quote:
Originally posted by danno on 02-19-2000 02:43 AM
Just an observation, in the pros to me it looks like they should be called for walking
a lot more than they are. I saw a commercial featuring a lay up by Kobe Bryant and it sure looked like a walk to me. In the pros do they look the other way on these great looking dunks?
It seems to me that each year the NBA looks a little less like basketball in a lot of regards. The shoving in the lane is out of hand; it's illegal to play team (zone) defense; you can't take a charge too close to the basket....
But the travelling often looks the silliest of all. Another example is Ewing whose standard post move involves switching the position of both feet while holding the ball. I don't think I've ever seen him called for it, but I'd be willing to bet that any one of us would call it in a HS game.
The NBA has made it quite clear that its goal is to sell shoes (or any other branded item). Rules are made specifically to encourage high scoring individual performances.
It's been suggested that the media success of Michael Jordan has had a lot to do with the desire to "create marketable stars." (See a new-ish book called "Sole Influence.") It's ironic (and unfortunate) that one of the game's greatest players has to be implicated in the watering down of the sport, but it looks like a reasonable argument to me.