February 12, 1942

Mre MeSe Stewart
Esquire
919 Ne Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Tllinois

Dear Mre Stewart:

; I have read your article, "Wyhew at the Box Office",
and I think it is an excellent article, bringing out the very potent
dangers of this fire engine, pellemell, fundamental destroying, hurricane
shuttling back and forth, up and down the floor games Not only fundamental
destroying but energy and health destroyinge

In your article you tell of the research of Paul Je Fay
and Lloyd Le Messerschmidt of De Pauw University, Greencastle, Indiam,
who put the pedaneter on the boys to determine the distance traveled during
a game. Yos, they do travel quite a bit further under the present rules
of the game, but the big point has not been brought outs namely, that when
@ smaller team in stature and in weight meets a larger team, as is most usually
the case, the boys are worn to a frazzle endeavoring to get the ball off
of one or the other hackboards from one of those mezzanine}peeping coonte

You will renember that the advocates of the elimination of
the center jump: Sam Barry, Pinky lambert, John Bunn, Harold Olsen, L.We
St. John, and a host of others, said, “Eliminate the center jump and you will
- @liminate tall fellow who can do nothing but go to the center and tip the
ball over the shorter fellows’ headse 2

: In my text, Better Basketball, I have a chart showing the
tall players in the United States. These players have been increasing in |
height consistently for over a period of twenty-five years. It would be
well for sane physicists to figure out how many pounds of energy it takes
for & 6* man to outejunp a 6'5" man, and it is not the jumping in the air
that hurts a fellowes

Basketball is a game of contact under each basket. Theo=
retically, they say basketball is a nonecontact game, but when players are
jumping for the ball there is cmtacte However, the saving grace of thie
geme is that the players play the ball, but everytime they jump, even th
they play the ball, they are cautioned to protect themselves. Even this
skill, so highly developed, has a wearing down process on the shorter fellowes

No team is beaten in the center of the court at the Lipeoff.
The teams are beaten on the rebounds under the offensive or the defensive
baskets Any team that wins consistently must have at least two tall mene