4-on-4, Back-2-Back

For some reason I'm having a hard time getting excited about the NBA playoffs. Maybe it's just the early rounds, and the lack of any local rooting interest...obviously no Celtics, but no Sonics (who I hear are moving to Oklahoma City next year anyway) or Trailblazers either... and who really cares about the Lakers anymore? Gotta love the Spurs and hate the Mavs, respect the Suns, and the Nuggets are at least intriguing. Jazz/Rockets -- so what? In the East I still like Miami and Detroit -- but the Bulls are playing cocky, and I miss the Pacers. And I've heard enough LeBron hype to last me a lifetime. Maybe I'll start paying more attention in a couple of weeks. Chicago/Miami, Denver/San Antonio, and Golden State/Dallas are really the only first-round match-ups worth watching. And even those are a little lame...

Meanwhile, speak of lame, hobbled out on the court again tonight for the second day in a row, after having played yesterday afternoon as well. I don't often try to play back to back nights anymore, but for some reason today I was feeling a little friskier than usual and decided to try it. Good weather and school vacation have cut into our regular turn-out -- one of the reasons I played at all on Sunday is that I knew they were going to have a hard time making a minyan, and since I had nothing better to do I thought I'd help out. And as it was, we only had eight both times, which meant playing 4-on-4 instead of our regular 5-on-5.

It's funny how the game changes when you play with one fewer player on each team. A lot of games I see now are 4-on-4 runs on a short court, and despite the fact that it looks the same, it is really very different. Theoretically I suppose playing 4-on-4 instead of 5-on-5 means that everyone gets 25% more touches (which is to say, all things being equal, instead of touching the ball 20% of the time, each player handles it 25% of the time, which is 5% more of the total touches, but 25% more than you were touching it before -- five being 25% of twenty), but this rarely works out in real life. What it does mean is that the absence of an additional help-side defender puts the wide-open shot one fewer extra pass away than usual, and that the cross-court back-door pass is sometimes available as well. It also opens up the court in transition; but in the over-35 games I play in, we have an "offside" rule which prohibits the offense from passing the ball across midcourt, and thus eliminates any cherry-picking.

3-on-3 is a half-court game, and has truly evolved into a game all its own. Played well, it's basically fundamental old-school pick-and-roll/give-and-go basketball...with a spot-up shooter/back-door slasher on the weak-side to exploit the double-team. I sometimes like to play this at about three-quarter speed as a warm-up, but generally it doesn't hold much interest for me any more. 3-on-3 likewise can be played either "winners-outs" (where the team that scores keeps possesion of the ball) or "losers-outs" (where possession changes after every score), which are two very different games in their own right. When the winners keep the ball, the better team can generally dispose of the weaker team pretty quickly, whereas with two fairly balanced teams the team that plays better defense will generally win the game. Alternating possessions ("losers") often degenerates pretty quickly into a game of H-O-R-S-E: nobody plays any defense at all, since everyone knows they are going to get the ball back anyway, and want to conserve energy to create shots for themselves.

2-on-2 is a much more athletic half-court game, especially when the offensive team is allowed to dribble the ball in from the top of the key after checking-up. It's hard to create a shot by passing alone in 2-on-2, which at once is both its charm and its bane. I tend to think of 3-on-3 as a driveway game and 2-on-2 as a playground game, although it might just as easily be the other way around, depending on how many kids there were in your neighborhood (and how big the driveways were). The movie "White Men Can't Jump" is a great comic celebration of the charm of 2-on-2, and perhaps its principal redeeming virtue.

1-on-1 is at once both the ultimate test of individual skills, and a silly pointless expression of macho mano-a-mano. Hate it and NEVER play it any more... unless I'm really feeling the need to school somebody I know I can beat easily simply by going left, and by forcing them to their weak hand as well. But ordinarily I'd rather just shoot on my own than play a game of 1-on-1 -- and when I see guys trying to play 1-on-1 (or, more typically, 1-on-3 or 4 or even 5) while four other guys stand around watching and waiting their turn...it actually makes me angry.

Anyway, what is the point of all this rambling? Sunday afternoon I stepped on the court feeling terrible...still limping around with a mysterious bruise on my left knee that I couldn't remember HOW I'd gotten (and no, I hadn't been drinking...), which left me feeling like I just couldn't find that top gear. Struggled terribly on both offense and defense, and with only eight players on the floor there wasn't really anyplace to hide either. Made one basket the entire night -- an ugly jump-shot from the free throw line which bounced all over the rim before finally falling through, to accompany a handful of uglier bricks and some even uglier turnovers.

So tonight I'd pretty much planned on staying home, but as the time grew closer and my legs actully felt OK, I decided I might as well suit up and see how it went...and sure enough, again we only had eight (and if I hadn't showed there might not have been a game at all). It actually took about half an hour even before the eight showed up, which meant plenty of time to stretch, warm-up, and even play a little easy 3-on-3. First few games only played so-so, and I was still shooting pretty poorly, although not quite as badly as the afternoon before. Knew exactly what the problem was too (I was releasing the ball off the side of my index finger rather than cleanly with all the fingers of my shooting hand keeping contact with the ball until the shot left my hand, which meant that everything came off my fingers both weak and short), but the more I thought about it the worse it got...especially once I started thinking about my fingers rather than looking at the rim

But then, thanks mostly to the extra touches I was getting, I found a little rhythm and stopped thinking so much. Started out by creating a little 16-foot jump shot for myself by dribbling left around a high screen on the left elbow, pulling up and knocking it down...and then knocked down another four shots in relatively quick succession...three of them from beyond the arc, all of them with a quick, clean release and hitting nothing but net. And you know...my knees suddenly felt great. So I imagine I'll be out there again Wednesday night too.....