T-Mac and Soccer

Sometimes, you watch Tracy McGrady and you get a feeling for the sublime. The guy is just so awesome when he's on. Tonight, he was only on the court for thirty minutes, but his performance in the fourth quarter was beautiful. Of course, it would have been more beautiful had he made some more of those shots, but the feeling was there, know what I'm sayin'?

T-Mac is an injured old man. Of course, he's only nine years my senior, so it's odd to think of him as an old man, but he's been in the league longer than I've had arm hair. The resident Jazz fan over at the Dream Shake says McGrady has no heart. But T-Mac has heart. It takes heart to play through minor injuries. The problem is that T-Mac isn't 22 anymore. He's 29 with a bad shoulder, bad back, and bad knee. Time and a decade of professional play have worn down his abilities. Only time will tell us if he can get back on track this season. We would've won tonight's game had Yao been playing. But I'm glad that the trainers are treating Yao with a delicate touch. The same should be true of McGrady.

Oh, and Brent Barry just looks awful out there. He missed wide open shots all night, and I wonder (as did JVG) if he's playing hurt, too.

I watched about ten minutes of the USA-Guatamala soccer match on TV. I played plenty of soccer as a kid, but I don't think I ever really grasped the strategy of it (I still don't). I always played defense, and my primary thoughts on defense (much as my primary thoughts on defense in every other sport) always revolved around getting the ball back. I never really thought about scoring after that. Just give that to the more athletic dude.

Anyways, I was watching this, and I was struck by the strangeness of this sport. Maybe it's just because football and basketball tend to rely upon such tight ball control (heh ... ball control), but the sort of activity that soccer involves is kind of nervewracking. Watching this, you see much more isolated activity. Spacing is generally measured in yards (or, I suppose, meters) rather than feet, as with basketball. And individual players seem to have much less control over where and how the ball is advanced. It just seems, from my inexperienced vantage point, to be a more uncontrolled activity. I kept expecting, at any moment, for someone to come in and take the ball away. But any time a defender got close, the ball was virtually immediately passed. But these long, uncontrolled passes (again, because players are so spaced out) often result in turnovers. But turnovers were so common, and penetration to the goal so infrequent, that there was little cost to any individual turnover. Contrast this again to basketball, where turnovers can often be guaranteed points (of course, when scores are routinely in the triple digits, individual turnovers begin to lose a lot of meaning).

Now, imagine if you were to cut the field (or the pitch, as they put it) in half. You'd create a much more interesting game, I'd think. Passes would have to be more controlled, turnovers would be less frequent but more costly, and players would be much more closely spaced. Of course, you'd have to cut the number of players significantly to avoid injury, but I think the pace of the game would increase significantly.

But I guess that's why they have indoor soccer. And nobody watches that shit.