Galveston Round-up

Aight, it's been a long day. Been a good day, too. But a long day. We arrived in Phoenix from Tampa (via Atlanta) around midnight Arizona time Wednesday night. Collected our bags and enjoyed a bit of drama trying to collect our rental. ("This reservation isn't in your name, sir. Give me your driver's license, a credit card and your left foot, please.") Since nobody had dinner we hit the drive thru at a Jack-in-the-Box on the way to our hotel. ("I'll have a number 9 medium with curly fries and a root beer." "Will that complete your order?" "Not even close--") We rolled in around 1:30 am with a team text message letting us know we needed to be in the lobby at 6 am ready to go. Our first match of the day--at 8 am vs. Heat--was part of the last half day's prelims to be made up from the Galveston rain out. We played well enough to pull out a tight win not because we were playing particularly well but because the guys don't let the situation or the score get into their heads and they've been down before and know what it takes to pull games back. Next up for us is Upton 187 who played some tightly contested matches in Galveston and thumped Viscious earlier that morning. This is their first event as pros. With the Infamous win over Legion we were confident we knew how the seeding would break down and focused on improving from our first match. With a good win over 187 we were ready for "Sunday" play.
Before the first quarter-final match started we'd already been on site for seven and a half hours. We stayed in the shade as best we could and constantly encouraged the guys to drink more fluids. There were questions early on exactly how the quarters and semis would be seeded. Divisional has a formula but some of us (myself included) lobbied for a simple formula where the higher seed from bracket A would play the lower seed from bracket B and vice versa--but that ain't what happened. The reason for the suggested formula is to assure fresh match-ups and avoid circumstances like those that occurred when Infamous and Heat played a second match of the day against each other in the quarters. And the Ironmen played Thunder--a team they had also already played in Galveston. Hopefully common sense will prevail by Chicago. (I don't hold out any hopes for this weekend--at least in that respect.)
Moving into the semis was Ironmen and Heat. We played the 'Men and Dynasty played Heat. (Despite the fact the divisional formula seeded the "Sunday" teams for match-ups it doesn't re-seed after the quarters. Instead assigns the winner of the 3/6 match-up to the 2 seed and the winner of the 4/5 match-up to the 1 seed regardless of quarter-final results.)
The finals was us & Heat--who did a great job reaching the finals in their first pro event and will likely be a power to be reckoned with in the foreseeable future. By the finals we were working like a well-oiled machine and pulled out a couple of wrinkles we hoped Heat might not be expecting and took a somewhat misleading 7-1 win--most of the points were hotly contested--for our third PSP pro victory in a row.
And that was just Thursday.

PSP Phoenix begins tomorrow.

Throw in the Towel?

If you looked at yesterday's links (Throw in the Green Flag) here and here are the follow-up links. (And even if you didn't look at yesterday's links check these out.) They do a very good job of framing the Big Picture issue I want to raise today. And that's all I want to do--offer a perhaps different way of thinking about refereeing. Right now the conceptual framework underlying the rules is the law enforcement approach. You do the crime, you do the time--with built in deterrence to let the next guy know that crime doesn't pay. I understand the motives and the approach, I just don't think they result in the best game.

Rules are necessary. They give the game shape and substance. Violating those rules requires redress. So far, so good, right?

Here's where I have a couple of questions for you. What's more important, the play of the game or rules enforcement--or is there, should there be, some balance?
Which sort of basketball do you prefer; the game that is constantly being interrupted to send players to the free throw line or the sort that is fast and free flowing the majority of the time?


My gripe yesterday was the lack of consistency in officiating. That lack of consistency is exacerbated by the law enforcement attitude of the referees and the impact of any penalty call on the play of the game which I think is often disproportionate overkill. But current views of the game don't really have any other place to go so we are stuck with pulling bodies or doing nothing. There are no in-betweens, and the only result of official discretion is widely divergent outcomes. What I am advocating is taking a fresh approach to the game and re-prioritizing our goals. Ideally I would like to see the penalties more accurately reflect their impact on the game and focus on maintaining order and basic equity while allowing the game to be played and won (or lost) on the field by the players the majority of the time. (As we are unlikely to ever fully escape the officiated outcome.) We can do better. But first we have to want to improve the game instead of focusing the function of penalties on punishment; merited or otherwise.

Btw, there's no throwing in the towel. Tomorrow, a new system for regulating play of the game on the field by the officiating crew.

On the PSP Pro field

While we continue to wait to hear the list of final changes for the new season there is one item that needs to be considered (or reconsidered) and it concerns the implementation of the new 90 second rule. (And, no, I'm not gonna lobby to not do it 'cus that's a battle I'm not gonna win--not right now anyway.) But the issue does relate to the 90 second rule. The routine on the pro field has been to start the two minute countdown on the ref's signal of a flag hang. But this happens prior to the official awarding of the point as the refs check the player after signaling the hang. The result is our 2 minute clock has always started running before live players can leave the field. The intent, I assume, was to save game time and not burn clock while the refs are checking the player(s). Problematically, the refs take however long they take and with the break time now reduced the commish and/or the league needs to decide how they're going to handle this before the first teams step on the field.
The sensible answer is to stop the game clock on the hang signal but not start the 90 second clock until the point is actually awarded or denied. The problem this presents the league is that the time they thought they were saving per match will be reduced. In fact, the only way it won't be reduced is if game clock runs off while the refs decide every clean hang or the 90 second clock starts as before--with live players on the field. Either way it takes away from the game for the teams and I can easily foresee teams having to burn their timeouts because of it. In the past it passed unobjected to because 2 minutes was a large enough buffer that it seldom proved to be a critical inconsistency but in this effort to play more matches there isn't ten, fifteen or twenty seconds to spare anymore.
So, what you gonna do PSP?

Redacted

Sorry, kids. I've pulled the post. First time. Hopefully the last time. It has nothing to do with inimical external forces pressuring poor old Baca--or with any embarrassing error in the content. It is related to an internal team issue and that's about the only thing that would make me pull a post.

For those who want to know what it was all about I'll try to remember to re-post it when it no longer matters.

PSP Suggestion Box

There is the increasingly rare interesting thread over in the PSP forum at PBN requesting suggested changes to PSP. Started by Ken of the PBV it's focus is on the sorts of changes that affect the play of the game and the players. If this isn't an off-season ritual already it will become one as the league has shown a penchant for making moves. I am not posting in the thread because Ken specifically requested constructive positive input and some part of this post won't be. Constructive maybe, positive--not so much. For my part I will also be covering some old ground with ideas and suggestions posted in the past for those among you who started reading after I did this the last time (and because I can seldom resist any opportunity to repeat myself.)

Ken started the (paint) ball rolling and the thread did what most PBN threads do--went downhill from there. Throughout there is support in the thread for a modified game with a race to win, ie; whoever is ahead when time runs out, wins. This instead of the Race 2 whatever. A modified scoring system is suggested that deals with the silly notion you deserve something for taking longer to lose (the OT point) and there's a request for an across the board standard ROF. All of these are perfectly reasonable ideas from a player's perspective. (There were also some unreasonable ideas. Along with requests to bring penalty boxes back and standardize the game across all divisions.)

Here's where I'm less than positive in my response. The league dropped xball and went to Race 2 with new ref jerseys and everything. Did anybody notice? I seriously doubt they want to try and re-brand their game all over again. That, and there is a reason matches are a race. The race total controls the average match length, not the match time. Statistically a match window can be calculated for the Race 2 matches, and trust me, it's significantly shorter than a race 2 win match would be. [For example, 12 minute match time Race 2 Win versus 15 minute match time Race 2 4. R2W using point time variables of 30 seconds up to 3 minutes gets a match window of 18 minutes to 60 minutes plus. Using the same variables in R24 results in a match window of 16 minutes to 26 minutes. Additionally the weakness--from the perspective of the PSP--is that faster, more aggressive points results in longer matches. And for the curious, the R25 match window is approx. 21 minutes to 33 minutes.] And there is a schedule to be maintained and there will be (already is) increasing pressure in the future to try and find ways to cut down event length. And of course the long term trend isn't more on field time--regardless of the rationale.

Regarding the idea of a new scoring system that weighs wins and overtime wins and losses differently the league might go for it. Given the limited number of matches played the current scoring system offers added complexity and uncertainty and (I'm guessing) that finds approval in some quarters. The suggested scoring change is even more complex, resolves the 3-1 record versus the 2-0-2 record conundrum and offers another layer of seeding clarity. Then there's the scoring system that is also a format modification in that it retains the Race 2 but adds a win by 2 element. The idea here is to identify a clear winner in the more competitive matches. (It would also be a value added for the players and not as time intensive as a simple Race 2 Win since it would only come into play under certain circumstances.) Or we could go to simple wins and losses but then the issue of limited match numbers re-enters the equation.

And then there is ROF. I doubt there is any discernible trickle down or that there is anything more than a gut feeling ROF values "saved" paint or encouraged more newbies to play locally. Even so it would be a mistake to change it--again. The lower ROF has real potential to be beneficial for lower level players (despite the fact most of them are certain they know everything already.) Now that it's done I wouldn't change it.

Personally I'm tempted to begin with things I don't want to see. Like another batch of changes being touted as beneficial to me while in fact they reduce my game time and increase my per player cost. Like last year. (I know, I know, without the PSP we'd be playing guerrilla events in cow pastures (oh, wait!) on vacant lots and in the wee hours of the night in stadium parking lots. Whatever.) And the "inevitability" of small ball. Fortunately, with the 50 cal craze I expect the league to do their due diligence before they jump on that bandwagon. (What is it they say about the definition of insanity?)

Instead I'm gonna take a stab at being constructive too. First, I think the Win By 2 variant is a winner. By my rough calculations the time cost is minimal even in the matches where it occurs, say +5 min on average. Best of all though it only kicks in under very limited circumstances and only alters the Race 2 limits under the most competitive circumstances where a clear winner is a highly desirable outcome.

Here's my wish list. Keep D4 Race 2 4 as entry level to the-game-formerly-known-as-xball and make all the other Am divisions [1, 2, 3] Race 2 5 with identical entry fees and the bulk of the prizes offered in D1 & perhaps D2. Encourage teams to excel instead of penalizing them for getting better, or worse, force them to compete at a higher level based on a poorly conceived, anti-competitive scheme. [The classification system.] Carry that over conceptually to semi-pro and pro as well. If they play the same format they should pay the same entry. And don't start in on the prizes nonsense, the prizes have been shrinking faster than the match times. All I'm suggesting is a coherent policy that promotes and rewards excellence. (But I'm not holding my breath.)

Got any ideas you'd like to toss out there? Here's your chance.

UPDATE: On a nuts & bolts level I'd like to see the Pro roster bumped up to, preferably 10, but the number doesn't really matter as long as it's larger than 8. And it's already sorta 9 with the mid-season makeshift injured/replaced player rule so I suggest doing away with all the pointless detail and simply call it 10--which is where semi-pro already is. Besides, I am confident that if the PSP asked likely pro teams they would discover 10 is a pretty popular number. Just saying.

Effect of ROF on the play of the game; Part 2

Here's the set-up. 1) Honest question: [a] Will someone please tell me what the skill is when moving under higher rates of fire? [b] Is there some talent or skill players develop to get through tighter lanes of paint? [c] Isn't the whole point of the 'lane' of paint that a player CAN'T get through it?

The answer to [b] first: yes and no. The skill is in learning how to get through a controlled gap (a lane of paint) and then successfully and routinely executing, not in how to magically dodge 13 bps (which isn't what happens most of the time). You might be surprised to learn how many ways there are. [c]: No, the whole point is to try and contain/control movement in order to gain a positional advantage and this concept is a team concept not an individual player concept. [a]: it isn't a single skill, it is a diverse group of abilities; it's vision, it's timing, it's coordinated action, it's often running & shooting, it's body awareness [where you are in relation to where peeps can kill you], it's planning and preparation, it's physical tools including raw speed. There are a couple others but hopefully you get the idea. It's a rather complex interplay of game playing elements that in combinations allows movement through a zone the opposition is trying to control.

Here's the big picture answer–and the reason why ROF is important to the game play. ROF is the principle modifier of Movement. A few years ago, during the transition to semi-auto field rentals from pumps, we were playing some after hours paintball with the soon to be obsolete (then) pumps. We were playing approx. 5 on 5 on the speedball field which was mostly barrels and crossed plywood. Before one game it occurred to us that the pumps weren't capable, on that field, of containing our movement particularly if the other team played as if we all had semi-autos. The predictable result was that we ran them off the field in seconds. The proximity created by the dimensions of the modern xball field require a counterbalancing ROF in order to retain the game's complexity. Even with the old 15 bps and sideline coaches good players are still able to move and run down their opponents. If, for example, you put the pro ROF at 8 bps on a standard field layout the result would, in short order, be a brutal game of train wreck points because the ROF wouldn't be able to control movement versus the skill level of the players. The fact that pro players are capable of moving when confronted by high ROF is one of the defining characteristics of the current game. From my point of view, the ideal ROF for purposes of game play is one or two notches below being able to control the movement of the best teams. (And incidentally the reason why graduated ROF doesn't bother me at all. It should give developing players an opportunity to exercise the correct skill set with the correct priorities placed on the various demands of the game.)
When movement becomes too easy it loses value. In the modern format ROF makes movement meaningful. And meaningful movement is what makes all the great moves great.