ESPN: NBA on the decline
...While the NBA is purportedly a flashy offense-dominated league, overall offensive proficiency is in long-term decline. The Spurs, the likely champions, are shooting just .447 percent in the playoffs. Boston, which got to the conference semifinals, shot just .422 in the playoffs. Detroit, which got to the conference finals, shot just .410 percent in the playoffs. Dallas, promoted as the exemplar of 21st-century offense, averaged just .450 percent in the playoffs. Imagine what would be happening to NFL popularity if runners averaged 2.9 yards a carry and passers averaged 4.7 yards per attempt.
Shooting numbers are so poor because NBA teams spend much of their time launching low-percentage shots. Anyone can go one-on-one and then heave up a low-percentage prayer. Getting into position for high-percentage shots requires tactics, set plays and coordination among players. In the ego-is-everything contemporary NBA, plays and coordination don't happen. Low-percentage shots happen. Clang happens.
One reason for the erosion in NBA quality is the ever-earlier age at which players join the league. Jumping from high school, or after one or two years of college, means players arrive with insufficient coaching in fundamentals -- equally important, with insufficient repetitions of the fundamentals. Callow, lightly-coached players arriving in the NBA must choose between patiently learning fundamentals, or going one-on-one and then jumping around pointing at themselves. Which option would the typical teenager be expected to select? TMQ's big argument against letting anyone below the age of 20 play in the NBA is that this is bad for basketball, killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Every year there are more younger, unpolished players and fewer golden eggs. Think about it.
Adoration of the three-point shot also contributes to NBA decline. Every NBA gentleman now wants to drain a trey and then dance around pointing at himself; most seem willing to clang quite a few silly attempts in order to get that one moment of self-pointing. Announcers and sportswriters are complicit -- they wildly praise the three-pointer that falls, rarely criticize the silly long attempt. Players know they will be wildly praised if they hit a big three, while no one will say anything if they miss threes that should have been twos. So, responding to the incentive structure, players launch crazy shots that go clang, and offensive quality erodes.
Then there's slam-dunk psychology. Announcers and, especially, marketers extol the slam. Yet the most exciting play in basketball is the layup -- because layups don't happen unless at least two players are working together. The best and most exciting play in Sunday's Spurs-Nets game was a first-quarter fast-break layup by New Jersey, the layup coming after two very sharp, coordinated passes. Slam-dunks don't require coordinated play. Slam-dunks don't require practice. They just happen. What do we see in the current Nike commercials? Basketball players going one-on-one and slam-dunking. We don't see coordinated action being extolled; we see immature, pointing-at-myself strutting.
The Nike commercials don't even depict games. They depict one guy trying to jump over or blow past one other guy -- the least challenging, least interesting aspect of basketball -- one-on-one being the form of basketball that requires no thinking whatsoever. Nike may believe that emphasizing low-percentage immature strutting is a way to sell shoes; perhaps Nike calculates that its typical customer is a low-percentage, immature sort of individual. But this race to the bottom surely is not selling the NBA. Every year there are fewer golden eggs.....
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=tmq/030610
1A Artikel von Gregg Easterbrook, der die momentane Situation der Liga auf den Punkt bringt. :thumb: :thumb: