What Were They Thinking?
What were the Boston Globe's crack sports editors thinking when they let loose this whopper on Page 2 of the sports section today? (Remember, this is the same Boston whose Celtics now have 17 world championships.)
The Globe has a weekly feature entitled "What They Were Thinking" that presents the story behind an interesting photograph. And today, it describes Mark Joe taking a 3-point basketball shot at the court at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. And he is. Only the text describes "an NBA-length 3-pointer." But it is obvious that the 3-pointer is a college-length 3-pointer—the dark line of the longer 3-pointer is only a foot behind the high-school 3-point line that touches the top of the key (the semicircle above the free-throw area).
The real NBA 3-point arc is four full feet behind the high-school 3-point line.
I should point out that the college 3-point line was only moved out a foot in conjunction with the upcoming college basketball season. But surely a newspaper department that is devoted to basketball, and to college basketball, and to the rules of college basketball, ought to get those rules right.
Imagine the mistakes that a sloppy paper makes in its political coverage, where the details are not so obvious even to the casual observer.
Labels: 3-point line, basketball, Boston Globe, Stupid reporting tricks
