Short Wave - The physics of wheelchair basketball, from a Paralympian

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Patrick Anderson is widely recognized as the greatest wheelchair basketball player of all time. He's represented Canada at the Paralympics six times and led his team to win three gold — and one silver — medals. But since he first started playing in the 1990s, the sport has changed dramatically. He says that's due in part to the technological innovations in wheelchair athletics. In this episode, guest host Andrew Mambo chats with Patrick about the reasons for these changes. They also cover the origin of the sport, how the innovations that have changed gameplay and the rising popularity of wheelchair basketball around the world. Plus, the commonality between sport wheelchairs and stance cars.Interested in hearing more about the science behind sports? Email us at [e-mail] — we'd love to hear your feedback!See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Andrew Mamo here. So my main gig at NPR is producing the Sunday Story podcast. But today, I'm stepping into the host chair to report on a sport that has had me glued to the TV the past few weeks. Wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics. If you're unfamiliar, the court and the ball are the same as the NBA, but the way the players move on the court, pass the ball, spin and dribble. It's so different. I mean, even the great Michael Jordan found out how different

it is when he lost to a 16-year-old in a game of wheelchair basketball back in 1987. Good sport, Michael Jordan is shaking his head. He's had a lesson. Eric Barber did a number on Michael. I wanted to know more, so I figured I'd talk to someone who actually plays the game, Patrick Anderson. I grew up in small town, Ontario, near Toronto, and loved all sports, but particularly hockey. But when I was nine years old, I was hit by a car and lost my legs below the knees on both sides. I'm a bilateral baloney amputee. And, you know, that first year was very hard from swinging from the tops of trees to sitting in a hospital wheelchair and having someone pushed me around total loss of independence. And that's when a couple of Paralympians introduced him to wheelchair

basketball. I was sort of transformed, but it was just, it was the first time I really felt like I was in control. And I had independence again. freedom of movement and joy. That feeling of joy has never been pure and sharper. And for the next several years, he kept playing. He kept chasing that feeling until he made it to Whitewater, Wisconsin. There were a bunch of guys in Whitewater, Wisconsin training for the Atlanta games. Some Canadians, some Australians, some Americans. I really saw these guys who were among the best in the world, and I was running with them every day, and I wasn't dominating or anything, but I was hanging. And that's when I started to really kind of see, like, oh, yeah, a couple more years my time

is going to come. Patrick was 16 at the time. A year later, he was chosen for the Canadian national team. And in 2000, he went to his first Paralympic Games in Sydney. He's representing Canada at six Paralympic games, including this past summer in Paris, and led the team to three gold medals and a silver. He's widely recognized as the greatest to ever play the sport. He's like the Michael Jordan of wheelchair basketball.

Or maybe Michael Jordan is the Patrick Anderson of the NBA. Either way, I've been around so long. I really do span pretty primitive time chairwise to where we're at now. So today on the show, wheelchair basketball, where it started, how technological advancements have changed the game, and what might lie in the future. I'm Andrew Mambo. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, so Patrick, I want to start by going back a little bit because wheelchair basketball isn't that old, right? I mean, it's a fairly recent sport, like less than 100 years old. I mean, the sports started in the late 40s, 50s, war vets, you know, and they're in hospital chairs.

And those chairs that they played in initially haven't really changed that much. You know, that's the chair that I was sat in for a year after my accident. I started playing in my everyday chair. So the chair I used day-to-day and the sport chair were one and the same. And actually, a lot of people in the early 90s, that was still the case. You went to a basketball tournament. You just brought one wheelchair. And when you went on the court, you played in that chair.

when you went for dinner after, you're in the same chair. But I came along, sort of came of age in the 90s, and a lot of innovations happen. And so they're getting a lot more customized. So, you know, just as an NBA player, they're not playing in street shoes. You know, they've got specialized shoes. You have specialized equipment.

I was wondering if you could help us understand a bit, how it kind of differs from your everyday use chair. So there's a few things you could look at. One, like the camber of the wheel started going out and out, which is like the tilt of the wheel. So it increases the wheel base and makes the chair just more responsive. Okay, I got to stop you right there because I'm not sure whether people have heard the term camera I mean, it's relatively new to me.

So how would you describe it? I think it's pretty easy to visualize if you saw somebody like in a store and a chair, like their wheels are basically go straight up and down so that you can fit through doorways and fit through life. You don't want a super wide chair nor do you really need it generally. But as that angle of the wheel sort of tips out, I'm using my hands in the Zoom call. That doesn't work. This is audio. So those chairs, like my everyday chair, it looks like zero degrees of cambers.

The wheels are straight up and down, but it's actually probably two or three degrees. And so as the base of the wheel kind of goes out, and you can imagine the wheel just tipping, tilting out, out, out. Like cars have camber, right? I mean, high performance cars. Yeah, for cornering. Basically, it's for cornering, right? It's for turning. You know, when I grew up, it was probably like nine degrees.

And then I remember 12 degrees, 15 was a big jump. And 18 seems to be where most people have landed. I've had a chair up to 22 degrees of camber, but then the chair starts getting so wide at the base that you can't fit through anywhere. So yes, it turns really great, but there's a diminishing returns as you get too wide, and you only need to spin so well.

Another thing that happened sort of in my mid-teens that helped me sort of accelerate my development was anti-tip wheels. So before it's like a wheelchair with four wheels, right? Two big back wheels, two small front wheels. But the changes of rule to allow an anti-tip wheel. And that was huge for me, especially as a W amputee, because I was always very tippy. Like there was always the danger of me tipping over backwards.

So I would have to set up my chair so my center of gravity is kind of far forward to prevent that, which made it less turny, less reactive. But once I got those anti-tip wheels, then I could start pushing my center of gravity back, which makes it more less 747, more fighter jet, if you know what I mean? That really, that innovation was really huge, not only for amputees, for paraplegics, for a lot of people, everybody, really. If you could help me understand, you know, like the difference. We see there's like two large wheels and then you, you know, you have the two in the front.

But where are the anti-tip wheels? What do they look like? It started off with one, so a fifth wheel between the back wheels. So, you know, we're pushing out there. Maybe it looks like four wheels, but it's actually six wheels. The rule was they can't stick out further than the back of the back wheel so that you're not using it as a weapon out there, like swinging around like a dinosaur tail or something. Usually we have it maybe like a millimeter or two off the ground. so you sort of tip back onto it.

And also what it created was like the fade away. Because before that, I couldn't fade away on somebody. Like I was working on a hook shot. I remember when that. Like I was going back. We were going old school. Like, well, let's get the Cream Abdul Jabbar tapes out. Now I can wheel backwards and shoot over somebody like a fadeaway.

Like think of MJ or Kobe or something. The other thing that happens sort of at similar time is, you know, there's the chair and how it's designed. But then there's also the installation, like how you're connected to the chair with straps and all that kind of stuff. And guys like me traditionally probably didn't strap that much like amputees. You're basically sitting on a chair. The best way to picture it is if in 1994, if I was flying down the court and someone filed me, it's maybe more exciting.

It just legs, arms, wheels, everything go flying in every different direction because no one was attached to their chairs, you know. So you kind of get up and you go find your chair and you'd run out, you know, get back in it. Oh, my God. But now everyone's all strapped in. So fast forward a couple of years, I'm going down court. I run into somebody. I go flying, my chair goes with me.

But then you just pop up. and keep going. The chair's attached to you. So it's like the difference between maybe like playing basketball and flip flops versus putting some sneakers on a lacing them up. Yeah, that's a great analogy. And you mentioned the center of gravity. Like, do you mean like the height or the angle?

How does your center of gravity affect how the chair moves? If you sit really far forward in your chair, you're going to be stable, but it's not going to turn very well. But if you move your center of gravity too far back over your back wheels, your chair will spin like crazy. So you kind of got to, Everyone's got to find it based on what feels right to them and also based on their type of disability. Right. That's the other thing. Everyone's a little different and the technology is getting better and more customized to kind of fit those differences, right?

Oh, totally. I was just at the Paralympics and one of the big wheelchair sponsors, Autoblock, there's an interview with one of their spokesmen. He's a great spokesperson for people's disabilities, great Paralympian, but he's a runner. He's a guy who is into the, you know, the prosthetic world. and he was sort of talking about what an achievement it is for somebody to have run, like a paraplegic to have run a marathon in an exoskeleton for the first time. And like in the words you used, phrasing was something like escaped his wheelchair or something like that. And to me that, you know, it begs a lot of questions. It's like it's one other reason I think the Paralympics as a whole is important. You see amputees like getting out of the wheelchair and back on their feet, great. But you see other amputees like me, like prosthetics are fine and they've been increased my quality of life at times

in my life, but for me, the joy was found in a wheelchair, and there's no stigma in my mind, and nor should there be. But I know that sort of still exists. People are a little scared of wheelchairs, especially, say, in amputee. He's like, I don't want to be a wheelchair user. I want to walk. Great. Try to do it. Run, jump. Do whatever. But also just be aware of that. Wheelchairs are pretty sick and fun. And they take some work to develop the skills. But once you do, man, that can take you all kinds of places on and off the court. That's beautiful. I love that. I mean, you've been playing for a long time. You know, you're one of the most visible players in the world.

Looking back at how far the sport has come, what do you hope for the players moving forward? I mean, we got our butts kicked in Paris by Great Britain and USA, which stung in the moment. But at the same time, it set up a gold medal match, which I've learned to look forward to. Those two teams are just playing amazing basketball. And so it's really impressive where the peak

of the sport is. But in a sense, what's more meaningful to me is like the floor. Like, there's so many more countries that can compete. When I started, there was just a handful of real contenders and sort of everyone else. Now, you know, there's still those two are out in front of everybody, but there's 12, 13, 14 national teams. If that means that there's more participation and it's blessing more people's lives, if more people are playing around the world, that's what means to me. For other reasons I mentioned earlier about like it's just being such a powerful, positive influence on the lives of people of disabilities, whether they play competitively or not. I don't know what I'm going to do now that I'm retired exactly to give back to the sport.

It'll be something at some point. But I certainly, my mind goes towards just grassroots. The heroes to me are the ones who start new things, just get new people to play and like plant that seed in their imagination like those people did with me and give them a chance to feel a win in their hair like I did. And then wherever it goes from there, it's all good. So, yeah, I just hope more and more people discover what it can mean for them in their community and society in general.

Before we head out, Shortwave is turning five soon on October 15th. And to celebrate, we are answering your listener questions, but only if you're five years old. That's right, we're handing the reins to some of the youngest shortwavers to ask us anything. Like, how do submarines work? Why is the sky blue? Where do worms go to sleep? Send us a voice memo with your best questions to Shortwave at npr.org and listen out for the answers on October 15th. See you then.

This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and Jessica Young. Tyler Jones checked the facts, and Quasi Lee was the audio engineer. Special thanks to Vicky Tolfrey and Sophie Bushwick. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president

of podcasting strategy. I'm Andrew Mombo in the host chair. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Thank you.