Triple Bottom Basketball

If you hadn't noticed, I've started playing again which means my mind becomes basketball obsessive. But one particular challenge of basketball entrapps my mind more than any other. Entertainment vs Effectiveness.

From what I recall of game theory the number one rule is that the game play conforms to the rules.

For example, if you removed the 3-point line from basketball (introduced by the ABA, eventually adopted by the NBA) you would expect in accordance with game theory for the play over time to virtually eliminate 3-point attempts from play.

The reason being that the best 3-point shooters (with a decent number of attempts) get only about 40% of their shots in, compared to lobbing it to someone like Shaq that can slam the ball in with a 68% chance of scoring. If they were worth the same amount of points, offensive strategy would gear towards slam dunks, and not bombing the ball in from downtown.

Perhaps the most startling example for any basketball player is to play netball. Netball is justifiably a very fast passed, very athletic, very skill intensive sport. It is the pure passing game, with specialised roles and in my view really shitty rules.

For example, you have two players that can actually shoot for goal, Goal Attack (GA) and Goal Shooter (GS) and two defenders, making double teaming virtually impossible.

Furthermore if you are defending the shooter, the shooter has time to calm themselves, focus and shoot as you are not allowed to get close enough really to slap the ball out of their hands. Perhaps as the worst rule of all, whilst you are allowed as Goal Defense or Goal Guard? Goal Blocker? To stick your hand out, if you actually were to put your hand where it can obstruct the shot (known as a block in the NBA) you get called for 'obstruction'.

Thus the entire game of netball probably all happens in the midfield. It also in my view comes as no surprise that netball makes very little money, and rates very poorly relative to a whole host of other sports.

Netball requires immense skill and determination to win like any good sport, yet lacks entertainment value when practiced at it's best (in compliance to the rules).

In New York at my Hostel I got to watch the final Game of last years NOH vs SAS playoff run. 1. I was amazed at how unbelievably fast Chris Paul was. 2. I commented on how Tim Duncan was the leagues most boring player.

This comment recieved much applause to the rest of the people watching the game, because I was Australian they figured I was the most impartial observer. But sadly it is true. Yet this followed on a debate - many argued the NBA would protect Tim Duncan because he was the poster boy. Well behaved, a champion, well behaved, an MVP, well behaved and boring.

His low post play is perhaps the best and most effective of his era. But for me as a businessman and hypothetical NBA commissioner I would lean back and say 'Is this boring ass play really what we want to be encouraging?' and set about changing the rules specifically to make Tim Duncan's style of play ineffective.

I have no idea how I would do it, but it would be something I would definitely throw my energies behind. I think as a contrasting example, in the AFL rule changes happen regularly and for two reasons - 1. to protect players from injury vis a vis the new tap out style ruck rules and 2. to make the game more exciting/faster such as increasing the minimum distance for a mark to count, all the talk about changing the rules to prevent backwards chips and all that shit.

AFL having more players and a much more free flowing set up probably has more scope for rule changes. But the NBA has changed rules in the past, now more favorable to point guards, with stuff like the no hand-checks rules.

And of course, oft-times effectiveness spawns entertainment and thus changes in the rules or stats. For a shining example go no further than Bill Russell -



The original No-Stats Allstar, which wasn't entirely true, but Hakeem Elajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo would not be all time leading shotblockers if they had recorded blocks on the box score when Russell was averaging an alleged ten per night.

And I say No-Stats Allstar because friend John sent me this article about Shane Battier. Specifically of note Shane Battier blocks shots when a player like Kobe is raising the ball from waist to over his head, which isn't counted as a block. Shane comments on how if he was commissioner he would count this as a block.

This presumably would encourage players to block shots before they are even attempted rather than spectacularly hitting them out of the air into the 5th row.

I use the Battier approach generally, I am amazed at how easy it is to confound offensive threats by simply placing my hand on the ball as they raise it for a shot, or even drive in for a layup. It throws players arms out of line and at worst can be like running into a brick wall for them.

But to the viewer it might be amusing if they have some kind of personal vendetta against the offensive player, it just isn't very entertaining. So if you changed the rules so that these counted as blocks, you would have Superstars racking them up to better their stats, something that payroll all too often depends on.

If the superstars were racking up boring, tedious blocks that result in a scramble to pick the ball up off the floor the game would probably slow down, and certainly be less entertaining.

Perhaps a compromise then, encourage effectiveness by only making blocks count if the ball is gathered up by the defender or tapped to a team-mate, in other words resulting in possession, and not out-of-bounds or returning to offensive possession? Here too, it isn't clear cut, it would probably force better play out of defenders but I think it is more ambiguous than that.

For one thing, if you have a lead, you would probably be running down the offensive clock as much as the shot clock allows, then running a tight zone defence down the other end, as such getting posession off a block is good, but wasting the other teams time by hitting it out of bounds, or simply blocking one shot attempt forcing them to make another 5 seconds down could both be considered effective at a pinch.

Hopefully a smart player would figure this out anyway, but not if they were encouraged all their career to think these kind of blocks were bad by the stats or rules, in the same way Battier's Hip-blocks are 'bad' in terms of stats, yet highly effective in terms of winning.

In AFL a smart player knows that a behind is as good as a goal for turning a 6-point lead into a 7-point lead in the last minute of the 4th quarter. Because it forces the opposition to need two offensive posessions instead of one to win the game, and both of those will have to be goals unless they want to tie.

And what then, of the mind game, referred to in the Bill Russell clip, as 'blocking shots by making players scared to take them' same again as Battier's forcing of players into less effective shooting positions.

To me having a 7-foot 260 pound guy tap the ball out of my hands as I'm raising it from my waist is annoying. Having that same guy leap into the air, swat the ball off trajectory and into the audience (presumably killing someone) and then scream at me is terrifying. Not just terrifying but humiliating, it happens in front of an Audience after all. I'm certain that if this happened to me, I would be intimidated into shooting as far away as possible from said player.

Or consider how much money the alley-oop made the Seattle Super Sonics (Now the Oklahoma City Thunder) in the days of Shawn Kemp and Gary Patton. If the Alley-oop was disallowed as either a friendly-fire form of goal tending, or some airborn form of travelling the game would be very different and less entertaining.

But their the difference lies, an alley-oop makes offense more effective because a high inbounds pass can be converted into a very effecient field goal, where a 3-point attempt may be relatively inefficient. It makes a point guard and a center/power forward or other player just that little bit more dangerous.

John put it thus, and I hope he doesn't mind sharing with you the following example:

I'm a bad ball-handler and my general lack of coordination mean that balls often bounce out of my hands and so on, but my teams win a disproportionately high percentage of the time when we play. I think it's because I'm the only person in Timor who actually knows how to play zone defence... I talk to my teammates, tell them where to be and so on... It's another manifestation of that fundamental truth in game theory. In a world (or in this case a team) of hippies (nice players), everyone is more productive. When one arsehole (a selfish player) joins the system, they get rich (score a lot of points), but the whole system is less efficient.

Which I agree with, when I play streetball I wear Wallace's jersey because I am and always have been a defensive specialist. The game is never easier for me, than when some Allen Iverson wannabe is my opponent, because I know his team is largely irrelevant, even if he has a good outside shooter on board he never wants to pass to them because they have come to practice their fancy crosses and lay-ups.

Despite Yao being the face of Chinese Basketball, most Chinese Nationals (who make up the vast majority of ball players in Melbourne) for reasons of height generally try to emulate Iverson above all others. So this is often the case. And my job is made easy by simply standing infront of them, putting my hand on the ball whenever I see it and boxing them out of the rebound.

It really, really frustrates them and often they lose it, or in a show of bad sportsmanship, simply start refusing to play and just go practice down the other end, or find some other friends to play with. The downside with streetball is that these players call foul every second time, for anything that might be regarded as defence which just isn't supposed to happen, but since there are no free-throws, it really doesn't matter.

But alas, Slam DUnk has a point, the way to get kids to love basketball is through run-and-gun style play. Fast breaks, high scoring, offensive threat. Defence comes in when you get tired of losing all the time. I would rather play Iverson's swarming brood than nobody at all, which would be the case if the league was populated by Tim Duncan's, far more effective player (the Championships prove it) but nowhere near the following. Things have been looking up for Tim Duncan now that there is Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli to spice up their offensive game, but the lowest rating finals series in recent times was Spurs vs Cavs, something no doubt that made Lebron hungrier than ever for a championship where he actually wins and people actually watch.

Detroit in the Wallace-Chauncey days toppled the Shaq-Kobe Lakers in Phil's final season through hard work and solid team play, but the Pistons are still a lot of fun to watch compared to the Spurs, they had Billups and Rip as guards and Rasheed for technical fouls and Wallace for spectacular blocks and dunks.

You can still be effective and intelligent at play whilst having rules that incentives spectacle, Sport is afterall a business, and the business is entertainment, not in fact winning. In the Jordan days, the Knicks would sell out Madison Square Garden so the fans could watch their home-team get their arse handed to them by Jordan, a clear cut case of entertainment trumping winning. (admittedly the Knicks then were not the shit house team the Knicks are now, with Pat Riley as coach and Pat Ewing at Center).

And as final proof I submit to you both the youtube Tim Duncan Mixtape -


.........well okay there is no Tim Duncan Mixtape, which I think is amazing, considering there is a Gerald Green highschool mixtape.

And in contrast the Shawn Kemp mixtape described as 'powerforward extraordinair' by Phil Jackson, even though his Bulls rolled them in the finals and Shawn Kemp is now probably closer to biggest loser contender than championship contender. Tim Duncan may well be remembered as one of the all time great powerforwards, but he will never match the selling power of explosive players like Garnett, Nowitzki, Barkley or Kemp.