Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Paint

Philosophers Can't Jump

PHILOSOPHERS CAN’T JUMP Tim Elcombe MATHEMATICALLY, A SPACE that measures ten feet is the same distance anywhere in the world. The same can be said for time: ten seconds in Indianapolis is the same as ten seconds in Toronto, Buenos Aires, Munich , Sydney, or Beijing. But anyone who has ever played basketball knows that ten feet or ten seconds can be experienced in radically different ways in different situations. For a nine-year-old child, dreams of flying through the air to dunk a basketball are tempered by the seemingly insurmountable space between their outstretched hands and the bottom of the rim. A free throw to tie the game with no time left on the clock makes fifteen feet seem like a quarter mile. Two minutes on a clock ticks by at a constant rate of one second at a time. However, for a team holding on to a one-point lead in the championship game, two minutes can seem like an eternity. For aging hardwood warriors, including most basketball -playing philosophers, the length of the lunch hour usually (and thankfully) determines game time, and the court seems to grow longer with each passing year. In this chapter, I explore how time and space are experienced pragmatically in the game of basketball. With the help of American philosopher John (“Dr. J.”) Dewey (1859–1952), I explore basketball phenomenologically to deepen our understanding of how we actually live in time and space and to enhance our appreciation of the world’s most “phenomenal ” game. Reflections on Living Time and Space in Basketball 208 Tim Elcombe Tape Measures and Ticking Clocks in Hoosierland Nearly all basketball fans remember the scene in the film Hoosiers when the “pint-sized, hardly big enough for three syllables” Hickory Huskers first step onto the court in cavernous Butler Fieldhouse. The small-town Indiana high school team, in big-city Indianapolis to play an improbable state-final game against the mighty Bears of South Bend Central, is clearly overwhelmed by the enormity of the facility. To ease the tension, Hickory ’s wise and crafty coach, Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman), first measures the distance from the hoop to the free throw line and then instructs Strap to place Ollie on his shoulders to determine the height of the rim. Measurements confirm that the basket is positioned fifteen feet from the free throw line and ten feet off the ground. “I think you’ll find these are the exact measurements as our gym back in Hickory,” says Coach Dale. Coach Dale’s simple strategy helps his awestruck players gain a sense of order and familiarity in the massive facility. His tactic also demonstrates a commonsense, analytical way of thinking about time and space. Although the Huskers are no longer in Hickory, the basic dimensions of the court are the same as in their home gym. Similarly, the seconds on the large electronic game clock will tick away at the same rate of speed as the smaller timer they use at home, in spite of the enormity of the event. Time and space on the basketball court, Coach Dale is implicitly saying, stand as unchanging constants—a commonality that binds huge facilities in big cities to tiny gyms in small communities. Dewey helps us understand this phenomenon, noting that human experience is structured and continuous. Experience has form and recurrent patterns—a brute “isness” or durable quality.1 But contrary to the theories of “experience” espoused by traditional claims of empiricists or idealists , this structured aspect of experience is “had” rather than simply “known.” From a pragmatist perspective, we live ordered and habituated notions of time and space. Our experience is embodied and durable rather than disconnected or fixed. Basketball nicely exemplifies the durable and uniform qualities of lived time and space. As Coach Dale points out to his players, basketball courts typically share equal dimensions—from basket heights to free throw and three-point line distances, and with some exceptions, court 209 Philosophers Can’t Jump length and width. Time is also a fairly constant quality in basketball. Depending on the league, quarters or halves are the same length of time.2 There are no rain-shortened contests or mercy rules. All Olympic basketball games, for example, last forty minutes of playing time. The durable quality of lived time and space, particularly in a wellde fined context such as a basketball...