The Brooklyn Nets made history by signing the NBA's first openly gay player, but some wonder how much Brooklyn's motivations for signing Collins were, despite what ownership has said, motivated by non-basketball factors.
While GM Billy King attempted to shut down this line of thinking when he prefixed his remarks about the Collins signing by emphasizing it was "a basketball decision", it's not uncommon for a team to factor in non-basketball factors into a signing.
While basketball is rarely a factor in conference realignment, the Big East tournament is perhaps the most valuable property outside the N.C.A.A. men's tournament.
The one major factor in basketball, rarely accounted for in football, is minutes played.
Lately, though, there seems to be yet another factor grinding down basketball's endgame.
"The difficult thing to factor in is basketball is more of a collaborative, chemistry sport than baseball," said Chris Wallace, the Memphis Grizzlies' general manager, who worked with Morey in Boston.
The committee's ingenious response was to introduce a time factor akin to basketball's shot clock, to limit a coach's ability to make substitutions and to put a limit on those substitutions.
He said he liked competing in the Big East, but he also said he understood there were factors other than basketball, or even tradition, that determined whether a conference had a strong future.
Rather, the most important factors in NBA basketball success are likely genetics, work ethic and a skill set that is largely built long before any elite men's basketball player even steps foot on a college basketball court.
It includes crucial factors in wheelchair basketball performance, such as starting and sprinting, which involve both strength capacity and coordination skills [ 23, 25].
