.
Both Tex Winter and Joe Dumars agree that there will be adjustments, just as they agree that now that the NBA has found some new offensive life, there will be no turning back to the old ways.
So the upcoming season becomes a matter of how teams, coaches and players adjust to a new game.
Dumars, always a stoic as a player, takes the same approach as an executive.
“Everybody is going to have to adjust to how the game is being called,” he said. “There’s no sense in complaining about it because it’s not going to change. That’s been the history of the league. The game changes and you have to make adjustments.”
Teams will have to adjust their personnel, coaches will have to adjust their strategies and tactics, and players will have to adjust their play, Dumars said.
There will be adjustments before the season, before games, even during games, he added.
Winter, though, thinks adjustments should not be made just by players and coaches.
He thinks officials still need to adjust how they call the game. They can’t make it a sport of touch fouls.
“It’s pretty hard to play defense against these quicker guards without touching them a little bit,” Winter said. “I think the officials are going to have to make an adjustment too. They can’t call all those touch fouls.”
A big issue for Winter’s Lakers is how the guards will play defensively. Traditionally, Phil Jackson’s teams have featured lots of ball pressure. That means the Lakers’ pressure style has to shift.
“I think you have to play more of a containing defense,” explained Winter. “You can still put some pressure on the offense. You can contain them and slow the ball up.”
But the new guidelines “change how you force turnovers,” Winter explained. “You can’t be as aggressive as you’d like to be with your hands. You can’t be ‘into’ the guy as much.”
As a result, defense now becomes a matter of waiting for the offensive player to make a mistake, rather than forcing a turnover, Winter said.
The Lakers would like to exert the kind of ball pressure they used to deploy when Derek Fisher wore the Forum Blue and Gold.
But the new guidelines are still murky, Winter said.
Before games, officials have visited with teams to explain the new approach, Winter said.
“They come in and tell us all this stuff. Then the first four or five plays of the game, you see them doing just the opposite from what they said. You don’t know what they’re going to call. So you have to adjust accordingly, depending what’s going on from game to game, even half to half.”
Barry agreed immediately, citing several incidents in the playoffs where veteran officials made questionable touch calls that had substantial impact on the outcome of a series.
Still, all in all, Barry says he likes the direction the league is taking toward eliminating hooliganism. Hockey finally did that, which now allows fans to see the brilliance of the world’s fastest, most athletic, skaters, Barry said.
As for Dumars, he’s already begun his adjustments. He signed Flip Murray in the offseason, primarily because he’s a young guard who knows how to move his feet and stay in front of an opponent with a killer crossover and lightning moves.
Dumars knows he’s got to find defenders who know that they can move their feet and look the opponent in the eye. They just can’t touch.
