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The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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What ails the game

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  • What ails the game

    This is a few months' old, but is an interesting read about the NBA game. The link from the NYTimes Magazine has expired, but here is the article in full:


    New York Times Magazine
    February 13, 2005
    Clang!
    By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE

    Behold the slam dunk, the pulse-quickening, throw-it-down, in-your-face signature move of the National Basketball Association. The dunk is a declaration of power and dominance, of machismo. In a team game, an ensemble of five players a side, it is an expression of self. In a sport devoted to selling sneakers, the dunk is a marketing tour de force, the money shot at the end of every worthy basketball sequence. (When you see the shoes in the 30-second spot, what is the wearer of those shoes always doing?) Next weekend in Denver, the cultural moment that is the N.B.A. All-Star Game will take place, an event set annually amid a weekend of concerts, lavish parties and showy displays of fashion. On such a big stage (and with defensive standards momentarily relaxed), the game itself is sure to be a veritable dunkathon, a string of self-satisfied throw-downs by the league's biggest stars. If I had my way, at the conclusion of the game the dunk would be taken out of commission. Banned as a first step toward rescuing a game that has strayed far from its roots, fundamentals and essential appeal.

    The addiction to the dunk is emblematic of the direction in which basketball -- like all major pro sports, really -- has been heading: less nuance, more explosive force. Greater emphasis on individual heroics and personal acclaim, less on such quaint values as teamwork and sacrifice. Basketball's muscled-up, minimally skilled dunker is the equivalent of baseball's steroid-fueled home-run slugger or the guided-missile N.F.L. linebacker, his helmet aimed at anything that moves. It is all part of a video-game aesthetic being transplanted into our real games: the athlete as action hero, an essentially antisocial lone wolf set apart from teammates, dedicated to his own personal glory and not bound by much of anything, even the laws of gravity. (Last month the sports media giant ESPN entered into an $850 million partnership with Electronic Arts, the video-game company that turns real-life athletes into digitized figures, further blurring the distinction between flesh-and-blood athletes and the superhumans we have come to expect in the sports arena.)

    In November, an ugly incident, a brawl between N.B.A. players and fans in Detroit, led some commentators to conclude that pro basketball is populated by thugs. (My online search of the keywords ''N.B.A.'' and ''thug'' a month later produced more than 400 hits.) But the fight was an aberration; N.B.A. players are, in my experience, as gentlemanly as (or more so than) athletes in other pro sports. The N.B.A. doesn't have a thug problem; it has a basketball problem. Its players are the best athletes in all of pro sports -- oversize, swift and agile -- but weirdly they are also the first to have devolved to a point where they can no longer play their own game.

    Unbelievable as it may seem, you can make millions in today's N.B.A. without having even one semireliable way to put the ball in the basket -- no jump shot, no hook shot, no little 12-foot bank shot. In fact, the entire area between dunking range and the three-point line, what used to be prime real estate for scoring, is now a virtual dead zone. (The three-point shot is the other one of the N.B.A.'s twin addictions, but more on that later.) Richard Hamilton of the Detroit Pistons, last year's N.B.A. champion, has been just about knighted for his ability to consistently sink the ''midrange'' jumper, which used to be an entry-level requirement into the N.B.A. -- if you couldn't do that, you had to find another line of work. But not anymore. This generation of players is so young, so green, so unschooled (four years of college is now exceedingly rare), so raised on a diet of ESPN highlights that many have nothing but so-called N.B.A. bodies.

    Last year, the New Jersey Nets scored 56 points in a playoff game. Fifty-six! ''We just missed shots,'' said a Nets player. No kidding. Wilt Chamberlain once averaged more than 50 points a game, all by himself. Two decades ago, teams averaged about 110 points a game; this year, the figure is about 96 points per game (which is actually 3 points better than last season). Presented with players bent on executing highlight-reel dunks -- but who otherwise do not pass well, shoot well or move effectively to open spots on the floor -- many N.B.A. coaches have slowed the pace to a plodding, unwatchable crawl. And the more important the game, the more slowly it is played. ''It's an incongruity,'' Rod Thorn, the president of the Nets, told me. ''We have better athletes than ever, but they play at a slower pace. The reason is they're not as sound fundamentally, so the coaches feel that the faster they play, the more mistakes they'll make.''

    The dunk, by the way, has been banned once before, for reasons other than the one I am proposing. In 1965, a 7-foot-1 basketball player of uncommon grace and coordination graduated from Power Memorial Academy in New York City and enrolled at U.C.L.A., then the dominant force in college basketball. In his first season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) led U.C.L.A. to a national championship. Faced with the probability that no other team would have any chance at a title for the duration of Abdul-Jabbar's stay, the N.C.A.A. outlawed ''basket stuffing,'' aka the dunk. No one said straight out that the new rule was meant to handicap the young giant, but it immediately became known as the Alcindor rule. U.C.L.A. still thrived, winning national championships in both of Abdul-Jabbar's remaining two seasons. ''After the so-called Alcindor rule was passed . . . some skeptics said he wouldn't be as great,'' John Wooden, the legendary U.C.L.A. coach, observed years later. ''They ignored his tremendous desire and determination. He worked twice as hard on banking shots off the glass, his little hook across the lane and his turnaround jumper.''

    In other words, Abdul-Jabbar, already skilled, became even more so. His ''sky hook'' -- released 5 to 10 feet from the basket, with his right arm fully extended and the ball cradled in one hand -- remains the most devastatingly effective, and most beautiful, shot in the history of the game. A close second, in terms of grace, might be the ''finger roll'' of Julius Erving, in which high-flying Dr. J glided above defenders and let the ball roll toward the hoop with his palm facing up, as if he were a waiter extending a serving tray. It is no coincidence that Erving played his college basketball within the years (1967-76) that the Alcindor rule was in effect: the finger roll is the kind of move you invent when the option of just powering it to the basket and stuffing it is not available.

    arl Monroe, a stylish guard who played for the New York Knicks in the 1970's, employed ''tempo changes only Thelonious Monk would understand,'' the music and social critic Nelson George has written. Many others over the years have seen basketball as jazz, an apt comparison when the game is played well -- as an amalgam of creativity, individuality, collaboration, improvisation and structure. Much of what makes basketball interesting is the give and take, the constant tension, between individual expression and team concepts. On the best teams, players take their turns as soloists, but not at the expense of others in the quintet.

    The most obvious aspect of basketball, especially at the N.B.A. level, is the extraordinary athleticism of the players. What is less apparent is that the outcome of games, more so than in any other major sport, is determined by a series of social interactions. Basketball coaches have long taught that the ball must be ''shared'' -- passed from player to player until it ends up in the hands of the one with the best possible shot. Players are urged constantly to ''talk'' on defense -- communicate about the alignment and movements of offensive players -- and to ''give help,'' meaning that a defender is not just responsible for the man he is guarding but also for sliding over to help a teammate who has been beaten by his own man. With just 5 players on the court at a time and rosters that consist of just 12 men, N.B.A. teams are intimate groups, extended families almost, and the ones that succeed cover for individual weaknesses and stress their strengths. They play as if they are aware of, and care for, one another.

    One reason that fans of a certain age remember and still cherish the great Knicks teams of the early 70's is because they seemed to be such a functional, appealing social unit. The guards Walt (Clyde) Frazier, Dick Barnett and Earl Monroe were sort of urban hipsters. Bill Bradley, the dead-eye shooter and future United States senator, was an Ivy League wonk nicknamed Dollar Bill by his teammates for the presumed cost of the bargain-basement suits he wore. Willis Reed and Dave DeBusschere did the dirty work under the basket and were so blue-collar in their approach to the game that it wasn't hard to imagine them carrying lunch buckets to some M.T.A. railyard. They meshed seamlessly on the court, elevating the concept of sharing the ball (Coach Red Holzman's mantra was ''hit the open man'') to something like an art form. The same could be said of the Los Angeles Lakers of Magic Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar in the 80's, the so-called Showtime teams. The multitalented Johnson, in particular, was understood to have sacrificed his own scoring in order to involve teammates in a free-flowing, high-scoring offense.

    Few teams play like that anymore because basketball culture in America is broken in ways that go beyond the addiction to dunking or the decline in fundamentals like shooting. It has always been possible to identify extraordinary basketball talent at very young ages. The game's phenoms present early, like female gymnasts or violin prodigies (and unlike athletes in, say, football or baseball, where seemingly talented 12-year-olds often just fizzle out). What has changed in basketball is that a whole constellation has been created for the phenoms; they are separated out and sent off to dwell in a world of their own. An industry of tout sheets and recruiting services identifies them as early as fifth or sixth grade, and they begin traveling a nationwide circuit of tournaments with their high-powered youth teams. In the summer, the best high-school players attend showcases sponsored by the big sneaker companies. (The latest of the prodigies earned cover notice on Sports Illustrated in January. ''Meet Demetrius Walker,'' the headline said. ''He's 14 Years Old. You're Going to Hear From Him.'')

    Quite understandably, these young stars, rather than being prone to sharing the ball, are apt to believe they own it. ''I'm amazed when guys make it out of that system with any sense of perspective at all,'' said Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks coach now coaching the Houston Rockets. ''It's not natural to be that catered to at such a young age. We've got kids being named the 'best 11-year-old basketball player in America.' How the hell do you recover from that?''

    As Van Gundy knows too well, many do not recover. The N.B.A.'s upper tier, its elite performers (the American ones, as opposed to the increasing number of foreign-born players), now typically come out of a system in which they have been pointed toward the ''next level'' since grammar school. They have never played in the present tense. Their high-school coach and teammates may well have been secondary to their peer group of nationally recognized megastars. If they stopped off in college before turning pro, it was probably for just a year or two. It is not often easy to coach such a player because he is likely to see himself as a finished product, in no need of instruction, polishing or discipline. (My favorite college coach, John Chaney of Temple University, recently benched a couple of players because they showed up for the team bus without the winter hats he requires in cold weather. Unsurprisingly, Chaney rarely lands any of the nation's most coveted recruits.)

    Stephon Marbury, the 27-year-old, $14-million-a-year point guard of the New York Knicks and one of the most celebrated schoolboy players ever, is in many ways the embodiment of modern basketball culture. Even among other very good players in his Coney Island neighborhood (including his three older brothers, who all went on to play college ball), he stood out as gifted. As a ninth grader, he was an instant starter at Abraham Lincoln High, the perennial New York City powerhouse. A basketball luminary since grammar school, he had been so eagerly awaited that after just one high-school game, Newsday proclaimed that the ''era of Stephon Marbury'' had begun.

    One night earlier this season at the press table at Madison Square Garden, I was seated next to Jeff Lenchiner, the editor of InsideHoops.com, an online magazine for basketball aficionados. During a lull in the game, he turned his laptop computer toward me and directed me to watch an electronic file of Stephon Marbury highlights, an array of breathtaking moves: crossover dribbles that left defenders looking as if they were stuck in cement; spinning, twisting drives to the basket; soaring dunks. The last clip showed the 6-foot-2 Marbury rising up for a jump shot over a taller defender. At his peak, just as the ball left his hand, his sneakers looked to be about three feet above the floor. ''Look at him!'' Lenchiner shouted. ''It's like he's in a video game. He's got thrusters!''

    Marbury played one year of college basketball at Georgia Tech before jumping to the N.B.A. A dazzling ball handler, utterly fearless about driving to the hoop against bigger defenders, he has compiled high scoring averages and high assist totals (an assist is a pass that leads directly to a basket) in the pros while at the same time often leaving the strong impression that he does not play well with others. But then again, the concept of being part of a team is one that seems to elude a great many N.B.A. players. Prodigies as kids, they see themselves as virtuosos, leading men with ''supporting casts'' (a favorite phrase of Michael Jordan's) rather than players with teammates.

    On his first pro team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, Marbury chafed at sharing the spotlight with another young talent, Kevin Garnett, and forced a trade. Marbury has yet to play on a team that advanced past one round of the playoffs, even as, in the last three of his four N.B.A. stops (in nine seasons), he has been his team's unquestioned marquee performer. Marbury this year publicly proclaimed himself the best point guard in the N.B.A. The Knicks promptly lost 14 of their next 16 games, and the coach, Lenny Wilkins, resigned along the way.

    Few of the N.B.A.'s younger stars want to share top billing. Tracy McGrady left the Toronto Raptors rather than stay with another superstar, Vince Carter (who also happened to be his cousin). Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers is much admired for his grit and competitive spirit, but it is not unusual for him to fire up 30 or more shots in a game in which no teammate takes as many as 15. Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal famously could not get along in Los Angeles, and with Shaq's trade, Kobe has been left on a vastly inferior Lakers team, a trade-off he seemed willing to make.

    Marbury was among a dozen N.B.A. players who went to Athens last August to represent the United States at the Summer Olympics. Since N.B.A. players began competing at the Olympics in 1992, the Americans had never lost a game, let alone failed to win the gold medal. But in Athens, the U.S. truly dominated only one game -- against the scrappy but overmatched Angolans. The N.B.A. players, who collectively earn more than $100 million a year, suffered relatively close losses to Lithuania and Argentina. They squeaked by Greece, which did have the home-court advantage. Stunningly, the U.S. Olympians were blown off the court by the commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

    In the midst of this tournament, as it was going downhill, Isiah Thomas, the president of the Knicks, called Marbury from New York. Marbury's game had been muted; he wasn't taking many shots or being very aggressive. His defense was so lax that the Puerto Rican point guard, Carlos Arroyo, scored 24 points on him (as compared with Marbury's 2). ''I was just honest with him,'' Thomas said, recalling the conversation. ''I told him he was playing like'' something that can't be reprinted here. Thomas advised Marbury: ''Remember who you are.'' In other words, be the man, be the wizard of Coney Island. But only one person at a time, of course, can be that kind of player.

    After his talk with Thomas, Marbury responded with a record-breaking barrage of three-pointers in a close victory over Spain, nearly single-handedly preserving the U.S. medal hopes. But the next night he failed to make any three-pointers, and the Americans lost the game to Argentina, and with it any hope for a gold medal. (They settled for a bronze.)

    The Olympic basketball tournament amounted to an indictment of U.S. basketball. If you had just watched the games in Athens and knew nothing of basketball history, it would have been reasonable to conclude that the sport had been invented and popularized in, say, Argentina or Italy -- and was just starting to catch on in the United States. Other teams passed better, shot more accurately, played better defense. (Foul shooting is generally regarded as a matter of discipline and repetition. With enough practice, most players can become proficient. It's worth noting that in Athens, the gold-medal-winning U.S. women's team made 76 percent of its foul shots while the men connected on a woeful 67 percent.)

    The American men, in defeat, chose to focus on how much better the rest of the world's players have become and how unfamiliar the U.S. players were with one another and the somewhat different style and rules of international basketball. The larger point, they would not face: after a month together and with the noted basketball teacher Larry Brown of the Detroit Pistons as their coach, they still played as strangers. Seasoned jazz musicians can pick up together in a lounge and play the standards and sound pretty damn good -- they would know all the changes in ''Stompin' at the Savoy'' -- but the American basketballers had no common basketball language. Five old heads on lunch hour at a gym in North Philly or Harlem could have meshed better.

    his season, some good things are starting to happen in the N.B.A., possibly because the Olympic debacle was such an eye-opener. Scoring has started to edge up for the first time in years, and some coaches have begun to trust their teams to play a fast-breaking style. After years of exporting the game, the N.B.A. is importing not just players but also a style of play from abroad. The high-scoring Phoenix Suns have been the surprise team of the N.B.A. season so far. Their coach, Mike D'Antoni, holds dual Italian and U.S. citizenship and has spent most of his career playing and coaching in Europe. The Suns' point guard, the master orchestrator of their run-and-gun offense, is Steve Nash, a Canadian. (The Suns signed him as a free agent to replace their point guard of last season, Stephon Marbury.)

    The San Antonio Spurs do not play at the frenzied pace of the Suns, but they are one of the N.B.A.'s best teams and, within the coaching fraternity, probably the most admired. On offense, they are a five-man whirl of movement. A player who passes the ball cuts to the basket. The player receiving a pass either shoots, makes a move toward the hoop or quickly passes to someone else. They execute the old-school ''give and go'' play -- a player passes to a teammate, cuts, then gets it right back. ''The Spurs are the gold standard,'' Van Gundy said.

    As the Spurs took the floor for a November game in San Antonio against the Knicks, I looked in my program and noted the backgrounds of the players in their starting lineup. Rasho Nesterovic is from Slovenia; Tony Parker, from France; Manu Ginobili, star of the gold-medal-winning Olympic team, from Argentina; and Tim Duncan, the Spurs power forward and best player, from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Among the Spurs starters, only Bruce Bowen was born on United States soil, and he spent four years after college toiling for minor-league teams in the U.S. and on the European pro circuit. A key reserve, Beno Udrih, is another Slovenian.

    For Marbury, playing the Spurs must have felt like being back in Athens. Their style is sometimes called Euro-ball, but it is really nothing new: constant motion on offense, hit the open man. It's the game that used to be played in the U.S. but was forsaken for a more static style.

    The Knicks got off to an early lead, spurred by one of Marbury's highlight-reel moments: he stole a pass, raced the ball toward his offensive end and shoveled a no-look, behind-the-back, left-handed pass to Nazr Mohammed, who finished the sequence with a dunk. Eventually, though, the Spurs' teamwork and Duncan's strong inside presence took over. What kept me fascinated, even after the game was no longer competitive, was that the two teams played according to entirely different geometries. The Spurs made a series of angled passes that usually culminated with the final one advancing the ball closer to the basket. The Knicks' offense consisted of Marbury using his speed off the dribble to dart inside the lane, and then, when the Spurs defense collapsed on him, he passed the ball back out, farther from the basket -- often to beyond the three-point line where teammates were standing still, awaiting a pass.

    ''They do that even on a fast break, not just the Knicks but most of the rest of the teams,'' Walt Frazier explained to me. A Knicks broadcaster now, Frazier diagrammed this on a tablecloth as he spoke. He was quite agitated. ''One guy's got the ball in the middle, and these two guys on the wing here, they should be cutting to the basket, right? But, no, here they go way out here, to three-point land, and they get the ball and shoot it. You're 6 feet from the hoop; why pass it back out 25 feet? And then people wonder why teams can't score 80 points.''

    I am guessing that the league's commissioner, David Stern, the best and the brightest of all sports executives, will not take my suggestion and decommission the dunk shot. It's too much of a crowd-pleaser -- just two points, but so much money in the bank. But I do hope that college and high-school basketball will again ban dunking, so that players on the way up have some chance of acquiring something other than a repertory of slam dunks.

    The three-point shot is another matter altogether. No reason it should not just disappear. ''The dagger!'' announcers sometimes call it, as if it were the shock-and-awe of the hardwood, a weapon that brings opposing players to their knees. The three-pointer is a corruption of the sport, a perversion of a century of basketball wisdom that held that the whole point of the game was to advance the ball closer to the basket. If its intent was to increase scoring, the three-point shot definitely has not done that, and if it was to make the game more wide open and exciting, it hasn't accomplished that either. The unintended consequence of the three-pointer has been to make the game more static as players ''spot up'' outside the arc, waiting for the pass that will lead to the dagger.

    ichael Jeffrey Jordan is almost certainly more popular than Jesus,'' Playboy declared in 1992. ''What's more, he has better endorsement deals.''

    Money, of course, is at the root of many, probably most, of the N.B.A.'s ills. Because Jordan established that one man can become a brand unto himself, that he can personally elevate a company -- no one was more responsible for making Nike into a worldwide cultural force -- the N.B.A. is now the only pro league in which a player can become an endorsement king without playing for a winning team. If he's a spectacular enough dunker, it can happen, even if he plays in some N.B.A. outpost.

    Jordan created this world, but it's important to remember that he did not grow up in it. Until he was deep into high school, few outside of his hometown had heard of him. When he needed coaching, he was still listening -- which is part of what made him worth watching. The same cannot be said of many of his heirs in the sneaker-shilling game.

    The power of the shoe deal (and the hoped-for shoe deal) in basketball cannot be overstated. It induces kids to skip college and go right to the N.B.A. because endorsement money from Nike and other companies can dwarf the salaries they make from playing ball. The shoe deal is specifically what is making the N.B.A. younger -- which, in turn, is what is degrading the quality of play.

    Sebastian Telfair of Coney Island was a phenom from an early age, pointed toward bigger things and therefore on the radar of the sneaker companies -- just like his cousin, Stephon Marbury. He went to an Adidas-sponsored camp. The teams he played for as a kid, right up through high school, were outfitted in Adidas. Last spring, he took the shoe money, a reported $15 million -- from Adidas, of course -- and skipped right from Lincoln High to the N.B.A. ''I've been Adidas all my life,'' he said at the press conference to announce his N.B.A. ascension. I saw him play the other night. He looked small and lost.

    snapshot from today's N.B.A.: the locker room of the New York Knicks, where in each dressing cubicle a necktie hangs on a hook, pre-knotted. Isiah Thomas, the team president, has ordered players to wear suits and ties to the arenas, a grown-up enough thing. But during games, a team functionary goes around knotting the ties so that when a player gets dressed afterward, all he has to do is slip the tie over his head and tighten it rather than actually having to make the knot himself.

    One other snapshot: the Knicks bench, with 12 players, 1 head coach and 6 assistant coaches. The Dallas Mavericks have employed as many as 10 assistants, nearly 1 per player. I checked into how many assistants Red Holzman had with the old Knicks. The answer: none. He coached by himself. It was explained to me by people around the league that in the modern N.B.A., a half-dozen or more assistant coaches are needed to help fill in the gaps for young players. In essence, they teach remedial basketball for millionaires.

    What the N.B.A. needs, most of all, is to get older. Last summer, eight first-round draft choices were high-school kids; four were college seniors. There are some true prodigies out there, young men ready to go straight from seventh-period English to the N.B.A. But not that many. The most notable recent one is LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who somehow survived intense high-school fame to emerge as a mature, team-oriented professional basketball player.

    For most, though, the N.B.A. is a bad place to learn, no matter how many coaches are available as tutors. The league is increasingly stocked with athletes who might have ripened in college -- if they had not been picked so young. They end up stunted. The players are paid, but the fans, and the game, are being cheated.

    Michael Sokolove, author of ''The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw,'' is a contributing writer for the magazine.



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  • #2
    Re: What ails the game

    I think banning the dunk would doom the NBA.

    But I also believe it's way overused and overhyped...Give me Reggie Miller's and Ray Allen's games any day over the flashy dunks guys'.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: What ails the game

      Originally posted by MSA2CF
      I think banning the dunk would doom the NBA.

      But I also believe it's way overused and overhyped...Give me Reggie Miller's and Ray Allen's games any day over the flashy dunks guys'.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: What ails the game

        the success of And1 proves that dunks and showmanship sell just as well (or better) as/than fundamentals, nationwide. This small sampling also shows that Indiana fans would rather see team ball and sharpshooting than dunking and chest-thumping.

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