Soccer, Basketball and Space
Spain won yesterday, and I feel like the better team won.
I've been thinking a little more broadly about space, though, and its relationship to success on the field. More than that, however, it seems like this questions of aesthetics comes in as well: not only playing the game, but playing it beautifully.
There's been a lot of recent news about the links between basketball and soccer, and I'd like to spin out a couple of other things I've been considering. Henry Abbot at True Hoop has published a couple of stories (here or here) about a recent charity game organized by Steve Nash and Claudio Reyna, and they're well worth a read. One of the consistent themes that's stood out to me is the relationship between playing the point and playing soccer. There's something about the field sense that soccer requires, it seems, that carries over onto the basketball court.
There was something similar that came up during the Lakers/Jazz playoff series: Kobe Bryant noted (from Forum Blue and Gold) that a significant number of the Lakers had grown up playing soccer early on; and I feel like I came across mention of the fluid nature of the triangle offense, and how much it depends on movement without the ball. Something similar to soccer, I suspect.
What continues to interest me, though, is how this question of spacing and success leads into a question of aesthetics. Kelly Dwyer has written several times over the past couple of months about how beautiful the triangle can be when it's played well (though I can't find anything specific at the moment). Kevin Abbot at ClipperBlog just wrote about the Clippers' choice of Eric Gordon over Jerryd Bayless, noting that it might be as much an aesthetic decision as it is a functional decision. And then thinking about everyone who's lauded the Suns over the past couple of years for their aesthetically pleasing (though never quite as successful as we all might have wanted) style, I think it's worth thinking a little bit more about the continued blurring of the line between aesthetics and success. One of the things that continues to recommend basketball and soccer over football in my mind is the kind of effortless beauty at work in the first two. Football has its moments of glory, but my appreciation for the game has often turned on its clash of wills aspect, the wounded hero action, the hurtling of all obstacles at work. It's a linear beauty, perhaps, all about will and perseverance and stubborn push. That's not to say that basketball and soccer don't have those qualities (they have them in spades, I think), but that there's something more to them, a kind of fluidity, a movement in and through space. A friend of mine told me yesterday that people have compared the movement of soccer teams to something organic, rather than something mechanical.
Can you argue for a kind of sea change in the way that sports are being played? Can you argue that camera angles - the kind of swooping and fully rotating view that is becoming more and more common to televised matches - are leading to new ways of staging these sports? I sure don't know, but I think it's at least worth thinking about.
I've been thinking a little more broadly about space, though, and its relationship to success on the field. More than that, however, it seems like this questions of aesthetics comes in as well: not only playing the game, but playing it beautifully.
There's been a lot of recent news about the links between basketball and soccer, and I'd like to spin out a couple of other things I've been considering. Henry Abbot at True Hoop has published a couple of stories (here or here) about a recent charity game organized by Steve Nash and Claudio Reyna, and they're well worth a read. One of the consistent themes that's stood out to me is the relationship between playing the point and playing soccer. There's something about the field sense that soccer requires, it seems, that carries over onto the basketball court.
There was something similar that came up during the Lakers/Jazz playoff series: Kobe Bryant noted (from Forum Blue and Gold) that a significant number of the Lakers had grown up playing soccer early on; and I feel like I came across mention of the fluid nature of the triangle offense, and how much it depends on movement without the ball. Something similar to soccer, I suspect.
What continues to interest me, though, is how this question of spacing and success leads into a question of aesthetics. Kelly Dwyer has written several times over the past couple of months about how beautiful the triangle can be when it's played well (though I can't find anything specific at the moment). Kevin Abbot at ClipperBlog just wrote about the Clippers' choice of Eric Gordon over Jerryd Bayless, noting that it might be as much an aesthetic decision as it is a functional decision. And then thinking about everyone who's lauded the Suns over the past couple of years for their aesthetically pleasing (though never quite as successful as we all might have wanted) style, I think it's worth thinking a little bit more about the continued blurring of the line between aesthetics and success. One of the things that continues to recommend basketball and soccer over football in my mind is the kind of effortless beauty at work in the first two. Football has its moments of glory, but my appreciation for the game has often turned on its clash of wills aspect, the wounded hero action, the hurtling of all obstacles at work. It's a linear beauty, perhaps, all about will and perseverance and stubborn push. That's not to say that basketball and soccer don't have those qualities (they have them in spades, I think), but that there's something more to them, a kind of fluidity, a movement in and through space. A friend of mine told me yesterday that people have compared the movement of soccer teams to something organic, rather than something mechanical.
Can you argue for a kind of sea change in the way that sports are being played? Can you argue that camera angles - the kind of swooping and fully rotating view that is becoming more and more common to televised matches - are leading to new ways of staging these sports? I sure don't know, but I think it's at least worth thinking about.
Comments
There's more there too - about soccer, space, landscape interpretation stuff.
Greetings from KL