Don't try this at home

Out in the open court last night, trying to push the ball in transition, I went to cross-over a defender I'd caught back on his heels, and rediscovered once again first hand the first principle of Newton's laws of motion: that you can't tack a forty-foot ketch in the same space that you can an eight-foot dinghy. The ball crossed-over perfectly, while my defender's life passed before his eyes as we collided with a force that might easily have been fatal had I not been so well padded. Fortunately, I caught him before he hit the floor, humiliated that my sports car brain had even attempted such a feat with my Mack truck body. So no harm, and no foul either...since I'd already turned the ball over out-of-bounds.

Another tough night shooting from beyond the arc (one for ballgame I believe...but it came at a very good time), and a couple of shorter "J's" along with a handful of sweet assists. Spend a lot of time defending and rebounding, which was fine. Arrived late to the gym so I didn't really get much of a chance to warm-up either...tried to stretch as best I could, and then kept it slow and easy until I had broken a comfortable sweat. And my shooting problems are no mystery. Sore knees and a few extra LBs have cut about an inch and a half out of my vertical, which means that everything I'm putting up is landing flat and off the front rim. The shorter shots are falling because I'm shooting them all with a soft touch with my wrist, but the Trey's really rely on a good shooter's rhythm and it's just not happening.

Of course, some of that falls on my teammates too. Even though I was playing with a group of guys I like a lot, we weren't getting that good of perimeter ball movement. Instead, the tendency was to put the ball on the floor and take it right back into the heart of the defense, which had collapsed down around the basket. Folks turned a lot of open shots into turnovers because they wanted to put the ball on the floor first, which really doesn't make much sense.

Here are the rules for good shot selection:

1) Can you score the ball easily from right where you're standing?

2) Can you pass the ball quickly to someone who can?

3) Can you fake, put the ball on the floor, drive an OPEN lane and score with one or (at most) two dribbles?

4) Can you fake, put the ball on the floor, and draw a defender to you, creating a wide open shot for a teammate?

The problem is, most guys want to jump straight to what is, at best, the fifth or sixth best option (since you can also always just pass and cut or screen away), which is to try to create a shot for themselves by beating their defender off the dribble. And depending on how unsuccessful they are, they generally end up in lots of traffic throwing bricks at the basket, while their wide-open teammates stand drop-jawed in astonishment.

There are, of course, times when it is appropriate to try to create a shot for yourself by breaking down your defender off the dribble. But if you do it every time you touch the ball, the whole team suffers as a result. And it generally leads to a lot of lost games as well. So my advice is do the charitable thing, and share the ball. And then maybe people will share the ball with you as well....