Thursday, November 16, 2006

On hand-checking and logic

I drifted away from basketball long ago myself -- a fair weather fan ever since the mid-'80s Celtics -- but I wanted to take issue with Chris's post as a logical argument. I think Yglesias might be on target. It's a fair point that banning hand-checking has taken away a tool of the best defenders. But now of course they've adapted. And if they are still not as dangerous as they were in the hand-check era, that's almost irrelevant because every team has the same disadvantage and is still doing their darnedest to stop the opponent from scoring.

Imagine defenders were suddenly able to slap the ball carrier in the face. Defense would become more effective, sure, but not exactly more important vis a vis offense. You still gotta score, and that means getting past the other team's face-slappers.

True, if defenders were now bound to chairs the entire game, defense would be less important than offense, so in that sense Yglesias' point may have been stated too broadly. But that is nothing like the current situation. Hand-checking at the perimeter can't have been that crucial (he says from a position of relative ignorance). It only creates a turnover a game, if that, and a little added anxiety about good ball-handling. That's not such a big deal.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 02:55 PM

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