Centers' Little Helper

Dennis Hans, unrenowned former adjunct professor of mass comm and American foreign policy, relentlessly exposed the Bush administration’s “techniques of deceit” BEFORE the Iraq war, when it could have made a difference (see links). For decades he has fought baseball’s discrimination against lefthanded infielders and promoted his ingenious clockwise solution. A lifelong advocate for a flowing, non-brutal, flop-free NBA, he now champions the cause of its second-class citizens: the centers.

Monday, December 11, 2006

The NBA’s unsafe work environment
I’ve written a very long Open Letter to Ronnie Nunn, the NBA’s director of officials, on what the league must do to end the growing practice of undercutting drivers. Most such plays don’t have a malicious intent, but two rules have evolved over time so that they provide players an incentive to do just that, as well as cause dangerous land-based collisions. It’s all about getting block/charge calls right — and fixing the rules and on-court mindset so that the NBA gets back to being a (light) contact sport, not a football-style collision sport.

I first wrote about this problem in 2001 at InsideHoops.com and the online edition of The Sporting News in a remarkably prescient essay entitled 15 Steps to an Exciting NBA.