They Don't Have Power Plays In Basketball . . . Right?

Whaddafuck?

I've gone through the rulebook and the ref's guidebook (both available on NBA.com as PDF files, invaluable ammunition in a bar fight), and none of the scenarios listed in the ref's guidebook cover what to do if a team has an extra man on the court and the refs don't notice it before that team scores.

Okay, so we lack precedent. In the spirit of fair play, what is the correct ruling? What's the right thing to do?

1. Basket is discounted and the points are taken off that team's score.

2. A technical foul is assessed to the team. Opposing team shoots uncontested free throw and retains posession.

3. Resume play.

According to the officials present -- who according to the letter of NBA rules have the final say -- the basket was scored before the error was caught and the basket counts.

Bullshit, say I. That troika of grayshirts should be suspended and fined and locked in a room alone with Kevin Garnett for ten minutes. I'm sure Doc Rivers will agree to have him muzzled; you'll probably survive. That field goal came about where one team posessed an unfair advantage over the other due to a clear and unquestionable violation of the rules; ergo, the basket should not count.

If a contest isn't fair, it's meaningless. It stops being a sport and starts being playacting. Having refs when all you want to do is watch ten guys duke it out -- and all the ten guys want to do is play -- is a pain. Why should the players and fans tolerate a league that can't make sure everyone plays fair?

Another day in NBA infamy.
-BJ

We're Having Fun Now

Ahhh . . . that's better.

It's interesting -- one could take the Mavs' Summer League so far as an example of team cohesion. In the course of three games we go from an almighty ass-whuppin to a game worthy of some chest-beating. Shan (you pronounce that Shane, Misters Maggot-Brained Announcers) Foster and Reyshawn Terry both looked salty. The team spent a lot less time in Offensive Half Court Hell; defensively they were a wall.

I don't think it was an even matchup, to be completely fair. This was the Timberwolves' first Summer League game, and they had a lot of the same problems as the Mavs did at their inauspicious debut.

I hadn't taken that into consideration. A lot of these guys are first-year players, or they've been overseas (I can't even imagine playing a sport at any pro level while living in another country). And they're trying to gell as a team given about a week's worth of practise, when they know full damn well they're probably going nowhere -- back to the D-League, back to Europe, back to where-ever. And considering that turning pro voids your college eligibility . . .

I'm not hunting up excuses. I'm trying to understand how this all works.

Anywho, the rest of Summer League should be interesting. I think I understand what Coach was saying when he said he was looking for shooters -- in major game situations the opposing defensive strategy seems to be Pile People On Dirk with double- and triple-teams. Why? Because it works. I'm going to need to research this a bit more, but it squares with what I've been reading; Dirk's a perimiter player, and his instinct when double-teamed is to fall back with a jump shot. When he's well defended, those shots don't sink.

The downside to multiple defenders on one guy, of course, is it leaves the rest of the offensive team underdefended. What I think the Org is aiming for is a scenario where the Bad Guys double up on Dirk, Dirk passes out to Jason Kidd, Kidd finds the underdefended player and passes to them for a jump shot or a layup. This Plan B depends on two things; Jason Kidd's offensive playmaking abilities and a reliable scorer on the floor.

As usual, if I'm full of shit, tell me so I can find out you're right and learn something. (Please don't take any name-calling personally. I hate being wrong.)

One more thing about Summer League; at about the nine minute mark in the second quarter there was an offensive rebound I wish the announcers would've paid attention to. T-wolves sent up a jump shot, it was waaaay short, and one of the Mavs leapt and caught it mid-air.

Here's my problem; since the throw was a shot and not a pass, and since the ball was going down, would that rebound actually be a goaltending violation? Once a shot's on the downward arc, hands off. Or is it since the shot was clearly short it didn't count as a shot? Was that a no-call on the part of the refs? The zebras are in training too, in Summer League.
-BJ

My Humble Opinions, June 16

Well it wasn't pretty. I stand by my Cloudy Crystal Ball and say it's the Celtics in six. Tuesday night, and we're in the off-season.

Gonna be a looooong few months.

It isn't really a developing story, because Tim Donaghy's statements are farts in the wind. What he's saying isn't confirmable. Any trial attorney will tell you testimony's crap without a second independent witness or some other form of corraberation. All he's doing is trying to get his sentence reduced, and the world would be well-advised to keep that in mind.

On the other hand, the ref-ing in basketball is . . . confusing to the uninitiated. In researching the whys and wherefores of the sport I'm dreading the part on fouls. Is the officiating 100% fair and impartial? Of course not. The refs are human, they have favorites and hates, double-standards, moments of inattention, judgement lapses. That's human error and an issue in any contest.

The accusation is that the NBA is instructing their officials to favor one team over the other in their calls. Why? Well look at the press the Finals is getting. Historic rematch and all that. They even got Their Holinesses Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to pose for one of those There Can Only Be One spots. Larger audiences, greater glory, more money . . . the motivation is there.

Not trusting the sport itself to produce a riveting spectacle, a governing body directs its officials to create artificial results irregardless of who actually wins.

Sound familiar?

I understand why the blowhards don't consider figure skating a sport. It's not because of the idea that it's not as physically demanding as "real" sports (hey, you try dancing on ice skates while hauling around ninety-five pounds of partner), or because of the artistic elements involved, or even because the athletes wear sequins. It's the corruption in the scoring. Winning in figure skating can and does have almost nothing to do with how well someone skates on that particular night. The best example I have is (of course) the 1994 ice dance competition. Gritchuk and Platov did not earn that gold medal. Their program was inferior to the other medalists', wasn't skated as well, and involved clear and obvious rule violations for which they were not penalized. The ISU didn't want to reward the team that moved ice dance's artistic focus in a more theatrical direction (Torvill and Dean), and didn't want to reward the team who had run in that direction successfully (Usova and Zhulin). They weren't particularly subtle about it, either.

I'm not saying that's what the NBA is doing. But public perception can easily swing that way because the system of fouls and penalties is hard to understand if you don't know what you're looking at. I hope Mr. Stern and the rest of the league's leadership nip this in the bud toot-sweet. A reputation for corruption and unfairness killed figure skating in the US, and don't think for a minute the NBA is too big and powerful to fall down the same cliff.
-BJ

Quick Hits, Some Rants, Little Silliness

Believe it or not, this is intended as a scholarly work. So after some quick hits, back to business:

- Yes I'm watching the Finals. Yes it sucks that my guys aren't there. It . . . really sucks, actually. But I'm enjoying the game. It's reassuring to know the game's enjoyable to watch without having someone to root for. Not nearly as much fun though.

- How come I want to hate Kobe Bryant? Is it because of the rape charges from a few years ago? I'm going to have to look into that a little; I don't remember if it ever went to trial. I mean yeah, the family portrait's overposed unless his wife usually wears stage makeup and a little black dress, and his daughters white lace, while Mr. Bryant's working the treadmill. I want to hate this man. I want to loathe him with every cell in my body. But why? Other than being better than Dirk -- big fat hairy fucking deal, Kobe's better than everybody these days.

- Coach Carlisle's on his way to Germany. Is it wrong that I want to be a fly on the wall for this? Or better, a Babel fish in the goldfish bowl. We're all taking it as an encouraging sign that Coach wants to spend extra time with Dirk, but there's a potentially ugly side. I mean, is Coach the kind of control freak that can't let the players out of his sight for more than a week? God I hope not.

- Some encouraging notes concerning new blood. The guys over at the Morning News and D-Basketball-dot-com have said that team recruiting efforts will be focused in Europe this year as the organization works around the salary cap and lack of draft picks. Since the Basketball Gods did not arrange for that bout of ptomine poisoning I asked for, nor the alien abductions, I'm hoping they show us some love there.

- Dallas b-ball fans are spoiled rotten in many ways (most of them wear #41). One of them is the quality of the in-game commentary when it comes to televised games. TXA-21's guys are always informative and interesting. Their talk augments the game without intruding upon it. The same cannot be said for the nationally televised games on ABC. I could give a shit what you pay for a haircut, just please tell me why that wasn't a fucking foul!

- Speaking of fouls, I've said it before and it bears repeating; my yardstick for official sports corruption is a pretty long one. I don't think the International Skating Union even pretends any more. The current brouhaha over ex-referee Tim Donaghy's statements regarding delibrately bad refereeing just makes me tired. Without corraberation, there's no way to verify what he's saying. Corraberation is not something we're likely to get. And nobody's going to propose seriously overhauling a system where everybody pretty much gets screwed over equally in the final wash. So here we are. The gentlemen over at Hardwood Paroxysm say it all better than I can.

- And further on the subject, I find it funny that a few weeks ago there was a bad call on a foul because the fouled party "didn't sell it." At the same time the NBAs taking steps to prevent flopping, it's telling the players to "sell" fouls? Wait . . .

- Halloween costumes, Dirk as Harpo Marx. I'm just sayin'!

-BJ