Ball Don't Lie?

Our gracious MC Craig has kindly asked me to buzz the blog tower occasionally with various, often useless thoughts. As a lifelong Boston Celtics fan (minus the Dee Brown era, of course), I'm suddenly drawn back to watching NBA hoops this month, and this punched me in my noggin . . .

An old joke with NBA basketball is the absurd tolerance for traveling. Again, it’s an old joke, but really, why the heck is there so much traveling? These athletes are professionals, guys who have played basketball for the majority of their lives. One very important tenet of the game is that you have to dribble a basketball, not run with it. If you want to have ‘game’ and walk around with your chest puffed up, learning to make sweet moves while dribbling at the same time is a must. The rule is enforced at younger ages, everyone adheres to it. Then, all of a sudden, at the professional level (it’s creeping into college now too), these guys completely ignore the obstacle of dribbling while producing their highlight reels. What’s to be proud of when you posterize someone if you’ve taken 3 steps and had to break the rules of the game to accomplish it?

Straight-up baller

I don’t get it. Even more perplexing – how did your body so quickly re-program itself to play that way? Bottom line on traveling – isn’t it the dorkiest possible transgression in basketball? Shouldn’t someone be embarrassed by their need to travel in order to effectively play the game? What would its equivalent be in golf? . . . teeing it up in the rough? . . . weak.