Easterbunk

ESPN.com: Page 2 : TMQ hoops it up

Notice that I don't write much in detail about hockey or soccer. This is because I don't like hockey or soccer. Gregg Easterbrook doesn't like the NBA but spends his football column talking about the NBA anyway. He doesn't get it.

In particular, Easterbrook says that the boost in NBA esthetics last season was due to the NBA's new ban on drafting players straight out of high school. What is wrong with this is that the ban only went into effect beginning with the most recent draft! While the top five picks in last year's draft all had some college experience, there were two high schoolers taken in the top ten and another eighteenth. The high school ban can not have had any effect.

What in fact happened was that a series of rules changes essentially took away the ability to play physical defense on the ballhandler while (at the same time) officials apparently started allowing moving screens. I don't really have a problem with these rules, and frankly defenders get away with too much still, but it was by and large the new rules and not new players (other than Chris Paul) who caused the changes.