How I Would Fix Basketball
my infallible solutions for bringing sports to the masses
Coach said to fake right and break left! Watch out for the pick and keep an eye on defense! Gotta run the give and go and take the ball to the hole, but don't be afraid to shoot the outside J! Gotta get ya head in the game!
Have wiser words ever been spoken by a teen basketball-theater prodigy? I think not.
In honor of the NBA season starting, and since I’m running a famously topical blog, we’re kicking off a new series here at The Stump [hold for applause]. Today marks the first edition of The Stump series: “How I Would Fix Sports.” See, all sports are pretty good. Hell, I’d venture to say your worst sport is better than roughly 95% of other things in life. I would even watch golf over doing pretty much anything else I’m supposed to do in life. That being said, I demand perfection! And, as is my modis operandi, I have lots of opinions about how we can fix sports and make the beautiful games that much more beautiful.
I’m kicking off this series with basketball for a few reasons, all borne of respect, which is something to keep in mind as I lightly trash and disparage it going forward. First, basketball is one of the Big Three Classic American Sports™ along with football and baseball, though the latter is limping along in this category anemically. Now, I have accumulated a small audience of readers from outside the United States [“Stumpie” is rapidly becoming the bona fide international identity], and I’m sure others of you have your own dumb reasons for pretending not to care about one of our best American pastimes, so I do apologize for perhaps boring y’all with my content this week. On the other hand, I don’t apologize in the slightest; basketball is a phenomenal sport and you should be consuming it! What, you don’t want to watch a 10-foot tall freak of nature attempt to be graceful? You’re telling me that it sounds dull to watch several literal giants push each other around and jump high enough that the air traffic controllers are on alert? I’m not buyin’ it! Just look at this guy and tell me you aren’t deathly curious about how he functions performing literally any movement:
The second reason I have elected to start with basketball for this new series is that I have a personal fondness for the game, having played until high school [it’s not important that I quit after freshman year]. You see, as a child who was moderately short and resembled a telephone poll, I thought I would be a consummate fit for a highly physical sport full of Amazonians. Nevertheless, I persevered. Hell, I even won MVP once [in 8th grade… on the B team]. So I guess you could call me something of a subject matter expert in this domain.
My affinity and respect for the sport have provided me with the laser focus and cunning insights necessary to explain how we can, definitively, fix basketball.
And she wins the toss! Time to play offense.
1) The sport is played by giants, the court should be made for giants.
This is the most obvious, slam-dunk [ha] fix I’ll be presenting today. If the NBA implements this tomorrow, it would feel like a gnawing itch in that hard-to-reach spot on the back of your shoulder blade had been scratched. As I said, basketball is the sport of folks apparently stretched by god on one of those medieval torture devices. So why in the world are we tolerating watching them play on a baby court???
Professional basketball players have gotten, on average, 3 inches taller since 1952. Yet we still have these behemoths running around on a court with - I shit you not - the exact same dimensions as I was playing on when I was 7 years old. So, how do we fix it?
First, the court needs to be double the size, minimally. I did a little back-of-the-envelop math using the player Mikal Bridges [I don’t know who this man is, but my editor sure does]. Mikal Bridges plays for the Brooklyn Nets and stands at 6ft. 6in. tall, which is the current NBA average height. After surveying some posts from insecure men on our favorite website Reddit about their inseam lengths, I would venture a guess that Mikal’s inseam is roughly 36 inches. If Mikal Bridges did the splits, we’re conservatively looking at 72 inches of length from foot-to-foot. The length of a basketball court is 94 feet, or 1,128 inches. That means that the average NBA player only has to do the splits about 15 times to cross the entire length of the court. That’s not very many!!! I think it should be substantially more difficult for Mikal Bridges to do splits down an entire basketball court. In contrast, Mikal would have to do five times as many splits to cross a football field.
If we doubled the NBA court dimensions to 188ft by 100ft, Mikal would now need to do about 31 splits to make it down the court. That feels right to me. I want the players to have to run a little, make ‘em sweat. Let’s see some hustle! No one is hustling at only 15 splits per court.
Additionally, basketball players being so tall and talented now means that dunking simply isn’t very special anymore. The basketball goal rim has remained placed at 10 feet high since *1891* when the game was invented. Back when we were playing with damn peach baskets. The average point guard in the NBA now [that’s the short, squirrelly one on the team for those who are already tired of hearing about basketball] is about 6’0 to 6’3 with a 35 inch vertical jump. Add wingspan to that, and even our shorties are plausibly dunking! If everyone can do it, it simply isn’t as special, and as of now I do make the rules. Raise the basket! I want only our heartiest giants leaping for the stars.
Finally, the basketball itself should be heavier and larger. They wield that thing with the same cavalierness as I do with a fork when I’m regaling a particularly lively story at the dinner table. The ball, at its best, should be frustratingly barely too large for the average player to palm. That’s how I remember it from playing basketball when I was 14, so that’s how it should be! Palming a basketball, like dunking, should still be special.
To summarize, I simply enjoy the prospect of watching the current NBA transition into a body-appropriate court [like watching your oldest-in-the-class toddler finally have to get their ass kicked a little by the big kids in elementary school]. The colossuses among us deserve to have their talents protected, respected, and showcased in a manner that fully highlights the medical marvel of enormous human bodies.
2) I’m on my hands and knees begging you to stop calling timeouts.
Okay, this is probably going to be a more tedious complaint for those of you who do not engage with basketball outside of this blog. For those of you who do care about basketball, this might be the suggestion you find the least repulsive. I love running a blog where I’m managing to generally make both the lovers and haters mad simultaneously. Pledge subscriptions so I can commit to full-time aggravation.
So, in basketball, each team gets seven timeouts per game. There are some very minor restrictions on the timing with which one can call a timeout, but what happens in practice every damn time is that both teams save their maximal number of timeouts for the last two minutes of the game.
Walk with me here: you’ve watched an entire basketball game. The score is close; the players are glistening with foul quantities of sweat. It’s been an exciting evening of fast-paced, non-stop action. Your heart is pumping out of your chest, waiting to see if the team you have arbitrarily attached loyalty to because your home team sucks, again, is going to win the game. Two minutes left. Surely, you’ll be chugging your beer in elation or misery soon… And then… they call a timeout… and then the other team has to call a timeout… and suddenly you’ve withered into your barstool, decrepit, just waiting for them to come back from commercials from their 700th fucking timeout.
Yeah, no. They gotta fix that. I have lost millennia, eternities, eons from my life waiting for the damn basketball game to finish. I just so do not care if you pick the perfect little inbounding play. Maybe if you had played better during the previous 46 minutes, you wouldn’t be in this situation! Maybe you deserve to feel a little rushed, huh!? Did you think about that!? I propose a simple new rule: keep your seven timeouts per team, but you cannot call them within 5 minutes of each other, and only one timeout can be called in the last two minutes - first team to call it, gets it. I have not thought deeply about this rule; it once again just feels right. Let us cast off the shackles of the final two minutes of basketball oppression! If the NBA is reading this [who am I kidding, of course the NBA is reading this], I’m holding basketball hostage. If you do not cool it with the fucking timeouts, I’m also taking away your right unleash every single foul you have left to use in the last two minutes as well. My threat is credible, I promise.
3) Who wears short-shorts?
Fashion changes, but one thing remains: everyone loves short-shorts. My next request is perhaps best captured by merely sharing an image from a time when basketball mixed both style and athleticism:
You know it, I know it. Everyone in that picture looks cooler than anyone who has ever existed. The small shorts, the long socks - this is the imagery basketball should be curating. We may be out of the baggiest era of basketball fashion [rip the 90s/00s and your terrible taste in everything], but we have yet to return to our roots. Once upon a time, you could tune in for a game and a bit of thigh. Now, we hide the thighs away with a shame that I cannot understand. Bring back the thighs! Thighs! Thighs! Thighs!
Purely from a perspective of aerodynamics, the lack of swishing fabrics must have made the game easier for these gentlemen. I’ve personally sprinted across a court in both contemporary basketball shorts and shorts equivalently small as the ones pictured above, and I know which ones made me feel that drag. The lack of short-shorts was certainly what kept me from making varsity.
Baseball uniforms have a dignified air [what other sport makes you wear one of man’s cruelest inventions - the belt]. Football has a uniform so distinct and complex they’re one battery away from being an Iron Man suit. Basketball used to have a similarly unique style and flair, but we’ve lost our way. I shouldn’t be able to recreate the uniform of an elite-level athlete by wearing my ordinary gym clothes; I should have to earn my right to wear tiny shorts and matching tall striped socks. What better way to protect their amply endowed calves! Who wears short-shorts? The NBA, if they weren’t being damned cowards.
4) Two baskets was fun? How about four.
For you real goobers out there, this last one is for you. Maybe you’re a diehard basketball fan, but you want a little extra excitement, a little more basketball, as it were. Maybe I have not convinced you to care about basketball at all, and you need a real shake-up of the status quo to have a snowball’s chance in hell of tuning in. Maybe you care about professional basketball a medium amount, like me, and you just wanna think about something stupid, like me. This one has it all.
What if - and hear me out - we put four baskets in the corners of the court. And what if we had two balls going at a time with which you could score in those four baskets. And what if those four baskets were constantly changing team ownership throughout the game. Simply imagine the goddamn excitement of a simultaneous buzzer-beater shot by each team! How would the ball going out of bounds work? I don’t know! But I bet it would be thrilling.
Basketball is about dreaming as big as the gargantuan humans that play it, and my dream is to make basketball an intricately executed dance between ten men, two balls, and four baskets. You may think basketball is artistry in motion as it stands, but imagine the coordination it would take to keep track of two baskets and balls with the same number of players. In my imagination, this idea looks as elegant as a spider weaving a delicate web or a symphony conducted by someone really good with that stick thing they wave. I’m quite positive there are approximately zero flaws with this idea, and I expect all of you to agree. It’s time for basketball to evolve to the 21st Century, two balls at a time.
Now for my own buzzer-beater
We did good work today, team. All that’s left is to watch the Houston Rockets soar to a surely decisive championship title this season. I sincerely hope you enjoyed the first installation of “How I Would Fix Sports.” I sure know I did. If you enjoyed it, let me know in the like button and comments [and dollars]! If you didn’t, keep it to your damn self!
As we often do here on The Stump, I will end with a call to action: I want you to click this link and let the NBA have a piece of your mind. Let them know that basketball is fixable, and you know the girl who can do it. Hell, spam a link to my blog in their socials, their emails, shout it from the rooftops! Tell the NBA that they’re not alone anymore - The Stump has been on the bench, but we’re ready to take the rock straight to the basket, no flops. The shot clock is on.
Stumpies on three - One, two, three, Stumpies!!!
dazzled by my unrelenting wit and wisdom? you can finance my caffeine and alcohol consumption that keeps this stone rolling uphill. also, i’ll be immeasurably grateful and possibly weep.
Katie, your prescriptions are infallible for sure, but why stop at four baskets? Why not four teams as well? Imagine the carnage that would follow with all those seven footers running about. Fast breaks would look like the hunger games.
go stumpies! i think i have watched two basketball games in my life, when it comes to American Sports i have been an NFL girl more than anything else (go Broncos), but am disappointed at the lack of places to watch a game over here.
i wholeheartedly agree that a game with four holes and two balls can't go wrong. these guys need to work a little harder, get a bit balletic with it, you know?