Sport: Practical Proposal

Basketball has become a bore, according to Charley Eckman—onetime coach of the Fort Wayne Pistons and now a busy college referee. Last week in the Greensboro (N.C.) Daily News, Eckman spelled out his complaint.

"Basketball today," said the disillusioned referee, "is like playing baseball without the home run. It's like four-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust football. Dull. There's nothing more breathtaking than the long set shot or the long jump shot. But you see very few of these any more in the game we're playing. All you see is a lot of heavy traffic and battling under the basket. That's where 90% of the fouls occur and all the fights start, because that's where the goons are—the big guys who grab the ball and stand there admiring themselves, daring anybody to try and take it away. They look good in railroad stations and air terminals, but all they do on a basketball court is take up space."

The game, said Charley, is far too rough—especially as it is played in college. "These boys are playing for blood. Five times already this season, I've seen players undercut [i.e., blocked low across the legs] going in for a layup—and you shouldn't see that many in an entire season. It's the worst foul in the game: a boy can get killed. An official needs eight degrees, including four in psychology, to know what is a dangerous foul and what isn't. Usually, the real danger isn't the big blow. It's the agitation foul—the constant shove that ex cites and angers boys to the point that an accidentally thrown elbow can start a fight."

Eckman calls for radical revision of the game: cut the number of players on each team to four and restrict defensive as well as offensive players to three consecutive seconds in the foul lane. "This would reduce the traffic under the basket, and eliminate the goon. The four-man game would be limited to players who can dribble, run, pass and shoot. Versatile players. The game would be played all over the court—not just in an area of 25 ft. or less. If fans ever saw four-man basketball once," Eckman is sure, "they'd never sit still for the game we see today. But," he adds sadly, "it will probably never happen."