Locker room talk: rolling basketball thread

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
luka said:
american leagues are more even than our cos of their salary capping and draft system etc. australian sport follows the same model and it doesnt preclude teams being dominant for multiple seasons but it cuts down on the massive differences in talent. people like to talk about how ironic it is that american sport is so anti capitalist in this way
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Yeah I've seen that exact point made. I don't know which is better - I mean it can't be right that Abromovich or an oil rich Arab nation can swoop in and start throwing around billions to lift a random team to insane heights. But I do think that the US one levels things out too far. I think that teams that succeed should get money and be allowed to spend it. I would like something like the financial fair play rules which we supposedly have - basically you can spend money you make but not more - enforced properly.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
luka said:
rugby league is the same. it means it only gets exciting once you get towards the last ten, fifteen minutes cos its all turn based.
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arguably cricket too... one team pulls slowly but steadily ahead and there is no particular moment of excitement. Or on rare occasions it's decided on the last over. Of course that's simplistic in that there can be a game-changing wicket or whatever.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i dont know which is better either. it did sometimes feel as if winning was too cheap in australia in a way. if everyone gets a turn it hardly means anything. but then teams that did win tended to have earned it by having very good/innovative coaching and exceptional players in the form of their lives. oh, and cheating. massive salary cap breaches, that was the other way they won.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't understand the positions in basketball either. You have five players but then I read all these things like "power forward" is that a position in its own right or just a way of playing within the position "forward"?
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
luka said:
i dont know which is better either. it did sometimes feel as if winning was too cheap in australia in a way. if everyone gets a turn it hardly means anything. but then teams that did win tended to have earned it by having very good/innovative coaching and exceptional players in the form of their lives. oh, and cheating. massive salary cap breaches, that was the other way they won.
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Often a very good tactic.
 
luka

luka

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i think a power forward is someone with no technical ability, a 'dominant big man' who cant shoot, dribble or pass, but can barge smaller boys out of the way and slam dunk it.
 
Leo

Leo

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Here's another twist: Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap, but does have a luxury tax. teams can overspend the set limit, but they have to pay a tax on the amount they go over, with that money going towards player benefits.

From wiki:
The first $2,375,400 and 50% of the remaining total are used to fund player benefits, 25% goes to the Industry Growth Fund, and the remaining 25% is used to defray teams' funding obligations from player benefits.
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Leo

Leo

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it's part of the reason why people hate the Yankees (the main reason initially was because they won lost of championships at one point). they were notorious for just going out and overpaying for big name stars. ironically, that move also backfired a fair number of times, where they've way overpaid or paid a high salary to a star who was past their peak.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
luka said:
i think a power forward is someone with no technical ability, a 'dominant big man' who cant shoot, dribble or pass, but can barge smaller boys out of the way and slam dunk it.
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OK so it's not an actual position, it's a descriptor of a type of player.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Leo said:
Here's another twist: Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap, but does have a luxury tax. teams can overspend the set limit, but they have to pay a tax on the amount they go over, with that money going towards player benefits.

From wiki:
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OK, so that sounds like one of those things where the government sets a fine at a level which is too low to act as a deterrent cos the profits the company can make from breaking the law are larger. It just becomes a cost of doing business.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
IdleRich said:
I don't understand the positions in basketball either. You have five players but then I read all these things like "power forward" is that a position in its own right or just a way of playing within the position "forward"?
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You play it powerfully
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Googling more about this....

The NBA always goes through changes in every generation, whether it is the type of players coming into the league or the change of commissioner’s directions. More specifically, changes happen around the NBA because rules tend to change throughout time to minimize the impact of extremely dominant players or encourage greater audience viewership.
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Is that true? Do they explicitly say that? I gotta say that - and I admit this is unlikely to happen at this stage in my sporting career - if I were to become the best in the world at some sport after dedicating my life to reaching its absolute pinnacle, I would be more than a little disgruntled if the sport's controlling body was to say "Rich is too good at this, let's change the rules to stop him winning". I assume that the rule changes of this nature are general rules that apply to everyone but which are cunningly designed to curtail the specific skill I or Messi or whoever are applying to devastating effect - rather than simply "From now on, Rich has to play with his shoelaces tied together" - but even so, this doesn't seem quite cricket to me.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
The giraffe in the room when it comes to NBA is the height of the players - apparently the average height of NBA players has been declining for a while (and why is this do you guys reckon?) and it went down again this season... to six foot four point seven. Only one percent of Americans (American men I assume) are 6'4 or more. There have only been 25 players in the entire history of NBA at 5'9 or less which is the average height (and which is approximately my height).

I've been reading about this guy Zion Williams who is a newish one I think. It says that from a very young age he was determined to be an NBA player, he did extra training all the time and played against older boys a lot. From childhood he dominated his age group year after year and whatever team he played for tended to win pretty much every game. And I guess this the normal trajectory near enough for lots of top level sportsmen (there was one top level football player - I think Ian Wright but I could be wrong - who never played the game until he was fourteen or fifteen but that is extremely rare, probably rarer stil these days) but, with basketball there is an extra gamble involved - will you make the necessary height?

Luckily for Zion, at about seventeen or something he shot up to six foot six, but what if he had peaked at a mere 6'2, or even 5'6? It seems fair to assume that, at the very least, he would have had to be a different type of player had he not grown into a freakishly tall monster man. Maybe both his parents were very tall but choosing to put all your eggs in one basket at a young age when you don't know if your genes will let you through the door is a double risk. And of course, we hear about him cos he made it, I guess there are probably hundreds of other equally talented players in each cohort who never had that growth spurt and so were simply ruled out of the game.

Very interesting that average height is decreasing though. If I were one of the powers that be in basketball and my aim was to make the sport more popular then I think I would be looking for ways to make sure that process continues and, if possible accelerated. I have no idea what the reason for this is and I'm sure what I'm about to say is completely impossible at the moment - but imagine if somehow the game could be changed so that height wasn't the huge advantage that it is now. If everyone with the talent had the same chance of making it, would that extra accessibility make it more popular... or would it somehow remove some of the untouchable magic of the sport?
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I suppose you could make the basket three feet lower but that would change the game quite considerably, perhaps even more than the zonal marking. Any other suggestions? And it's a genuine question as to why players are getting shorter. I assume it's something to do with the rules pushing in that direction, also, at the same time I assume that whatever it is, there is a limit to how far it can push and it is never going to overcome the demand for height which is caused by the basket.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
The giraffe in the room when it comes to NBA is the height of the players - apparently the average height of NBA players has been declining for a while (and why is this do you guys reckon?) and it went down again this season... to six foot four point seven. Only one percent of Americans (American men I assume) are 6'4 or more. There have only been 25 players in the entire history of NBA at 5'9 or less which is the average height (and which is approximately my height).

I've been reading about this guy Zion Williams who is a newish one I think. It says that from a very young age he was determined to be an NBA player, he did extra training all the time and played against older boys a lot. From childhood he dominated his age group year after year and whatever team he played for tended to win pretty much every game. And I guess this the normal trajectory near enough for lots of top level sportsmen (there was one top level football player - I think Ian Wright but I could be wrong - who never played the game until he was fourteen or fifteen but that is extremely rare, probably rarer stil these days) but, with basketball there is an extra gamble involved - will you make the necessary height?

Luckily for Zion, at about seventeen or something he shot up to six foot six, but what if he had peaked at a mere 6'2, or even 5'6? It seems fair to assume that, at the very least, he would have had to be a different type of player had he not grown into a freakishly tall monster man. Maybe both his parents were very tall but choosing to put all your eggs in one basket at a young age when you don't know if your genes will let you through the door is a double risk. And of course, we hear about him cos he made it, I guess there are probably hundreds of other equally talented players in each cohort who never had that growth spurt and so were simply ruled out of the game.

Very interesting that average height is decreasing though. If I were one of the powers that be in basketball and my aim was to make the sport more popular then I think I would be looking for ways to make sure that process continues and, if possible accelerated. I have no idea what the reason for this is and I'm sure what I'm about to say is completely impossible at the moment - but imagine if somehow the game could be changed so that height wasn't the huge advantage that it is now. If everyone with the talent had the same chance of making it, would that extra accessibility make it more popular... or would it somehow remove some of the untouchable magic of the sport?
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its a more perimeter oriented game now and teams have less need for multiple 7 footers on the roster. look at both teams currently in the finals- they have one center and instead of subbing out that one center when hes tired for another player of similar stature they instead just play a 'small' lineup of more midsized skill guys and slide their power forward into the center position.

part of it is rule changes and part of it is teams realizing its better to find a bunch of players in the 6'8 range that have actual ball skills than it is to have circus freak giants who cant even dribble.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
back when shaq played in the early aughts every team in the league had to have multiple 7 footers on the roster to essentially act as human speed bumps against him. didnt need to have even seen a basketball before, just go out there, stand in the way, use your 6 fouls and sit back down.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
linebaugh said:
its a more perimeter oriented game now and teams have less need for multiple 7 footers on the roster. look at both teams currently in the finals- they have one center and instead of subbing out that one center when hes tired for another player of similar stature they instead just play a 'small' lineup of more midsized skill guys and slide their power forward into the center position.

part of it is rule changes and part of it is teams realizing its better to find a bunch of players in the 6'8 range that have actual ball skills than it is to have circus freak giants who cant even dribble.
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Roughly what I expected. Also in as much as it's never gonna drag the average down below a certain level.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
and I imagine that 6'4 number is deceiving. I imagine the average player to see playing time is still around 6'6 or 6'7.
 
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