I agree that that seems the natural mode for any game of this kind where you have one team trying to score at one end and one at the other - you have an equal number of players and a kind of default opposite number. But it just seems insane - am I really getting this right? - that if I beat my man, then I get a free run at the goal. No-one else is allowed to stop me?
I do understand that a team could make for a tedious game by putting all of their players at the back and just - as they say in football - parking the bus. Especially if, as you say that skill levels were lower and maybe teams couldn't beat that with long range shots.
But my thoughts are as follows
1. You get so many points in an average game in basketball, it wouldn't hurt to have some lower scoring games. A bit of variety.
2. In football it's well recognised that some teams asre stronger than others. If Sheffield United play Manchester City and they go toe-to-toe with them in an open attacking game they will get thrashed ten nil, so why shouldn't be allowed to try an alternative strategy that plays to their strengths? In football it's perfectly legitimate to "park the bus" and put ten men behind the ball (or even eleven) with the idea of holding on for a draw, or even frustrating the stronger team to the extent that they lose concentration and leave the backdoor unlocked, and then Sheffield, if they can be clinical enough, manage to capitalise on the far smaller number of chances they get. In the Champions League final last week - and this is not an extreme example cos of course in the final the skill differential is not gonna be as great as it can be in a league of 22 teams - Real Madrid had one shot on target and they made it count and won.
So to me, ultra-negative defence is a way that teams can set up, and then it's a question that top teams have to answer "how do we unlock such a defence?". There are many different ways to play and win a football match and that's part of what makes the game as a whole so fascinating. Personally I wouldn't want to legislate that out of the game.
3. But if you really do want to create rules to prevent this way of playing then aren't there better ways of doing it? You could have some sort of reverse off-side rule where teams are not allowed more than three players in their D or behind that line there is (or you could draw a new one I suppose). Or maybe it could be the max they can have is the same as the attacking team plus one. Or maybe the rules should be that a team has to have three in the opponent's half at all times. Obviously you guys know better than me what formula might work here, but the point is there are vairous things that you could try and that this one-to-one rule seems weird.
Also, how did they impose this rule? Do I have to tell the ref at the start that I am marking number 23? Presumably there are circumstances when I can change marker, what circs were those how do they judge them? Aren't there moments that are kinda free for all? Does the rule get dropped then?
It seems as though the game must have changed hugely with this rule being abolished. It's not like in football when they tweak the off-side rule or bring in the backpass rule or something, it seems like an enormous structural change to the way that the game was played - not the handling and shooting skills, but the sport as a team game must have been dramatically altered.. Which season was it when this happened? Was the next season kinda shambolic with people forgetting that they were allowed to tackle people and so on?
Also guys, I asked about hand-checking, what's that?
nb I know I keep drawing comparisons with the thing I know ie football. I suppose that that does have a limited value, but I think it does have some value all the same. To me, games such as ice hockey, field hockey, basketball, football, probably some others too, have this fundamental game engine in which the same number of players line up against each other and try and get it into a hole, a goal, a basket or something. You can beat players by going round them or you can take several players out with a pass - basically someone who is familiar with watching one of these sports can watch another one and see to some extent what is going on. Interested to hear if people agree with me there and whether you think that you can kinda adapt things that you have learned watching one to one of the others.