Has The NBA Become Too Complex For The New and Casual Fan To Understand?

This article is my first of hopefully many to be featured on the new Timberwolves fan site I created…. NBA Timberwolves Talk.

I am a fan of the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves. For better would be great but, for most of their 30 years in the league, it has been for the worse. I have followed them every season, hoping to see them have another season like they did in 2004 when they made it to the Western Conference Finals. My trust in that hope is what keeps me following them, even though I no longer live in Minnesota.

Recently, while reading an article about them, I noticed there were a lot of basketball terms being used and I admit, I didn't know what some of them meant. Over the years I have considered myself a "common fan.” That Means I understand basic basketball terminology, enough to understand most of what I read in today's NBA news.

I started to think back to the days when the Wolves started playing and I tried to recall what terms were used back in 1989. NBA Basketball was new to most Minnesotan's back then and the articles were mostly written by writers employed by the local newspapers and most of those writers wrote about the other local sports in addition to the Timberwolves. In other words, most of the people who wrote about the Wolves were not die-hard fans of NBA Basketball. The pieces they wrote were fairly basic and used a lot of terms that most people would understand. They appealed to the common and casual fan of the game who read about the Twin Cities' newest professional sport.

Terms often used back then included 'Traveling', 'Backboard' and 'Forward' was used when referring to the forward position. A fan of limited basketball knowledge could at least have a good idea what those meant. They were fairly simple and weren't difficult to comprehend.
Reading about today's NBA basketball is a different experience and sometimes it even seems like another language. More and more I find myself reading an article trying to figure out exactly what it means when they say, 'Put the ball on the floor', 'Hit the glass' and 'They can play the 4' or 'they are more of a stretch-4'.

What the hell is a 'Stretch-4???' I had been reading where a coach said, a player can “really stretch the floor.” I don't understand that term and I can't imagine a wooden floor being stretched at all. (Sarcasm) I remember reading once, where Flip Saunders was talking about a point guard and what he could do. Again, I am still just a common fan but, I had a pretty difficult time understanding what he meant. He said things like, "He can really push the ball up the court and move the ball" and "He can put the ball on the floor" and "when the floor is stretched, he can kick the ball out to the wings."
I felt like a 3rd grader who has no clue what the teacher is talking about. I felt like the kid who had to raise their hand all the time and say, "I don't get it."

Really though, what exactly is a "wing" in the NBA? Are they referring to a player like Jordan who many believed could fly? What exactly do they mean by a player who can "push the ball up the court?" I keep seeing a running back running a football when I try to understand that term.
I was left totally baffled after reading the following: "He projects as a stretch 4 that can knock down threes or face up and attack slower bigs off the bounce." Are you serious? Now it sounds more like what I would expect to hear when watching American Gladiators. The only thing I understood from that was "knock down three's" meaning they can make 3-point shots. The rest? Yeah, right! Hello... basketball novice reading here!
If I had read a sentence like that back when I first became interested in the NBA, I would have felt left out and gone back to following the Twins and Vikings.

The NBA game is written about and described by so many writers these days. Some are life-long, die-hard fans who specialize in NBA basketball and their articles reflect that. There are also young kids in their early 20’s who take as many short cuts as they can and pump out “fluff” articles that don’t have much substance nor do they research much of what they write about. Most were not even born when the Wolves started playing. They seem to know the game. They know most of the terms. Sometimes, they even know the coaches and many of the players.
They commonly write about players who play at the “top of the key” or players “who can play in the paint.” Maybe they don't realize that to a casual fan, we don't know what they mean when they say, "paint". After all, there is paint all over the court and sidelines.

The problem for me and I assume many fans, who are new to the game… We can’t raise our hands and shout out, "I don't get it!"
I noticed the NBA tried to simplify the positions on the NBA All-Star ballot a few years back by limiting them to “Guards” and the “Frontcourt.” Those were at least somewhat easy for a common fan to understand. Maybe the NBA has already considered that they have lost touch with the newer fan base. Or maybe they haven't. I don't know.

I hope at least some of the writers covering today's NBA will come around and "dumb it down" a little so, the new, curious fans can follow along and get into the excitement of the game, while understanding what is going on. It sounds crazy but, it would be a nice touch if a glossary of terms was added at the end of the article with definitions of the terms used in the piece.

It has been a long wait for me to see the Wolves as a contender again. I hope there are new fans coming around to watch and read about Karl-Anthony Towns, Robert Covington, Josh Okogie and others when they (hopefully) evolve into a serious contender. (Note: Andrew Wiggins was not mentioned on purpose.)
After so many awful seasons of losing, 4-year rebuilding plans lasting 10+ years, hoping the current rebuild can recover from the damage caused by Tom Thibodeau and Jimmy Butler, it would be such a waste if new, would-be fans got fed up and looked for another sport to follow simply because, they don't understand the lingo.

Here is a simple term I think most inexperienced fans can understand... Go Wolves!
I hope that wasn't too "above the rim" for people to understand.