By Holden Hartle
Basketball, even outside of the NBA, goes through different waves of how people play the game. Normally spearheaded by a small group of players, a new style of play will burst onto the scene, and it will actually cause teams to modify their roster. That is long and convoluted, so let me give you some examples.
Through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, the NBA was led by several different stars that all had their unique styles of play. Wilt Chamberlain and Bill 
Russell dominated the league in the 60’s, while the revolutionary scoring of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar took the league by storm in the 70’s.
During the 80’s, the faces of the league were Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. But, during this era, the idea of grit and grind is introduced. This is the idea of playing tough defense, fouling hard, and showing the rest of the league that you are the toughest guy on that court.
The 90’s popularized the ideas of the pick and roll and isolation basketball, or ISO for short. The pick and roll was executed to perfection by John Stockton and his counterpart Karl Malone. The way Stockton and Malone pulled this off is something that NBA teams are still trying to perfect today. And, then, there’s the idea of ISO-ball, popularized by none other than Michael Jordan. His coach, Phil Jackson, created an offense in which Jordan would get the ball at the top of the three-point line, everyone would give him space to let him work, and Jordan 
would score easy buckets. It’s basically like a 1v1 between Jordan and the defender. ISO-ball, as well as the pick and roll, are both present in the league today, but the grit-and-grind mindset of the 80’s players are for the most part gone, with a few exceptions of course.
The reason that defense in the 80’s and 90’s was so prolific is because of hand checking. Before the 2000’s, you could place your hand on the offensive player’s hip to help dictate where they are going. In the 2000’s, the league ruled against it, which allowed people like Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, and Kobe Bryant to play the same kind of ISO-ball that Jordan did, except with much more ease, as their defender is basically helpless without hand checking.
For the 2010’s, the revolutionary style of basketball has to do with the three-pointer, popularized by the Splash Brothers, Klay Thompson and Steph Curry. Though the three pointer had been in the league since the 80’s, no superstar made the three pointer a sole part of their game. Yes, Larry Bird could shoot the ball, but he was also an amazing defender and playmaker. Though Ray Allen could shoot the ball, I wouldn’t necessarily call him a superstar. And, though superstar Kobe could shoot 3’s, he could basically shoot from anywhere, and his main attack was the mid-range shot. But, Steph Curry took the three pointer and made it his primary way of scoring the ball. While playing in college, many scouts saw him as a risky prospect. He was small; he was thin; his defense was subpar, and many didn’t think that he could be a playmaker. Nonetheless, he 
proved all of them wrong by winning back-to-back MVP’s and becoming a three-time NBA champion. But, as for the three pointer, it is normally seen as a weakness if you can’t shoot 3’s. Even centers, who have historically stayed in the paint are forced to come outside of the paint and their comfort zone to help their team stretch the floor.
For the 2020’s, who knows what the NBA could become? A rule change could drastically change the way the game is played, like with the hand-checking rule. In any case, I’m sure the NBA will stay relevant and exciting for decades to come.
Editor: Makena Behnke
Counter-Strike, etc. So, let’s take, for example, League of Legends, a popular multi-player game. People who are really good at League of Legends must have inhuman reaction speed, excellent team awareness, and great minds–just like in any other sport. Moreover, these players have to practice for more than ten hours a day in order to improve their personal and team-working skills. You may think that playing ten hours of a video game is easy, but if you try to play just one competitive hour of any eSport game you will know that it’s not easy at all.
world championship attracted 32 million online viewers, which was more than double the amount of the online viewership of the Baseball World Series and seven times the amount of the NBA finals online. The 2015 Counter-Strike Grand Final drew 36.95 million viewers online–a 295% jump in viewership from last year. The 2014 League of Legends world championship attracted 40,000 fans at Seoul Sangam Stadium, which hosted a football World Cup semi-final in 2002. And, in July 2014, 11,000 fans watched an eSports event in a Seattle basketball arena. It offered the highest eSports prize pool so far–$10.9 million, which is higher than the prize for golf’s USPGA Championship, and this event was streamed by US broadcasting giant ESPN.
