Sifaka
O sol nascerá amanhã.
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2017
- Messages
- 1,036
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We are basketball fans.
We want to watch games.
We are growing weary of trying to substitute conversation for competition.
But before we declare that it's safe (enough?) to resume play, ponder the following, please.
"Basketball is one of these sports where you’re right on top of each other, face to face, and there’s no way around it,” said Joe Allen, a Harvard University assistant professor of exposure assessment science. “It’s hard to get away from breathing in someone’s face.”
A basketball court is more like a crowded bar than a socially distanced baseball field—and that makes each game a potential breeding ground for disease. The basics of the sport have never looked so risky. There is physical contact on every play. The ball is touched so many times by so many hands that it might as well be a doorknob. The best teams are in constant vocal communication as they talk with each other, talk trash at opponents and talk down to referees. From high-fives to Stephen Curry’s dangling mouthguard, almost everything about basketball now feels menacing.
In fact, if you were trying to design a sport to spread a highly contagious respiratory illness, you would probably come up with an idea like Naismith’s ingenious way of entertaining his restless students."
source: Wall Street Journal,
www.wsj.com
We want to watch games.
We are growing weary of trying to substitute conversation for competition.
But before we declare that it's safe (enough?) to resume play, ponder the following, please.
"Basketball is one of these sports where you’re right on top of each other, face to face, and there’s no way around it,” said Joe Allen, a Harvard University assistant professor of exposure assessment science. “It’s hard to get away from breathing in someone’s face.”
A basketball court is more like a crowded bar than a socially distanced baseball field—and that makes each game a potential breeding ground for disease. The basics of the sport have never looked so risky. There is physical contact on every play. The ball is touched so many times by so many hands that it might as well be a doorknob. The best teams are in constant vocal communication as they talk with each other, talk trash at opponents and talk down to referees. From high-fives to Stephen Curry’s dangling mouthguard, almost everything about basketball now feels menacing.
In fact, if you were trying to design a sport to spread a highly contagious respiratory illness, you would probably come up with an idea like Naismith’s ingenious way of entertaining his restless students."
source: Wall Street Journal,
Basketball Was Made to Be Played Indoors. Now That’s the Problem.
James Naismith invented a sport that could be played indoors. That’s exactly what makes it so dangerous today.
www.wsj.com
