Ric Bucher- Wider court = better offense

[Tammo29@xxxxxxx]

Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Wider court = better offense

By Ric Bucher
ESPN the Magazine

Forget that two-front-teeth business. All I want for Christmas -- next 
Christmas is fine -- is two more feet. Not in height, but in width. And not for me, 
but the standard NBA floor.
It stands to reason that with players bigger, stronger, faster and far more 
advanced and committed defensively than even 10 years ago, the solution to 
opening up the NBA game is to expand the playing area. (Check the difference in 
NHL vs. Olympic hockey to see what space can do.) In any case, it's been made 
pretty clear by now that rule changes are akin to using free ointments and 
eyeblush to turn back the clock. As a 50-year-old hooker will tell you, the shelf 
life of that kind of deception is pretty short and when it falls apart, the 
effect is a heretofore unimagined ghastliness.
Why more width over more length? (Forgive that this is sounding like a penile 
implant infomercial.) One, because at least one NBA coach questions the value 
of more length. Two, I'm reasonable. In today's arenas, it would be harder to 
accommodate longer floors than wider floors.

A wider playing surface would give today's bigger NBA perimeter player more 
room to roam.
Now, what chance do I have of getting my wish? None. So why am I putting it 
out there? To make a point.
In an informal poll of coaches and GMs, every one agreed that a wider floor 
would be a sure-fire improvement. Every one also smirked and said, in one form 
or another, "Of course, it'll never happen. Because you're talking about 
cutting out some floor seats."
Well, yeah, if necessary. Raise the price of the remaining floor seats. Bump 
the luxury-suite tag. You're telling me a billion-dollar industry can't find a 
way to cover the bottom line on a row of missing seats? Or can't take a hit 
to upgrade what is supposed to be the sport's premier showcase? What is that "I 
Love This Game" smack about, then, anyway?
Granted, if this Christmas demonstrated anything, it's that talk about the 
NBA having fallen off since the good ol' days officially has zero cred. No one 
says exactly when these good ol' days were, but for argument's sake, let's 
place them in the mid-80s, when the Bird-Magic rivalry was as its height. To the 
revisionists and those who decry the way the game is played today: For 
starters, it wasn't half as good as you pretend it was. There were as many dog teams 
and dog players then as there are now. For every Lakers-Celtics Game 6 tilt, 
there were a half-dozen games like Christmas Day 1986, when the Knicks beat the 
Bulls in a battle of lottery-bound squads. This, of course, was back when, 
legend has it, every game broke 100 points as a matter of course. Except, of 
course, this one. Final score: Knicks 86, Bulls 85.
Sure, the game has changed. So has the entire world. All I know is, instead 
of watching one game on my rabbit-eared TV, I had three on my stereophonic flat 
screen that captured every dramatic plot line a hoops junkie could want. You 
want two great players trying to lift sub-par teams, a la Patrick vs. Jordan 
in '86? LeBron and T-Mac, at your service. You want the see-saw of two teams 
jacking it up, a la every team in the '70s and playing defense only when the 
mood strikes them? It was never better then than the Kings-Mavericks are now. 
Teams playing a balanced championship-caliber style game, complete with 
bona-fide, low-post-scoring big men, is more to your taste? Yao-Shaq/Lakers-Rockets 
delivered all that and, thanks to modern technology, I got to hear a miked-up 
Steve Francis to boot. (Not that all technology is good -- the floor cam is a 
perfect example of something taken too far, unless looking up shorts flips your 
switch. What next, a nostril cam, so we can appreciate the undulation of Sam I 
Am's nose hairs?)
None of this means the game couldn't be improved, of course, and the most 
obvious, irrefutable change needed is to make the playing field bigger. The logic 
is simple -- the offense would have more room to create shots, while the 
defense has more angles, holes, seams and space to defend. You can keep your 
hallowed length at 94 feet and the rim at 10 feet and the shot clock at 24 seconds. 
I'm just tired of seeing players inadvertently step out of bounds attempting 
to drive from the corners while remaining a 3-point threat. Ray Allen, for 
one, blames that on poor fundamentals and lack of awareness. I'll give him that 
-- but part of it is the increase in 6-foot-10-and-over perimeter players whose 
stance naturally takes more space than a 6-footer. The extra space also would 
provide that much more of an edge to the fundamentally sound.
 
bThe overall conditions have changed where there's a need to do something 
significant. They've tried all the subtle changes. b
b Rick Carlisle
"The idea of making the court wider is a good one," Pacers coach Rick 
Carlisle said. "It doesn't even have to be two feet. A foot, total, would make a 
difference."
Carlisle, though, has his own ideas. He mentioned one earlier this season 
that struck some as either sacrilegious or a condemnation of the current talent 
-- make the basket bigger. He was being semi-facetious, in that he believes 
that would instantly increase scoring and shooting percentages. The facetious 
part is he doesn't believe scoring and shooting percentages need to be improved. 
The ball going in the basket, in and of itself, is only a payoff. For me, the 
actual beauty of the game is the way in which the ball going in the basket is 
created. Having examined the topic with the same acute attention to detail he 
does everything, Carlisle has two simple suggestions -- make the 3-point line 
a true, shorter arc, which would encourage coaches to run plays for 
high-percentage 3-point shots all over the floor, not just in the corners, and re-set 
the shot clock in the frontcourt to 16, rather than 14 seconds.
"I think the extra two seconds would make a huge difference, especially 
attacking zones," he said. "That's the defense you see most inbounding the ball 
from the sidelines. You've got 10 to 20 sideout situations every game. Those two 
seconds would allow you to get a much better shot and they'd add less than a 
minute to the length of the game."
Carlisle also sees moving in the 3-point line to a uniform length 
accomplishing the same goal as widening the court -- open up the corners. I'm leery of 
that idea because it was tried, several years ago, when the league went to a 
uniform 22-foot arc. It didn't work because everybody in the league thought they 
should be shooting 3s.
"The overall conditions have changed where there's a need to do something 
significant," Carlisle said. "They've tried all the subtle changes."
Except widening the floor, which would hardly be noticeable except, maybe, in 
the profit margin. But I'm fully aware the NBA is in the entertainment 
business, not the basketball-caretaking business. I just always get struck by a case 
of perfect-world rumination this time of year, thinking less about what is 
than what could be. I should be over it any day now. 

Ric Bucher covers the NBA for ESPN The Magazine. Also, click here to send Ric 
a question for possible use on ESPNEWS.

Which NBA rule change will most efficiently increase scoring?
Widen the court
Enlarge the rim
Add more time to the shot clock
Reduce the 10-second rule to eight
No rule changes needed

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=bucher_ric&id=1697435

TAM