Even in its three-on-three schoolyard/driveway form, basketball was an art form. An acquired taste at a required pace.
But if one of the participants was what we called “a chucker,” someone who regularly heaved it up from the far outside — and even if he was sometimes successful — he’d wreck the game for the other five. And, inevitably, he’d be told by all five to cut it out.
To that sustaining end, I’m not fond of how these Knicks, under Mike Brown, play offense as I increasingly say to myself “cut it out.” They seem more and more reliant on the uncreative, redundant and unreliable three-ball.
The paucity of three-ball coaching last season allowed Tom Thibodeau’s Knicks to knock off the favored three-ball addicted and afflicted Celtics when it counted most.
