Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="OttoMets, post: 1776467, member: 716"] Maybe I'm in the minority on this one (but I'd have company in that minority, based on what I hear from hoops friends), but I'd love to watch a bunch of 2.5-hour slopfests in November and December if it meant that the rules were going to be enforced less selectively for the full season. I know the kids would adjust and we'd start watching clean basketball again come conference season: no more Trevor Cooney shuffle, no more football play in the post, no more hands/forearms/hips on the driver, no more free pass for fouling a guy as he makes a dunk. As much as those Jim Burr and-one anticipation calls were frustrating in the '80s and '90s, at least they reflected some institutional understanding that basketball's not intended to be a physical game. I'd be happy to trend back in that direction, even if we suffered through some 75-foul games during the breaking-in period. (Note that I'm not including the block/charge on here, though that's got something to do with the deterioration of the game; I have no idea how to fix that one.) Anyway, it seems that a lot of coaches and the string-pullers at the top of the pyramid disagree with me. "Flow" trumps clean play. Now, as far as player development goes, I agree that that's a huge culprit and certainly not the officials' responsibility. It'd be nice if high school coaches could teach well-rounded skills to their players without AAU distractions; better still would be a educational system at the college level that prioritized things like "use this hand for a lay-up from the left side" or "use the glass when shooting from this angle" rather than burning up practice time on teaching sophisticated defensive schemes that end up bogging down the game. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?