As many of you I am sure have seen me write before, I have had a certain fondness for some of the thugs I’ve carried on my roster in the past. In real life, rooting for injuries is rather evil. But in BB, it’s part of the fun. Injuries to players on the other team, that is. (Unfortunately, I’ve been on the wrong side of this equation a little too often the last month or so. Sigh.) I’ll leave you to search my other posts on the likes of Ramon McGreggor.
Anyway, to look at it this with some eye towards realism, I wonder if aggressiveness really changes much over time. My initial reaction to this post was to think, no way, players don’t really change their style much over time, it’s too tied to personality. So aggressiveness shouldn’t change in BB. But then I was thinking, on the other hand, players do become savvier with experience and probably do learn how to play defense without fouling so much, and maybe people really do mellow as they get older, so maybe aggressiveness does decline over time. So aggressiveness should decline over time in BB. Of course, this will also probably mean that a player would draw fewer fouls over time, too since drawing fouls is also to aggressiveness, and that doesn’t make sense since players tend to get better at drawing fouls as they age. But then I was thinking, and others seem to have thought this, too, that it’s not that aggressiveness decreases, but defensive skills improve making fouling less necessary or likely. So aggressiveness should stay the same in BB and defensive skill should account for the differences in fouls committed. But then I realized that not all players really get so much better at defensive skills so much as they just gain experience at doing what they know how to do, and in BB players who never get defensive training would never reduce their rate of committing fouls in spite of their extra experience. So then I concluded that aggressiveness should never change, defensive improvements should account for some ability to defend without committing fouls, but increases in experience should also reduce the number of fouls committed. And to top it off, I also figured that a player’s driving skills should also affect his ability to draw fouls since that’s the mostly likely place for a player to draw a foul on the offensive end. Not that I’m the first one to think all of this, as I’m sure the developers must surely have put all of these sorts of thoughts into the game planning.
So anyway, yesterday I was out playing some ball, and even at my old age I was still pretty aggressive on offense and defense like when I was young, at least in my head. I had the same urge to push the ball, drive the lane, mug the ball handler, take that open shot (checking for teammates in rebounding position first, of course, which comes with experience) as I’ve pretty much always had. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much gas in the tank as I once had. When I had that feeling like there was something loose somewhere in my hip, and I was really starting to tire, I suddenly didn’t feel so aggressive. When fatigue really sank in, my game changed. On offense, I was less likely to drive to the basket aggressively, I was more likely to settle for a jump shot even when my defender was off balance and I could have easily gotten around him, and I was more likely to pass the ball away. On defense, I didn’t play up on my man so hard and kept more of a cushion to give me more reaction time if he drove the lane (making it easier for him to shoot or pass), and because I was slower, I was far more likely to hack somebody shooting the ball. Granted, a lot of my mistakes (and need to foul) are related to decreased defensive skills from my younger days (sitting at a computer most of the day will do that!), and my ball handling skills have declined making it harder to drive on offense, but my experience gave me insight into when to drive the lane, when to shoot, when to pass, when to press on de
Don't ask what sort of Chunks they are, you probably don't want to know. Blowing Chunks since Season 4!