I’m done with finals until Wednesday, I have solved Rubik’s cube twelve times, and I just finished watching the Bulls game.  Kind of.  I finished watching the flash-updates of the game statistics and imagining what it would look like in real life.  I get pretty creative when it comes to how some players commit turnovers in my mind.  So all that is left to do is start writing again.

I have noticed two trends recently in the NBA – the big lineup and the small lineup.  Of course these have been around for ages, but lately coaches have tried to get tricky and create match-up problems for the other team with higher frequency. For those of you who are not familiar with basketball positions, there are five traditional positions:  Point Guard (1), Shooting Guard (2), Small Forward (3), Power Forward (4), and Center (5).  For the sake of discussion, players of higher position number, in this case, Center, will be taller, and if listed from shortest to tallest, it would go something like 12345.  In reality, there is some flexibility, and teams will have lineups like 12354 or 21345 or 21354.  Now that we have all that mumbo-jumbo out of the way, let’s get back on topic.

The Toronto Raptors, until recently, employed the big starting lineup in which it had three players listed at 6-10 or taller.  I do not enjoy watching games with the big lineup because it looks like the game is being played in slow motion.

The small lineup, however, is exciting.  And my Chicago Bulls will often use this to mess with opponents.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.  I remember watching the Bulls play the Washington Wizards about a week ago at a friend’s place.  I think it was the third quarter when the Bulls pulled out their small lineup.  Washington countered with their own.  Then the Bulls got even smaller.  At one point, the tallest man on the floor for the Bulls was Luol Deng, who stands at 6-9 and is naturally a small forward.  They had one point guard, two shooting guards, and two small forwards playing at the same time.  That’s messed up.

And for this game it worked:  The Bulls started to run away with the lead (which they promptly gave up in the fourth quarter and had to hold on for dear life).  The player I want to focus on is Andres Nocioni.  He is, by far, my favorite player on the team.  He plays hard, he plays through injuries, he takes offensive fouls, he makes open three-pointers, and he gets those tough rebounds.  Basically, the only thing he is not able to do is handle the ball like a point guard.  Here is my point:  Andres Nocioni (6-7) was playing center.  And he did a decent job at it.

But I started to think about what would happen if he did this more often.  If he played the five all the time he would be matched up against guys who are six inches taller than him and at least sixty pounds heavier.  In other words, he would get beaten to a pulp, statistically and physically.  He would play half of the game being pushed down on his back.  So even though the small lineup worked in the short run, it is not feasible over a full game, much less an eighty-two game season.

The phenomenon of playing out of postion is not unique to basketball.  Sometimes the Chicago Bears put Devin Hester at tailback.  In fact, this occurrence is not even unique to sports.  What about everyday people?

Here I am.  I feel like I’m playing out of position.  And it worked for a while.  But I am being beat and bruised more than I can handle.  And soon, I feel, I am going to suffer a season-ending injury.  Maybe one that is career-ending.

And the conclusion I came to also has a phrase in the sports world.  A good player who struggles sometimes is said to need one thing:  A change of scenery.