Revisiting the Zone Defense and Hand-check changes.

Just curious, what's the big/crucial difference, in terms of defense, between NBA rules and international rules? Which one is harder to post players or those like to score in the paint?

 

The zone is terrible. It's not even a true zone either, it's like it's r****ded half b*stard second cousin.

 

The biggest difference are the size of the court, size of the lane, they have a trapezoid lane, and the fact that they have a true zone, the NBA's zone is not a zone at all, because of the 3 second violation rule.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that their is no restricted area under the basket, if a defender has position and an offensive player runs him over it's an offensive foul.

All this complaining is for nothing IMO, I watch Euro basketball and they don't have a problem running an offense through the post, the problems the NBA has is that most of it's big men are just big, that's it, they have no real skills, and most guards don't know how to make a post entry pass. Yao, Shaq, Duncan, Brand, JO, Bosh, Howard, Dirk, Rasheed, Z, Webber, Gasol, Randolph, etc. produce because they have skills, sometimes their teams have trouble getting them the ball, but when they get it they produce. Also notice that most of those guys are on winning teams, so all this guards league talk is a bunch of nothing, yeah they get the best stats and are on all the highlights, but the best teams in the NBA have great big men.

 

well said mc

 

I have hated it since day 1.

 

I love the no hand check, but hate the zone....if they got rid of the legalized zone it would make the game really sing.

Right now they are hampering the center and low post players the most.

It is blatently unfair.

DD

 

I didn't say everyone runs it through the post, but the teams that have good low post players run it through the post without as many problems as are apparently found in the NBA, and the ones that don't still have no problems passing it down low if they want to run a play or two for those guys. Not all of the guys with a good low post game come over to the NBA either, most of them prefer to stay over there because they're either old and not wanted because of that, or they'll make more money and play a more important role on the team over there. I don't watch it enough to remember the names, but trust me, there are good highly skilled post players over there, that would be better than a lot of American big guys. Even out of the list you posted, Dirk does have a good low post game, Zaza and Rasho have some moves too, the only Brazilians are Nene and the guy in Cleveland, Nene does have a post game, Pau has an excellent game down low and is the best passer down there. Believe what you want.

It is not a zone defense, if it was a guy like Wade wouldn't come close to dominating a game, if they really wanted to make it more European and force passing and shooting they would widen the lane, get rid of that restricted area under the basket, and get rid of the 3 second defense violations. Who's unguardable that takes full advantage of that no hand-check rule? Wade? AI? Parker? And then who? I wouldn't include guys like Francis, Marbury, Davis, Miller, etc. because they're not as good as those other guys, and I wouldn't include Kobe, T-Mac, James, Arenas, Redd, Bibby, Nash, etc. because they can shoot, they would do well anyway.

I just think you're making a big deal out of something that's not a big deal, what we should be worrying about is why shooting can't be better, why players can't pass better, and why big mean aren't as good as they could be. We're getting killed in international competitions because of those problems, not because of some dumb rules, if the rules were made because of those problems then they went at solving those problems the wrong way.

 

m_cable, you are right that the rules now do not make the game better. However, you still haven't addressed the ISO question. Kobe scored 81 partly because of the hand-check rule, not because of the zone.

The old illegal defense rule did create ISO (one-man clearout, or two-man) games. That was ugly. In fact, "the dump it to the post and let the big man opperate" game is a form of ISO. I personally think it is quite ugly too. It was "beautiful" only because we had Dream and his dazzling moves won championships for us. (I am sure teams who have guys like Kobe and Iverson also think the perimeter ISO beautiful too.)

I've always felt that ridding of illegal defense is a good thing in the long run. So what if the post game is harder? You can still play it if you have good shooters to make the doubling pay. The illegal defense rule let teams cheat on offense because they could throw a no-offense guy (Ryan Bowen type) in there and the opponent still had to waste a defender on him. That created a breed of defense-only players who had no offensive skills. That made basketball ugly.

With the zone rule, you have to have good outside shooting and good passing to create space for the big guy inside. I think that's good basketball. What I do want is the banning of wrestling matches inside. I think if they don't allow physical contact for perimeter defense, they should not allow physical contact for low post defense. As of now, the excessive physical play inside, not the zone, is what kills the inside game.

Anyway, debates about rules ultimately come down to taste. What kind of basketball you want to watch. I like smooth flowing type, more than the spread out and dump it down to the low post type. However, I hate the trapezoid lane in international game.

BTW, I always find it amazing why people keep insisting that the big men should not play the outside game. Euro big men not having a back-to-the-basket game is as bad as American big men not being able to shoot outside of 8 ft.

 

I agree with Shaq on this one. He said the rules were designed to slow him down and keep him from being so dominant. And the second reason being to give our game a more international flair.

Both of those reasons are bogus. If you want to slow Shaq down, under the old rules, just call the offensive foul the way it is supposed to be called. Don't let Shaq run over and through the defender and then call the and one on the defender. Don't let Shaq hook his elbow under the defender who is standing, two feet on the floor with hands straight up, and Shaq use that wing to rotate around and over the defender for the dunk and the foul. Shaq doesn't use that move a whole lot anymore but he built his career on bull in a phone booth basketball. Consequently, the league had to give it back to the defense in other ways. They quit calling all the hacks and consequently Shaq got hacked to death. If they had just called the game right from the get go, there wouldn't have been a problem. Shaq is a talented enough player that he would have adjusted and we would have been able to maintain some consistency in his era.

Also, those Magic-Bird-MJ dream teams didn't have any trouble with the International Rules. And they weren't playing zone gimmick defenses back in the NBA then. Now, we think we are going to play more like the international game so we can get our gold medal back? Get real. I hate watching these defenses stifling the inside play.

The game is not balanced.

 

I really miss the post up game.

It seems like every big man wants to face up now, and the zone d makes it harder for any player with a back to the basket game to thrive.


Course I also miss pounding it into the post ala Barkley and Mark Jaskson, so eh.

 

the international rules could've been that the US had to play lefthanded and it wouldn't have given them any problems. that's what happens when you're 50 points better than everyone. maybe my friends and i could go play a bunch of european kindergarteners under international rules and then report back after the massacre that the rules didn't affect us.


as for the thread, i agree the zone has done too much to hurt post play. post play is basically non-existent in college ball with the zone and you don't see many euros with back to the basket games either. and now it's being phased out here. why anyone thinks that part of the game hurts the product is beyond me. it has been a big part of the league since its inception and no one complained before. think what yao would be like w/o the ability to double him w/o the ball. think about guys like hakeem, shaq, ewing, or robinson spending their whole careers going against defenses that played like seattle used to play us. what a waste. why force a team to have to have great shooting to combat that? shouldn't talents be equally appreciated. even with great shooting, the zone is still going to take the big man out first. teams never stopped doubling shaq on the pre-zone lakers title teams even with all those 3 point shooters. it would've been even worse with the zone. at least without it good centers have a few seconds to make a move.

i don't know why we think we have to make our game more european. it's not like that's better basketball or something. the 2 biggest reasons they've been beating us are the two games are vastly different, and they care more about beating us than we may ever care about beating them.

based on the olympics and world championships, foreigners should be over here just dominating the nba, but they aren't. carlos arroyo and 11 scrubs whooped tim duncan, allen iverson, and 10 stars. based on that i should think carlos would be over here showing us poor fundamentals americans how it's done. but tim duncan is an mvp with multiple rings, iverson is an mvp who led a team to the finals, and arroyo mostly rides the pine. there's just a disconnect. to think the rest of the world knows how to play and we don't is silly (unless you simply prefer watch one style over another).

they aren't over here dominating us or anything. in the all-star game there were 6 international players. none were on the east side. of the 6 on the west, 2 were tim duncan and steve nash, and they're about as foreign as french fries. another was yao, who does not come from the european or south american style of play people like to say is overtaking us. so there were really 3 international players who are passing us up playing in the ASG. out of 24. and 2 of them (parker and gasol) spent most of the night f'ing the west chances up. even after those 3, who are the other big time international players? peja, ak47, ginobili, ilgauskas? outside of dirk no foreign player leads a team or is ever mentioned for things like the mvp. americans still dominate the upper echelons of the nba (and the lower ones too). why, b/c the nba and international games are just that different.

 

We wouldn't see this post if the Rockets' record were 35-17

 

Says who? So why are ESPN writers writing about it? It *is* a major issue, regardless of team records.

 

Bring back the old rules damn it!!

 

Don't forget about one reason the zone was allowed is every referee had a different idea what was illegal defense and what wasn't If you remember George Karl was running the carolina 1-3-1 in Seattle for years thats what gave the dream so much trouble against them.Don Nelson also ran a zone and got away with it in Milwaukee and Golden State.Those coaches didn't need the rules changes to play like that so why can't current coaches adjust or is it just JVG can't figure it out,and since he can't he throws the team under the bus in the media every week.

 

My bad for scrambling my reply. I knew what you meant about Kobe's 81 points. I was trying to address your point that you favored eliminating the zone because you felt that it didn't accomplish what it was supposed to do--namely, better passing and shooting.

My point, in the nutshell, is that the zone might have made the low post game harder but it didn't kill it. What kills the low post game is the excessive physical defense under the basket. I don't mind the hand-check rule if they apply it to the low post as much as the perimeter.

A lot of people here mourn about the extinction of low post big men. I think they do that mostly out of nostalgic sentiment of past great big men the Rockets had. I personally feel that the "spread out and dump it to the big guy" is pretty boring basketball. If that kind of basketball goes extinct, so be it.

That doesn't mean I don't like low post game. I am all for incorporating the low post game into a ball movement offense. I think the zone rule does force teams to move the ball better (and shoot better!) to get the ball to the big men. That's all good.

And that's from a diehard Rockets fan who wants very much our boy Yao Ming to become one of the greatest basketball players.

 

You hit the nail on the head - that's how to save the big man's game. I doubt if the NBA would put the genie back in the bottle and illegalize the zones. So give the post-players some advantage back by outlawing the arm bar defense and the knee wedge. Don't let it be so physical in the paint, and Yao will be able to get the ball much lower. With the zone, you still won't be able to back it in like Barkley, but at least the centers will be able to score.