Basketball from a fan’s perspective

The Basketball Rules

Depending on where you live in the world you might not be familiar with “The Gibbs Rules.” Mark Harmon played special agent Jethro Gibbs for years on the CBS television program NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service). The character Gibbs has a set of rules he lives by and they are numbered. I have rules as well, Rule Number 1., Never compare basketball players from different era’s to one another. There is no effective method (except your argument) to compare Michael Jordan against LeBron James. In the near future additional basketball rules will be detailed for you, Gibbs has an extended list of rules to follow. My list is small by comparison, currently its under 10 and will certainly not exceed that number.    

“Whoa, I don’t pay no defense”

In the 1996 movie Space Jam Bill Murray enters the huddle and begins to dictate the offense. After providing the starters the offensive scheme he’s told, “We are on defense.” Murray’s response became an instant classic, “Whoa I don’t play defense, alright you’re gonna listen to Mike on this one.” For several years many have commended the basketball skill of the Mavs Luka Doncic, despite this fact the knock on his play has persisted he doesn’t play defense. From my seat allow me to say Doncic is not a great defender but don’t kid yourself a total game is played by Luka the Don.

Luka was the leader as his Mavs team took a two games to one lead over the Clippers 101-90. He didn’t shoot well however his 22 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists aided the effort, his teammates Kyrie and especially reserve Dereck Lively help tremendously in the victory. As for the Clippers it was an all-out effort by James Harden leading the way with 21 points. This is certainly no intent to downplay the effort of Ivica Zubac but understand this, his scoring number of 19 points exceeded Kawhi Leonard and Paul George’s (16). Truth is the Clippers are in a far better position at this time over their Crypto.com neighbors, understand this. Neither team is championship quality material this season, there might be a question will they ever be?

I’m sorry if this upsets some of you…that is not the intent

My purpose is that of the messenger, there is no intent on my part to doubt Caitlan Clark. Clark is a very talented player I hope she has much success in the WNBA over the next few seasons. The news I bring is simple, Clark is not the all-time women’s scoring champion. The honor belongs to Pearl Moore who played at Francis Marion College in Florence South Carolina, by now why the question regarding the all-time women’s scoring champion…it was the time period. Moore scored 4,061 points from 1975-79 while enrolled at Francis Marion.

The NCAA did not begin to recognize women’s sport until 1983, from 1971 to 1983 the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women or AIAW was responsible for governance of women’s sports. Apparently when the NCAA began implementing programs records were not transferred to the NCAA. The 3,685 points scored by Clark is far below the number established by Moore in 1979, in essence Clark holds the NCAA record not the all-time number. We are now left with a record similar to the 1961 home run record. Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record with his 61-home run, later the commissioner tagged the Maris record with an asterisk. Why, in 1927 baseball played a 154-game schedule which became 162 by the time the record was “broken.”

How did that happen

This is a look back at a story once provided to readers much earlier. If you check the history of team names you will discover 99% of them reference an animal. We also have professional sports teams in Texas, Arizona, Minnesota and (North) Carolina taking on the name of the state. An example might be sports teams in baseball Minnesota Twins and in the NBA the Minnesota Wolves. Nowhere in professional sport do we have a team named after an area within a city. The Nets hold a unique existence being named after the borough they reside in rather than New York City.

The Nets have played in New York City in the past however the history of the team is mostly connected to the New Jersey side. Barclays Center opened in 2012, at that point the team moved to the borough of Brooklyn thus becoming the Brooklyn Nets. In Los Angeles we have the Lakers and Clippers having the city name in front, in New York City the Knicks have solo ownership of New York. As for the name rather than city it’s a connection or throwback to Dodger baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers called the borough home from 1913 until the franchise located to Los Angeles in 1957. There you have the brief history how a basketball team took on an area name rather than a city or state name.