Women should not be flying high

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...hitlock/040401

Hit the nail on the head.
 

Candance Parker is a great player. If anyone saw her in the last two State Title games, she is going to be a great one. But all we can focus on is the fact that she can dunk.

Good article.

Peace

Here we go again
 

I do not consider myself part of the PC crowd by any stretch of the imagination. However, as I read the article I was struck by the fact that once again we have some man trying to define the role of women in sports. :rolleyes: As for male qualities that women should not try to emulate...how about condescending to women about what worthless weasels all males are (which he does not believe for the merest fraction of a second) and pandering to men about how women should stick to playing the kind of ball they're good at As a writer he may be shallow, but then again, he's just a man.

Re: Here we go again
 

Removing gender from the equations, were hers the best dunks in the competition? If yes, then she wins. If not, then she shouldn't have.

They looked like dunks I see in HS games by kids who can barely get over the rim. I didn't see the other dunks, so I can't say if they were better.

Re: Re: Here we go again
 

Not that simple. She won partly becasue the other players did not even make a successful dunk. You could not get points for what you try and failed at, you just had to complete a dunk. If the last competetor had just completed a regular dunk, he might have won the competition. But he was trying all this behind the back, thru the legs and 360 bounce the ball off the floor attempts and missed all of them.

Well she made it to the final round by completing dunks. I think the others thought the would WOW the crowd and be spectacular. But if you cannot do the basic thing, which is dunk, you do not deserve to win the contest. I give her credit for winning, but she did not just outscore better dunks, she actually completed a dunk, which her competition did not do.

Peace

Re: Re: Re: Here we go again
 

Then what's the debate?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Here we go again
 

Well from my standpoint, there really is no debate. She won the contest fair and square. It is not her fault that the boys were too stupid to complete a simple dunk to win the contest.

I guess this situation has been turned into "socialogical" debate one what it means. And the media has played this up as a "victory" for women on some level. I think that is why the article from ESPN was written.

Peace

Re: Re: Here we go again
 

I agree. And if the author had stuck to this line of reasoning, I'd have agreed (yawned, but agreed). But he most of the article talking about how women shouldn't be trying to dunk and how the dunk is ruining basketball and how women shouldn't try to be like men and yadda, yadda, frikin' yadda. Then again, he's gotta make a living somehow. :rolleyes:

As a coach of girls ball, one of the fundamental problems with girls is they do not try to play the same game the boys can play. We were discussing this issue at a coahc's meeting for the spring. One of our coaches is a former player for the NY Liberty, and she said she is upset to go on the court with a bunch of HS girls and none of them can do a finger roll.

My freshman girls AAU team scrimmaged an 8-9th grade boys AAU team yesterday. They had a 5'10" white guy who was slamming before the scrimmage (white men CAN dunk :) ), and several taller kids who could slam. My 5'10" player doesn't even think about dunking, which really means she won't play the game in the air like the boys. The boys executed a lot of plays that my girls have never tried. some of it is BS and causes their coach to go ballistic, but some of it is very useful for creating shots against tough defense.

So I think it is a big deal that a girl dunks and gets publicity, because it may lead to girls re-thinking how they approach the game. But I also think it is a bit overdone. If it leads to a lot of jumping and dunking, I think it will improve the girls game. But we have had the isolated female dunker for about 15-20 years now, and it is always one woman in college at a time, now one HS player - you get my point. When it is half of the HS all-Americans, when it is half of the UCONN or Tenn starting line-up (or Baylor even, Judge!), then the game will start to change. Until then, it remains a curiosity, but not a game changing act.

Are you saying that you have a girl who is a high school freshman, who is 5'10", and who is capable of dunking in a game, but does not do it becuase she never thought of it. Unless you have some sort of super awesome player here, I woould assume the reason she is not dunking is not because she never thought about it. My guess would be because she can not do it. I know many a 5'10", even 6'3" men who can not dunk.

Clearly she cannot do it. But she doesn't do the things that boys who dream of dunking do, like see how high she can sky, go after the rim, etc. We did that as boys all along, and at 5'7" I was proud to be able to touch rim in HS. Girls don't do those kind of things, but I think they would if they saw other girls dunking - and the number of dunkers would rise, jumping would improve, etc.

Coach, you make a good point. I was watching the replay of the McD's dunk contest this morning with my 4 year old daughter. When she was watching one of the boys go up and dunk, she turns to me and says, "Daddy, he can fly." I laughed and agreed with her. Then she asked, "Daddy, what does he use to fly like that?"
When I told her he can just jump really high, she then started showing me how high she can jump. If we can just encourage girls to work on their verticle leap without sacrificing the things they do better. It was noted on the show that the girls had done better than the boys in the 3 pt contest. They should make that contest intra-gender.

Also, what about training/conditioning techniques and tools? I don't know much about girls HS teams, but as for boys, many coaches use ankle weights, running up and down stairs, etc to improve jumping ability. I know my HS coach at Bishop Molloy in NY has done it for 40 years.

There's not much you can do as a coach, during the season, to improve jumping ability. That work has to, for the most part, be done in the off season. Of course, mine is a perspective developed without year-round basketball season (I played baseball, too.) :)