Read an Excerpt
Three-Finger Zen
A BASKETBALL REVOLUTION
By Xiaoxing (Benjamin) Chen
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Xiaoxing (Benjamin) Chen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-4717-8
Chapter One
Basketball Revolution
WHY A REVOLUTION?
Basketball is a wonderful game, exciting to play and enjoyable to watch. It has tremendous popularity worldwide, being the second most participated sport after soccer. There are established administration and competition systems of all levels: the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), national and local basketball organizations, professional basketball leagues such as the NBA and Euroleague, college leagues like the NCAA, and youth leagues.
Throughout the world, basketball players, coaches, trainers, and teachers dedicate themselves to the sport. We have sports institutions, researchers, and practitioners who focus their works on basketball studies and training. Basketball facilities are sophisticated and well built in many countries; some of them are magnificent landmarks of their cities.
Basketball seems to be a great sport with perfect systems. What is wrong with basketball, and why do we need a revolution?
We do have wonderful basketball games and nearly perfect systems. But to become a perfect game and a pure, healthy sport, it has still a long way to go. For the future game we dream of, the modern basketball, with its technical limitations, can do little by itself. In contrary, the existing basketball techniques negatively affect the development of basketball in many ways, as we will discuss in the following sections of this chapter. Therefore, a revolution is necessary for a new, advanced game of basketball.
This revolution is not about organizational or structural changes like the Marxist revolution; we want our good games and systems intact. It is a pure technological revolution of fundamental basketball techniques and skills. Similarly, in the Industrial Revolution and the information revolution, machines and computers replaced hard laborers and those doing paperwork. Now, for basketball, 3fz will replace the existing ball-handling techniques and offense skills, all of them. In other words, today's basketball offense skills, especially shooting skills, will be obsolete in the revolution.
In contrast to the industrial and information revolutions, which have been both good and bad, the 3fz revolution will bring only positive changes to basketball. It will significantly improve every aspect of the game, solve the existing problems, and benefit every participant of the sport.
For the basketball revolution, we have established theories, mechanisms and techniques, and successful praxes. Human kinetics and hand studies are the scientific foundations of the revolution. Universal Ball-Handling Mechanism (3fz), Universal shooting Mechanism (UniShot), and Universal Alignment (4u1) are the new groundbreaking mechanisms and techniques. These revolutionary skills are acquired in my long-term praxis, and they have been successfully experimented and tested among youths.
Prior to the engagement of the big changes, we ought to know, from a revolutionary perspective, what problems and challenges are obstacles in the advancement of basketball.
CURRENT SITUATIONS AND CHALLENGES
Modern basketball favors big, strong, and quick players. It is disadvantageous to small, female, and older players for their lack of size, strength, agility, or explosive power. A competitive basketball game is full of intensive physical activity and bodily contact. Players of competitive basketball leagues are well conditioned for tough physical challenges. They need to have excellent athletic strengths to apply their ball skills in competitions.
Having distinctive athletic bodies, females play a different style of basketball than males play. There are great women's games, with fluent teamwork, spectacular passes, swift transitions, and accurate shots. But physical basketball games are extremely hazardous to most female players. Due to their special physiques, women endure higher risks of injury during extreme movements or activities. For instance, during a hard stop or sudden direction change, compared to their male counterparts, female players are exposed to significantly higher risk of a torn ACL—anterior cruciate ligament—a crucial ligament of the knee joint involved in jumping and turning.
Basketball is among the sports leading in injuries, and injury is the main cause of short careers of many professional players. Without any protective equipment, players collide, hit and foul each other, or fall and land improperly after jumping, and they get hurt. The higher the level of competition, the more risks of injury professional players are exposed to.
Modern basketball has two major challenges: technical limitation and playing style. In the last thirty years of basketball development, there has been no significant technical improvement or innovative skill of any kind, but the players are younger and stronger, with more physical powers. More teenagers have entered professional basketball leagues, and there are significant increases in the three-point distances—about two feet (half a meter)—in the NBA and FIBA games.
The technical limitations of the conventional basketball lead to physical playing styles, as pumping muscles for brutal strengths in offense and pressing with rough body contacts in defense are easy ways to elevate the game for public attractions. Consequently, modern basketball games develop to a "physical powers over pure skills" playing style. Professional players may be more skilled than amateurs, but their physical powers are definitely superior. Unfortunately, there are more bad (or ugly) basketball games coming along with the playing style.
Isolated offensive skills
The individual basketball skills, including pass, dribble, and shoot, are fundamental components of team offense. Each of them uses different ball-handling techniques. They are independent offensive skills and thus trained separately.
On the other hand, players have variable talents in mastering the skills. Point guards are normally good at dribbling and passing but not necessarily at shooting. Many professional players cannot pass the ball with good control, especially in dynamic game settings, so they rarely have assists in their games. Shoot on catch is a skill that only a few great shooters have mastered.
While training, players must allocate extra time to practice each of the isolated skills. Even in the same skill category, like passing, different types of passes are practiced in distinctive drills. For scoring, jump shots, hook shots, and layups are using totally different techniques. Regardless of a player's talent level, separated time and effort are needed to acquire each type of the categorized skills.
Pass and Catch
Passing is the most difficult ball-handling skill. Timing, vision, experience, and technique are important elements of a good pass in dynamic game settings. Players' talents and hard training are needed to integrate the elements and throw assisting passes in the game. In the top professional leagues such as the NBA, only a handful of players can make accurate assisting passes facing defensive pressure. For passing, there are no standard techniques and no definite body posture, hand-arm involvement, or footwork. Passing skills are irrelevant to dribbling and shooting skills.
From ball release positions, there are three types of passing skills, each with specific techniques:
• Chest pass. Ball is held to the middle front section of body. It is a two-handed symmetric pass powered primarily by the chest and legs. The pass is quick, safe, and good with triple threat combination, but it is hard to throw long passes such as crosscourt passes.
• Lob pass. Ball is to a side of body. A lob pass is a complex of ball catch and quick throw. The pass has usually a one-handed release with a combined hand-arm action. It requires excellent coordination of arms and legs, court vision, decision making, and teamwork.
• Over-the-head pass. Two-handed or one-handed over-the-head passes have no definite forms. Players just throw overhead passes with their own styles, feelings, and abilities.
The major challenge is that there is no set passing alignment of arm, hand, and fingers on ball. That makes it difficult to coordinate shoulder, elbow, wrist, and fingertips to catch and throw the ball with good control. Mechanically, holding a big basketball without precise finger alignment, even with the good aerodynamics of a round ball in smaller distances, makes it difficult to throw accurate long passes like the passes in American football.
Catching the ball seems not as hard as passing it. But if you try to catch the ball with one hand in the air with control, simultaneously keep body balance, and get ready to pass or shoot, it is not easy at all. There is no set mechanism for catching the ball; technically, it is just a wild catch every time a player receives a pass.
Dribble
Dribbling is the most misused skill in basketball offense. Nowadays, professional players tend to be more confident in their dribbling skills, as they are allowed to change the ball directions twice in one dribble without it being called palming. Selfishness or heroism is another factor for overconfident one-man shows. Most players have developed a bad dribble-first habit, which gives the defense time to kill their offensive chances effectively.
Conventional dribbling emphasizes active hand and arm involvements in handling the basketball, but there is no standard finger alignment controlling the ball. That is the reason that players are dribbling the ball in quite different forms and postures, even for a simple crossover. Actually, players are using different nonstandard techniques for each of the following three types of dribbling:
• Ball on side: Inside-out, back-and-forth, and speed dribbles
• Ball in front: Crossover and cross-the-legs dribbles
• Ball at rear: Behind-the-back, spin-move, and back cross-the-legs dribbles.
The three dribbling types have distinctive ball-controlling techniques, which are not transferrable and must be trained separately. Therefore, many players can't dribble a crossover, and some don't do behind-the-back or spin-move dribbles. Because there is no technical standard to follow, many players just couldn't figure out the physical coordination of some dribbling types in their skill development.
More detailed technical analyses of passing techniques and Universal Ball-Handling Mechanism are given in chapter 2.
Shoot
Shooting is the most important, complex, and therefore the most trained skill of basketball offense. The existing two-hand over-the-head method has been taught by coaches and teachers as a standard shooting technique for making field goals. Despite its practical use in games and worldwide acceptance by basketball players and coaches, the conventional shooting method has vital defects: shooting alignment and posture.
From defensive perspectives, the conventional shooting is uniform, predictable, and unprotected. It is evident that players' shooting percentages decline dramatically in the games (about 50 percent drop in the NBA), as compared to their shooting practices. No doubt defense presence is the difference maker. In other words, the shooting is extremely vulnerable to defense. With that in mind, coaches have a straight goal of creating open shots in training their team offense.
The conventional shooting alignment is based on elbow-in and index-finger-release mechanics. Biomechanically, this alignment is contradictory to human physiology and kinesiology. (Please read chapter 4 for the analysis on the shooting alignment and the detailed technical analyses of shooting problems.) In the shooting mechanics and their compact processes, it is hard for players to control the ball or to generate enough shooting power for long shots.
These vital problems can't be solved by the conventional shooting method itself since the defects lie in the shooting mechanics. A change for new shooting techniques is needed.
Ugly Basketball Games
From its invention to modern games, basketball exhibits its unique, attractive essence with three important attributes:
• A healthy sport. The sport gives its participants a good overall workout, improves physical strength and mental acuity, and promotes good general health.
• A civilized game. As a game of pure competition in skills and athletics, it exhibits great team spirit and personal virtue, bringing friendship and love among participants and teams.
• An enjoyable game. It is a game full of spectacular drives and shots, powerful moves, graceful layups, dreamlike passes, tacit team plays, and so forth. It is one of the most enjoyable and exciting sports to play and to watch.
But in certain stages of development, with technical limitations of modern basketball and negative influence of professionalism, basketball competitions oftentimes turn out to be quite ugly. The followings are the negative sides of the game:
* Physical Game. When a game gets physical, it is tough to play or even to watch. Rough physical contact stimulates the wartime fighting spirits of human nature, causing total ignorance of the sport's essences. Emotional talks, dangerous offensive or defensive maneuvers, hard or flagrant fouls, and fights or brawls are common symptoms of a physical game. They severely damage the game. A fighting game exposes players to extreme professional hazards: frustration, emotional outbreak, and physical injuries. It brings negative public images; some were nightmares of basketball lovers.
* Women Play in Men's Style. Women's basketball is enjoyable for their special playing styles. Nowadays in certain professional leagues, female players try to play the game like their male counterparts. Without the jump abilities and explosive powers, it is not quite feasible for them to play that way. Shooting long jumpers, throwing crosscourt passes, and dunking the ball are not to their advantages. Some women's professional basketball games are less enjoyable, especially when they hassle each other by hand checking or scrambling for loose balls.
* Strength over Skill. Professional basketball hails individual talent and physical power. Low-post power moves, one-man team, and tough-pressing defense become major winning strategies of many teams. Players have to train harder for pure physical strength, which greatly compromises their athletic bodies by gaining muscle mass and body weight. Smart skills are compensated by hard muscles and brutal strength.
* Overweight Amateur Players. Obesity is a major public health issue that well presents in amateur players. Quite a proportion of players enjoy playing basketball by taking advantage of their heavier bodies. Influenced by professionals, instead of having muscle strengths, they try to beat the defense in low-posts by using their obese bodies. They move more laterally or back-down than run and jump, and they hardly have any endurance or agility in full-court games. Basketball is not healthy for them in the playing style, and it is also hazardous to play defense against them.
* Uglyx Physiques. Under physical pressure because of competitive games, professionals have to train extremely hard for pure muscle strength. Instead of achieving more athletic ability, such as endurance and agility, they tend to abuse their bodies in the gym to gain fast-growing bulk muscles for short-term sport-specific advantages. Many players have bigger upper bodies and leaner lower bodies, and some are so muscular or corpulent that it affects their athletic skills.
Following the professional trends, it is more convenient for basketball players to gain physical strength than hard-trained skills. Compared with the populations of other sports, such as soccer, tennis, track and field, and swimming, basketball players have unnatural physical appearances. With their natural fitness, female track athletes and tennis players are more attractive. In contrast, female disc throwers and basketball players have more muscles but less natural beauty.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Three-Finger Zen by Xiaoxing (Benjamin) Chen Copyright © 2011 by Xiaoxing (Benjamin) Chen. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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