Coffs Harbour Basketball 9 years ago when it was pretty good.
Do you live in the mid-north coast region and have mad basketball skills? Are you thinking about taking your talents to the Coffs Coast? We’ll if you’re seriously considering it, then stop right now. Coffs Harbour basketball is just plain pedestrian, and it has been for over 10 years, which is about how long I’ve been playing there. Coffs Harbour basketball is pedestrian because it is run by people who do not know the sport of basketball. If you don’t know basketball, then how the hell are you supposed to run a basketball association?
Allow me to explain what basketball is to those who are not aware. This definition is derived straight from Wikipedia:
Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter and 10 feet (3.048 m) high mounted to a backboard at each end. There are many techniques for ball handling—shooting, passing, dribbling, and rebounding. Basketball teams generally have player positions, the tallest and strongest members of a team are called a centre or power forward, while slightly shorter and more agile players are called small forward, and the shortest players or those who possess the best ball handling skills are called a point guard or shooting guard. The point guard directs the on court action of the team, implementing the coach’s game plan, and managing the execution of offensive and defensive plays (player positioning).
From the excerpt, you can pretty much derive that basketball requires a lot of skill, agility, size, strength and great timing. People who play basketball know that it takes a lot of hours of practice to develop skills that translate to success on the court. They recognise talent and learn to appreciate the display that’s presented before them by players on the court. What if a basketball organisation is run by people oblivious to the intricacies of the game of basketball? What you have my friend, is a recipe for disaster.
The Intricacies of Basketball
A lot of people who start playing basketball don’t know the finer details about the sport for obvious reasons. The best way to learn basketball is to play basketball with someone who knows how to play basketball. If you play basketball in a competition run by the Coffs Harbour Basketball Association, and think that you’re playing basketball, we’ll sorry but you are not playing basketball. The brand of basketball they employ is far from the game that Dr. James Naismith invented in early December 1891. There are a number of intricacies that make the game of basketball unique. I’ll point them out in the next few topics.
Basketball is a Contact Sport. But…
There are legal and illegal contacts. Basketball is about getting to a spot before your opponent, in offense and in defense. If you get to an open spot before the defender, then you have the right of way i.e. if the defensive player bumps you or makes excessive contact with your arms then it’s a foul. This is also true the other way around. If you get to an open spot before the offensive player, then you have the right of way i.e. if the offensive player plows you ever while you established your defensive spot, then it’s an offensive foul. Very hard to officiate but you soon get good at it after a while if you’re watching it. Well, that’s part of the problem in Coffs Harbour Basketball, the refs (especially the young ones) does not recognise legal or illegal contacts.
3-Second Rule
The three-second rule was introduced in 1936 and was expressed as such: no offensive player could remain in the free throw lane, with or without the ball, for more than three seconds. This rule was introduced to keep the big guys out of the “key”, in order to make the game challenging. Big guys have to learn about timing, and coordination, just like the little guys. It makes the game more uniform so everyone is playing on an even playing field. Players, big or small, are forced to develop skill sets that will bring success on the court. Well, you don’t need to worry about the 3-Second rule in the Coffs Comp. Frankly, I don’t believe the refs know about it in Coffs, even though it was introduced 80 years ago. Someone please send the Coffs Harbour Association a memo about the 3-Second rule ASAP.
Travelling
In basketball, travelling is a violation of the rules that occurs when a player holding the ball moves one or both of their feet illegally. Most commonly, a player travels by illegally moving his or her pivot foot or taking two or more steps without dribbling the ball. Could someone please remind Coffs referees that there is only one pivot foot and it’s perfectly OK to move the other foot as long as the pivot foot is down. The majority of the calls in a Coffs Harbour basketball game are travelling violations, probably 50% during a game.
Coffs Harbour referees, please pay more attention to the first 2 rules that I pointed out before, Defensive/Offensive Foul and 3-Second violations. They are a lot more important in terms of controlling the physicality of the game which we all know can get out of hand very quickly. Nobody in the history of the game has ever seethed because their opponent travelled one too many times for their liking. But if illegal contacts or “camping” out in the key are allowed in a single game, then someone is going to get pissed right off.
