Reaffirming My Faith in Basketball

I've been waiting for this for years. I don't think I've had this much fun watching an NBA team probably since the Barkley-KJ-Majerle-Ceballos Suns in the early 90s. And somehow, it's actually the Golden State Warriors that are doing it for me. NBA purists love to bash the college game because so many teams just spread the floor and jack up 3's with no conscience. They say that this doesn't constitute real basketball. It could never win in the NBA. But with the Warriors one game away from knocking out the 1 seed, people like me are finally geting proved right.

I love drive-and-kick basketball. The more 3s the better, especially when you're the underdog. From a strictly statistical standpoint, it makes sense. Either take a 3 or a layup. It worked for West Virginia the last few years in college (an Elite 8, a Sweet 16, and an NIT championship, all with vastly inferior talent), and is working just fine for the Suns these days. A team only has to shoot 33% on threes to make the equivalent of 50% on twos. For reference, 29 out of 30 NBA teams this year shot 33% on 3s. Only 7 out of 30 shot 50% on 2s. It CAN pay off to shoot threes. But for some reason, NBA people get off to the thought of a good big man, and teams that slow the pace down. And I would be stupid to argue that this hasn't worked (see the Spurs), so long as you're lucky enough to have Duncan or Shaq. For most teams that don't have Hall-of-Fame post players -- this includes Dallas -- I see no reason why playing an uptempo, helter-skelter kind of game isn't at least worth trying.

The Dallas-GS series has at least shown one thing. That a college style offense which encourages penetration and quick threes can be successful against a classic pro-style team that also happens to be one of the best defensive teams in the league. People may say that it's a fluke, that Golden State is just lighting it up, but that isn't the case at all. They're actually shooting worse from 3 in this series than they did in the regular season. The biggest difference is 1) they take a million threes, so they're also making a lot more than Dallas and 2) they're shooting 53% on 2-pointers vs. 47% for Dallas. For me, this is an affirmation that running and gunning can work in the NBA. It creates mismatches against bigger, slower teams and it gives less talented teams a fighting chance, which is all Golden State can ask for. There's more than one way to win, and playing college-style ball is certainly one of them.

Beale, you'll probly disagree with me and say that defense and a slow tempo wins championships. And to this point, you'd be right. For the most part, that's how the Pistons, Spurs, and Heat have won. Over the course of 4 playoff series, it pays off to be able to dump the ball down low and get stops. But the reality is, playing to one's talent is what wins. The Suns may be the favorite to win the whole thing now and all they do is shoot 3s and layups, because they have the personnel to do so. The Warriors are about to pull the biggest upset since the Nuggets in '94 doing the same thing. My plea is not for every team to start doing this, but only for teams (like the Sixers) who can't match the Spurs or Pistons' talent to consider it. Just like 12 or 13 seeds in the NCAA tournament have no chance unless they hoist (and make) a ton of 3s, an average NBA team can at least compete by playing the percentages and spreading the floor to get layups and 3s.