BBIQ ( was RE: Will Powe Go?)

[Kim Malo]

At 12:24 PM 10/12/2007, asterix ninetynine wrote:
>The lexicon of basketball intelligentsia continues to amaze (and 
>somewhat perplex) me.  "Long" players with tremendous "Upside"?  And 
>now we can add the term "BBIQ".
>
>   What exactly is basketball I.Q. and what does it describe?  I 
> presume it means that a player exhibits solid fundamentals, but I 
> would appreciate hearing how others define this term.

Not so much just having or even exhibiting fundamentals. Exhibiting 
them can just be because you're well trained and mindless enough for 
that to be remarkably effective, while BBIQ doesn't just involve 
fundamentals anyway. And you can have BBIQ but not be able to execute 
- Scal will often clearly understand the right thing to do but can't 
do it. Hell, I'm much better at understanding the game than I ever 
was as a player, where I mostly took advantage of smarts, 
ruthlessness, persistence, a solid frame... and getting my growth 
spurt several years before the boys I was playing against <g>. Of 
course amongst the local girls I was da man... (hmmm, something wrong 
with that statement)

The key word here is understanding - it's being able to see the court 
/ game as a whole and understand the game in the broadest sense, 
along with what you're seeing now, to know what the most appropriate 
thing to do is in basketball terms, to take best advantage of what 
you see and minimize the disadvantages. Which may involve exhibiting 
the fundamentally sound thing but may also mean doing something 
outrageous but perfect, as Bird so often did. And he had one of the 
highest BBIQ in action I've ever seen. As did Russ. His shot blocking 
was fundamentally sound, his deciding to block it so as to start a 
break for his teammates vs out of bounds (where it couldn't be 
rebounded or tapped back in but if you were the last one to touch it, 
it might well lead to an easy basket anyway on the inbound),  when no 
one else did it that way, was high BBIQ. Your understanding of the 
game certainly involves fundamentals, but if it never moves beyond 
having them, I don't think it's a high BBIQ any more than doing well 
on spelling tests because of a photographic memory or teacher who is 
very good at drill means being a brilliant creative thinker.

Someone mentioned Gomes. BBIQ might tell you that the best thing for 
you to do in a given situation is nothing direct, simply move without 
the ball NOW because you see 3 defenders taking the first step to 
close in on the guy with the ball, which means there's going to be a 
lot of open space somewhere and an urgent need to get the ball to 
someone else before he gets trapped. Vs. simply standing and watching 
or moving to the open space, but too late because you waited for it 
to already be there with the trap locked down and couldn't think 
beyond oh, there's an open space, maybe someone will pass it to me if 
I go there. Or, in a related situation (and this is a MAJOR pet peeve 
because it is so easy and so basic and so obvious and we are SO bad 
about it) going enough  to the ball when someone is trapped or about 
to be, to give them a visible and safe outlet target, even if it's 
just for a moment before passing the ball right back. And even if 
it's not part of the original play call (following a script doesn't 
take BBIQ). It's making a bounce pass not just because it's more 
appropriate for the part of the court, who you're passing to and the 
overall situation than a chest high bullet, but understanding why 
that's true, not just doing so on instinct and training. You could 
see Jefferson starting to raise his, at least on offense, last season 
when he was making his moves more situationally appropriate vs acting 
wholly on instinct and raw talent and a prayer.

Kim