By Jerry Mittleman

Despite Doomsday predictions that legalizing the zone would plunge the NBA back to the peach bucket era of basketball, the game hasn’t been radically altered, at least, not yet. In fact, whatever changes that have taken place have been for the better.

We are three quarters into the current NBA season, the first under new rules meant to encourage and increase movement. These rules were expected by some to create the most revolutionary change in the NBA game since the inception of the 24 second clock in 1954. Remarkably they’ve had a relatively minor impact.

Probably the most positive effect has been a case of addition by substraction. We no longer have to see that dreaded bewildering Illegal Defense called. The Illegal D was often a matter of inadvertantly standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather then trying to usurp the rule against the zone, and was terribly unpopular rule among players and fans. The rule permitting zone defenses has also significantly cut down on those boring isolations. There’s a lot less of that, 8 guys standing around and 2 guys going man to man, stuff.

In general, at least, to the naked eye, the game has a smoother flow with much less stoppage of action.

While point production still remains far below the level of 20 or even 10 years ago, the legalization of the zone hasn’t caused an additional crimp in scoring as was feared. In fact, points per game figures have actually risen slightly. NBA players are far too talented to be stopped by any type of defense, and the fear that superstars like Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson and Shaquille O’Neal could be shut down by the zone have proved unfounded.

Without a doubt the team that’s benefited the most from the new rules has been the Minnesota Timberwolves. Early in the season the T-Wolves made judicious use of the match-up zone before opponents started adjusting to their tactics. The T-Wolves moved Wally Szczerbiak to shooting guard and employed three tall, long-armed defenders in their front-line. As a result the T-Wolves are considerably tougher on defense and have become one of the elite teams in the Western Conference.

The Utah Jazz have probably been hurt the most by the legalization of the zone. The phrase “Stockton to Malone” has been synonymous with the success of the Jazz over the years. Your could substitute the term “pick and roll” for Stockton to Malone and basically be talking about the same thing.

The pick and roll, is one of the few offensive weapons designed specifically to attack man to man defenses. It’s been the bread and butter of the Jazz attack, and nobody runs it to perfection like Utah’s two future Hall of Famers. Playing the zone against the Jazz isn’t like stealing bread and butter, it’s more like Grand Larceny.

Almost 60 games into the schedule, the initial indications are that the new rules have done some good and certainly no harm. The main objective of creating more movement has definitely been achieved. Hopefully the T-Wolves success will encourage other teams to make creative use of the new rules on offense and defense.