Something of interest to hoopheads: Today in Seattle basketball coach Tom Newell is going to put some former college players through an experimental game with an 11-foot-high basket instead of the 10 we know and love.
It seems like a natural step in the evolutionary cycle, like the push in the NHL to change the size and shape of the net (although it's at nowhere near the same stage in critical mass). Newell's rationale is that hoops is getting too individual and too far away from the five-players-thinking-as-one model that's lot more aesthetically pleasing. With an 11-foot basket, the dunk is almost physically impossible and three-point shooting is less of a factor, since that extra foot would make it harder to shoot with pinpoint accuracy from 20-plus feet away. (Here's the one conundrum of the three-pointer: NBA games are lower-scoring than they were before it was added.)
Would people watch the NBA without the slam dunk and with a limited place for the three-ball? It gets into the whole Domination Culture aspect of pro sports -- people watch to see someone do something -- hit a 95-mph fastball, jam a ball through a hoop 10 feet off the floor -- but not many people just watched the NBA Finals, so it's a question worth pursuing. Everyone's seen a million slam dunks on TV, so maybe the product needs some tweaking.
There has been some movement in the NBA to get back to the true five-man, fast-break game, with the Steve Nash-Mike D'Antoni Phoenix Suns, the Golden State Warriors and to some extent, our Toronto Raptors. Only time's going to tell if this is a sea change or just a handful of teams who went against the norm since they were failing going the conventional route. How long are the Suns going to keep trying to take the high road after three years of falling short in the conference playoffs?
It's anyone guess how Newell's experimental game will look, but it could make basketball look more like it did in the halcyon days of the '80s.
Related:
Raising a question by raising the rims (San Diego Union-Tribune)
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