Roundball Real Estate

I like basketball. I have for a good long time, going back to the early 90s. That's a long time for me. I think it's a great game, particularly when good fundamentals are practiced and my team wins. I enjoy the pro game as well as college and that peculiar variety one only sees in international competition (which is a little less fun now that the world knows how to play and the USA is unable to field a complete team of all-time legends). I once was an obsessive devotee of video game basketball, spending an inordinate amount of time playing 'Bulls vs Blazers and the NBA Playoffs'. A game almost as fun but probably more popular was 'NBA Jam'. There was a thing that the announcers on it would say, and which real-world announcers inexplicably say when a player would launch a three point shot: "From downtown...". He would trail off expectantly as the shot would arc through the air and either clank or swish.

I hate that phrase. Those around me when it comes up are invariable astonished at how heated I become in attacking it. It's likely to be a factor in my ultimate demise of stress and anxiety-related causes. It doesn't make any sense. The problem is that they have it entirely backwards. The half court is like a city, as the phrase suggests. A  point worth noting is where players of various stature tend to be positioned. The basket is ten feet up in the air, and as layups and dunks are the surest shots, it's entirely logical to place a team's tallest players around the basket. The shorter, quicker players are more likely to be found around the perimeter.

The three point line is just about as far from the center of things as one can get. That's why a basket there is worth more points. Downtown is not far from the heart of things- it is the heart of things. And what's the heart of basketball? It is, of course, the basket. By all rights, the term downtown should be applied to the key. That sounds like the skyscrapers in a city's downtown and the shorter buildings out in the suburbs to me. It's absolutely irrefutable. I'm sure I've made my point, and hopefully I'm mainly preaching to the choir. Sadly, I've found it to be the case when carrying on conversations in person that people have some kind of misguided and sentimental attachment to a phrase which is wholly inaccurate.

I implore you all to consider afresh what I say. I appreciate that it's a relatively new idea, and people are naturally slow to embrace even that which itself becomes self-evident and orthodox. We could enjoy the game of basketball so much more if we could only discard outdated and inaccurate notions which cloud our understanding of it. Maybe the level of play would even be elevated if players and coaches spoke in language which reflected the strategy and tactics which show that they innately understand the point I'm trying to get across. I hope so fervently. This season still is in its early stages, and we could really get some momentum behind this by the All-Star break. Let's do it! Thank you for your time.