trex_8063 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:trex_8063 wrote:
Some good observations. This is one of the more striking features of these super-early pro games. I've said it before [elsewhere]: the degree to which the game changed going from pre-shotclock to the mid-late 60s is probably larger than the change that has happened since (or at least larger then what transpired over the next 35 years).
My opinion is that a big part of why they didn't improve [more rapidly] on shot mechanics and selection is simply this: they didn't have to to be competitive with their peers at the time.
Sort of as research for something I'm trying to write, I recently re-read that famous novel for teens/pre-teens, Hatchet by Gary Paulson.
There's a scene in it where the main character [Brian?] is trying to spear some fish in the lake, but can't get them. Even after he figures out how the water bends the light, so that he knows where to aim, as soon as he moves his arm the fish are too fast. He realizes he needs something like a bow and arrow, where he can have the tip of the projectile IN the water to start and the mechanism [bow-string] drawn back (no need for a large lead-distance for the projectile to gain momentum: all the force is contained in the drawn bow-string).
He realizes he needs to "invent" the bow and arrow to catch the fish.
He then ambiently wonders if early Man had similar realizations in similar circumstance, speculating that perhaps ALL inventions happened because they NEEDED to happen. ("Necessity is the mother of all invention", basically)
Players didn't immediately develop better ways of shooting because they frankly didn't NEED to take better quality shots to be competitive in this league environment (not because they were incapable of doing so, as some posters [not you] have seemed to insinuate).
So, I think the thoughts here are important, but I'd push back against the cause described as "they didn't have to shoot better in order to compete" even though I think there's a kernel of truth here.
The thing is, in a winner-take-all environment like this, everybody but the champs surely feels like if they could only find a way to make more shots and miss less they'd be the champs instead.
Sure, and I'm not suggesting total complacency by the players of the day (that's why the game progressed so quickly through the 50s and early 60s).
But nonetheless, what I said is essentially true when looking at this year (or those immediately around it) in isolation: these guys weren't going to be run out of the league for not being able to make 40% [or even 35-36%] of their FGA's because.......well, relatively few of their peers were either. i.e. They were still competitive even with these shots.
It's like the narratives of how Wilt/Russell pushed each other to greatness; ditto Bird/Magic, and other sports rivalries. Competition and true challenges spur better development (and this is true in any field outside of sport, too).
At this time, there were just very few players challenging the notion that a shot-diet which was netting ~34-35% from the field was good enough.
Minor tweaks were no doubt happening all the time, but pressure to entirely re-tool/re-invent the skillset [even though it was clearly very poor at the time] just wasn't there.
So I'm with you on the "rivals spurring each other to greatness", but would quibble with the idea that this happened with Wilt/Russell & Bird/Magic, but wasn't happening in earlier eras. The key thing in all cases is that you really have to look across years in order to see it.
And when you look year-by-year for signs of improvement, well, the leagues from this era were shifting considerably faster than later eras, and it was pushing guys out of stardom back to the sidelines who were of an age that we'd think should go in the opposite direction.
I think, incidentally, that this is always one of the key things to look at when evaluating the competitive level of a sport over time: When are the players peaking? If they are peaking at a younger age than we'd expect, this is often a sign that an influx of talent & technique are making guys obsolete. (Older than expected? Either the opposite or something is driving longevity that didn't always exist to the same degree.)
trex_8063 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:
The data available to players and coaches back in the day was sorely lacking, and that made it far harder to tell what was working and what wasn't. And practically speaking this means that even changes that don't require a massive change in skill generation took longer to take hold.
Also sorely lacking in this time period is a WAY for information, mentorship, and visual models to disseminate. Games were not televised, internet didn't exist, live attendance was still pretty low. If someone DID suddenly come up with a far greater way of doing things, very few people would see or notice it (at first).
I'm actually surprised the game advanced as fast as it did given the limitations in terms of media for skills to spread.
Oh it's amazing, and I think the key thing to understand here is that is that the YMCA had amazing influence across the world in this era.
Naismith was working at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, MA when he invented basketball in 1891.
Meanwhile, in 1895, a YMCA instructor (William Morgan) in Holyoak, MA invented a sport he called "mintonette", which then got rechristened "volleyball" when the new sport was demonstrated at - you guessed it - the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, MA.
There's also the game of "netball" that arose from a different interpretation of basketball rules in England in 1895. How did that person (Clara Gregory Baer) have the opportunity to have any interpretation at all? Well, the YMCA had printed publications that they were using to try to spread games like these across the globe as part of the Muscular Christianity movement.
And then there's Albert Spaulding, who Naismith asked to manufacture basketball to a specification. Spaulding would fill the same role for volleyball, and then look to promote the hell out of both sports.
And all of this happening at a time where basically every town has a high school gymnasium ripe for team sports like basketball & volleyball, and at a time where outdoor city design found it easy to reserve some rectangular space where courts could be placed (which I think served basketball better than volleyball given the relative flimsiness of the volleyball net compared to a metal hoop).
Truly, this was the era where sports were able to emerge from nothing to ubiquity like no other.
