6 Necember, 1940

BASKETBALL, THROUGH THE EYES OF A SPORTS WRITER
By Everett Morris
(A Speech delivered et the 1940 Meeting)

I want to assure all that there is no evil in my eyes, They are neither bi-
optic nor astigmatic, They may be a little red rimmed, but that comes from svending
forty-eight hours on the train with the metropolitan district basketball coaches
and trying to sleep in this hotel,

There is an unwritten rule in my profession that newspaper men should
read and not see; another part of that rule is that they should write and not
speak, Well, if certain basketball conferences can disregard basketball rules, I
guess that I can disregard the rules of my profession, too, and stand up here and
let you look at me and shoot off my mouth,

The subject is rather a broad one, I have no preconceived plan of how to
attack it. Maybe I had better go into something transitional and stratified, em-
plying principles of man for man, at the same time using the zone and spreading my-
self out to protect all vulnerable lanes or something of that sort.

It is none of my business but I do wish that the University of Kansas bas-
ketball team would come East some time, I would like to know what the little guy
up in the corner is doing when the other guy is going around him, Of course, I may
have an evil mind,

I have been asked a lot of times what I think about basketball and what I
think is wrong with it, and except for what I read in the newspapers I do not think
there is anything wrong with it, but every time I pick up an out-of-town newspaper
or the afternoon wire reports of the Associated Press or the United Press, I read
that some coach thinks that this is a very bad game we are playing, that it isa
terrible mess, and he has a panacea that will cure all the evils with which our
notable game is afflicted. Some of these panaceas involve the use of circles and
detour signs and policemen with whistles and white stripes across blue shirts, and
some of them call for the illusion of © bean bag and a wash boiler,

I remember that 210,000 people were in the Garden for fifteen basketball
double-headers this year, and I remember that when Indiana plays Purdue you cart
buy a ticket for two or three weeks in advance, when Missouri plays Kansas you can-
not even get in the town, and when Oklahoma plays Oklahoma A & M they call out the
Texas Rangers to keep the crowds in order, I cannot see anything very wrong with a
geme that has that much spectator appeal.

But I think that if there is anything wrong with the game, it is probably
traceable right back to two fundamental sources, First (and this isn't very hospi-
table) the coaches; second, the officials, The subjects are probably interrelated
inasmuch as, unfortunately, you cannot play basketball games without officials and
there never seems to be enough good officials to go around in any part of the coun-
try, In every section of the country you will hear: "We have so-and-so who isgpod
and so-and-so is fair and the rest of them are terrible," and when you have a con-
ference that is playing four games in one night, one game has good officiating and,
the other three have terrible officiating or at least they think so, Perhaps this
is the fault of the coaches and perhaps it is the fault of the officials' groups
themselves, I do not pretend to know, but I do think that one of the most intelli-
gent suggestions that I have heard this year for improving basketball had nothing
whatever to do with raising the baskets up to the balcony, or cutting another twen-
ty or thirty square yards of playing area off the floor or using an indoor baseball