Don’t Sell Cousy’s New League Short

Listen! Like to see the lightweight champion of the world fight the heavyweight champion, would you? How about Sugar Ray Leonard against Mike Tyson? Jaws against a rowboat? The Christians against the lions?

Maybe that’s what you’re getting in the NBA these days. What kind of a matchup is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs. Tyrone Bogues? Akeem Olajuwon vs. Spud Webb?

Basketball is a vexing sport. It is getting so it is available as a career for only about 1/100th of 1% of the world’s population, or that portion of it that is 7 feet tall or thereabouts. That’s a pretty elite group of participants. The only way to make it more exclusive would be to restrict it to individuals with one eye in the middle of their foreheads, or three arms.

Robert J. Cousy may be as good an under-7-foot player as ever took up the game. Bob Cousy revolutionized the art of bringing the ball up the court, playmaking, hitting the open man, wraparound pass, behind-the-back dribble. Cousy was the original Magic, minus nine inches.

His art was, he tended to make the ball disappear on the defense for long periods of time, following which it would suddenly materialize as an ear-high pass to a free shooter in the post or a swish through the basket by Cousy himself. Cousy, on his good nights, rarely touched a rim. Cousy started in this game what Oscar Robertson and Walt Frazier and even Magic Johnson refined.

He played in the 7-foot era. Wilt Chamberlain was abroad on the boards at that time, as were assorted other troglodytes of the boards.

But there weren’t a floor full of them then. Everyone wasn’t 6-10 or 7 feet. Today, the game is played at snow level and it is the notion of some people that this has taken the athleticism out of the game and made it too much of a shove-and-dunk exercise, 70 feet of people trying to go through one revolving door or queuing up at a bargain counter.

Various proposals to relieve this congestion have been put forth: Raise the baskets, enlarge the court, shrink the rim, reduce the number of players.

But, USA Today pointed out recently, Bob Cousy has a more daring fix. Don’t raise the basket, lower the players.

Cousy can handle this ball well, too. He is proposing a league in which no player can be more than 6 feet 4 inches tall.

The game will then become basketball again, return to sea level and the rest of mankind.

The program is not universally greeted with hats in the air. “Guard ball,” sniffs the head of the United States Basketball League, a rival minor league. “It’s just a bunch of guards.”

Mocks another league commissioner: “They can call it short ball.”

Cousy is not one to look down his nose at the NBA game. After all, he makes his living from it, broadcasting Boston Celtic games. And he made his reputation in it.

He knows the new format and its acceptance is no easy lay-up. It’s a tough sell.

Short is not a sellable word in this society. Some years ago, the producer of John Wayne’s movies had a brainstorm. He went to the agent for film star Alan Ladd, proposing: “Why don’t we make a picture with Wayne and Alan in it and Duke can call him Shorty throughout the picture?”

History records that Ladd’s agent, who was also his wife, threw the producer out of the office.

The public is similarly chary of something that doesn’t smack of the biggest and the best. The skeptics are out in force. “Why not just have a baseball league for .230 hitters?” they jeer.

Cousy prefers the boxing approach. “Why should that be the only sport which regulates competition by size?” he asks.

He points out that there are 40 players in the NBA who stand 7 feet or higher. Fewer than 20 are under 6-4. “Ninety percent of the world is under 6 feet, maybe 99%,” Cousy insists.

This David is not going to attempt to slay the Goliath. It is not going to go up against the NBA. It is going to play its games in summer, May through September. And, it is going to concentrate on the international market, hence its grand title, International Basketball Assn. Will it fly? Cousy thinks it will. First of all, there is the availability of talent.

“The colleges have 4,000 players playing in varsity basketball,” he says. “The playgrounds have thousands more. Very skilled ones fall through the cracks. Coaches being coaches, they want the biggest and the strongest.

“You take a player like (5-7) Spud Webb of Atlanta, (5-3) Muggsy Bogues of Wake Forest. When their novelty value wears off in the NBA and someone 6-5 comes along with the same skills, they’re gone. Not with us. They’ll be exciting stars in our league.”

Playing in summer should be no hardship. “Basketball was originally conceived as an outdoor, summer game,” Cousy points out.

The game, unlike the late summer football experiment, can be played indoors in air-conditioned comfort, except in the Boston Garden.

It is not going to mount an economic offensive. Its salary cap is $600,000, as compared with the NBA’s $3.6 million.

Backcourt basketball?

“We will pick the skilled athlete who has all the tools except height,” Cousy insists. “We will have guys who are used to playing with their backs to the basket. There are lots of people playing power forward--even center--on college teams who are under 6-4.

The league will have its 200-man West Coast tryout Saturday and Sunday at Morningside High School in Inglewood, 8 a.m. each day. To make the squad, you need an $85 tryout fee, a jump shot and proof you can walk through a normal door without stooping. Selectees will get to go on tour to the Philippines this fall.

The IBA itself proposes to open a 60-game schedule next May. It has 9 of 12 proposed franchises lined up and funded--Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Orange County, Vancouver, Dallas, Chicago, San Jose and Fresno.

Is the league going to be filled with guys who would be called Tiny or Flea or Junior if they played in the other league?

“Hey!” Cousy says. “We could have had Jerry West, Earl Monroe, Walt Frazier, Hal Greer, Richie Guerin, Dave Bing, Nate Archibald, K.C. Jones and Sam Jones in this league!”

An even better gauge is that the league could have had Bob Cousy in it. In his day, he was a league all by himself.