too many Daves

I posted a comment about this on seattletimes.com. The comment should have been a blog post. So here it is …

A KUOW host asked Sue Bird and Swin Cash about this over the summer. They politely explained why they wouldn’t want a lower rim. Here’s how Sue put it:

“I watch the NBA just as much as the next person and it is exciting, the way they play and what they do. But that’s what makes us different: We’re not the NBA. The way we play, the style that we play, kind of using our fundamentals because we have to, that’s what makes fans who enjoy the WNBA enjoy it. We’re not trying to be like the men. We are who we are and we play the way we play …”

Thinking about all this after that interview and reflecting on where the game of basketball started and where it’s ended up, it hit me that raising the rim for men makes more sense than lowering it for women. I say this as a guy who grew up wanting to “Be Like Mike,” as a guy who used to show up at playgrounds with high-school friends and commandeer the little-kid hoops just to get a taste of what it would feel like to juke a defender, drive the lane, and throw down a dunk.

The same week I heard KUOW’s Bird/Cash interview, I came across a sentence that seemed to absolutely nail what increased size and athleticism have done to the NBA. It’s from Hemingway. He was writing about Spanish bullfight crowds that had come to prize showboating over well-rounded skill. He mourned “the decay of a complete art through a magnification of certain of its aspects.” That’s kind of a mouthful of a phrase, but I see women’s basketball as “a complete art” that would “decay” if a Sue Bird buzzer-beater from the elbow got replaced by a Lauren Jackson double-clutch dunk on a little-kid hoop.

Let’s hope FIBA sobers up and that the WNBA never goes anywhere near this lousy idea.