A look at the evolution, or not, of basketball

Below is oregon-hoops on the evolution of the game:

We're hearing a lot of complaints from coaches about the new college officiating guidelines. These coaches are concerned about the high number of fouls being called and long games decided by an increasing free throw count. What we haven't seen as frequently are reasoned defenses of the new guidelines.

In the 1980's, NBA fans were treated to a brilliant brand of fast-paced basketball, with Magic and Bird adding beauty, moxie and flair. The Showtime era was fun basketball, no other way to look at it. For many fans, those were the golden days. Magic and Bird helped to revitalize the NBA and paved the way for a guy named Michael Jordan. By his fifth year in the league, coaches realized that Jordan would be virtually unstoppable in a free-flowing game, and his very existence (the Jordan Rules) contributed to the creation of smash-mouth teams like the Pistons, Heat, Knicks and Pacers. It wasn't so long ago that NBA fans were the ones complaining, increasingly frustrated by the state of a game that had evolved into wrestling matches involving the likes of Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Alonzo Mourning, and even Jeff Van Gundy, attached to Zo's leg like a pit bull. What fans were seeing in the 90's didn't so much resemble Dr. Naismith's game as a mixture of wrestling and rugby. Scoring plummeted and fan interest waned. So what did the NBA do to fix its game?

The league instituted defensive 3 seconds and outlawed hand-checking on the perimeter. These two changes had the effect of opening the lane and led to a direct increase in scoring. Fan interest and satisfaction is up. Ironically, we find that many of the college coaches complaining today considered the pro game unwatchable a decade or more ago. And these are the very same coaches who love to watch modern NBA basketball with the bigs out high, leading wide pick and rolls, or the entire team with the floor spread using Vance Walberg dribble drive concepts. We submit that change is sometimes hard if you're the one living it, particularly if you pride yourself on having an "old school" mentality. For comfort that it will all work out for the college game, let's take a further look at the evolution of the NBA...

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We're hearing a lot of complaints from coaches about the new college officiating guidelines. These coaches are concerned about the high number of fouls being called and long games decided by an increasing free throw count. What we haven't seen as frequently are reasoned defenses of the new guidelines.
In the 1980's, NBA fans were treated to a brilliant brand of fast-paced basketball, with Magic and Bird adding beauty, moxie and flair. The Showtime era was fun basketball, no other way to look at it. For many fans, those were the golden days. Magic and Bird helped to revitalize the NBA and paved the way for a guy named Michael Jordan. By his fifth year in the league, coaches realized that Jordan would be virtually unstoppable in a free-flowing game, and his very existence (the Jordan Rules) contributed to the creation of smash-mouth teams like the Pistons, Heat, Knicks and Pacers. It wasn't so long ago that NBA fans were the ones complaining, increasingly frustrated by the state of a game that had evolved into wrestling matches involving the likes of Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Alonzo Mourning, and even Jeff Van Gundy, attached to Zo's leg like a pit bull. What fans were seeing in the 90's didn't so much resemble Dr. Naismith's game as a mixture of wrestling and rugby. Scoring plummeted and fan interest waned. So what did the NBA do to fix its game?
The league instituted defensive 3 seconds and outlawed hand-checking on the perimeter. These two changes had the effect of opening the lane and led to a direct increase in scoring. Fan interest and satisfaction is up. Ironically, we find that many of the college coaches complaining today considered the pro game unwatchable a decade or more ago. And these are the very same coaches who love to watch modern NBA basketball with the bigs out high, leading wide pick and rolls, or the entire team with the floor spread using Vance Walberg dribble drive concepts. We submit that change is sometimes hard if you're the one living it, particularly if you pride yourself on having an "old school" mentality. For comfort that it will all work out for the college game, let's take a further look at the evolution of the NBA
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