February 21, 1946

Lt. Robert A. Cook

Ground Training Unit, O«-T |
Second Air Force Headquarters
Colorado Springs, Colorado,

Dear Bob:

We are getting ready to leave for the University of Missouri today at
noon and so I will not have much time to give you the benefit of my reactions

concerning “how to enjoy basketball",

Tne first thing I would say is that naturally the individual spectator
watches the ball too muche To enjoy the finer points of the game he should watch
the pattern of play of the offense and of the defense. I think that is the common
fault of even the officials who work the game. The umpire naturally should watch
the back court and also the feet of the too often travelling players, but both
officials, generally speaking, together with 95 percent of the spectators, watch
the progress of the ball, This is perfectly natural, however, It is difficult to
do otherwise.

‘Naturally, my next statement is going to be a criticism of the Rutes
Committee in eliminating the center jump. I have just finished an article for an
eastern magazine pointing out this fault. Jim Barry of U.S.C., John Bunn of Stan-
ford, Bob Koegon of Notre Dame, Harold Olson of Ohio State, and a lot of other false
prophets stated, “Eliminate the center jump and you will run the taller goons out
of basketball." I maintained then and I still maintain that games are won or lost
on the rebounds of the offensive and the defensive basket. Therefore, when the Rules
Committee eliminated the tip-off, or the center jump, they inaugurated an histerical,
hockeyigedeshuttle basketball imbroglio,

The game now is too fast and desperate for ccordinative play. The spectators
now become so excited with the haremescarem milling of the players and it is too fast
for two officials to work the game. Basketball is now much after the manner of a
ballyhooed fake wrestling bout. Please do not misunderstand me that I think basket-
ball is a fake as is wrestling, but the result is the same, The wrestling promoters
know that if the spectators were left to their sane judgment during an orderly
wrestling bout, they would go once or twice and soon the attendance would fall off.
However, the wise promoter knows the thing to do is to make the public excited; there-
fore, they have put in some eye gouging, strangling, fisticuffed rough house tactics,
and many other things that they think the public will get excited about. The promoters
even have policemen rush into the ring at times when the wrestlers have slugged the
referee, All of this, of course, is a fake but it gets the crowd.

Now basketball has this common attraction, namely, that the game is so fast
and furious and the fundamentals are so poor in this fast moving circus that the ball
flies hither and yon, going out of bounds many times in the consequent changing of hands.
Coaches, most of them, do not teach good fundamentals of defense. Everything is all
out on the offense and patterns of play which once existed are now practically extinct.