Untouchable Players: A Complaint from an Angry Basketball Nerd - Mike

I'm not sure if it is known at this point whether or not I have a life outside of this blog, but in case you could not tell, I do. And one of the things I do outside of this, is play 11th man on a 1A Varsity basketball team for a school with less than 130 students. So, it is safe to say that I am not exactly the star of the team. (Even though I am 3/3 from beyond the arc this year, and I've made 3 of my team's 6 three-pointers.) But I do notice things with other teams. One of the things that I notice that bother me the most, is the glorification of these athletes.

There should be no real reason that a mediocre player on a 1A high school, a player who is a dime a dozen in most playgrounds in bigger cities, is considered an untouchable asset to his team. Especially when his shot percentages begin to dip into the lower 30s. The player averages 29 a game because of volume shooting, not consistency. Unfortunately, this mentality does not only affect small school players. I happens at every level, from junior high, to high school, to AAU, College, and even at the professional level.

I am sick of it. Monta Ellis is not an all star guard. I was impressed when he put up 20 per game on 53% shooting in 2007. I was not impressed when he put up 24 per game on 45% shooting. He averaged 20 shot attempts per game, and only made 9 of those shots on average. If I'm missing 11 shots, I quit shooting during a shoot-around. He is doing this during a game! He matches his 2007 shooting percentage and he averages 28 per game! On 53% shooting! I love Monta Ellis as a player, I feel he has a chance to be a great 2nd scoring option on a title contender. But he needs to step up his game if he really feels like he can be a number one scoring option and get that big contract you know he has been playing for.

This is just one of many examples I could give, but my computer just got the Blue Screen of Death again, so I will keep this post a lot shorter than I planned, considering that I am lucky that I had this much saved.