ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120059
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The NBA All-Star Game was wonderfully historical. George Mikan and Paul Arizin, among the 50 greatest players in league history introduced Sunday at Gund Arena, weren't the only dinosaurs on display.
Check the score - 132-120. Remember those days, not so long ago, when the NBA always lit up the far left of three digits on arena scoreboards?
There actually were fast breaks in the All-Star Game. For years, naysayers said the NBA played no defense. Now, it seems too much is played.
Actually, neither of those premises is accurate, but there definitely is something missing in the NBA. In recent weeks, I've looked in on five or six NBA telecasts and had to quit watching. It was too painful to see the world's best players trying to beat the 24-second clock.
The NBA game, to those who appreciated it, was different from college hoops. And that was good. Now, the shooting and scoring in both games have sunk.
The NBA is supposed to be entertainment? Is 87-79 entertaining? Not if you remember the not so old good days. A decade ago, there were 23 NBA teams. None averaged fewer than 103.8 points per game.
Now, there are 29 teams, and it seems expansion has watered down even the scoring. No team averages 103.8. The highest-scoring club is Chicago, at 102.3. Seattle (101.7) is the only other club averaging triple figures. Sixteen clubs are at fewer than 96 per game.
In 680 games entering Tuesday night's return from the All-Star break, teams have scored less than 100 points 856 times. That's 63 percent of the team opportunities.
Critics used to complain that the NBA was too much one-on-one. What it's become is too much two-on-two. It's a halfcourt game, and three of the offensive players move to the weakside and let the other pair play pitch-and-catch while milking the shot clock.
OK, the defense has improved, and there's too much hammering inside to sell the sport on its finesse these days, but the NBA's problem is more about style than substance. The coaches are strangling the game. The NBA was a players' game. Now, it's as much - maybe more - a coaches' game as Division I college hoops.
If a team loses 92-84, is that better than losing 118-110? Well, there does seem to be a bench-rooted notion that it looks better, as if a team that is taught how to run a disciplined break can't be as well-coached as one that eats up possession time.
There was a time when the thinking was if you weren't the best team, you could have a chance by trying to get more field-goal attempts. Twenty years ago, most NBA teams regularly took about 95 shots per game. That number has dwindled to about 80.
Cleveland is averaging a league-low 88.1 points, and allowing an NBA defensive-best 84.7 per game. Obviously, coach Mike Fratello hasn't given up his "Czar of the Telestrator'' diagramming expertise since leaving NBC.
The other problem is that the players aren't as good, and not just because expansion has put 72 players on NBA rosters that weren't there a decade ago.
On NBC's "Meet the Press'' on Sunday, Detroit's Grant Hill was one of three players in an NBA roundtable discussion. Hill remarked how today's average player may be a superior athlete to those of the past, but skills are missing. You don't have to be a Duke grad to figure that out.
It's a common problem to major college basketball. Who can shoot? Who can pass? Speaking of the NBA's 50 greatest players, Pete Maravich must be spinning the ball in his grave.
Too many players who left college early - or didn't go at all - are in the NBA, where a frequent-fliers schedule doesn't leave much time for tutoring.
Everyone wants to fire 3-pointers or dunk - because that's what they grow up seeing in highlights on the tube.
There's nothing wrong with trying to be like a certain Mike, as the shoe salesmen say, and no one really wants the game to be like Mikan again.
Wilt Chamberlain once scored 100 points in a game. Is it too much to ask a team to do that?
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines KEYWORDS: BASKETBALLby CNB