(01-15-2014 11:16 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-15-2014 11:10 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Basketball interest is in the negative for me.

It is a boring game to watch these days. 5 individuals doing their own thing, taking numerous steps on the way to the bucket, palming the ball at will, and that is just the beginning of why I hate basketball. The officiating is atrocious. The players don't stay long enough for us to get interested in them so there is no continuity from season to season, so all in all the product just stinks and the play isn't worth the price of admission. Did I say I love baseball?

Basketball outside of the P5 is actually quite enjoyable. Not calling Carrying and Traveling does ruin the game. Its the equivalent of not calling handball in soccer.

(01-15-2014 11:16 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-15-2014 11:10 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Basketball interest is in the negative for me.

It is a boring game to watch these days. 5 individuals doing their own thing, taking numerous steps on the way to the bucket, palming the ball at will, and that is just the beginning of why I hate basketball. The officiating is atrocious. The players don't stay long enough for us to get interested in them so there is no continuity from season to season, so all in all the product just stinks and the play isn't worth the price of admission. Did I say I love baseball?

I never grew up around the game, growing up overseas, so I never learned to like it. I care more about the NCAA Golf Tournament.

And yet despite the lack of support, the SEC has real potential to be a decent basketball conference too.

We already have UK and Florida with recent national titles and MU who is a historic basketball school.

SC, LSU, Vandy, MSU, UT and Arky are in downturns right now but are traditionally strong programs

A&M, Ole Miss, UGA and Bama aren't traditional basketball schools but have all made big financial commitments to try and overcome our lack of history/success.

Give it another 5-10 years and SEC basketball could go from joke to outright respectable

(01-15-2014 11:16 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-15-2014 11:10 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Basketball interest is in the negative for me.

It is a boring game to watch these days. 5 individuals doing their own thing, taking numerous steps on the way to the bucket, palming the ball at will, and that is just the beginning of why I hate basketball. The officiating is atrocious. The players don't stay long enough for us to get interested in them so there is no continuity from season to season, so all in all the product just stinks and the play isn't worth the price of admission. Did I say I love baseball?

My wife really, really, really hates the blatant traveling and palming of the ball in today's game.

(01-17-2014 10:46 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(01-15-2014 11:16 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-15-2014 11:10 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Basketball interest is in the negative for me.

It is a boring game to watch these days. 5 individuals doing their own thing, taking numerous steps on the way to the bucket, palming the ball at will, and that is just the beginning of why I hate basketball. The officiating is atrocious. The players don't stay long enough for us to get interested in them so there is no continuity from season to season, so all in all the product just stinks and the play isn't worth the price of admission. Did I say I love baseball?

My wife really, really, really hates the blatant traveling and palming of the ball in today's game.

Phog, my wife and I once bought season basketball tickets as well. We once enjoyed the game. Watching Pete Maravich in a shoot out with John Mengelt in a sold out Beard Eaves coliseum was spectacular. Yes we watched Sir Charles, the Persons (Wesley and Chuck), and many others that went on to the NBA like Chris Morris. But those days are long gone.

I have a theory about the spread offense in football and the problems with today's basketball teams that have a common factor. Here goes. With the advent of video games in the late 70's exploding into a must by the late 80's way too many kids became insular. In my day nobody had to teach us the fundamentals of any game. We only watched TV on a rainy day and spent every afternoon after homework was done playing the sport of the season. In those days the high school gym was never locked so we played basketball there or at an outside court the Baptist Church had built. Baseball was played at the National Guard Armory's drill field every evening from Spring through the Summer. Football was played there too. We got up street teams and the older kids taught the younger ones the fundamentals so that they wouldn't be the weakest link on the field or court. We enforced rules and every kid wanted to play all sports from pee wee through high school. The kids today are constantly supervised, are raised to be so mistrusting and isolated and spoiled that getting them outside is tough enough but then getting them with such poor social skills to organize any kind of a game with multiple people from the neighborhood is simply out of the question. Little league and Pee Wee has devolved in too many cases to simply having the coach make his kid the star. They put the best athletes on the field and just hope that they can throw, catch, hit, or shoot. The same thing happens in high school. The spread offense in football is the result of the lack of skilled players. It is ideal for kids who are the fastest players on the field. If the quarterback can learn the reads and has any kind of arm you are in business. The goal becomes outscoring the other team and the poorest athletes are put on defense. The college coaches got tired of taking raw talent that lack fundamentals and trying to teach an 18 year old spoiled prima donna how to play. So, the colleges now adopt the spread.

The same damned thing has happened in basketball. If you have 5 kids that dribble well, are fast, can jump, and are shooters then it's 5 guys running wild doing their thing and if they are better than your 5 guys running wild you win. The same lack of fundamentals are dictating the play. Without fundamentals rules and technique break down, discipline breaks down, and any semblance of team is long gone. It's killing basketball and when college football becomes fast break no defense football it will eventually kill it too. There is no beauty to the game any more because these kids are athletes, but they are not skilled in ways that make team play possible. That is why right now baseball is back to being front and center in my life. Those kids play winter ball in high school, travel ball in the Summer, and go to camps to learn fundamentals. It is still the game that I played and loved in my youth. The others are mere shadows of their former artistry.

While I'm griping our old coliseum had bigger seats and sat about 20,000. The new coliseum at Auburn seats about 14,000 has plastic seats where your knees are jammed into the back of the seat in front of you and there are no long urinals in the rest room for the men. There are private individual urinals. It's the first time in my life I've had to stand in line to pee at a basketball game because the modern male is apparently to bashful to hang it out in a public way in the men's room. Boy, I can't imagine what they would do on a jungle patrol or in a battlefield foxhole. They built the seats closer to the floor so the noise would be a factor, but that's it. Give me my old wooden theater chair with leg room, and the multiple easy access men's rooms any day and I would pay through the nose to see basketball played like the art it once was. I'm more entertained by a good game of RAT than watching what they put out there today.

I understand totally why your wife feels the way she does. Tell her I said "May your tribe increase!"

JR, it is even different from when I played in high school. Watching these freshman at UK is excruciating at times. I was born in 1983, so that puts my high school days at 1997-2001. I just looked up the NBA players that are my age, and the list is full of players who have always been considered pure scorers (like I'm told about Maravich) or "glue guys". To me, this mysterious combination that makes someone a glue player is simply that they know both the fundamentals and the strategy of the game. Some of those players are David Lee, Ben Gordon, Chuck Hayes, Devin Harris, Kevin Martin, Channing Frye, Danny Granger, Randy Foye, and Ronny Turiaf. None of these guys are physically imposing to what we see now, but they know what the heck they are doing out there, even as old geezers at 30 years old.

(01-17-2014 02:53 PM)bigblueblindness Wrote:  JR, it is even different from when I played in high school. Watching these freshman at UK is excruciating at times. I was born in 1983, so that puts my high school days at 1997-2001. I just looked up the NBA players that are my age, and the list of full of players who have always been considered pure scorers (like I'm told about Maravich) or "glue guys". To me, this mysterious combination that makes someone a glue player is simply that they know both the fundamentals and the strategy of the game. Some of those players are David Lee, Ben Gordon, Chuck Hayes, Devin Harris, Kevin Martin, Channing Frye, Danny Granger, Randy Foye, and Ronny Turiaf. None of these guys are physically imposing to what we see now, but they know what the heck they are doing out there, even as old geezers at 30 years old.

Yep, I witnessed some of what you are saying with this year's Missouri team. Their talent was way better than that of Auburn but our guys who shoot less than 40% from the charity line and have no semblance of offense had a 1 point lead with 1:51 to go. Missouri won but clearly lacked the discipline and knowledge of the game to do any better than play down to the competition. That contributed to their losses to Georgia at home and to Vanderbilt on the road, two more teams that clearly they had the superior talent against.

But, it's not just basketball, even Doctors lack fundamental skill sets. Specialization has hurt them. They didn't want to extend medical school so they now spend 1 year in general medicine and 3 in advanced studies in their areas where they once spent 3 in general medicine and 1 in special training. So what we are turning out are doctors that are phenomenal in 1 area but lack the general knowledge to recognize systemic issues outside of their specialty. For instance a cause of hypertension that frequently goes untreated is a blockage in the renal artery. Cardiologists check the heart and look for blockages. If they can't find one they call it hereditary. They prescribe medicine from simple diuretics to beta blockers. The problem is that does nothing much for a blockage in the renal artery but the hypertension can still lead to a stroke, or in this case the blockage can lead to renal failure. I've known three different people under wonderful care who have had this missed because cardiologists don't know to check the kidneys. Old country GP's did know and they were much better diagnosticians. They listened and discovered ailments by symptoms and process of elimination. They also knew their patients well enough to ask the right questions. The modern doctor just keeps ordering tests and procedures until he learns something. There is a difference.

So what I'm saying is that today we learn a profession, but we don't always learn the theory behind it, or how it fits into a greater system and is impacted by it, or impacts it. It's the same problem with the athletes. They learn how to shoot, but don't learn when to shoot, or when to let someone else take a higher percentage shot. I witnessed the same thing at work in businesses, education, masters and PHD programs, and in all disciplines. We teach people how to do things, not why to do them. We teach people one function, but not how that function relates to all other functions, and we teach our kids to repeat information without really having a context in which to place it. That too is a benchmark of the decline of a civilization. Not trying to be downer, just saying as a sociologist of sorts that the symptoms are all around us.