Rick Telander Wants To Raise The Rims
It’s time to raise the basketball rims.
Ten feet, 6 inches would be a reasonable height, a half foot above the current rim, although I’d let you make an argument for 10-4 or even 10-8.
Why?
Because the current 10-foot rim, which has been at that arbitrary height ever since James Naismith nailed a peach basket to the lower railing of the balcony at Springfield (Mass.) College in 1891 has ‘‘grown’’ too low.
And 90 feet between bases on the diamond is also arbitrary. I don’t see how raising the rims makes it any safer for players. Of course, I don’t have empirical evidence from the 1960’s.
Twelve feet is too much. But in periodic exhibition games played with 12-foot baskets, smaller men have shot almost as well as they did on 10-foot baskets, and big guys couldn’t block everything that came their way.
Said former University of Tennessee center and longtime Bulls center Tom Boerwinkle after playing a preseason college game in 1967 on 12-foot baskets: ‘‘Usually I block six or eight shots a game, but I didn’t have a chance tonight because of the higher arc.’’
Raising the rim is, quite simply, a dumb idea. And it seems like the kind of summer topic that every columnist gets a crack at. The rims aren’t going anywhere. Especially up.