And This Is Why He's Playing Basketball

I have to admit that the idea of the 11-foot rims in basketball intrigues me. But that in itself is not enough to justify a Three and Out post (you may have noticed that very little sports news meets our exacting standards recently). Making fun of a minor league athlete? Hey, we can't fire up Blogger fast enough.

One of the players who came in for the exhibition game with 11-foot rims (and how were they selected, anyway? Volunteers? picked out of a hat? Happened to be wandering by? Kidnapped by Tom Newell and forced to play along with his dastardly scheme?) was an IBL player, who made an incisive observation on how the game changes when you raise the rim by a foot:

Dontay Harris, a 6-8 former Drake player now with the Tacoma Thunder of the International Basketball League, noticed an immediate difference in inside play.

"You can't just get the ball and turn around and drop it in," he said. "Now there's another eight inches to go. It's definitely a challenge."


It's no use asking whether he graduated from Drake, really, is it? (Just as it's no use asking whether I can dunk on a six-foot rim, let alone ten or eleven.) But really, we should be thanking Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times for selecting that particular quote. You just know he was sitting in the gym thinking, "I can't believe I have to cover this...wait, did he really say 'eight inches'? Oh, I am so using that."