SQ14 #27 Soapbox: The Isolation Play

Don’t get me wrong, the cobra’s dance of Kobe, or Michael, was a fascinating display of individual dominance.  To many the beauty is that they operated best with all of their teammates beyond the arc on the other side of the floor, the star taking their defender mano-a-mano and imposing their will on the hapless victim, the rest of the team taking the play off.  My problem is exactly that--they operated best with all of their teammates beyond the arc on the other side of the floor.  I am of the opinion that the real beauty of basketball is that it is a team sport and that the intricate dance of bodies, and ball, is the essence of basketball.  Obviously, I find myself in the (probably minority, perhaps tiny minority) camp of those who find ESPN symptomatic of what is wrong with sports today. 

To reduce baseball to the three-second flight from bat into the outfield bleachers, football to the soaring leap and deft toe touch inside the back of the end-zone, or soccer to the ball zipping past the outstretched arms of the horizontal goalie and settling into the net--sadly misses the full tapestry of a complex series of personnel battles involving many teammates over one or many minutes, and leveraging any number of individual and group conflicts to arrive at that “Kodak” moment.  But, just as our news and politics get reduced to the sound bite that is all that the power brokers figure the gullible and simple-minded public can comprehend, so too the sports pundits feed their followers highlights so they don’t tax the mental capacity and attention span of what they must feel are a herd of barely sentient lemmings.  Who knows, perhaps they are right, but it still angers me.  I want to hear Paul Harvey’s “the rest of the story.”

It is not that the Celtics have not had their own individual stars.  Give Bird the ball and the last five seconds of the game and he would befuddle his defender and laugh at him as the ball nestled into the net as the time expired--often having told his prey exactly what he was going to do to/in-spite-of anything the poor chap could do to interfere.  Or watch McHale turn to face his fall guy and put him through the wringer with a series of pivots, feints, fakes, reversals until the poor stooge leaned just a little too far to recover as Kevin leaned up/around/over/under/away to deftly flip the ball into the basket.  However far more often, whether in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, or the early part of the PGA window, defenders heads appeared to be on a swivel as the ball whipped around and the Celtics found the open man for an easy open shot or a lay up.

To me this was true beauty.  If you want to fight a two-man duel, play tennis, or arm wrestle, or vie in the MMA arena, or argue with your girlfriend or wife (or both ;>).  Isolating a star by sending his teammates home (well, to the far reaches of the half court) may make for dramatic TV but for me it misses the mark, and lacks the deeper interest of the chess game of basketball.

The changes to the rules allowing a “zone” defense, at least for 2.9 seconds per player at a time, have actually made the game better, at least for me.  Since the defenders don’t have to go into exile along with the Iso Man’s teammates, it makes it much harder to one-on-one effectively.  I don’t think that was the primary intention, but I see it as a serendipitous side effect.

I’ll still watch the home-run derby, and maybe even the dunk contest, but I’m oh so glad that pro basketball is fostering more complex approaches than “Hey watch this” (coincidentally, also the phrase most often associated with accidental death in Arkansas [or the rural area, preferably mountainous, of your choice--here in Texas we would just say A&M]).  We’ll now return you to your Ten Best Plays programming and your Barcalounger, the keg is on the deck.

Only 38 days until training camp.[Discuss on CG Forums!]