strategy

Basketball, as a game of skill, is totally compromised when referees don't protect shooters by calling the bumps to the body and especially the seemingly insignificant knocks to the elbow or forearm. But players need to learn that when you initiate contact with a defender, the refs don't call that anymore. William Walker gets fouled virtually every time he turns around to shoot, but most of the time it doesn't get called. Meanwhile, referees in college love calling these idiotic offensive fouls where the defense appears to set and then flops backwards. College basketball has become too much of a wrestling match in the past ten years, and the only hope for skilled basketball players (rather than over sized troglodytes) to reclaim the graceful purity of the sport is to turn the game into a 94 foot contest. The mid-range jumpshot needs to make a return, and players need to be able to make the shot even when well defended. It's easier to make a fifteen footer with a defender in your face while not being fouled (and they still do call it when a jump shooter gets hit) than to muscle your way to the basket, bumped the entire way, and force up a shot hoping for the foul that should be called. When they let the defense get away with so much holding and bumping, the only thing left to do is run and shoot, run and shoot, run and shoot.