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Romancing the zone
Updated: Saturday November 03, 2001 12:44 AM
Forgive me for talking heresy, but the best addition to the NBA in this new season is not Michael Jordan. Michael may bring back a buzz and bring out the celebrities at courtside -- Hello Spike; Hello Woody; you, too, Star Jones -- but the best change will come from the return of the zone defense. The zone brings the game back to the fan. For what seems to have been an eternity, the league was locked into the same old man-to-man rhythms. An increasingly long set of arcane and incomprehensible rules dictated what a player could and could not do on defense, where he could stand and where he couldn't ... and for how long. The players never understood these rules. The fans never understood these rules.
Someone like Dr. Jack Ramsay, looking and sounding a lot like economic czar Alan Greenspan, had to come along and try to explain. Maybe put out a few flow charts. The return of the zone brings back a return of the defensive imagination. Shaquille O'Neal is killing his man? OK, let's try two men against him. Let's try three. The box and one, the three-two, the two-three, the triangle and two, the two-two-one, let's try 'em all. The underdog, able to hide weaknesses, has a better shot to win. The favorite has to think a little bit. The basic NBA defensive strategy perpetually has been "take the man who takes you." The new NBA strategy is going to be ... well, you don't know what it's going to be. This will be the fun part to watch. Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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