[mike777]

yes there are unwritten rules in baseball, many don't like rules when they are unwritten but there you are.

OtOH you can look at football WHERE there are many many written rules, just most of us don't know them and the players do not either... for example holding

[Mbodell]

mike777, on 2015-January-24, 00:00, said:

yes there are unwritten rules in baseball, many don't like rules when they are unwritten but there you are.

OtOH you can look at football WHERE there are many many written rules, just most of us don't know them and the players do not either... for example holding

Or what makes a catch legal with respect to the ground causing fumbles. Or, say, the pressure that a football needs to legally be - despite letting the offense choose and manage the balls they use.

[MrAce]

onoway, on 2015-January-22, 14:06, said:

If you are competing and your opps can casually disregard your best efforts as virtually meaningless no matter how hard you try, it is going to be experienced by most people as humiliating, nobody likes to be made to feel inept, incompetent,powerless, insignificant. If a person CHOOSES to put themselves in such a situation as a learning experience, that's a totally different situation, these kids play when and who they are told to.

I disagree. I never see the result of a match as "humiliation". And even if I did, and tried to prevent it from happening again, last thing I would do is to suspend winning team's coach on the basis of unwritten rules. Instead I would go after the people who were responsible to put them in that match at the first place, or try to practice a little better.

onoway, on 2015-January-22, 14:06, said:

Telling a child not to feel humiliated in this situation is the same as telling a child that they should not be upset about being beat up or bullied - denying reality. There have to be other options and it is irresponsible of the coaches not to look for them, a total lack of respect for the players of either team to have this match go forward as a real competition instead of the farce it obviously was.For sure, it's a good thing to tell the kids that you respect them for doing their best, but it's a rare person, especially a child, to whom that is other than very cold comfort.

The point is, the KIDS did NOT make the bed, the irresponsible adults in their lives did, and then made the kids lie in it.

No, it is not the same thing as being bullied. It is a basketball match of high school kids. Either see it as one, or go after the real source of problem, which is definitely not the coach of winning team. And teach them that there is a limit to avoid the situation by being protected, whether that be the mercy of other team or who put them there at the first place. Once they are put in that field, or cornered in the school yard or juvenile penitentiary yard or a work environment, they need to deal with it and try to do their best.

Irresponsible adult is a subjective term imo. To me an irresponsible adult is the one who sees it as humiliation and teaches them that there is always a way to avoid things like this in the system, as if we are living in a perfect world, which is far from realities. Irresponsible adult is the one who confirms that it was a humiliation, by suspending the other team's coach for not showing mercy. A responsible adult, would teach them that in real life there are things that does not end up with happy ending. By suspending the winning team coach, you are actually CONFIRMING that it was a humiliation. How is this supposed to make the losing team feel better if not worse?

As Rik (Trinidad) said in another topic that the moral values vary by culture or location or time. This happened in Cali, if it happened in Tx perhaps the coach would be suspended due to showing mercy if he did and would be seen as an effort to humiliating the other team. It is amazing that some of you are judging the person with your own values as if they are the concrete universal values and/or intentions. While the difference can be as tiny as from which side of the fence you are looking at the same thing. For example, in the same token, I may blame people like you, for making kids feel humiliated for a sport event loss. For creating a huge drama, which adults seem to love, out of nothing and use kids for it. Can you see how subjective it can be? And I will fall on the right side of the fence much more often than you ever will, because after all, speaking of a responsible adult, you are making your case by applying unwritten rules and ignoring the written ones. Way to go brother

If my kid was in this losing team, I would take him/her to lunch and tell that I could not possibly love him/her more, if they won the match by far. And that it is a game to be taken lessons from. Nothing more nothing less. I am not sure if that makes me an irresponsible or responsible adult. But that's what I would do and never mention anything about the other team or the coach.

[onoway]

You are expecting a child to understand and hold - comfortably- an adult's standards. Losing is indeed a fact of life, and kids are better off for learning that it isn't the end of the world. But there is losing and losing. For an adult to deliberately put a child into a situation where he or she isn't only certain to lose, but have her or his nose rubbed in the fact that nothing they can do will have the slightest effect IS irresponsible. It is certainly the opposite of empowering, it is fostering a sense of helplessness, and it will lead to kids not trusting adults to help them look after their best interests.

I spent some years working with children between the ages of 9 and 14 who had many many problems, to the point they could not function in "normal" society, were placed in a residential situation because they were out of control at home, banned from schools etc. It was abundantly clear how many of them were there because they had no support system anywhere and had been forced to function at adult levels long before they were emotionally or socially and sometimes intellectually mature enough to do so.

They had developed all sorts of strategies to deal with their sense of inadequacy, one or two through suicide attempts, most of the others with other sorts of ..usually hostile..techniques. It's a bit sobering to learn that a 12 year old child who had been emotionally abused for years by warring parents who both "loved him" and told him so repeatedly, had managed to turn him into the one (professionally diagnosed)psychopath I've ever (knowingly) met. Placing blame is not especially helpful EXCEPT if it helps prevent another child being forced to try to work out on his or her own how to deal with what they experience as a hostile world. Many many kids not in care live in what they feel is a hostile world but to a lesser degree, or they found more "acceptable" ways to cope. It decidedly isn't a credit to the adults in their lives.

Far too many kids have no meaningful support system anymore.Years ago a child's suicide was unthinkable, unheard of; now it seems relatively common. How many kids have been killed by other kids in the last ten years, usually before they killed themselves? At least 30 years ago researchers reported that kids were no longer identifying school as a place they felt safe. (and that was before mass murders and lockdowns happened, and regular rehearsals as to what to do if a person with a gun arrived in their classroom.) Yet they are sent there every day anyway, by the adults in their lives, and left to cope as best they can. We expect a lot from kids these days.

You keep referring to how YOU feel in situations which YOU choose to be in, this is not the case for these kids. If they were honestly and without pressure of any kind given the option of playing or not, and knew what the result was likely to be, and volunteered to participate, then I have no issues with it. The fact that the coach was suspended makes it abundantly clear this was not the case.

If someone you trusted threw you into a cage with a lion but hauled you out before you got mauled too badly, then told you not to feel bad, they were proud of you for putting up a good fight, but you just had to learn that life is brutal sometimes, I doubt you would feel much better about it - or them. Words don't come anywhere near trumping what is felt.

A responsible adult is supposed to teach a child strategies how to overcome obstacles,or help them find ways to circumvent or get help to deal with obstacles they cannot manage, not deliberately put insurmountable obstacles in their way, deliberately set up failure.It's unfair, unjust and a betrayal of trust, just power tripping. Failure will happen without it being forced, just in the natural course of living. Parents and teachers and people in positions of trust are supposed to be support for the child when that happens, not the instigators of failure. You forget, perhaps, just how vulnerable a child is, in spite of what often looks like bravado and insouciance.

That's only one side of the story...the team that won is also being taught that society holds some fairly ugly values. Since most kids have an innate sense of fair play unless it's distorted by their environment, it wasn't a healthy situation for them either. There's little self respect or sense of accomplishment for a healthy ego to be beating up on someone known to be much weaker. They were put in an impossible situation of either doing just that or deliberately playing badly, which is highly unfair and unreasonable to expect them to do. The adults also failed them. One coach seems to have been a bit dim st best and the other one looking for some cheap glory. But whoever set this up is at least as much to blame, it was thoughtless and irresponsible of all the adults involved.

[Trinidad]

onoway, on 2015-January-26, 22:48, said:

You are expecting a child to understand and hold - comfortably- an adult's standards. Losing is indeed a fact of life, and kids are better off for learning that it isn't the end of the world. But there is losing and losing. For an adult to deliberately put a child into a situation where he or she isn't only certain to lose, but have her or his nose rubbed in the fact that nothing they can do will have the slightest effect IS irresponsible. It is certainly the opposite of empowering, it is fostering a sense of helplessness, and it will lead to kids not trusting adults to help them look after their best interests.

That is all true (though perhaps somewhat exagerated, but I'm okay with that). But it is not the issue at hand.

The coach didn't put these kids in this position. Whoever scheduled the game did. Once the game was scheduled to take place, the "nose rubbing" (as you call it) was inevitable. It doesn't matter whether the weaker team got their noses rubbed by being beaten 252-2 against the first string playing hard, or by 162-2 by the second string, or by 52-2 by the second string playing with one hand or by 24-2 against the second string with their shoes tied together. The only liberty that the winning coach had was to chose how those noses were going to be rubbed.

So, suspend whoever scheduled the game, but don't suspend the coach for winning 162-2.

Rik

[Trinidad]

I must say that I also find the constant qualification "these are children" a little annoying. We are talking about high school kids. Presumably half of them have a driver's license. If they can't cope with getting their noses rubbed in a basketball game, how will they cope with a fender bender (or worse)?

If one talks about irresponsible: I think it is irresponsible to put someone who is shaken up about losing a game (no matter how badly) behind the wheel of a car.

Rik

[onoway]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-26, 23:29, said:

That is all true (though perhaps somewhat exagerated, but I'm okay with that). But it is not the issue at hand.

The coach didn't put these kids in this position. Whoever scheduled the game did. . The only liberty that the winning coach had was to chose how those noses were going to be rubbed.

So, suspend whoever scheduled the game, but don't suspend the coach for winning 162-2.

Rik

And here I was under the impression "I was only following orders" had been ruled an invalid excuse.

[gwnn]

So the coach should have told them (i.e., the three players from the kindergarten team he does send on field) "play with your back to the ball, jump on one foot only, never approach the plank more than the halfway line, whatever you do, do not celebrate. We need to try to keep the difference as low as possible. The opponents will learn about mutual respect this way, when we only win by 20 points. "

[helene_t]

onoway, on 2015-January-27, 00:13, said:

And here I was under the impression "I was only following orders" had been ruled an invalid excuse.

Are you saying he should have cancelled the game? Maybe the two coaches should have considered playing the second half with hybrid teams. Like our xmas bridge drive where the weakest pair is teamed with the strongest one.

But ok if the full court press is not their normal game but something they use against weaker pairs then I can sorta understand. Maybe it is comparable to playing natural preemps against good opps but multi against the novices. I know too little about basketball to make good analogies.

[Trinidad]

onoway, on 2015-January-27, 00:13, said:

And here I was under the impression "I was only following orders" had been ruled an invalid excuse.

Tell me what the coach should have done. And, no, "letting the second string players play with their left hand only" is not the correct answer, since it is at least as humiliating as letting the first string players play their normal game.

Should he have sent everybody home (players, officials, audience) after the first half? Should he have organized an apple spice cookie bake off? Should he have taken his guitar and make everybody sing "Kum ba yah", "Blowing in the wind" and "Imagine"?

I understand that he actually talked to the officials, but the officials insisted that "the rules are the rules" (now who was only following orders?).

So, tell me what the coach should have done.

Rik

[billw55]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-27, 03:35, said:

So, tell me what the coach should have done.

Rik

As I said previously: play only reserves, and use the entire shot clock on every possession. Perhaps use a zone defense; certainly not a trap or press. Do these things from the start of the second quarter.

For those who worry about such things, this is not a lack of effort. It is only a different strategy, which also wins the game 100% of the time.

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-26, 23:29, said:

That is all true (though perhaps somewhat exagerated, but I'm okay with that). But it is not the issue at hand.

The coach didn't put these kids in this position. Whoever scheduled the game did. Once the game was scheduled to take place, the "nose rubbing" (as you call it) was inevitable.

The coach exacerbated the situation by having his kids go out for blood.

It would be like a baseball coach telling the outfielders to take a nap when he sees a weak batter come up to the plate. It's needlessly humiliating.

[gwnn]

ESPN covers the story, noting that the second string was instructed to only do a half-court press and to use all but 7 seconds from the shot clock in the third and fourth quarters. So he almost did what you asked him to do, billw5. Barmar: I see no evidence to prove or disprove the notion that the full-court press is only used by them against bad teams, you seem to assume it without question.

http://espn.go.com/e...-team-win-161-2

[cherdano]

Mbodell, on 2015-January-20, 01:59, said:

I suggested 4 players was one mitigation, and I am quite familiar with basketball.

Ok, sorry about my wrong inference. But I think you can see where I got that from - there are many possible steps in between "full court press" and "playing with 4 players" that would slow the scoring down.

[Trinidad]

billw55, on 2015-January-27, 07:09, said:

As I said previously: play only reserves, and use the entire shot clock on every possession. Perhaps use a zone defense; certainly not a trap or press. Do these things from the start of the second quarter.

For those who worry about such things, this is not a lack of effort. It is only a different strategy, which also wins the game 100% of the time.

As I said, "playing reserves with a handicap" is not an acceptable answer since it is just as humiliating (if not more) as losing with higher numbers against best play. (not to mention that it seems that this is exactly what the coach did.)

So, try again.

Rik

[onoway]

Maybe they do things differently in your neck of the woods, and possibly it's different for basketball leagues (I am only familiar with softball, which I used to umpire) but are you suggesting that this game was suddenly sprung on the coaches?

Certainly any leagues with which I have been associated the schedule of who you play and when (including exhibition games) is known long long before the games, which is when things should have been sorted out. Not at the last minute, on the field, with the coach whining about what he did to try to remedy the situation.

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-27, 19:02, said:

As I said, "playing reserves with a handicap" is not an acceptable answer since it is just as humiliating (if not more) as losing with higher numbers against best play. (not to mention that it seems that this is exactly what the coach did.)

It may not be as obvious that they're doing this, so it's not as humiliating.

Benchwarmers don't get much chance to play in games. Putting them in against weaker competition is a way to give them some experience outside of just practices.

[blackshoe]

I don't think there's any excuse for deliberately hitting somebody in the head with a 95 mph fast ball. Helmet or not, you might very well killl him. So it's not only wrong, it's stupid.

[mike777]

blackshoe, on 2015-January-28, 15:09, said:

I don't think there's any excuse for deliberately hitting somebody in the head with a 95 mph fast ball. Helmet or not, you might very well killl him. So it's not only wrong, it's stupid.

WEll ok not the head but I don't see you exempt any other body parts so I assume the rest is ok?

[MrAce]

onoway, on 2015-January-27, 00:13, said:

And here I was under the impression "I was only following orders" had been ruled an invalid excuse.

And he was under the impression that you are capable of knowing the difference between a team/coach who are doing their best to win in a basketball game against the other kids of same age, sex, country and state, with same ball, same tennis shoes and probably have access to everything that winning team had, and soldiers who are killing kids who already surrendered, on the order of their commanding officer.

I could sit down and write pages of what I think about some soldiers who had done awful things under the excuse of " I was following orders" and also what I think about the people who point fingers at them, while as society they pretend like they had no idea what their military or the system that they created, is capable of. One of them do awful things under the pressure, fearing about their lives, psychologically and emotionally weakened, and tied by the rules and brain washed that they are doing things for better future or bigger picture. And those soldiers can hurt only so many other human beings while the system supported by finger pointers, in the long run, impacts massive number of humans, everyday, every hour every second. Yet they pop up like may flowers, in a bar conversation or a bridge forum or w/e, and give lectures about "fairness" and "values" thinking that they can patch their consciousness. Now and then they may even suspend a coach too, because only a very tiny taste of ***** that they created happened right in front of their eyes and it felt just soooooo wrong!