Great find noogie_da_sheep! That sums it up right there, people don't put the time in to learn shooting. These kids are dunking at ages 13 and 14 and thats all they care about. I also blame coaches and GM's for putting too much into the defensive end. The game is now like a sumo match, lots of pushing going on. Players need to be more well rounded and the league must get away from this physical style of play. I have a quote for ya... "Basketball is essentially a non contact sport, going back to it's roots" The game has changed a lot people. Who misses those old Denver Nugget teams that would score 130 points a night at will?
Well if we are literally talking about going back to it's roots, all basketball was was a contact sport (in the cagers era)... <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Thank god College Basketball hasn't changed into what the NBA has. That is true basketball, fundamental basketball.</div> Eh...
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting King James:</div><div class="quote_post">Great find noogie_da_sheep! </div> How bout me for bringing up the topic in an artcle. j/k
Great topic The Prophecy! ;-) If you talke about Reggie... he's a great shooter, but since he was living of the screens set by his teammates he really had to adjust his game to the zone defense. He used to run around screens all the time, killing his defenders and then popping the open jumper. Now he has to find an open place and wait for the ball. What he said in the article posted earlier is very true... it's all about dunking, and nobody pays attention to shooting techniques. It's kinda strange, if you know that the last 10 championship teams had either Steve Kerr or Robert Horry on their roster, both great shooters.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting sunsfan1357:</div><div class="quote_post">Well if we are literally talking about going back to it's roots, all basketball was was a contact sport (in the cagers era)...</div> Go back further my friend
Well if we're talking about professional basketball roots then I am correct, however I do know that it isn't the case here so I know what you're talkin' about
The Zone Defense is perfect for shooters. WIth the introduction of the zone, you should see more shooting. South Koreans are one of the best at busting the zone. They can beat some NBA teams with their outside shooting. I agree with the topic though. Sad to say that there are NBA players who can fly out of the game but couldn't sink some simple shots.
I actually see the zone as a way that can, long term, bring back some great shooting. The real knock today isn't really 3 point shooting. If you look, most every perimeter star has the 3 point shot as an aspect of their game, its just more pronounced with the great shooters like Ray, Peja and Redd. The true loss of shooting technique in my opinion is the mid range J. Not enough players focus on this, and its a very important shot. Zone's often have guys out at the 3 point line and near the basket, so if you can split the zone defenders it often leaves open the midrange j, which players nowadays are hesitant to take. The zone does do good by cutting down on the drives and dunks(if that's a good thing), which i think it was designed to do. To break the zone players must shoot well. If players spread out the zone by spacing their shooters, the zone defenders are forced to shape their zone into nothing more than one on one matchups. To take advantage of this, players will have to work on their shooting. Since they haven't had to do this before, scoring is down right now. Once players have had a chance to adapt by shooting better, I think scoring might go back up, and you'll have better shooting and scoring games. However, that may take 4-5 years for results to be fully seen. I think first you'll have players like McGrady who think the zone will just open up for them in their greatness as they shoot out of it, but end up shooting terribly and scoring less. Ball movement will have to increase as well, as the Kings have already proven, so there might be less cases of one guy carrying the entire scoring load(read: Iverson, McGrady, Pierce) and more balanced scoring as with the Mavs, Kings and Lakers.
I saw a game of the T-wolves the other day (vs Clippers), and I wondered if you guys think we should add Spree to the list of pure shooters... The guy was lighting it up from outside, and deadly from midrange. I never really looked at him as a shooter, because I always remembered him as the high flying Spree from his GS days, but I think he deserves to be on that list...
a problem for the mid range shot dissapearing is that guys are so long/big/athletic/freakish now that they can cover so much ground. combined with zone defenses its no wonder why the majority of teams scoring is so low when your only offense are dunks and 3-pointers. what could help is if they could expand the width of the court on both sides a few feet and expand the 3 pt arc. this will make the defense have to cover more space....more space= more open looks, more lanes to the basket, and greatly increasing that mid range j area. the court is the same size now as it was when the avg height of a foward was 6'5". the players have evolved, the environment needs to as well.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting sunsfan1357:</div><div class="quote_post">Well if we are literally talking about going back to it's roots, all basketball was was a contact sport (in the cagers era)...</div> I'm not sure what the cagers era is, but I read that JAmes Naismith said that the first ever game of basketball was quite phsyical. They were playing it like football, except they couldn't take steps (traveling) nor could they dribble (dribbling was not yet implimented), and they ended up scoring only one basket. Guys would be tackling each other....my point is if you go back the furthest possible, than basketball was physical from the begining.
