Defense Is Overrated; Suits Are Not

When did basketball coaches stop wearing suits? I think it was last year, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The NBA resumed the season that had been suspended in March, but the teams all played in what came to be known as “The Bubble”: a state of the art athletic facility in Disney World. While the playoffs progressed, players remained sequestered in Orlando, away from friends and family, but relatively safe from Covid. Still, one can’t help but wonder how many players made half-assed efforts during the playoffs so as to get booted earlier from the Bubble. That would go a long way toward explaining how the Miami Heat made it to the finals.

Anyway, when the season resumed, coaches seemed to decide that the Bubble called for a more casual approach to fashion. Team-logoed fleeces replaced the Armani’s and Hugo Bosses to which we’d become accustomed since the days of Pat Riley. And this year, even with the resumption of relatively normal games, complete with fans on the stands, the coaches are still rocking the casual Friday look every day of the week.

Next thing you know, they’re gonna take a page from baseball and start dressing in uniforms like the players. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Nobody needs to see Tom Thibodeau in a pair of baggy shorts.

Speaking of Tom Thibodeau, the New York Knicks got bounced out of the playoffs yesterday. I’m not overly disappointed—I save my disappointment for the Mets. And the Knicks had a pretty good season, anyway.

It goes to show, though, that the old sports adage about defense winning championships doesn’t always hold true. Tom Thibodeau is universally acknowledged as a defensive-minded coach, and the Knicks did practice spectacular defense throughout the season. But in basketball, the better offensive team will almost always win.

You might respond, “Well, ultimately, doesn’t the better offensive team ALWAYS win in any sport?” Well, no. I mean, in other sports, you could have a team that, in general, is great offensively but that gets shut down by a superior defensive team—a defensive team that manages to eke out just enough offense to win. The key idea here is that, in other sports, the defense can shut down the opposition. Think about a pitcher throwing a shutout, or a football defense blanking their opponents.

In basketball, even a terrific defense is going to give up 90 points or so. So a great defense by itself won’t win you any championships if you can’t score enough. It’ll just cause you to lose by two points instead of 20.

*****

Amazon update: The price of the book today? $5.61. Nice try, Bezos!