Category: Understanding Sports

How does the sport of hurling work?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’m going to see my first hurling game ever tomorrow at Fenway Park in Boston. I’m excited for the Irish food and music. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the game too, but I have no idea what it’s like. How does the sport of hurling work?

Thanks,
Chester

Dear Chester,

What a coincidence, I’m going to see my first hurling match tomorrow at Fenway Park as well! It’s like you’re inside my head! Hurling is an ancient Irish sport, thousands of years old. It’s so old in fact, that many more common sports contain elements of hurling in how their games work. As a result, hurling feels like it’s a Frankensport, made up of many little parts of other sports. That’s really the easiest way to understand it, even if in truth, it’s the other way around.

Hurling is played on a giant rectangular field. Games are 70 minutes long, split into two 35 minute halves. A hurling field is one and a half times longer than a football field and almost twice as wide. Each team has fifteen players on the field at a time. Each player has a stick. The stick looks a little like it was created by taking a field hockey stick and smushing the thick, rounded end to create a flatter, wider surface. Another way to think about it is as if you took a lacrosse stick but replaced the pocket with a flat piece of wood. Players do wear helmets, but other than that there’s no protective padding. There are two goals, which look very much like soccer goals, on their side of the field. Unlike soccer goals, but very much like football uprights, there are tall posts that extend up from either side of the goal. You may have seen this on high school or college fields that are used for both soccer and football. In hurling, both elements of the goal are in play simultaneously. Finally, there’s a ball that’s marginally smaller than a baseball and is constructed in roughly the same way — leather stitched around a cork center.

The object of the game is to get the ball between your opponent’s goalposts. If the ball goes into the soccer-like part of the goal, it is worth three points and called a goal. If the ball goes between the upright above the crossbar, as in a football field goal, it is called a point and worth, you guessed it, one point. This is fairly straightforward, especially compared to how some other sports score their games. There is, however, a complication. Hurling has a very unique way of expressing the score. Instead of adding the points to create a single score, like we’re used to in basketball (a three pointer plus a two pointer equals five points) or football (a touchdown plus an extra point plus a field goal equals ten) hurling keeps goals and points separate. The score of a team that made two goals and five points is written as 2-5. If they played against a team that scored one goal and nine points, the final score would be written as Team A 2-5, Team B 1-9. The total amounts are added to figure out who won — in this case, Team B won by a total score of 12 points to 11 — but they’re not written that way.

The game will probably look quite chaotic to both of us. That’s normal when watching a sport for the first time. In terms of rules, the most important thing to understand is how players are allowed to interact with the ball. Like basketball, players cannot simply run with the ball in their hands. A player with the ball is allowed to take four steps but after that, they must bounce the ball on the end of their stick to continue running. They are allowed to catch the ball off their stick and run another four steps if need be, but this catch and run is only allowed three times consecutively. The ball cannot be picked up off the ground but must be scooped up with the stick. Players are not allowed to throw the ball, so passing and shooting must be done with the stick or by slapping the ball with an open hand.

I think that’s most of what we’ll need to enjoy the game tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What is icing the kicker? Why do football coaches do it?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is icing the kicker? Why do football coaches do it? I saw a game the other day where the coach took two time-outs right before a field goal by the opposing team. They made it anyway! What gives?

Thanks,
Terry

Dear Terry,

Close football games often come down to a last-minute or last second field goal kick. If the team attempting the kick makes it, they win. If they miss it, they lose. The defending team has very few options in this situation. Their ideal tactic would be to block the kick but unless you’ve got Jamie Collins on your team (and he gets pretty lucky,) blocking a field goal is virtually impossible. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any other options the defense has. Either the field goal kicker is going to make the kick or he’s not. Without any realistic options, many football coaches are left grasping at straws. And that’s when they ice the kicker.

Icing the kicker is when a coach takes a time-out right before the opposing team’s kicker attempts a field goal. The theory is that this will unnerve the kicker, particularly when the kick is very important, like in the scenario we set up above. The kicker, left to think about nothing but the kick at hand (or should it be at foot?) will start to think about the criticism he’ll face if he misses — will he be lambasted in the media? will he still have a job if he misses? will his teammates hate him? — and, because of that, he’ll panic and miss the kick. It doesn’t work. No, really, it doesn’t work. I promise. And really, why would it work? Professional field goal kickers already spend all game and all week and all year thinking about kicking field goals. Another 30 seconds isn’t going to matter. They know they’re always a missed kick from losing their jobs. The 32 who have made it into the NFL are the ones who thrive under those circumstances.

So, why do coaches persist in doing something that doesn’t work? It’s not because they’re stupid. I think it’s because there’s a strong human preference for action over inaction and also for delaying the inevitable. In our last second field goal scenario, taking a time-out doesn’t help the defending team, but it doesn’t hurt them either. So, perhaps the better question is, why not do it? Especially if no one thinks it’s going to win, they’re not going to criticize a coach for trying. It’s like the old joke about the scientist with a horseshoe on his door who answers a colleagues question about why he bothers hanging it there since he obviously doesn’t believe in superstition. The scientist replies, “well, it can’t hurt.” If you ice the kicker and it doesn’t work, well, we all know it doesn’t work — there’s no regrets. If you don’t ice the kicker and he makes the kick, maybe you wonder if the tactic would have worked, if only in that specific setting. Even if a coach truly doesn’t believe in icing the kicker, he probably doesn’t want to lose more than he doesn’t want to ice the kicker. For the next thirty seconds, at least, icing the kicker is a way to avoid losing.

Thanks for your question — and one last note. In the NFL, coaches aren’t allowed to take two time-outs before the same play. Maybe the coach took a time out, then a play was run, and then he took another time-out right before the kick?

Ezra Fischer

What constitutes offensive illegal motion in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’m confused over what constitutes offensive illegal motion in football. Rule 7 – Section 7 states, “No player is to be moving toward the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped.” Does this mean there’s a brief wait period before a backfield player can advance after the snap?

Look forward to your answer,
Dennis

Dear Dennis,

From your reference to Rule 7 – Section 7 in your question, I’m going to assume that you’re interested primarily in the National Football League, not any other type of football. Rule 7 – Section 7 in the NFL rulebook corresponds to illegal motion, a very specific violation of a general rule. In this post, I’ll explain the general rule, then write about the specific violation called illegal motion, and quickly touch on the other common penalties that are similar to illegal motion. At the end, we’ll return to your question about whether a backfield player must wait briefly before advancing after the snap.

The general rule which underpins the illegal motion penalty is that offensive players should be still when the ball is snapped. Although this sounds mundane, it’s actually one of the primary things which separate football from the rest of the popular sports. As opposed to a fluid, constantly shifting game like basketball or soccer, football is a series of set plays, almost like moves in a turn-based board game. The game stops, the teams set up, they go like demons for a short period, and then the pattern repeats. All the stopping and starting can make football seem boring to new fans and lead to the common criticism that football games only have 11 minutes of action but it’s actually the key to football being the most tactically complex and suspenseful sport. When I think about how I watch a football game, the moment between when an offensive team has set up to begin a play and when they snap the ball is the moment when my brain is most active. I’m trying to figure out what’s going to happen – is the offensive team going to run or pass? Will they be successful? Who is going to be involved in the play. Having the offense pause before the play starts facilitates more than just fan interest, it also gives the defense a chance to adjust their formation and plan to match the offense’s. This is essential to keep things somewhat balanced between offense and defense.

Motion is a technical term in football that provides one exception to the rule against the movement of offensive players when the ball is snapped. One player on the offensive team may be moving when the ball is snapped as long as that player is not moving toward the line of scrimmage and he is not a member of the offensive line. You see this somewhat commonly with wide receivers who move from one side of the formation to the other or running backs who move from one side of the quarterback to the other. Illegal motion is what happens when a team attempts motion and fails for some procedural reason. The two main types of failure are the player in motion mistakenly moves toward the line of scrimmage instead of just sideways and the player in motion being ineligible to be in motion because he was originally lined up on the line of scrimmage like an offensive lineman. In all cases of illegal motion, the penalty is five yards.

There are two other types of violations against the principle of offensive stillness. The first is an illegal shift and it’s very similar to illegal motion. Shifting is movement by offensive players before the ball is snapped (instead of during). More than one player is allowed to shift at the same time but they all have to come to a one second stop before the ball is snapped. The other violation is called a false start and it’s what happens when any of the players not in motion make a sharp movement before the ball is snapped. This is most commonly an offensive lineman starting to come out of his stance and move backwards to protect his quarterback.

To return finally to your question about whether the illegal motion rule means that a backfield player like a running back or quarterback has to momentarily wait after the ball is snapped before moving, it does not. Illegal motion only applies to players who were moving before the ball was snapped. As long as they are eligible to move and moving sideways or backwards, they are allowed to continue their motion through the snapping of the ball. All the other players, who were still before the snap, are allowed to start moving in any direction as soon as the ball is snapped.

Thanks so much for reading and keep the questions coming,
Ezra Fischer

What does down by contact mean in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does down by contact mean in football? I hear people talking about it when a player fumbles the ball. Does it have something to do with fumbling?

Thanks,
Bruce

Dear Bruce,

There are two ways for an NFL football player who has established control of the ball to be ruled down by contact. Either contact with an opposing player forces a part of his body other than his hands or feet to touch the ground or a player from the opposing team touches him while a part of his body other than his hands or feet are touching the ground (even if it wasn’t contact with that player that forced him to the ground.) In other words, a ball carrier is down by contact if he’s touched while on the ground or if contact with an opposing player forces him to the ground. In college football, the rules are different, but in the NFL, when these conditions have been met, that play is over and anything that happens afterwards, good or bad for either team, should not count. A player cannot fumble the ball once he is down by contact nor can he score a touchdown or earn a first down. Generally, as you pointed out in your question, if you hear people talk about whether a player is down by contact, it’s because one of those three things may have happened. In this post, we’ll run through a scenario for a fumble and for a touchdown (a first down scenario is identical to a touchdown one) as a means of explaining the down by contact rule.

Is a player down by contact or has he fumbled?

Imagine a wide receiver running down the field. The quarterback delivers a perfect back shoulder pass which the receiver catches easily. He secures the ball, cuts to the middle of the field, and fakes out one defender before being tackled by another. As he’s falling forward, the ball squirts loose and rolls around on the ground for a while before the defender picks it up. The defender runs the ball a few yards up the field before stepping out-of-bounds. He and his teammates are celebrating because they feel they’ve created a turnover and their offense should get the ball. The wide receiver is indignantly yelling at the ref that his knee was down before he lost control of the football. Not to worry, in the NFL all potential turnovers are subject to automatic video replay.

The question for this review is whether the wide receiver should be ruled down by contact or whether he fumbled the ball. The official looking at the video will go through a series of questions about the player in question. First, did he establish control of the ball? Yes, he caught it and then ran a bit with the ball, clearly establishing control. Second, was he forced to the ground by a player on the defensive team? Yes, a defender tackled him. Finally, the key question – was he in possession of the ball when a part of his body other than his hands or feet, in this case, his knee, first touched the ground thanks to the action of a defender? If the answer to that question is yes, then the player did not fumble the ball, he simply dropped it after the play was over — once he was down by contact.

Has a player scored a touchdown or was he down by contact?

In this scenario, a running back takes a handoff from the five yard line. He swings out wide, near the edge of the field, and thanks to some great blocking or trickery by his team, he has a clear path to the end zone. Alas, he trips on an errant tuft of grass. Not to worry, this isn’t college football, where the play is over as soon as any part of a ball carrier’s body other than his hands or feet touch the ground. This is the NFL where the down by contact rule tells us that a player with the ball must be on the ground AND touched by an opponent before the play is over. So, the running back starts wriggling his way toward the goal line. All he has to do is get the tip of the ball to the line to score. As he’s wriggling and squiggling and reaching out to score, a defender runs over and dives at him, touching his back with outstretched arms. The refs call it a touchdown but, since all scoring plays are automatically reviewed, and the ref runs to the video monitor to take a second look.

In this scenario, there’s no question about the ball carrier having possession of the ball. The running back takes it from the quarterback and holds onto it for the entire play. There’s also no question about when the player’s knees, butt, elbows, etc. touch the ground. He falls on his own and then maintains contact with the ground for the rest of the play, crawling along. The only question is when the ball carrier was first touched by an opposing player, which would make him down by contact and end the play. Did the touch happen before or after the ball reached the goal line? After looking at the video and freezing it the moment the ball carrier was touched by a defender, the ref concludes that the ball had not reached the goal line yet. No touchdown is awarded but the offense gets to start the next play with the ball six inches from the goal line, the distance it was when the ball carrier was touched and therefore down by contact.

—

Hopefully these two scenarios have helped to demystify the down by contact rule in the NFL. Show off to your friends the next time the issue comes up in a game you’re watching!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What's the difference between a major and minor penalty in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

What’s the difference between a major and a minor penalty in hockey? Is it just how long the penalty is?

Thanks,
Amber

Dear Amber,

Ice hockey has one of the most colorful ways of penalizing players for misdeeds on the ice. The guilty player is sent to sit, alone, on the other side of the ice from their teammates, in a little glass-enclosed prison called the penalty box. While they are there, their team (usually) has to play a player (basically everyone, even in women’s hockey, says “a man down” but we’ll use the more egalitarian “player”) down. Duration is one difference between a major and a minor penalty in hockey, but it’s not the only one. There are actually a few more key types of penalties in hockey: minor, double minor, major, and a confusing category that includes misconducts, game misconducts, and match penalties. In this post, we’ll run through each type of penalty and its consequences.

What is a minor penalty in hockey?

The minor penalty is by far the most common penalty in hockey. It’s given for infractions like tripping, obstruction, goalie interference, and the less violent forms of cross-checking, high sticking, boarding, etc. A minor penalty sends a player to the penalty box for two minutes. During that time, her team will play with a four player unit on the ice called a penalty killing unit, while the other team plays with five players on an offensive-minded power play unit. If a goal is scored by the team with the extra player, during the two minute penalty, the rest of the penalty time is negated and the teams return to even strength — five against five. If another player on the same team commits a penalty while his teammate is still serving a two minute minor, that player joins his teammate in the penalty box and their team plays two players down. The resulting 5-3 power play often results in a goal. If the goal is scored during the 5-3, only the first player to commit the penalty leaves the box, and when play resumes, there will still be a 5-4 penalty.

What is a double-minor penalty in hockey?

A double-minor is exactly what it sounds like — two minor penalties assessed to a single player. This could be for two separate acts. For example, a player could be called for tripping, feel as though it was the result of a dive, get angry at the player who he thinks dove, start a scuffle with that player, and be assessed an additional minor penalty for roughing. The result would be a double-minor: two minutes for tripping and two minutes for roughing. More common is a double-minor assessed for a single act whose violence merits more than two minutes of penalty time. Double-minors are relatively rare and the majority of them are for a single offense: high sticking. High sticking, when one player’s stick hits another player above the shoulders not as part of the follow-through from a shot, is a two minute, minor penalty… unless the player who got hit with the stick bleeds. In that case, it’s a double-minor. This is why you’ll often see a ref go over to examine the player who took the stick in the head or face. Fans of that team will often be rooting for blood to appear. It’s a weird rule. A double-minor behaves like two independent minor penalties, one after another. If a goal is scored during the first two minutes, whatever time is left on that penalty is forgiven and the second two-minute penalty will begin as soon as play resumes. If a goal is scored during the second two minutes, the rest of that penalty is wiped out and the player leaves the penalty box.

What is a major penalty in hockey?

A major penalty is generally one given for a violent infraction with intent. Most are more serious versions of minor penalties. For example, cross-checking, boarding, elbowing, charging, may all be given in minor form or as a major. A major penalty comes with five minutes of penalty time. Five minutes is a lot, but there’s another reason that major penalties are so punitive. Major penalties can never be wiped out by a power play goal. Unlike in a minor or double-minor, when the team with the extra player scores during a major penalty, the penalty continues. No matter how many goals the other team scores, they continue to play with a numerical advantage until the five minutes are up. A major penalty is the one given for fighting, but because fighting always involves two players equally, the two major penalties cancel each other out. Although the two players involved do have to sit in the penalty box, their teams are allowed to continue playing five on five as they would otherwise do.

What are misconduct, game misconduct, and match penalties?

These three forms of penalty are a little complicated but they’re basically all given to players who do dumb shit on the ice. Their primary purpose is to get a player off the ice for either ten minutes (the misconduct) or the rest of the game (game misconduct and match penalty). None of them result in a power play but they’re often given in conjunction with a minor or major penalty. For example, a player who throws a particularly dangerous elbow may be given a major and a match penalty. Both the game misconduct and match penalty result in throwing a player out for the rest of the game but they have different implications for fines and suspensions after the fact. All three types of penalties are relatively rare, but you will see them if you keep watching hockey for long enough.

—

Hopefully this gives you a sense of how the major (no pun intended) forms of penalties work in hockey. The primary difference between them is duration, but what happens when a goal is scored during the resulting power play is another important factor.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What is a balk in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a balk in baseball? I think it’s when a pitcher starts to pitch but then doesn’t but I’ve asked a few friends I have who are baseball fans and no one can explain it more clearly. Can you help?

Thanks,
Jeff

Dear Jeff,

The balk is one of the most unique rules in baseball. It’s controversial, important, and simultaneously confusing to the point of opaqueness. Reading Major League Baseball’s rulebook on the subject is almost entirely useless for anyone who doesn’t already know what a balk is. For example, here is a short passage on what constitutes a balk:

From the Windup Position, the pitcher may:
(1) deliver the ball to the batter, or
(2) step and throw to a base in an attempt to pick-off a runner, or
(3) disengage the rubber (if he does he must drop his hand to his sides).
In disengaging the rubber the pitcher must step off with his pivot foot and not his free foot first.
He may not go into a set or stretch position —if he does it is a balk.

There’s only one response to language like that, and Groucho Marx said it over 80 years ago.

Luckily, we don’t need to understand the particulars of the rule as it’s written to understand how the rule works in actual baseball. We can work our way backwards from what the rule is trying to prevent to how it’s actually enforced.

The balk rule was put in place in 1898. Before then, a pitcher could get a base runner out in the following way. Imagine there’s a runner on first base. He takes a short lead toward second base and waits there. As the pitcher starts his windup to pitch the ball, the base runner takes one or two steps farther toward second base. This is a smart move, because it puts him in a better position to get to second base on a weakly hit ball and it still leaves him with plenty of time to return to first in the case of a strike or a pop fly. However (!) the pitcher hasn’t actually pitched. Instead, he’s tricked the base runner by winding up and starting to throw the ball but not actually letting it go. Now that the base runner has moved further from first base, it’s easy enough for the pitcher to stop, turn, and throw the ball to the first baseman, who calmly tags the base runner out. Now, baseball prides itself on being a tricky sport, but it’s possible that this trick was simply too devious to allow. It’s also possible that the main problem was not the move’s deceptive nature, but its effectiveness. Rules have always been created to balance the power between offense and defense, and a move which is almost guaranteed to remove a base runner from the game may simply have been too effective to allow. In any event, the balk rule was put in place to prevent pitchers from doing this.

For all its complex language, the balk rule can be summarized as this – once a pitcher starts his pitching motion, he must complete it by throwing the ball to home plate. I italicized the word “his” because pitchers all have unique pitching motions. One pitcher’s motion may be as distinct from another’s as a lion is from a house cat. The motion itself is not important to the rule, what is important is that every pitcher’s motion during one pitch is identical to his own motion on every other pitch. Umpires learn pitchers’ motions and are able to notice if a pitcher deviates from it, even slightly. When a pitcher throws to first base, to hold a runner there, or to try to pick him off, he uses a motion that may be similar to his pitching motion, but is not identical. The umpire is able to distinguish a pick off throw motion from a pitching motion.

Although the balk rule exists to prevent a pitcher from intentionally tricking a base runner by starting to pitch and then doing something else, the rule is enforced slightly differently. Most sports rules try to stay away from legislating intent and the balk rule is no different. In order to avoid asking umpires to make a judgement call about whether the pitcher intended to trick the base runner and whether the base runner was actually fooled, the balk rule simplifies the decision. If a pitcher enters his pitching motion but does not complete it, a balk must be called. This results in some unfortunate accidents when a pitcher starts to pitch but slips or stumbles or is attacked by a fit of sneezing or bees. In any of these situations, the umpire should call a balk. Balks legislate action, not intent.

The penalty for a balk is that all base runners get to advance one base. If there was a runner on first, he goes to second. A runner on third would score. The only exceptions to this are if the balk also results in the batter reaching first base because of a walk or a hit batter. In this case, all the runners would advance anyway, so there’s no further penalty. If, in the process of the balk, the pitcher loses the ball and it goes flying somewhere, the base runners are allowed to try to advance more than one base, but they do so at their own risk and can be tagged for an out.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra

 

 

What is a shift in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a shift in baseball?

Thanks,
Darrel

Dear Darrel,

If you’ve watched a baseball game on TV lately, there’s a good chance you looked up at your television screen at some point and were surprised by the location of the players on the fielding team. Perhaps the short stop was on the first base side of second base instead of in his normal position on the third base side. Or the first and third basemen were on the home plate side of their bases and creeping in as the pitcher readied to pitch. What you were seeing was a shift – a tactic whereby the fielding team adjusts its positioning before the ball is put in play. A team may choose to shift its outfield, its infield, or both for situational or personnel reasons. We’ll run through a few examples of each scenario in this post.

The shift is a compelling element of baseball because it is simultaneously so obvious and so revolutionary. If you’ve ever played in the outfield of a baseball or softball game, you probably automatically shifted based on who was at bat; that dude with biceps the size of watermelons who hit the ball way past you last time is up to bat? You move back. That’s an example of a shift based on personnel. You see who is up to bat and adjust based on what you think they might do. In the example we gave, it doesn’t feel revolutionary. The personnel shifts you see in Major League Baseball (MLB) games today are the product of a similar type of analysis, just formalized and backed by big amounts of data. By the time a player has been in the league for three years, they will have played in close to 450 games and been up to bat over 1,250 times. This gives opposing teams a lot of information about where they usually hit the ball. Virtually every player has patterns that will reveal themselves over time and with study. A player who has a strong tendency to hit the ball in one direction or location is more vulnerable to a defensive shift.

Other times, it’s not the player who is up to bat but the situation that dictates a defensive shift. For example, if the batting team is down a run, has a player on first base, and is likely to try to bunt the ball to advance the runner to second, the first and third basemen may move toward home plate so that they are prepared to field the bunt they believe is coming. If it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, the batting team has a player on third base, and the game is tied, then the fielding team knows that they will lose if they allow that player to reach home. If the batter hits a long fly ball to the back of the outfield, the base runner will stay on third base until the ball is caught but then have plenty of time to run home safely before any throw could reach home plate. In this case, the fielding team knows for sure that any ball hit to the back of the outfield will result in them losing. So why even have outfielders back there? Isn’t it better to have them move in, so a ground ball hit through the infield may be able to be fielded quickly enough to prevent the runner from scoring? It is! The outfielders moving in in cases like that are another classic scenario that calls for a situational shift.

 

Defensive shifts have become much more common and more extreme in recent years. As of this year, they have doubled in frequency every year since 2011. It’s now quite regular for teams to shift all or almost all of their defensive players to one side but it still looks weird. One wonders how professional baseball players, people who are paid millions of dollars to be good at hitting a ball, cannot simply hit the ball in an unexpected direction. Apparently, it’s harder than it looks! Shifts are all part of the greater statistical revolution in baseball. The gloriously large and discreet data that baseball creates have offered numerous opportunities for teams to identify exactly what each opposing player and team does best… and do everything in their power to take that away from their opponents. Shifts are an integral part of the tactical game of cat and mouse that makes baseball a compelling sport to watch.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra

NBA Basketball in 2015 is not selfish

The 2015-2016 National Basketball Association (NBA) season started yesterday. This offers a great opportunity to write about the current state of the NBA and one of the most persistent myths about the league. If you talk to enough people about sports as often as I do, you get used to hearing people say they “don’t like the NBA because the play is (or the players are) too selfish.”

There are two ways of interpreting that comment: a cynical way and a way that gives the benefit of the doubt to the person making it. Let’s start by giving the benefit of the doubt to critics of the NBA. Viewed in the best possible light, the criticism of the NBA as selfish is based on a belief that there is less passing in the NBA than there should be or than there once was. In the eyes of these critics, NBA basketball is typified by a player dribbling the ball up the court, telling his teammates to get out of the way, trying to beat his defender one-on-one, and then shooting the ball. In basketball terms, this is called an “isolation” or “isolation basketball.”

The truth is, isolation basketball has been on the decline for the last twenty years of NBA history and is now almost universally recognized as a losing tactic. Kirk Goldsberry, Grantland’s chief basketball illustrator and an excellent writer as well, wrote an article recently that summarized the shift in tactics from isolation ball to today’s NBA and explaining its statistical underpinnings. It is a wonderful article – clear and even poetic – and it explains why isolation ball, particularly when it leads to two point shots that aren’t layups or dunks, has become a tactic used only by the most clueless organizations. He writes with the strength of quantitative evidence:

Last season, NBA players attempted just over 200,000 shots. Fifty-three percent of these shots qualify as assisted, while 47 percent qualify as unassisted.1 Overall, the league’s shooters converted 45 percent of their shots — the assisted tries went in 51 percent of the time, while the unassisted shots scored only 38 percent of the time.

and also gives compelling anecdotal support to the theory. He quotes San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich as saying of today’s basketball, “You move it or you die.” Popovich is the most well-respected modern coach. He is seen as a guru of team building and on-court tactics. When he says, “you move it or you die,” he’s arguing that winning basketball has its foundation in teamwork and passing; in trust and interdependency. Want hard evidence? Look at a team assists statistic from last year. The team with the highest assist ration, the Golden State Warriors, won 67 regular season games (out of 82, by far the most in the league) and the championship. The team with the second highest assist ratio, the Atlanta Hawks, won the second most games in the league and made it to the Eastern Conference Championships before losing.

Even if the tactical shift in the NBA were in the opposite direction — toward isolation – it’s not altogether clear to me why that would be thought of as selfish. Selfishness has to do with intent. Tactics have to do with winning. If the tactic most likely to result in a victory involved giving the ball to a single player and asking him to do everything, then that would be the correct tactic. It would involve an incredible amount of unselfishness on the part of that player’s teammates, who would be asked to do the hard work of playing defense and setting picks, and on the part of the coach, who wouldn’t get very much acclaim for taking such a simple tactical approach. Maybe most of all, it would take unselfishness on the part of the player being asked to “carry the load” as they say in sports-lingo. Taking a majority of your team’s shots is exhausting. Carrying the ball up the court and taking every shot requires an almost super-human effort. This is close to what LeBron James was asked to do for part of last year’s playoffs because of injuries to his teammates and it clearly took a toll on him. He’s an incredible athlete, but even he had was visibly drained by the effort. Watching him force himself to keep handling the ball, keep driving to the hoop, and keep shooting when his body was telling him it would be easier to pass it up was a great lesson in unselfishness.

The last element of the question of selfishness in the NBA is the most delicate. In some ways, the criticism has nothing to do with tactics. The word selfish is a racially loaded word. I’ve written about this before. As basketball shifted from being a professional sport dominated by white and Jewish athletes to being one dominated by African-Americans, its default criticisms shifted as well. This is when basketball started being criticized as being selfish… and thuggish… and a whole bunch of other things that black people have been unfairly labeled as during the complicated and unfortunate racial history of our country.

It’s time to stop this. From now on, let’s all be more aggressive in our response to people who say they don’t like the NBA because it is selfish. They may not be racist — probably aren’t, in fact — but they are parroting a critique with a very bad history that isn’t at all, not even if you squint, supported by the actual evidence of what is going on in the NBA.

How does a snap shot work in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a snap shot work in ice hockey? Can you describe how it works and when or why a player would choose to use it?

Thanks,
Pat

Dear Pat,

There are three main kinds of shots in ice hockey: the slap shot, the snap shot, and the wrist shot. Each shot has its own technique and is distinguishable when watching hockey on TV or in person. Each shot has advantages and disadvantages and is appropriate for different situations. In this post, we’ll describe the most commonly used shot in today’s National Hockey League, the snap shot. You’ll learn how to identify it when you see it, when and what it’s used for, and even how to do it if you find yourself with a hockey stick in your hands.

The snap shot is a hybrid shot which combines the best features of the slap shot and wrist shot together in a single unstoppable combination. As we described in the post on wrist shots, the wrist shot is the quickest to get off because it requires no windup and the most accurate because it’s done in a single, fluid motion where the puck never leaves the blade of the stick. As we described in our post about slap shots, the slap shot is the most powerful shot in hockey — it can send a puck flying through the air at over 100 miles per hour. The snap shot steals elements from both shots. You can understand the snap shot as a slap shot but without most of the wind-up or as an abbreviated wrist shot. Take a look at one good example:


The clearest advantage of a snap shot is that it takes virtually no preparation to take. You can move into the snap shot motion equally well from stick handling or immediately from a pass. The snap shot doesn’t have the wind-up of a slap shot or the fluid but long motion of the wrist shot. This makes it much harder for goalies or defenders to block. Curtailing the wind-up also robs the other team of vital information about the direction of the shot. The snap shot takes advantage of the flexibility of modern hockey sticks but also allows a player to aim quite accurately.

If you want to work on taking a snap shot yourself, start with a slap shot or a wrist shot, whichever you’re more comfortable with. If you choose slap shot, take a smaller and smaller wind-up until you’re barely moving your stick back from the puck before propelling it forward and into a shooting motion. Once you’re there, raise your bottom hand up six inches to a foot on the shaft of the stick and add an extra flick of your bottom wrist right after your stick comes in contact with the puck. If you’re more comfortable starting with a wrist shot, practice leaving the puck still on the ice as you do the first half of the sweeping motion of the shot. It will feel like you’re picking the puck up in the middle of the wrist shot motion. Now add some extra oomph to the shot by slapping the puck when you first make contact.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

 

How can I get better at making trades in fantasy football?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve been playing fantasy football for a few years now and I think I’m pretty good at it. One thing I can’t do though is get people to trade with me. Either they don’t want to trade or what they’re offering doesn’t seem like anything I would want to do. How can I get better at making trades in fantasy football?

Thanks,
Rosalie

Dear Rosalie,

There’s an art to trading in fantasy football. In this post, I’ll describe some of the basic principles and tactics I use to trade when I play fantasy football.

Both sides should “win” the trade

The driving principle of being a good trading partner is to want the person you’re trading with to succeed. This may seem silly in a zero sum game like fantasy football — after all, if your trading partner succeeds, won’t they threaten your team — but it’s actually the most important part of making a trade. A good trade should benefit both teams and you should want it to be that way. There are a few reasons why this is important. First, fantasy football is a long game. It’s played over the course of 13-17 weeks and in many leagues, over years or even decades. Most leagues have 10 or 12 teams, each run by a friend or colleague of yours. You want to make trades that are good for your trading partners so that they want to deal with you in the future. Even if you could trick someone into making an incredibly lopsided trade, you probably shouldn’t. They’ll never trade with you again and the rest of your league-mates will notice too.

Don’t just target the weak. The overflowing team is ripe for the picking too!

Conventional wisdom suggests that a team at the top of the standings will be difficult to trade with. That’s not always the case. Often, teams at the top have been successful because of surprisingly good performances from unexpected places. If a team’s fifth running back turned out to be one of the best in the league, this may mean that they find themselves with more good running backs than they are able to make use of on a week-to-week basis. If you can offer a team overflowing with high performing players in one position a slight improvement in another position, they might be willing to trade one of their many successes to you. One of the most agonizing parts of fantasy football is making start/sit decisions each week. Fantasy owners who have a surfeit of talented players at one position may want to trade a player away just so they don’t have to drive themselves crazy each weekend trying to guess who is going to be better between two or more good options. Lastly, success is not an antidote to anxiety in fantasy football. Some owners will interpret their own success as a harbinger of doom and want to “sell high” on high performing players because they are scared of a fall from grace.

Identify unlucky players

Touchdowns are worth much more than yards in most fantasy football leagues. The most standard scoring system makes touchdowns worth 6 times more than ten yard gained for running backs, receivers, and tight ends, and 15 times more for quarterbacks. Fantasy points, the clearest and most meaningful measure of a player’s worth to a fantasy team, are therefore highly dependent on touchdowns. In reality though, touchdowns are much more random than yards. The average NFL team scored between two and three touchdowns a game. That’s a much smaller sample size, even over the course of several games, than the 50 or so yard-gaining plays that happen each game. Although there are some players whose style or abilities make them less likely to score touchdowns than others, there are more out there whose lack of touchdowns are simply bad luck. Find these players by sorting a list of players by yards gained as opposed to fantasy points and target them for a trade. Their owner may be fed up with their inability to score touchdowns and therefore generate fantasy points.

Help people heal their bye week blues

Every NFL team takes a single week off during the NFL season. On most weeks during the middle of the season, four teams will not be playing. Less common is the two-team or six-team bye weeks, but they do happen too. Most of the time, fantasy teams will have enough players on their bench to fill a starting lineup without any problem. There’s usually one team per week whose players happen to have byes that line up in an unfortunate way for that owner. Maybe they have five wide receivers on their roster but four of them have Week Seven bye weeks. They won’t want to drop the players, because they might not be able to get them back, but they also won’t want to go a week without enough players in that position to field a starting lineup. If you can offer roster flexibility in a trade, they may be willing to make a trade that even they think would otherwise be slightly (just slightly, don’t get crazy) slanted in your favor.

Deep? Get shallow. Shallow? Get deep.

There’s a kind of platonic ideal for fantasy football teams: a few star players, very good players at every other position in the starting lineup, lower-performing players with high potential on the bench. In reality, few teams match that ideal exactly. Most teams are either deeper, meaning they have more good players but perhaps not any true stars, or shallower, meaning they have a few stars but then there’s a steep drop-off in terms of talent on the rest of their roster. Owners generally want to shift their teams toward the ideal. If you have a shallow team, find a deep team and see if you can construct a trade to help both of your teams get closer to the ideal. In this example, that would mean trading one of your stars for two or three very good players. These types of two or three for one trades are a common gambit in fantasy football. The trick is to suggest them strategically. A shallow team won’t want to trade you two or three players for another star. A deep team won’t trade you their star player for two or three of your very good players. Find a team whose shape you can improve.

Work at it

My last suggestion is that you do your due diligence every week. Open up each team’s page once a week and look to see what their situation is. Examine their teams for the trade openings we’ve described here. Are they too deep? Too shallow? Are they suffering with the bye week blues? Are they overwhelmingly strong at one position, perhaps to their own detriment? Do they have agonizing start/sit decisions each week? When you’re done doing that, run through a sorted list of each position by fantasy points AND yards gained. Look for unlucky players who you think are likely to play better in the coming weeks. See who their owners are and if there’s potential to make a trade. Send a few offers out every week. You’ll be surprised at what your fellow fantasy players are interested in doing. Don’t send anything patently unfair though – lopsided offers give you a bad reputation and depress counter-offers and negotiation.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer