Well, with all of this talk of the Piston's semi-mythical Hyperbolic Paraboloid Transitional Floating Zone, here after referred to as the HPTFZ, people are probably wondering what it looks like, especially the Hyberbolic Paraboloid aspect. Well, all you have to do is follow this link, http://archives.math.utk.edu/ICTCM/E...9/html/hph.gif. See, the middle depression, where Z is at its minimum, is where Tayshaun plays, as his anchoring of the zone causes the opposing team to move to the perimeter. Where X is positive, and Z reaches a maximum, is the basket, where the bigs, 'Sheed, Webber, McDyess, Maxiell, play shutting down the lane. Where Z reaches its other max, when X is negative, is the three point line, where Chauncey and Rip chase down Chicago's perimeter shooters.

Thus, Z represents height, as Chancey and Rip jump as they rush the three point shooters, and the bigs, are well, bigs. The interior is no man's land, where Tay strips the ball. X is the court's length, while Y is its width. The ambiguous grey sheet is the shot clock, which chokes off Chicago's attempts to break the zone.

And there you go. That is the HPTFZ. Simple, no?

Terry T Jr.

What the NBA has needed to do for years has been and continues to be to widen the court. The NBA has been using the same size court since its inception when the average player was probably a half a foot shorter and 50 - 75 lbs lighter.

If you widen the court to where there is more than 22" of court behind the 3 point line on the side lines that will open up the game and add 10 or more points a game. The shooting range of players will improve just like it has since the 3 point goal came into affect. The zone doesn't need to be outlawed. The court needs to be widened and the 3 second lane changed to be like it is in Europe.

The problem with widening the court is that all of the Jack Nicholson and Spike Lee seats would have to be removed and that would cost teams an awfully lot of money. On the the other hand the game would be opened up and become more exciting which would increase its TV and mass marketing value to more than offset the loss of the money from losing those seats.

By the way. This is not my original idea. Chick Hearn talked about the pluses and minuses that I mentioned above years before he died. What I have written is my attempt to go from memory of what he said many times.

Nice posts TT and buddha. There aren't many better ways to start a day than Chick Hearns anecdotes and animated graphics of parabolas.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Just some random musings on the zone.

It doesn't appear that many other teams play as much zone as we do. This means they also practice less against a zone, giving us a preparation advantage.

Is it just me, or are the Pistons better against the zone this year on offense? Could it be because they have a better grasp of the concept on the defensive side?

All of the benchers except McDyess really haven't had a lot of time working on the zone in game situations. Putting the starters out of the equation for now, I think it is possible that we could get to be even better at it over time.

I know the zone is not the answer for all the offenses, and it's not the magical system that will generate title after title, but with the league trending further and further away from fundamental skills and towards athleticism and youth, having a veteran team playing a confusing defensive scheme (in addition to man-to-man) seems to be a huge advantage. I don't want to give Dumars too much credit, but maybe he saw this potential when he hired Flip?

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Hooray for math! But you forgot to talk about what the latus rectum represents. As Tony Kornheiser might say, if the Pistons' D strayed too far away from the latus rectum, they'd end up on Uranus.

It's an advantage against a young team that's in over its head, which I guess is mainly your point, that it works because a lot of the league is trending that way. Not sure it'll work so well against a San Antonio, or an athletic but smart team like Phoenix, with a PG who doesn't get rattled by much of anything.

Are you related to T.T. (was he thunder or lightning?)... what a vertcal leap that guy had.

No. Picked it as a screen name because of how upset I was when Trader Jack got rid of him to make room for some draft pick named Rodman.
That last post was courtesy of my son the math wiz, hence the junior.

I was going to go parabola [sp] math.
But you guys did a much better job.
Buckeyes#1 is a math teacher, but in Ohio, so we may need to break this down some more.
For instance when [X,Y,Z] = 0 all the players are stationary and there is no flow to anywhere.

TFD, you are a great man.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."