Dave Sez

For The Love Of Defense

Last week (or so), I linked to an article that Al Featherston had written for the Duke Basketball Report. Featherston, you may recall, was let go from the Durham Herald-Sun after they brought in new owners.

Well, Featherston has written another article for the DBR, and it is a great, great piece. It's on the impact of team defense and how it's very difficult to measure in any qualitative fashion (other than wins and losses).

If you're a Duke hater, you may not like that much of the article is about Shelden Williams and this Duke team, but it's not all about Duke. As a basketball fan, ignore the specific names he uses and just read it as an essay on good basketball. It's beautiful.

One thing this article really points out is the superiority of medium of web pages over print. Featherston could never have written this article for a newspaper. It's way too long. If he had cut it down to fit a standard opinion piece, it wouldn't have been nearly as good.

He's now two-for-two with fabulous pieces for the DBR. Quite a coup for those guys.