The changing game

It’s often good to take a step back from what has been so familiar, and come back after a certain length of time. Changes become more pronounced; evolution becomes more obvious; improvements are more ingrained. That has been this writer’s experience covering the basketball games of the Pilipinas Super League President’s Cup after being away from live basketball coverage for a few years. Things that are different are more noticeable and easier to spot. And it is impressive how much the game has changed. For example, in a majority of the games I’ve commentated, the first open look for a team is a three-point shot from the corner, which is counter-intuitive to what most of us were taught learning the fundamentals. First of all, it is more difficult without the backboard to aid in depth perception. Secondly, older coaches taught that getting closer to the basket was the way to go.

“There are two things about that,” explains broadcast analyst and two-time PBA Most Valuable Player Benjie Paras, whom I often work the games with. “It’s the first open shot in that situation. And it’s what we’ve been learning from the Europeans.”

He has a point. Six of the top 10 countries in the FIBA world rankings are from Europe: Spain, Germany, Serbia, Latvia, France and Lithuania. Finally, their style of basketball is catching on in the Philippines. But there are other noticeable changes in the game. The pick and roll, for example, once employed in the NBA masterfully by the Utah Jazz through John Stockton and Karl Malone, is now so clearly the foundational play of modern basketball. Almost everything emanates from this seemingly simple yet practically unstoppable play.

“There are so many options that can come out of that play,” says my other PSL broadcast partner and long-time collaborator, professor Randy Sacdalan. “Even if the starting point looks the same, defenses can’t tell which way it will go. And it opens up so many options on offense.”   

The game has also been redefining traditional positions for years now. In Saturday night’s PSL games, the Nueva Ecija Capitals scored the first blowout and first hundred-point game of the tournament with a 109-67 victory over JT Bulacan Taipan. Yet they don’t have a dominant, oversized big man or an over-the-tip scorer, and they always pass the ball even within a few feet of the basket. They are playing as the epitome of a team. Most of the teams in the league play the same way, but Nueva Ecija has taken it up a notch and served notice to the rest of the field. Is this what position-less basketball looks like?

Almost 30 years ago, Ron Jacobs introduced making substitutions during and after timeouts. Despite the obvious advantage of not allowing the opposing team to immediately counteract the new combination of players, almost nobody copied him. In the first three weeks of the PSL, we’ve seen it done multiple times. And we haven’t even talked about how three-point shooting, once laughed off as a gimmick of the defunct American Basketball Association, has become a staple of the game almost as much as a regular basket.

All of these changes add an exciting, fresh spin on the game, giving younger coaches more tools to use, and give old codgers like me a renewed appreciation of the sport I grew up loving. I’m glad to be back.