i begin with a quote, taken seconds ago from the broadcast of game 2 of sacto vs. san antone: "a jumper by bruce bowen! a great defensive player, so any points you get from him are a bonus!"

this drives me mad! i've never heard someone say or write: "peja stojakovic stayed in front of his man! a great offensive player, so any defense you get from him is a bonus!"

i mean hitting an open 15 foot jumper as Bowen just did seems pretty much as elementary a skill to expect from a professional player at his position as staying in front of his man seems to be.

so why is that? why does it seem to be okay to be a one-sided defensive player, but not a one-sided offensive player? bethlehem shoals, at the freedarko blog, wrote something about this some time ago, if i'm not mistaken, but i can't find it now, and don't remember it well enough to know for sure whether i'm just repeating less eloquently his argument.

but i think it has to do with morality. i mean morality in the sense of holier-than-thou moralizing, and of a particularly American variety. there's something, i suspect, that strikes people as profligate and incontinent, if not just plain lazy, about a great offensive player who never works on his defense. a defensive player who never works on his offensive game, is a "hustler," a "tireless worker," "gritty", etc.. an offensive player who never works on his defense is selfish, leaving his teammates to play 4 on 5 on the defensive end. but a defensive player who does the same to his teammates on the offensive end is always measured in such a way that his defensive contributions are judged on balance to outweigh his offensive deficiencies.

a long time ago, a sociologist named Max Weber wrote a book called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in which he examined the ways in which the puritan work ethic fit perfectly with and fed into the needs of a new nation born on the eve of a rapidly industrializing world. it's something like this that i smell in quotes like the one with which i began. as if being a great offensive player didn't take any practice or any work during games (ask rip if his offensive efficiency has come or comes without effort). and as if being a %%%%ty offensive player isn't just as much of a liability to the team as being a %%%%ty defensive player. if anything, it seems to me that decent team defense can mask defensive liabilities; but it takes a really prodigiously balanced offense to mask the weaknesses of one poor offensive player. but that's debatable and I don't want to stake the validity of my argument here on that aside. and i'm certainly not trying to reverse the judgment: to make it okay for offensive minded player to play no defense. i'm just saying that such players -- whether they be offensive or defensive "specialists" -- help and harm their teams equally, given equal teams around them.

the larger point (which I might not have gotten out clearly and still might not with this reformulation) is this: this disparity in judgment about one-sided players is wrong and, I think, part of a sick morality that equates virtue with effort and effort with quality so that anything that looks easy (like a Rip mid-range jumper, or a Stojakovic triple) must be somehow wrong, or must somehow be paid for or compensated with the requisite effort somewhere else (as though they'd stolen something). Meanwhile, the obvious effort that Bowen (or Ben, dare I say it) expends on defense is a self-compensating virtue and so relieves that player of the burden of moral judgment.

just had to get that off my chest.

That was a pretty good rant for someone who doesn't type much

Very interesting take.

There's no doubt offense-minded players do put great effort into their game. But I still think it is a matter of skill vs effort. While there is some innate skill involved with defense, it is mostly effort. A smooth shot is skill, a lot of times its just something you have or have developed over time. So you could actually make the argument that good offense takes as much effort as good defense, but once you develop a shot, you don't really have to "work" much more.

Sometimes you make shots, sometimes you don't. Whereas with defense you must ALWAYS put out the effort against your opponent, you can't slip. Scoring machines like Kobe and Bron and AI just jack up shots and their supreme skill carries them most of the time. So they could have a "lazy" night and still put up 25+. Another reason that good defense is more respected than offense could be that it is more visible. You can tell when a defender is working hard, pestering his man, but shooting doesn't really look all that hard from an effort standpoint.

NBA players, or sports players in general are seen as rich bums for the most part. Fans respect the effort all athletes put into their sport, sure, but does Shaq really deserve 20 million a year for what he does? The public sees these guys as getting paid WAY WAY more than they should. Let's be honest, most players slack off, and players like VC and TO don't help their cause much. So when you see a player break out of the norm and APPEAR to put forth more heart, energy, and effort than others, you take notice.

I don't think it has to do with morality or "noble" defenders, but more about effort and what appears to be more difficult.

They say defense is correct but the offensive guys do get all the props and TV time. Everyone tunes in to see if kobe can score 50.

#1 reason why:

Defence wins - in ANY sport.

Proven time and time again.

Actually, I think I HAVE heard someone say that any defense you get out of Peja Stojakovic is a bonus. It wasn't complimentary, but I seem to remember it.

Not to get into Max Weber (his goatee ruled, BTW), but a big part of the Protestant ethic is deferred gratification. Good works now, heaven later. And defense in the NBA is a classic case of this, because the fact is you don't always get rewarded.

Play hard defense in high school and college, and the guy misses his shot or turns it over and you're a hero. Do it in the NBA against the wrong guy on the wrong night, and he burns you to cinders while fans talk about what a sieve you are. You have to have faith in the rightness of what you're doing, even when people are selling posters at halftime with your face in Vince Carter's crotch.

Everybody in the NBA plays defense, but it's only a few dozen guys who play it hard all the time regardless of how their shot is falling or their team is doing. Those few dozen guys are the true believers, the saints and martyrs, the guys we'd like to be, and so we either admire them or pay tribute with Milwaukee Bucks-like whining that acknowledges just what pansies we are in comparison.

SK, I think you helped make my point: So when I see Rip running and running and running some more to get open, he's not working? (And that's just to pick the most obvious case). Even a player who works more off the dribble works hard to get that split second of open space to pull up and shoot, or slip by his guy for a floater.

Here it seems you are confusing chance variations in output ("sometimes you make shots, sometimes you don't") with controllable consistency in input (you must always put out the effort). Apples and oranges. I could just as easily say, "on offense you must ALWAYS put out the effort against your opponent, you can't slip. But sometimes you make shots, sometimes you don't. and on defense you must ALWAYS put out the effort against your opponent, you can't slip. But sometimes you get the stop, sometimes you don't."


I'm not denying natural talent. But I wonder how many hours, days, weeks, months and years of work went into that "supreme skill"? But even if it didn't. Let's say they never did anything to make it possible to still be effective on a "lazy" night. That's exactly my point: that we invoke moralizing adjectives (like lazy) when we talk about these issues and that we apply them disparately to offensive-minded versus defensive-minded players.

Yeah, that's what I said: we punish the offensive player because it appears easy (i.e. their effort isn't always as obvious or visible), whereas the defensive effort is obvious. A discerning and observant sports fan should be able to see beyond those apparent disparaties in effort.

My point exactly, if this isn't a moralizing argument ("rich bums", "deserve 20 million a year", "slack off") I don't know what is.

Maybe I should have made clear that by morality I mean discussion of something in terms of virtue and the lack thereof ("good" and "evil" or any of their more nuanced and moderate companion terms). In that sense, what could be more noble to an American than a guy who works hard at a job (defense) that doesn't carry a lot of glory, and concedes the more glorious parts of the job to others. And, conversely, what could be more despicable to an American than a guy who gets the glory for doing something "easy" (offense), while leaving the thankless grunt work to someone else.

What's wrong with this ethos, applied to the hardwood, is

a) that (with the exception of spot reserves paid to come in and nail 3s or wreak havoc on the opposing point guards) any of the 150 starters in the NBA, as professional basketball players, ought to be seen as having as their minimal job description to help their team put the ball in the hole and to help their team keep the other team from doing so

b) being great at helping your team put the ball in the hole takes just as much effort (though that effort is admittedly sometimes less visible) than helping to keep your team from putting the ball in the hole.

c) sucking at either of these things makes you -- all other things being equal -- a liability for your team.

Yes, LanierFan. Thanks for pointing that out. Deferred gratification is a big part of it. And obviously there are moments in any life when the ability to defer gratification is useful, not only to oneself but also to others. The thing with deferred gratification in the Protestant ethic is that it's whacked way out of balance. It is an ideal of life on this earth as one long continual deferral of gratification (a semblance of denial that masks the secret gratification that deferring gratification brings the person) that generates a resentful, judgmental cluck of the tongue at anything that looks easy.

I definitely think that anybody on the floor who is not working hard in a game, or who has not worked hard to put in time to improve weak parts of their game on either end of the floor should be called out for that (that's one reason why, much as I love and will never tire of recognizing his contributions, I won't forgive Ben his terrible free throw shooting and also why, much as I love to watch Nash and think he's a phenomenal offensive point guard, I wouldn't forgive him his terrible defense). I just think the calling out should be done equally and am struck by the fact that it is not.


"You eat your fundamentalist pie. But just a piece you understand, you'll get the rest up in the sky."

Johnny Cash, "In your mind" -- from the Dead Man Walking soundtrack.

Well Prof, it seems to me the pre-conceived notion you identified may well explain the underlying reasons for such sharp division of opinion characterizing our season long Evans -vs- Delfino debate.

So it was really about our own shortcommings, not those of CD or ME.

Amen LanierFan.

@ Professor - I comprehend the working class hero concept. And yeah, there is a nobility in Ben scoring 20 points. Not when compared to other players in the league, but certainly when compared against his typical body of work. 30 points in a game for Ben would be the equivalent of Kobe's 81. Relativity.

There is also something to be said for the fact that a scorer getting 30 in today's game is not a remarkable feat anymore. It's passe. 40 points gets some attention, and 50 becomes the talk of the week. But where baskets (from the field and free throw line) are so proliferate, how can anyone get excited by a 28 point game anymore?

There is more to this than the psychology of the masses. Supply and demand plays a large factor as well. The seasons are long and remarkable performances happen at least twice nightly from scorers.

But how many games go by without a 15+ rebounder? Or someone with 4 blocks? How often does a defender harass Ray Allen into a miserable shooting performance, and then on the bottom of a back-to-back hold Nowitzki to less than 20 points in a win?

It's scarcity, which in some way can be tied to your ideas about "moralizing" because those sacrifice rewards based on faith are also fleeting in their availability.

It all hinges on scoring being effortless and defense being the by-product of great effort. Likely they are the same, but perception is reality and Vince Carter exposes hoop making as a sweatless ballet.

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Not sure of the morality arguement. But if you execute a pefect offensive play that results in a shot (not a bunny) you might still miss 55% of the time. However if you blow a defensive assignment and it results in a shooting foul or a lay-up/dunk. You have given up more than you likely produced..... All five have to play defense because if the weak link is exploited a high percentage offensive shot will ensue. You may need only kobe bryant to get a 55% pecent shot off. That being said championship calibur basketball demands mostly two-way players like pistons and spurs.