aan

board, the only reason a 6 ft. 4 in. backboard was put up was to keep

the spectators from kicking the ball away or knocking it away from the

basket when the player shot. And there are still a lot of

ive basketball coaches, like the coaches in the Big Ten, who still stick
to the 6 ft. 4 in. rectangular board. And it was used as a protecting

wall, not as a shooting space. Any fello who cannot shoot close enough
to the basket to hit the kidney shaped board should lose the ball out of
bounds, yet the Big Ten coaches will not agree to a smaller board. And

it was put up for no purpose of rebounding at all.

You may think I have digressed a bit in bringing gf prathone genera but
I em showing you that a parallel case is the basket in a
feet because Dr. Naismith tacked it on a ruming track and the track was
10 feet from the floor. low through all these years we have argued about
the player interfering with the ball at the basket, and all we would have
- to do to eliminate all difficulties of that nature, and delete many of
the rules that are now in the book would be to raise the basket. 4nd
yet there are many people who will not agree to this because either the
drive-in or some other of their pets would be slightly curtailed. The
drive-in calls for the awarding of an extra shot.

Statistics have been made to show that between 72 and 92 per sent of

all the fouls are made within a radius of 16 to 20 feet of the basket.

We say that there are too many free throws, yet the very people to ergue

that point will not agree to a rule that would eliminate most of those

fouls. They go way around the measure by asking for five and six

personal fouls on a player to disqualify rather than four. Yet, if you

would reise the basket there would be very few players go out of the

game because most of the fouls are made on driving in fer the besket,

or being right under the basket when a player jumps up to shoot and is fouled by a
player too closely guarding the offensive man. The most disadvantageous position
for ‘ax offensive man is directly under a 12 foot basket. He should be out a
piece to bank his shot or to shoot in for the goale

Harold, why don't you get Bruce to put up a 12 foot hak ea ist his
players shoot at it for a while? I have found thet most of the objections
to the 12 foot basket are from coaches who heve never shot at one. I an
just venturing a good-natured guess now that Bruce has never shot at one,
end of course the thing that causes Bruce to be extremely emphatic now is
this 7 foot boy gown at Stillwater.

Several years ago I wrote a short article and had it mimeographed on the
12 foot basket for college and independent teams. You will notice that I
stress college and independent teams, and if you do write the article I
-think you should set out definitely that it is not for high school players.
i am enclosing one of these mimeographed copies which answers most of your
questions. However, I will take your questionnaire in order and answer the
same so that you will get the stuff you desire in the way you ask it. But
I did want to bring some other points out in this epistle to you. If there
is anything else that you desire, please feel free to call upon me because
I am not unduly interested, as I told Bruce, in the Rules Comittee and ita
members, or the Coaches Association and its members. You can use any or all
of the quotations you desire. I am not particularly anxious to wet-nurse
any of the boys on the Rules Committee. I worked a good many years for what
I considered the best interests of basketball and I find that the majority
of these fellows are a group of basketball politicians who try to get some