When using the expression “in focus,” the meaning is almost always figurative. After Game 4 of the 2015 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, “in focus” has an all too literal meaning.
Do we really have to have cameras that close to a basketball court, and certainly near the stanchions at each end of the floor?
LeBron James (pictured above in our cover image) suffered a significant cut to his head as a result of hitting it against a camera positioned near the basket.
However, as much as broadcast networks or news organizations want to have close proximity to the court, just how essential is it for video camera operators or photographers to all be that close, such that players — LeBron, Karl-Anthony Towns, anyone — doesn’t really have an “escape route” if subjected to a hard foul near or under the basket?
This question, thrust into focus (there’s that expression again) after Game 4 of the Finals, needs to be looked at by college basketball at the Final Four.
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If you think college basketball is better than the NBA in terms of giving players more room in which to fall or run out of bounds, you’re right… but not by much, and certainly not to the extent that we should think college basketball has sufficiently solved this issue.
Sure, this is a bigger problem in the NBA, where owners don’t want to take out a row of high-priced behind-the-basket seats so that photographers can move back four or five feet. Since every NBA game is played in a conventional arena (this isn’t the 1980s anymore — so long, Silverdome and Kingdome, among other former “dome homes” in the NBA), the issue of camera proximity is a more pressing one compared to college basketball, which regularly stages multiple regionals and the Final Four in domed stadiums.
You can see in the image below from the 2014 Final Four in AT&T Stadium (Arlington, Texas) that college basketball does offer a little more protection to players than the NBA does:
What you can specifically see is that players have a lot of room on the sidelines in which to move or slide if they are knocked out of bounds when battling for a loose ball. On the baselines, you can see that if players fall or slide toward the corners of the court, they have lanes which allow a lot of extra room.
However, while those are definite enhancements of player safety, the layout does not represent a complete solution to the larger problem. The areas immediately next to the stanchions at both ends of the court are sealed off by video camera operators and photographers.
A total solution to this issue would be to have all camera-owning personnel move back a good five feet, but with various publications and news organizations paying good money to get top-quality photos, it might require too much political muscle and overall negotiating to get movement — literally and figuratively — on this topic.
What emerges as a reasonable compromise solution — one that would not insist on moving all photographers back five feet or so — is to at least clear out five to seven feet on both sides of each stanchion. That way, players, if thrown off balance — especially by a hard foul on a drive to the hoop or when trying to take a charge, two common basketball occurrences — have alleys in which they can fall or slide without contacting anyone or anything other than the floor itself. They know that they don’t have to awkwardly or abruptly restrain their bodily momentum in the attempt to avoid plowing into a camera operator or photographer. This is the problem LeBron (again, literally) ran into in Game 4 of the Finals. If seven feet to the side of the stanchion were cleared away, LeBron simply would not have suffered that cut. The point is incontestable, and you’d like to think that the NBA players’ union will make this a point of emphasis heading into next season.
LeBron has a little bit of political capital to spend. Bet that he’ll use it.
College players, though, don’t have the political clout of LeBron. They might have watched last night’s game and privately thought that while they can fall or slide on the sidelines and in the corners, under-the-basket protection near the stanchion area of the court is still lacking.
We need to figure out a way to enable photographers to still enjoy close proximity to a basketball court while improving player safety. It’s the 21st century in America. We — the NBA and college basketball, together — can do this.
