Americans are probably the world’s most overdosed. So hyper-concerned with image and not simply on winning, but on winning in the most “American way,” possible, which in basketball since about 1980 usually means winning with tough defense. But basketball, created by Canadian James Naismith in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts, was created long before Americans became obsessed with tough defense, before football strategy started to contaminate other sports in other words. Bball was, perhaps accidentally, created as a game slightly biased in favor of offense. Those who have the best moves and shooting skills can theoretically not be stopped within the rules from scoring the ball if they actually use those moves and skills close to perfectly. But 1991, a hundred years after basketball was created, Americans generally had become susceptible to overdosing on all kinds of things: on medications, on food, on spending money, on borrowing money, on getting taxes on rich people down to as close to zero as possible, on getting incomes for rich people up to as close as possible to a billion a year as possible, and on overemphasis on defensive basketball just to name a few examples. . By 2008, the economy was in full collapse due to all those financial overdoses. There has not been a single net job created in the United States since 2001. In 2009, George Karl and other coaches and managers of the Denver Nuggets overdosed on defensive basketball, only to see basketball reassert its true identity in a game six of the West finals, a Nuggets elimination game in Denver, where Karl and the Nuggets were buried by the true to the game Los Angeles Lakers by a mountainous 27 point margin. These and many, many other overdose fiascos are not good outcomes. So if you are overdosing on something, just reverse the Nike slogan: Just don’t do it. Know that you have been had by bad culture. You have been taken. You have been snookered, perhaps for example by slick media campaigns. Maybe a career nest keeper has induced you to overdose on something, against your best interests. If you are overdosing on something, you need to substitute in moderation and reality for the extreme and the hype. Medications are never going to solve the real physical problems, and they will kill you if you don’t limit them. Your doctor may or may not know what he is doing. He may be getting direct payoffs for every prescription he or she writes. If you spend excessively you will eventually be in bankruptcy. Take a lot of steroids and you will end up a weakling. If you opt for defense only in basketball you will eventually be buried, and it just might be in an elimination game in your own building. Take a deep breath and stop it. Only in moderation (or optimized levels) can substances and tools really be useful; in the extreme they will kill you. If after half a foot of snow I get excessively kind and try to shovel everyone’s driveway in town I will drop dead from exhaustion and/or frostbite long before the last driveway is clear. If I settle for doing just the old lady’s small driveway next door and maybe the old man’s driveway across the street tomorrow, I’ll be alright. If you are a perfectionist like me learn how to keep the perfect control knob turned down below the maximum setting. In 1998, convinced that Allen Iverson was overdosing on scoring, then 76’ers Coach Larry Brown moved Iverson from Point Guard (PG) to Shooting Guard, so that Iverson was now not playing PG after six years there: two each in high school, college, and pro (for the first of which he was the rookie of the year). Wrong move. This has messed up both Iverson’s career and his team’s “chemistry” to one extent or another ever since, and has created the bizarre 2009 reality that future Hall of Famer Iverson is not wanted by hardly any teams at even a bargain price. Brown obviously should have known about this overdosing epidemic going around, and should have reduced Iverson’s compulsion to overdose on shooting and scoring rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, by in effect creating a new position: a player who can not be stopped from playing both positions at once. Now here in June 2009 there is the King of Music, Michael Jackson, dead at 50, which is still young by, say, Japanese, French, or Scandinavian standards. Jackson joins previous King Elvis Presley in the death due to overdosing on substances category. Those around Michael Jackson, including his doctor, should have known about how Americans are the most medicated population on the planet, and about how it almost goes without saying that there are more drug overdoses in America than anywhere else, whether you count just the on purpose ones, just the accidental ones, or both.. Electrodes should be attached to Jackson’s doctor to make sure there is really any brain activity there. The LAPD are as we speak in search of Michael Jackson’s doctor’s brain. Let’s hope there is a brain to be found. While overdosing is a chronic American problem, perfectionists such as Michael Jackson and Allen Iverson, ironically, are especially vulnerable to becoming basket cases. If perfectionism is allowed to mix with the urge to overdose, the resulting combination is roughly the same as what you get when you start splitting uranium atoms when seeking to detonate a nuclear bomb. Boom, you are so dead. So if you are a perfectionist, as many athletes are, be on the alert. Whoever you are, stop the overdosing. Chill out and sub in more fresh air, exercise, and rest for overdosing on whatever. As for me, as soon as I finish overdosing on taco chips, I’ll plan on not overdosing on them for awhile.
^^^ Newspaper style, unusual for me... NBA Real Player Ratings with (I think first ever) NBA-wide lists for offense and for defense coming this week, with any luck at all. Really, why don't you believe me they are coming, lol?
