Starting from its humble origins with peach baskets (giving the game its name), then moving through the streets, the schools and into the playgrounds on to the professional arena, it's clear that as the game gained popularity, it also became more complex, more studied and structured, both offensively and defensively
Now, one must figure out if it has been fate or destiny that has brought professional basketball back to the playground.
""Fate flows like the water, Destiny is man made"".
Just as when and where we are born we cannot decide when or where we will die; that is our fate.
What we do in the meantime, what we become, what we make, what we cultivate; that is our destiny.
In the summer of 1962, between the seventh and eighth grades, fate had me growing almost 18 centimeters and in that short time, in those short summer months, and without knowing it at the time, my dream of becoming, like thousands of others, a professional baseball player for the New York Yankees, who had already shown their interest in me, had vanished and basketball entered my life.
That very autumn, on the first day back at St. Camillus grade school and my uniform no longer fitting, I was ""recruited"" by my classmate Ray Corrigan and convinced to stay after school and attend, for the very first time, the school basketball team's practice, which I did.
And that is how fate had basketball become my destiny.
So... during that baseball off-season, my focus shifted to basketball. I turned to newspapers to catch up on box scores; my sports world revolved around the radio and black-and-white TV. I listened as the NYK made history, not as champions, but as the team Wilt scored 100 points against. Basketball became a geography lesson, introducing me to a Princeton basketball star and Rhodes Scholar who studied abroad (in England) and played (in Italy) after being drafted by the Knicks but before arriving in NY. He was the $400,000 man, Bill Bradley.
You played on four different teams at the same time, often not even knowing the names of your teammates. And, of course, there was always the playground.
All of it was a lesson. All of it was for learning.
Later, I received college scholarship offers for both baseball and basketball, which led to my professional career in both Holland and Austria, where my aspiration to coach the game became my destiny. I started as a player-coach and then transitioned to full-time coaching.
I coached, traveled, attended clinics, and studied.
Italy, France, Spain
John Wooden/UCLA
Dean Smith/North Carolina U.
Bobby Knight/Indiana U.
Bob Cousy/Boston College
Chuck Daly/Detroit Pistons
Dan Peterson/Milan Italy
Aito/Barcelona Spain
Destiny kept me in Spain. I worked with OAR, Breogan, SL Benfica-Lisbon, Atletico de Madrid (de Jesus Gil), Palma de Mallorca, COREN Ourense, South Korea, where my various teams employed, (depending on the types of players available):
The UCLA (full Court Zone) defenses and Wooden's offense,
Boston's Double Low Stack,
The Drake Shuffle,
The Flex,
The 1-3-1 continuous
The Pistons' Transition Offense,
Indiana's Rules of the Passing Game
The Triple Post Offense
Always using the defensive principles of the master Coach Bobby Knight (RIP), where the #1 rule was that each player had to have; ""The Predisposition to Dominate one's Adversary"".
Historically, exceptional coaches have crafted strategies and systems that could be viewed as masterpieces to some extent. In my opinion, the Drake Shuffle is a true piece of sports artistry. Interestingly, those same legendary coaches, expressed concerns when the three-point shot was introduced, predicting it would ruin the game.
These well-built offensive systems, developed by universities, European leagues, and the NBA have all become relics of the past, leading us to the present where the game has come full circle, returning to the playground and the monotony of the Pick and Roll.
It seems that this has become the man made destiny of our beloved game; that its crafted construction leads now to this fate. To forfeit its long-standing, organized, tactical, and technical heritage, its well-deserved respect, to transform into nothing more than a mere commodity.