Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark writes, "Baseball and soccer have Aztec antecedents. Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human. Lacrosse is an ancient Native American game, and hockey is related to it. But basketball is new. We've been making movies longer than we've been playing basketball...basketball has become - at its best - the paramount synthesis in sport of intelligence, precision, courage, audacity, anticipation, artifice, teamwork, elegance, and grace". He obviously never saw a bunch of English PhD students trying to play the game!

But we have a lot of fun, and we've actually gotten a bit better over the last month of playing. I suppose that isn't saying a whole lot since most of us had a lot of improving to do, but we have gotten a bit better. We keep picking up extras who are much better than most of us (one of our players is very good at the game - he's also tall - so his skill and height really dominate the rest of us, but he's also great at pulling up and giving those of us who aren't so good a chance to shoot, or pass etc.).

Intelligence? Off the court, sure...on, hmmm, I don't know about that. Precision? Those of us who can shoot, sure. Courage? Definitely! Just showing up and playing in public parks shows courage! Audacity? (See courage) Anticipation? See, there's another of those skills that we need to work on...some of us (myself included) still are a bit surprised when the ball ends up in our hands! Artifice? Nope, not good enough for that yet. Teamwork? Yeah, you bet! Best part of the game as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and grace? Nope, at least not for me...at this point, I've managed to fall and/or injure myself at almost every game - But I'm probably the least coordinated of those on the court. Of course Sagan was talking about NBA play, not the kind of game we play, but his point that the game is the most modern of the major games we play and that because of this, it is a game of skill and intelligence is well taken.