BleacherCoaches.com

Pretend I posted this last week.


A really cool thing happened tonight. During one of the 75 reruns of SportsCenter I watch on a nightly basis, I caught a story and some video about a high school basketball team playing in their county championship. What made this game make SportsCenter was the fact that the coach decided it was time to let his student-trainer suit up and play some basketball. The reason why this is noteworthy is because the kid is autistic.

He comes in, airballs his first shot, and then goes on a killing spree on the basketball court. After the airball, the kid makes SIX consecutive three-pointers while the crowd, who all were cheering wildly for him, were going apeshit. Everyone in the stadium had what appeared to be six consecutive orgasms.

Now, this brings me to an interesting question. As we have seen in movies such as 'Rain Man', autistic kids have a knack for numbers. Only a dummy would try to convince you that mathematics are not all around us, and do not make up EVERYTHING around you. Mathematics are in everything, folks. It is the most important thing in the universe, and the only real, pure thing in the universe.

So, is it not just mathematics when you make a shot in a basketball game? It's just trajectory. Whether or not you know the formula, every time you make a shot there is a math problem being solved someplace that you cannot see. So, if this kid is autistic and he's really good at mathematics, is it fair for him to be able to compete against kids who do not have that advantage? Remember: this is not something that he developed on his own. This is an outside force, a gift, that he was given and born with. Is it fair?

Note that I don't care if he plays. I think the whole story tonight was very nice and I was relaly happy for someone who was born with such a gift that also carries with it huge disadvantages. Talk amongst yourselves.

I'm not sure if TAE is serious about this, but I will give my opinion.

I don't believe this player has an unfair advantage on the basketball court because he has excellent math skills. Mathematics is a way to explain the world around us, but I don't think it will help you shoot a basketball well.

TAE is right. Shooting a basketball is a physics problem. Assuming there is no resistance from air, the path of the ball at the moment it is shot can be described by the following general equation.

r(t) = r[sub]o[/sub] + v[sub]o[/sub](t) + (1/2)g(t[sup]2[/sup])
where
t - time
r(t) is the position of the ball at time t
r[sub]o[/sub] - initial position of the ball
v[sub]o[/sub] - initial velocity of the ball
g - acceleration of the ball in the y direction due to gravity = -9.8 m/s[sup]2[/sup]

Again, math can explain what is going on, but it does not cause it to happen. What causes it to happen is the brain's ability to take in all the information that it has about the situation, process it, and send the signals to the rest of the body to perform the multiple movements to cause the body's reaction to exert the proper force (magnitude as well as direction)on the ball.

So there is a cognitive part, as well as a physical part. The cognitive part is based on how you take in the information and process it to select your outcome. So the first time you ever shot a basketball, you had no idea, but just to kind of throw it at the hoop, but based on that outcome you learned and used that for your next try and so forth. Now the physical part can come down to physical body strength and the body's ability to move in certain ways.

An example of sorts, the first time you ever strapped on a pair of pads for a real football practice. Kind of weird huh, never really in that situation before because you are used to seeing things from a different frame of reference, from the stands or on TV, but you got used to it the more your practiced. The truth is I love film sessions, but it would be so much easier to learn if you were able to see the actual play from your actual position on the field at field level, kind of a virtual film session. But instead you have to kind of see it from the stands and then use your mind to change the camera angle in Madden style.

Here is another one, why is it important and why do your coaches want you to do things at full speed when your practice. For one, conditioning, but also, because that is how they are going to occur in the game and you must be able process info at those kinds of speeds and make your body react in the correct manner. A kind of learning for the brain/body. The less practice in those kinds of situations, the less likely your brain will be able to process and fire the right muscle movements.

Again, I don't think that this student being good at math would make him shoot the ball better (just go to a graduate student basketball game if you don't believe me), but if his brain was advanced at learning quickly in terms of muscle memory because of autism, that would be a different story, but I can't comment on that, don't have the background.

Just giving my opinion,

Boiler Up!
Boiler OUT!

i thought it was a pretty good story...

Ancient Enemy - I have one simple question for you. How can you concoct a notion that this feat occured solely on the basis of mathematics. I do agree that math is all around us, even on the basketball court. But why can't it just be left at that? You're totally overshadowing the true story here. Jason McElwain, the teams waterboy, comes off the bench, airballs a 3, msises a layup, then goes onto drill 6 3-pointers in a row! It's not like he had a blackboard and a piece of chalk on the sideline, doing out the equations before he checked in. The kid just spot up, caught the ball, and in one motion, fired it up! This is a true David -vs- Goliath battle. McElwain has all of the disadvantages that we can imagine, but yet still finds a way to succeed. It wasn't because he was crunching numbers and solving equations that he hit the shots. So please, TAE, just let Jason have his 15 minutes or 75 reruns, of fame and let him ride this wave off into the sunset!