In the 1950's, George Mikan dominated the NBA by revolutionizing the center position. People mistakenly believe there were no seven footers back then, there were, maybe not as many as in today's game, but Mikan was not a seven footer. Traditionally, in the 1940's many center's played a high post game where they ran the offense with passes to driving guards for easy lay-ups. To be sure individual centers might have played in the low post, but it was a much more team oriented game then, and the coach had more control. Think of Coach Knight as the template for every coach back then, not just control but absolute control. It wasn't that Mikan lacked passing skills, it was more that he had the driving skills of a guard in addition to the big body of a center, he was physical but also had if not finesse, then touch. They eventually had to change the rules of the game to keep him from dominating.

Bill Russell was coming of age in San Fransisco. He would make Mikan's influence on the league look like ripples in a puddle compared to tsunami waves. The college game bans dunking. Let's be clear, this was about racism. It will eventually lead to a subculture known as Rucker's Court. Rucker's Court was and is a basketball court in Harlem. If you go there to play, be prepared to bring game. And to wait. You prolly won't get on the court. Dr. J was a regular there in the 1970's before signing with the ABA's NJ All American's (which later moved to Long Island before moving back to NJ as the Nets- part of a deal in which Mr. Erving's contract was sold to the Philadelphia 76'ers).

The Celtic's dominated the game in the 1960's based upon Red Aurbach's defensive style personified by Russell. The combination of the Celtic's defense, Russell's dominance inside, the Mikan rules and the lack of players who could dunk (sure there were dunkers in the 60's including Russell and Wilt and Robinson and Jabaar, a whole host of others) based on the NCAA's frowning on the practice (which creates a false incentive system structure where players are not rewarded for being able to dunk) leads to a stifled system in which the driving lanes are clogged.

Instituting the 3-point line would therefore open up the driving lanes by spreading out the game by rewarding teams more for hitting outside shots. This however, while it opens up the lanes as it was intended, leads to the unintended consequence of slowing down the game into halfcourt offenses. So, they institute the shot clock to speed the game up.

This leads to - and so on and so on. Eventually you get to a situation where you need to either scrap all the rules and start over (maybe with a new sport altogether like BASEketball- I mean basketball itself was simply made up, by Dr. James Naismith simply to give hoodlums a chance to play inside in the winter when the ground was too hard for football and kids were getting hurt- the "football" then was round) or you need to make some other new rule to counter the problem the last rule change led to. The most recent rule changes have involved adding defensive 5 seconds (similar to the traditional 3 second rule in the paint), changing the amount of time you have to get the ball to half court (6 seconds from 10) and adding a zone under the basket (the half circle that looks like a frown) where defensive players can't get a charge call (unless the play originates inside the semi-circle, and the defensive player is in position already, in which case bizarrely they can then even be in the air at the time of the foul) and removing the arcane and technical illegal defense (which they then turned around and re-instated but in a simpler form, with less stringency on the weakside defense).

Rule changes have effects in real-time, competing players, systems and teams are reacting the the new rules, refs are having a tough time adjusting to the changes, but it all eventually leads to a new homeostasis in which things return to a new balance. The Congress and SEC are like the rules committee and the refs and the players are like the stock brokers and the teams like the big banks.

You could widen the lane to the odd looking Rhombus shape of the international game, you could raise the basket to 11 or 12 feet, you could enlarge the entire court, shorten the shot clock, shorten the half court clock, lengthen or shorten the game, ban dunking, have topless cheerleaders, use glow in the dark balls and play in the dark (with glow in the dark jerseys and shorts, lot more revenue from apparel sales to boot) take the game outside (for a few games a year), play on ice, add "icing" off-sides rules, replace the tip-off with five minutes of mixed martial arts (Shaq vs. Dwight?) or "re-institute Glass Steagall" to try and revert to before Pandora's Box was opened.

You can't go back to 1934. You can't ban dunking, shrink the lane, get rid of the 3 seconds rule, you can't remove the shot clock or the 3 point line. You can't pretend that George Mikan, Bill Russell and Dr. J did not exist. Wall Street is amazing. These guys can't convince themselves of anything. They can call Mike Milken brilliant, they can ignore the past. But even they cannot ignore reality.

No one is talking about the fact that the other end of the AIG bets, the SCDO's compromised of credit default swaps based on tranches of AAA and AA rated mortgage bundles which were in fact 80 to 90 percent junk, meaning that that hedge would pay off huge once the market tanked in 2008, far too big for AIG to pay off to Goldman Sachs, the other end, the housing bonds themselves were heavily invested in by Germans. You can't ignore that AIG and Goldman, from the deregulation and the housing bubble and subprime, leading to the 2008 crisis leads directly to our current woes with Germany and the Euro and the Piigs.

Has the last domino fallen? Where did it start? Does it matter? Who is culpable? Clinton, Sumner, Geithner, Obama? Bush, Bernanke, Paulson, Greenspan? All of the above?

Take all the basketball analogy with a grain of salt. On ICE? Steve Nash might be from Canada and look like a hockey player (hey the nose looks good on you kid) but I don't even think Rondo knows how to play (I just can't figure out why they keep saying, "Damn, B look like he on skates.")

Whatever you do, don't click this link (studies show you're more likely if you shouldn't)