BS - 666: Welcome To The New Dead Ball Era

[benji]

The 40s and 50s are known as the Dead Ball Era because teams would often stall to protect leads since there was no shot clock.

Now, this decade will now be known as the New Dead Ball Era. Infact, it's so bad, you almost want to strip the title from the 40s and 50s and just give it to every year after 1992-93. Take a look:

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It almost makes you want to vomit. It's no wonder the NBA is getting almost as boring as that stupid AND 1 tour.

Thanks to modern medicine, "what can today's basketball players do better than the players that came before?" Bob Cousy asks, "run, jump, and finish on the fast break. These kids play higher above the rim than anyone ever has. So what kind of offenses do most teams use? They slow the game down. So what are the major weaknesses of the modern player? Dribbling, passing, shooting from the outside. And what are the primary skills you need to play walk-it-up-the-floor, half-court basketball? [Dribbling, passing, and shooting?] Exactly, none of it makes any sense."

Denver is playing at the fastest pace in the league this year. What's sad is half the teams in 1946-47 played at the same or faster pace.

So...what to do about this? Should the league chop seconds off the shot-clock? Should they institute Tom Tolbert's first team to 100 wins rule? Should they expand and enforce the Illegal Offense rule and stop all the stupid 1-4 clearouts?

If anybody says "get rid of Zone Defense" you're missing the point. The zone forces teams to run, unfortunately almost everyone in the league is just walking the ball into them. Sacramento and Dallas can shoot and also like to run, and you never see anyone spring a zone on them. If the zones weren't there the game would slow down even more.

Should the league widen (not lengthen) the court two inches on both sides? Should the league institute that five second backcourt rule from the NCAAs that no one really understands? Should the league hire Vinnie to bust the kneecaps of any coach in the league who won't run?

Or should we just let it get uglier, stupider, slower and more boring because of the stupid mentality that losing 85-80 is somehow better than losing 105-100?

Happy #666 to me!

[Ruff Ryder]

I think that the reason the pace is so slow this era is because of defense. D is now required to play by any coach. Back in the day, you probably could get away with being just a shooter but now D is the main thing and everyone shot from the outside, even though there was no 3pt line. If the pace needs to get faster, the 3-pt line should be shortened, to maybe college level. (20 ft)

In college there are threes all of the time and long rebounds lead to fast breaks. I, myself, prefer the fast paced game, but we don't want it to turn into the rookie challenge or the all-star game, where no one plays real hard until the 4th. I think the shot clock is fine where it is, and I also think the 24 seconds was put on to play into the 48 mins.

It almost makes you want to vomit. It's no wonder the NBA is getting almost as boring as that stupid AND 1 tour.

The pace of the NBA and the AND 1 tour are completely different. On and 1, they don't play for championships, they play for fun and to show off. Embarrassing(spl?) people with fancy dribbling moves and dunking on everyone is how it is supposed to be done. It isn't quite like that in the NBA.



And to conclude, happy 666.

[benji]

The pace of the NBA and the AND 1 tour are completely different. On and 1, they don't play for championships, they play for fun and to show off. Embarrassing(spl?) people with fancy dribbling moves and dunking on everyone is how it is supposed to be done. It isn't quite like that in the NBA.

Yes, but all the 1-4 clearouts is just like it. On that stupid tour generally three-four guys stand around while one guy wastes 15 seconds dribbling around and bouncing the ball of someones head then he does something. The NBA is the same way without the illegal dribbling. Half the players go stand on one side of the court while Iverson, Francis, Kobe, etc. tries to take his man off the dribble, sometimes he gets a pick. Blah, completely boring. Just like the AND 1 tour.

I think that the reason the pace is so slow this era is because of defense. D is now required to play by any coach. Back in the day, you probably could get away with being just a shooter but now D is the main thing and everyone shot from the outside, even though there was no 3pt line.

Nah. The defense hasn't really improved any since the 50s. The increase in defense (which is about 1 point per 100 possessions) is probably attributed to the fact that teams walk right into the defense instead of trying to break it.

As for being a shooter and not playing defense...Pike, Barry brothers, Person, etc. There has always been a place for a guy who can shoot.

Defense hasn't really changed, the same things apply, filter the ball towards the shot blocker. When teams ran you couldn't set up a defense as easily so you had to be smarter in setting up, now you get 15 seconds to set up your defense.

If the pace needs to get faster, the 3-pt line should be shortened, to maybe college level. (20 ft)

Won't work. They already tried shortning it and it slowed things down even more and it made for a lot of guys taking threes who shouldn't have been. A farther out three point line actually creates more space for an offense to operate in.

In college there are threes all of the time and long rebounds lead to fast breaks.

It's not fast breaks, teams today get those, the Nets, Kings, etc. The problem is the other 95% of the time.

I, myself, prefer the fast paced game, but we don't want it to turn into the rookie challenge or the all-star game, where no one plays real hard until the 4th.

Why would it turn into that? It wasn't that way in the 60s, 70s or 80s. They played hard for 48+ minutes in a track meet type game.

And to conclude, happy 666.

Thank you. for you.

[Amphatoast]

3point line to college length would probably increase scoring. from like 33 feet to 20feeet is a huge difference. Players like Yao Ming or Kurt Thomas ( big men with jump shots) will actually have the chance to hit 3pointers

[benji]

It's 23 feet 9 inches...last time they brought it in it didn't help...it would make motion even more difficult because it would pack the players into a area with a 20 foot radius instead of a 24 foot radius.

The problem is not increasing scoring it's increasing the pace, replacing some shots with more lower percentage shots doesn't increase the pace and wouldn't effect scoring much.

[Bill Russell]

Great stuff. I'd like to know, though, how you found about the pace of those 50's, 60's teams. How did you calculate it?

on the # of the Beast

[Old School Fool]

stupid AND 1

SHUT UP!!

Your just angry because...you get dunked on

[The Big Racist]

GET RID OF ZONE DEFENSE

[Alex Italo]

The game is getting more defensive all over the world, not just in the NBA.
The zone defense always existed in FIBA basketball and 20-25 years ago we used to have 100-120pts in 40min games... now we're often having 60-70pts games. The 3pt line in FIBA always was shorter and that was never a problem. Neither the zone defense!

My point of view is that players nowadays are more athletic and more aggresive defensively. When you have two non-athletic players, the most talented gets rid of the less talented one in a easier way. If you have two strong, fast, athletic players talent counts a little less in the equation.

This same aspect is shown in a lot of other team sports, particularly in soccer (look where I live), where many people think that in the past the game was more enjoyable because the scores used to be higher.

[fgrep15]

Yea its happening in many sports, scores are getting better, playrs are getting much more atheletic, and their are more people around the world playing. Like he said, before you'd have soccer games with scores like
5-2, 6-1, 5-4 stuff like that, but now most games average like 2-1.

We'll just have to get used to it. Not everyone back in the day was a good shooter, not everyone now id going to be a good shooter, boo. What you gonna do.

[benji]

The game is getting more defensive all over the world, not just in the NBA.
The zone defense always existed in FIBA basketball and 20-25 years ago we used to have 100-120pts in 40min games... now we're often having 60-70pts games. The 3pt line in FIBA always was shorter and that was never a problem. Neither the zone defense!

My point of view is that players nowadays are more athletic and more aggresive defensively.

Then your point of view is wrong. Defense has only dropped one point in the last twenty years.

It's the pace...THE PACE...not the defense...THE PACE...

The one point improvement in defense is the result of walking the ball into a defense and not any improvement in defense.

Teams have cut 25-30 possessions off from the 60s and 10-15 possessions from the 80s. That's the reason for the drop in scoring.

[fgrep15]

Well its the coaching then, or maybe players just aren't fit anymore and don't want to play run and gun.

[Matthew]

Stats, like opinions, arent facts. If this was true, John stockton would be the best point gaurd in nba history... there are always mitigating factors to a game of basketball, like who the goto guy is, how good a player is defensivly etc etc. Stats mean a little, but they arent the be all or end all of discussions.

[Stevan]

I don't think you can really measure defence anyway. Good defence is bodying up on somone, cutting off their path to the hoop, taking their penetration on the chest basically. Whether or not it is reflected in the stats, defence has improved, maybe in part due to strength and athleticism. Fuck the 50's. If Bob Cousy "the magician" with the dribbling skills of your average 13 year old could dribble circles around people then there's something wrong with the defence. But having said that I think it's only a small part of why scoring has gone down.

The game is more strategic than ever. Every possession is important, all these coaches, scouting, video footage. Hell 15 years ago the Bulls were putting together video packages on every little detail of a player's game. If he was doing something minor wrong, they put together a tape of 'lowlights' and showed him to correct the problem. There were statisticians who worked out what percentages certain players shot from certain spots on the floor, in order to force a certain player to turn baseline rather than go middle for example. That was the detail 15 years ago, it would be just as intense if not more intense now. Like other people have said, the game has evolved just like other sports.
Teams choose to slow the game down and sometimes they have to. The game is boring but the stats are great fun

[Alex Italo]

Then your point of view is wrong. Defense has only dropped one point in the last twenty years.

My point of view isn't the definitive answer to what have happened to the game, but certainly it's part of the problem.
If you get pictures or movies from the 50's or 60's you'll notice that pro players weren't so different from regular people back then. Nowadays if you compare a pro with an amateur or a regular person, you'll see a greater difference. Yes, the players are better prepared phisically and the strategies for defense are more complex, so the game has evolved.

Unfortunely, destroying is far more easier than creating so
the game became defensive minded... When I had my first contact with the NBA I was surprised to know that crowds chanted for defense when the objective of the game was score more than the opponent.

Ben, you may be right about the pace... but I think the pace is just another piece of the puzzle. It's hard to play a careless run and gun style of play against a well positioned defensive team, so teams have to spend more time setting plays.

Defense has only dropped one point in the last twenty years.

I have a degree in Statistics. It's what I do for a living. It's why I know that numbers may be deceiving if you don't consider all the variables involved because many of them have co-related effects in the result.
You have to consider that besides all the evolution in defense, offense may have evolved, after all look at dribbling and shooting skills of players nowadays. When you watch a rewind old game, the game looks clumsy sometimes.

We'll never know (it's just especulation) but probably teams of the 21st century could easily beat any team in the 50s, 60s, 70s in their prime...
It's just the fact the game has evolved.

[The Game]

Stats, like opinions, arent facts. If this was true, John stockton would be the best point gaurd in nba history...