This Year's Big Basketball Complaint: OK, so traveling is legal in the NBA -- take as many steps as you want so long as you score. A player would have to carry the ball out of the arena, hail a cab, show his passport and board an airplane bound for Sweden to get called for "traveling" in today's NBA. In the second game of the Mavs-Suns playoff series, Dirk Nowitzki scored the key late basket. Nowitzki drove the baseline, then took SIX STEPS without dribbling before launching the deciding shot. No whistle. Traveling is now legal: Please, NBA, just make it official.
But something worse than runaway traveling has recently evolved: the "hop through." On a hop-through, the player drives the lane, jumps into the air, comes down and stops for an instant, then takes more steps and launches a shot. It's both traveling and up-and-down (which is a form of traveling) on the same play, and officials aren't calling it either. Against the Suns in the playoffs, Josh Howard of Dallas did so many hop-throughs he practically sprouted cute fuzzy rabbit ears. In the Dallas-San Antonio series, the Spurs made the incredible blunder of actually observing the rules, while Jerry Stackhouse repeatedly used the hop-through without being whistled. In the NBA Finals, Dwyane Wade used the hop-through so often the organist should have played "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" when Wade started down the lane. At one point in the Finals, Shaq drove the lane and stopped dribbling, then took steps, then jumped and came back down, then took more steps and jumped on his shot. No whistle.
Nobody hops like LeBron James, and his success is one reason other players are imitating the move. Watch tape of any James performance; half a dozen of his shots per game come at the end of a hopping move on which he has both traveled and committed an up-and-down violation. TMQ attended a Cavs-Whizzies playoff contest this spring, and was struck by two things about James. First, he almost always took possession of the ball outside the opponent's three-point arc. Michael Jordan came off picks and caught the ball close to the basket. James can't come off picks because Cleveland does not run picks, or any other kind of play -- James just stands outside the arc and someone hands him the ball, then he goes one-on-one. The second thing that struck me about James' performance was the sheer number of times he went down the lane, traveled, jumped into the air, came back down, then jumped again without being called for anything.
NBA offensive basketball continues to be ugly -- the Suns and Mavs were such joys this year because they were pretty to watch. If players are allowed to barrel down the lane out of control, traveling and committing up-and-downs and not being whistled, why should they take sensible shots or cooperate to set picks to get teammates open? Why not just barrel down the lane out of control and then heave the ball in the general direction of the basket? That players even call the new move the hop-through -- James coined the term -- tells you they know what they're doing isn't legal. But they will keep doing it until the officials enforce the rules. And the game will become more artistic when that happens...
Clang! Clang! Clang!: At the NBA All-Star Game, Nate Robinson missed 20 of 22 attempts during the dunk contest -- which he won. In the game itself Ray Allen, Gilbert Arenas, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki and Rasheed Wallace combined to shoot 0-for-21 from the 3-point line.
Clang! Clang! Clang!: New Orleans missed 22 of its final 23 shots in losing to the Los Angeles Clippers 89-67. The Hornets also missed every 3-point attempt they took during the game.
Clang! Clang! Clang!: For the second consecutive year, Allen Iverson joined the small, elite group of basketball players who have missed 1,000 shots in a season. In 2004-05, Iverson took an NBA-leading 1,818 shots and missed 1,047; in 2005-06, Iverson took 1,822 shots and missed 1,008. But Iverson is staring at the tail lights of Kobe Bryant, who this season heaved an NBA-leading 2,173 shots in the general direction of the basket, missing 1,195. Bryant came within shouting distance of one of the few sports records likely never to be broken, Wilt Chamberlain's 1,592 missed shots during the 1961-62 basketball campaign. But Chamberlain also made 1,597 field goals that season -- that is, he hit more often than he missed. Bryant missed 217 more times than he hit. Though Kobe led the league in scoring, his shooting percentage didn't even finish in the top 50....
