Miscellaneous Basketball
Thoughts on various levels of hooping
Inspired in part by my thinking-out-loud last week, I went to the Union men’s basketball game last night. I used to go to the home games pretty regularly when the kids were little, but they reached a point a few years back where they no longer wanted to go run around in the lobby of the Viniar Center, but were high-maintenance enough that I didn’t want to stick Kate home alone with them just to go watch hoops. They’re now mature enough to not be a huge hassle to keep track of, though, so I’m going to start watching more Div III hoop.
I’m also trying to get back in the habit of writing more regularly, but most of the rest of the world is stupid and annoying right now. So I’m going to use this as an excuse to write a bit about basketball in general, posting a bunch of miscellaneous points, in no particular order:
—Union won 72-65 over Sarah Lawrence, in a game that was a bit of a grind— one of their big guys had an absolutely horrific evening, throwing a couple of shots into the bottom of the rim, and the whole team seemed to be rushing everything a bit. Probably the pressure of having me back in the audience… Didn’t help that Sarah Lawrence shot almost 40% from three-point range, either.
Even on what was pretty clearly an off night, though, Union has a really good team. They’re young, too— no seniors on the roster— so should be good for a while. And it was fun to be watching live hoops up close again.
— Today is the first day of final exams at Union, so it was sort of a weird vibe— the students who usually work the scoreboard were off studying, so coaches from other teams were filling in at the scorer’s table. This led to a couple of weird stoppages that I think were failures to properly start or reset the shot clock; I don’t really know, because the PA guy didn’t explain.
That said, the turnout was actually pretty reasonable, by Union standards. There were a couple of decent-sized groups of students in the stands, only one of which was the women’s basketball team. This hasn’t always been the case— like a lot of small colleges, students participating in sports at Union outnumber those who attend sporting events as fans, particularly sports outside the big three (hockey, football, and lacrosse).
— There’s been a major upgrade in the sports media infrastructure at Union, which you can sort of see from that game recap page. I was also amused to see at least three people being paid to document the game, two with DSLR cameras and one with a video rig. It was especially entertaining when the teams lined up for one of the very few free throws shot in the first half, and all three of them made a beeline for the same spot on the baseline to get a good angle of the shot and potential rebound.
— Today is the first day of exam week, so there was also a fair bit of studying going on in the stands, which is amusing to me. This young woman and her friend just out of the frame were clearly prepping for an economics test of some sort, taking turns quizzing one another on stuff from a review sheet during time-outs.
— That gym, the Viniar Center, is also where we play our lunchtime pick-up games. I still try to get out a few days a week, and despite my advancing age I’m still decent. It takes more and more of a toll, though, particular when we have a run like the one where I got stuck matching up with the best guy on the other team (who turns out to be the father of one of The Pip’s classmates) every day for about two weeks running. If I go all-out I can just about keep him in check, but it wipes me out for the rest of the day— I hobble around the house like Joe Biden all evening, and crash early even by my standards.
I’m stupidly competitive enough to actually do that, though, even when I know the price I’m going to pay. Which is probably a useful insight into my psychology, at some level.
— Speaking of pick-up, there are two things that have been driving me nuts in recent-ish (for values of “recent” stretching back a couple of years) games, that I think may reflect a generational change in the way younger people (which is to say, basically everybody else in our pick-up game) approach basketball.
The first is the less new of the two, and has to do with fast-break defense. As I’ve gotten older and slower, it’s become more and more common for the guy I’m guarding to beat me down the court, especially when I make an attempt to get an offensive rebound. And it’s gotten more and more common for the younger and faster guys on my team to just let that guy run past them to the basket. It’s not just ball-hawking, either— they’ve found the guy they’re matched up with in the half-court, and are guarding him 25 feet out on the wing and giving my guy a free run to the hoop.
I don’t even like to think about how many suicides I would’ve had to run if anybody on my high-school team did that— we had it absolutely beat into us that the number one responsibility of a fast-break defender is to prevent layups. There’s always been a little of this, which I used to attribute to guys just not knowing ball, but more and more it’s happening even with young guys who I’m pretty sure played organized basketball. It drives me nuts, whatever the reason.
— The other new-ish feature that’s driving me nuts has to do with pick-and-roll defense. Another thing that was absolutely beaten into me as a big guy in the 80’s was that if your guy goes to set a screen for the guy with the ball, you call out a warning to your teammate: “Pick coming!”, “On your right!”, that kind of thing. The idea being that they can use this information to avoid running full speed into a rather large man standing directly in their path.
Ideally, they would hear the warning and adjust their path to slip past the screen and stay with the guy they’re guarding. More and more, though, guys hear me call out a pick and just… stop. They assume that any screen is just an automatic switch, and don’t even attempt to get around the pick. Which sorta-kinda works when everybody is about the same age and size, but is a complete disaster when there’s a big disparity— I have to try to pick up a guard who’s 20 years younger than me and quicker than I ever was, while my smaller teammate is trailing a guy who can bench press me as he rolls to the hoop. It’s particularly galling as most of the screens don’t end up being very good— very few of the ball-handlers dribble close enough to force the defender to hit the pick, so it’s pretty easy to get past if you have a bit of warning and exert a little effort.
Again, this drives me nuts, but in this case, I suspect I know who to blame: the NBA. This automatic-switch business is the norm in the NBA these days, to the point where in a lot of games the star players can just pick the defender they would most like to go against, and arrange that switch with minimal effort. As someone who learned the game in a more defense-friendly era, this offends my sensibilities, and is one of the reasons I can’t entirely get on board with the NBA even though it’s The Pip’s favorite sports league.
— Speaking of which… Since I’ve never been a big NBA fan, The Pip, being very much of his generation, picked a rooting interest by picking a favorite player: Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks. Which was great when they won the title a few years ago, and has worked well for the last couple of Christmases because we’ve arranged trips to see the Bucks play in person, against the Knicks and Sixers. Also, Bucks-logo clothing has been a reliable gift category.
The problem is, Milwaukee got off to an absolutely dreadful start this season, and the modern NBA being what it is, that’s generated a ton of speculation that Giannis might be traded to another team. Which kind of puts a snag in any kind of plan to go see the Bucks later in the season, because what happens if he’s no longer on the team? The Pip, being very much of his generation, will most likely switch his loyalties to whatever team Giannis moves to, in which case I’d need to arrange a completely different out of town trip…
I think this particular bullet is getting dodged— they’ve won some games more recently, including a 59-point game from Giannis last night, and I suspect that the talk about an imminent trade was just the fevered rantings of people with fantasy-sports brainworms. It’s definitely been a source of concern, though.
Life was so much simpler in my generation, when you picked up immutable allegiances to whatever team was geographically closest to where you (or possibly your parents) grew up…
— For a variety of reasons, back in the summer I basically stopped keeping up with the podcasts I used to listen to that do significant NBA coverage. I’m picking some of those back up for the winter, but having missed the annual re-shuffling of players makes this really disorienting— I keep hearing them mention guys I think of as being on one team as scoring points for a different team. Or, in some cases, guys I think of as being on injured reserve for one team being on injured reserve for a team on the opposite coast. I guess this is what being a median voter feels like.
I probably need to scroll back in the Ringer archives a couple of weeks and find a big summary of all the summer moves to get back up to speed as to who is where. In all my copious free time…
That’s probably enough basketball material to make a point of some sort. If you want to see my reaction when The Pip switches his NBA fandom, here’s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
"You can tell it’s an intro econ course ..."
Hilarious caption!
I would guess you won't want to do a game on New Years Eve, but the Bucks are playing the Pacers that night. Indy is a good destination - the Fieldhouse is in the middle of downtown, so there are plenty of hotels and restaurants in walking distance. And January 1 sees Butler playing Villanova in Hinkle Fieldhouse, so you could make quite a basketball weekend of it...