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"Remember Rip Hamilton? Kobe? They lived in the midrange. Jordan did everything, everywhere, all at once. Now you know what you do in the modern NBA? You either get a sniper to shoot a foot behind the 3-point line, or you throw it to the post."

It's even worse. The post game also went the way of the midrange jumper. The entire game is 80% played beyond the 3 point line now. Those shots in the paint? The product of guards being pick-and-rolled from the 3 point line and into the paint to collapse defenses. Nobody posts up anymore.

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yep. it's really a tragic development. grayness and predictability.

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Great piece—thank you!

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thank YOU for reading :)

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Excellent article. Major League Baseball is even worse. They changed rules that had worked for over 100 years just to accommodate the shorter attention spans of younger viewers. Now it's just a LARP of a video game, i.e., a derivative of a derivative.

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thanks man. do you have any specific examples of these changes and the 'middle-gutting' impact they had? I don't follow baseball.

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Hi, thanks for responding. I only recently stumbled upon your Substack and have been very impressed. You've explained things regarding the Fed I've long suspected, but couldn't quite articulate.

As for MLB, they've changed the fundamental nature of the game through various rule changes post Covid. There's now a pitch clock, for example. Or limiting the number of pickoff attempts to 2 with a runner on base. The penalty being a balk. Or limiting the infield shift to only 2 infielders on either side of second base. The worst so far, in my opinion, is putting a runner on 2nd in the event of extra innings. All these things diminish the timeless nature of baseball. As well as the historical comparisons to past teams and/or players. All the records are now distorted. It was one of the few sports without a clock. A game took however long it took. And that, to many (myself included), was part of its charm. It's now less a battle of talent and skill, but more like a live action video game. Modern stadiums are more like mini amusement parks that happen to occasionally have baseball games. Maybe I'm just old, but Fenway Park or Wrigley Field are like living history museums, whereas modern stadiums seem lifeless, despite being full of endless distractions. Fenway or Wrigley say something about the people who built and maintained them and what they thought important vs our what our modern disposable culture values, (which isn't much, unfortunately). I hope that makes sense. I recently went to Truist Park in Atlanta and it was surreal. An actual game seemed just "incidental" to everything else going on at the time. Lastly, the most egregious 'middle-gutting' thing I've seen is the rise of sports betting. There are several stadiums with sports betting kiosks within them. If that's not middle gutting, I don't know what is.

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I think the soul of baseball is also being affected by analytics as it pertains to pitching/hitting, regardless of the clock rules. The analytics say strike outs and home runs are all that matters, so that’s what we’re getting. Batters are optimizing for that split. The middle is being gutted. Same with pitchers going 3 innings and blowing their elbows to throw 100mph

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I really appreciate the kind words. Thank you. And I'm very happy to hear those comments regarding the Fed! I will continue to add to that series of essays.

Thank you for this detail. Super informative, I was unaware of all of that. I commiserate with your conclusions.

Sorry for the delayed reply, substack never gave me a notification for this comment.

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Oct 7
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good thoughts. agreed.

potential solutions are worthy of another essay. any solution will basically definitionally be temporary, as I'd expect over enough time for everyone to converge on dominant strategies like this. even moreso now that we're equipped with AI. I think the solution may be found within finite games actually, meaning once they're solved, we move on. because all games will get solved eventually, and infinite games eventually converge on gray expected-value monolithic behaviors.

will reflect more on this. thanks for the comment man.

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