Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The plain vanilla of basketball

Three-point shooting has become the vanilla ice cream of basketball. The game is so slanted toward the arc that everyone concentrates on it. Players focus on it. Most everything else is neglected in favor of it. Three-point shooters are a dime a dozen. If you don't have several gunners, then you are really in trouble, and your recruiting is really bad.

In ice cream, it is the other flavors that are distinctive, not vanilla. Vanilla is everywhere. The three-point shot took the basketball world by storm when it was introduced, but it is too easy. The game is weighted too firmly in its favor. There is no reason to concentrate on anything else, at least to any great extent. (I am overstating the case, but I hope you get my point.) It is now the other things, the things that used to be drilled into players' heads over and over and over, that are the unique factors in basketball, the things that you sadly do not find everywhere.

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