My Biggest Takeaway From UConn vs Purdue In The National Championship Game Is This Is What The Game Of Basketball Is At It's Absolute Best
Brett Wilhelm. Getty Images.No stats today. I thought about making a bar graph in the shape of a sad train showing Purdue with the most total NCAA Tournament wins for any school that never won the championship. Who knows? Maybe I still will. But for now, there's something deeper about how awesome the first half of last night's game was that spoke to me on a 30,000 foot basketball level. So this blog is for my fellow mid-30s people out there who also lament what the NBA has become and miss our 90's physical game. Because for a little while last night, we got a glimpse of what basketball is supposed to be when it's at it's best.
Forget for a second that UConn pulled away to win by pretty much doing the exact thing I figured they'd do. Guard Edey one-on-one and not let the Edeyettes get wide open threes. No team has been able to do this to Purdue in Edey's entire college career because no one else has a seven footer like Clingan to match him up with. And that's what was so great about going into this game. We all wanted to see how that'd go. While people rightfully complain about how boring it can be watching a Purdue game, that's only because no one else had a tree of their own to counter Edey's yawn-worthy uncontestable tip ins.
Until last night. For the first time since Ewing/Olajuwon 40 years ago we got to see some old-school basketball consisting of two opposing seven footers in the national title game. We finally got to see how Edey would be affected by playing against someone his own size. And you know what? He stood up to the task. A lot more than I gave him credit for. Especially in the first half. Yes, Edey is still slow. Too slow to translate into an NBA player in today's game. But his fundamentals were sound. His decision making was sound. And you saw his preparation and determination come to life with his craft he produced on the court. On both sides of the ball. He won some battles down low, and lost some. It left us viewers with eyes peeled wondering what would happen each time. It was amazing. It was basketball porn.
And it wasn't just that. Everything was top notch. Offense. Defense. Coaching. Even the offiiciating. ESPECIALLY the officiating. We really got to tip our cap to them more often when they let players play (consistently throughout the game, not just at the end).
This leads me to my biggest takeway from last night's game. It's not that UConn is the best college tournament team ever. They are. But we got a reminder of what the aesthetics of basketball looks like when it's at it's best. And quite frankly, a big part of why a lot of people justifiably hate on the NBA. We saw two titans match up down low limiting the wide open three looks that have become monotonous in basketball. We got to experience the suspense of seeing these big men play physically without a foul being called on one of them breathing on the other as they leave us wondering whether they can manuever enough to score on their own or force the defense to help thus kicking out to an open shooter. That's what makes basketball fun to watch. Not knowing what's about to happen and watching actual strategy play out.
That brings me back to Zach Edey. I don't know if an NBA team will give him a chance or not, but I think he's just going to be too slow a big to play in the bigs. And I hope I'm fucking wrong. Maybe there's a team out there that will use Edey to establish an old school style of play. The NBA could sure use it. Paint the courts 856 different styles and add a desperate in-season tournament all you want, but until you value the old-school aesthetics of basketball style of play that's suspenseful to watch none of that lame window dressing matters.
We'll see what happens with Edey, but I think rule changes are in order to bring the glory of the traditional big man back into the game at the NBA level. How about not giving a fuck about defensive three seconds? Maybe make if five seconds. I don't know, but I need the NBA to understand why last night's game was so god damn fun to watch while it was still in the balance. And even when it wasn't. It's the chess component. The struggle between using pieces with vastly different strengths and weaknesses strategically instead of the checkers game it's become where everyone pretty much just tries to open up a decent look for three.
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It's a shame Purdue didn't have the stamina to hang with UConn in the second half. That would have made this the best college basketball game ever. But I won't let that take away from what we should learn from this game. Basketball is better when the big man is valued.