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MARCH, 1935

 

EXHIBIT A
Dunking by Seward of Purdue

Dr. Forrest C. Allen in an arti-
cle in the February Country
Gentleman. Dr. Allen is the leader of
a movement to raise the baskets to a
height of twelve feet, to give the play-
er of average height a more equitable
share in the rewards of under-basket
play. As it is now, it is “shooting for
the little fellow and dunking for the
big boy,” as the Kansas coach puts it.
(See Exhibit A above.)

The chances that 12-ft. baskets will
be adopted by the National Basketball
Committee at its spring meeting are
not very great. Even if the change
were imminent, there is little likeli-
hood that it would apply to high
schools. Evidently, there are not
enough tall high school players to
make dunking the problem to high
school basketball that it is to the col-
lege game.

Dr. Allen would perhaps be less
active in promoting 12-ft. baskets
were it not for the strength of another
reform movement which favors the
elimination of the center jump. There
is a question of relative values bearing
on these two “tall-man” situations.
We asked Dr. Allen for some com-
ment on this question’ and he respond-
ed as follows:

“So long as coaches talk of eliminating
the center tipoff, then I use the 12-ft.
basket argument to show the real cause
of dissatisfaction over the tall man. I have

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When they talk of throwing out the center jump,
Dr. Allen suggests raising the baskets

always maintained that the tall man beats
you under the rebound at either the offen-
sive or defensive basket, and my argument
for raising the basket to twelve feet is
that the area of dispersion from the re-
bounds is much greater on a 12-ft. basket
than on a 10-ft. basket. Therefore, the
players must be further out on the court,
and not under the basket as many of them
are now, to play a rebound on a higher
basket. And, by having a 12-ft. basket, the
tall players could not dunk them in as
they are doing now.

“My added argument is that with 12-ft.
baskets the little fellow could easily arch
his shot two feet further, and the big fel-
low would have to shoot the ball instead of
dunking it. :

“Moreover, to eliminate the center jump
and retain held balls as we now have them,
is to disregard the real source of disad-
vantage arising from all toss-ups. Statis-
tics on our home games this season show
that held balls occurred two-thirds as of-
ten as center jumps. And for the center
tipoff the two jumpers are more evenly
matched than any other two jumpers are
apt to be on the court. Each coach gets
his best jumper for the center tipoff,
while on a held ball jump you may have
the shortest man on the team jumping
against the tallest. This would never ob-
tain on the center jump proposition.”

Complaint Dep't
| high school at Balaton, Minne-
sota, writes in to call a personal
foul on us for our interpretation of the
strip of continuous-action pictures on
page 23 of the February issue, which
showed a set out-of-bounds play un-
der the basket. Mr. Olson says we pre-
sented as a legitimate maneuver that
which is in reality face guarding,
for which a personal foul should have
been called. In case you do not re-
call the strip of pictures in question
we are reproducing one frame from
the strip herewith (see Exhibit B).
Players 1 and 8 are teammates, facing
their own basket. Player 1 has just
received a high pass from a teammate
out-of-bounds under the basket. Player
3 has taken a well-spread position be-
hind Defensive Player 2, with his
back to him. Player 3 stands with his
back to Player 1 and his guard be-
cause it is part of the deception of
the play for Player 3 to fake recep-
tion of an imaginary pass which his

E high E. OLSON, coach of the

 

out-of-bounds teammate fakes to him.

The mechanics of the play are appar-
ent: In moving to cover Player 1’s
diagonal dribble, Defensive Player 2
is screened off by Player 3, who, as

all the pictures showed, stood per-
fectly still. A player cannot commit
face-guarding as long as he stands
still, regardless of whether he disre-
gards the ball. And if personal con-
tact ensues between Player 3 and De-
fensive Player 2 when the latter moves
to cover Player 1, the foul, if any is
called, should certainly not be on
Player 3, who has stood still, but on
Defensive Player 2 who unwittingly
bumped into him. Now, this may not
be fair, but at the current writing it

_ is law.

So, as long as Player 3 does not
move there cannot justly be a foul
called on him. And even though he
moved and became a moving screen no
foul could justly be called on him for
face-guarding unless he was facing
an opponent and disregarding the ball.
No doubt it was something we wrote
in the caption to the pictures in which

 

EXHIBIT B
Is 3 Face-guarding?

Mr. Olson saw face-guarding. The
pertinent part of the caption said: “If
the screen player sees that a success-
ful defensive switch is about to occur,
he can become a moving screen to dis-
commode the switchers.” In event the
play took this turn (which it did not
in the pictures) Player 3 would, if he
were clever, protect himself against
a charge of face-guarding by turning
in such a way that he would not be
facing either defensive player, and at
the same time would avoid causing
personal contact by the move.

We are glad that Mr. Olson brought
up the point, because it gives us a
chance to show off our technical
knowledge of a game which is becom-
ing more and more like a game of
chess. Pretty soon it will be necessary
for a player to jump over an oppo-
nent if he wants to get around him.

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