@drgnslayr
"I constantly nag on some of his moves... but I would nag far more on all other current coaches in D1."
This is sound insight well writ.
The real difference between one time wonders and persistently successful persons, especially those in the public eye, is the long term successful really have to know what they are doing, how they are doing it, how to adapt known principles to new circumstances, be able to recognize a new principle when it arises without losing sight of the core purpose of their enterprises, and withstand the psychically wrenching torque of XTReme Praise coupled with Constant Criticism.
Persons always forget how much the truly great are doubted and constantly criticised, even scathingly criticized as they do the great things they do. You and I remember John Wooden well. Recall how savagely he was criticized for not letting his players talk with the press, for simply holding his tongue and not contributing to the pro Vietnam War propaganda that was being expected from public figures, for being an old prig, about not being slick enough for Westwood and LA, losing to Pete Newell and Sam Cunningham for ten years, for not recruiting for ten years, kicking Edgar Lacy off the team, for kicking Lucious Allen off the team, for playing Alcindor with a scratch cornea in the Astrodome, for being past his prime the one year he did not win a ring after 10 straight rings or whatever it was, for playing African Americans early on, for playing too many African Americans later on, for not playing enough African Americans later on, for being henpecked by Nell, for being too devoted to Nell to recruit like a D1 coach, for waiting too long to go to the press, for sticking with the press to rigidly, for being too controlling of his players' shooting form and shot selection, for playing Lynn Shackleford who could "only shoot it out of the corner," for playing Mike Warren, who was too short, for playing Freddie Slaughter at center who was too short, for depending on hot heads like Gail Goodrich and John Vallely, for playing the high post in an era when big postmen were dominating with low post play, for making wing players shoot bank shots, for making his players play too mechanically and unemotionally, etc., etc., etc. And all of this while the guy was winning 10 rings in 11 years or whatever it was!!!! He had to live with this relentless questioning and doubting and criticism just as he had to live with the insane idolization, the early fumbling attempts at media packaging of coaching stars and ALL of the ridiculously envious and vindictive put downs of him in university politics among the frustrated, tenured, solipsists on the faculty of a university. He had to have had the most strength of will and purposefulness of vision to have endured that for ten years without any comparable prior, or contemporary role model!
People endlessly doubt and criticize the great, because they do not understand what has to be done and how it has to be done. They endlessly lose sight of both the changing constraints of context and generally lack the ability to forecast accurately what adaptions those changes will require. And without grasping the end goal, Most folks can figure out what the goal is in something as simple as basketball, but few can define the ultimate objective that must be achieved in order for hard work, superior resources and luck to weigh fully in one's favor. Thus, they are reduced to criticizing and doubting, because that is what one tends to do when one is not yet clear about what to do.
One of the reasons I often find your posts worthy of praise is that you often appear to understand and appreciate the difference between ultimate objective attainment and desirable goal outcome.
Self winning rings is the desirable goal outcome that will at the end of his career define his ranking, even though as Dean Smith told Roy, after Dean won his ring, I am the same coach today as I was before I won the ring. It is the nature of a profession. The lasting ranking of generals and Admirals and Presidents and Kings, and PMs and CEOs are not defined by any one awesome performance. They are determined by the scope and duration of their towering dominance. For this reason, John Wooden is king, even though Allen brought more to the game, Rupp purified it, Iba influenced it for the longest, Dean corporatized it to modern program organization, Knight distilled the strategic principles of each position and their interplay most clearly, and Consonants won the most games. Wooden totally dominated every aspect of the game for 11 years; that is longer than anyone. And if one wants to introduce Sam Gilbert into the mix, one need only respond that all the muckraking books I have found the last five years indicate that Wooden only stepped up to what most every major program was already doing, when Wooden merely began to level the recruiting playing field.
Which brings me back to Self.
Self, if we are to believe our own public relations, has done something truly extraordinary. He has run a clean program for ten years at KU, as Wooden did his first ten years of not winning rings, and won at a higher rate than Wooden, and won a ring that Wooden did not win. This is nothing short of phenomenal. He has out-won in percentage terms, Bob Knight, the previous definitive non-cheating big winner in his first ten years at Indiana. Knight may have won one more ring that first ten years, though.
Knight eventually collected 4 rings reputedly without cheating, so Self has a way to go to catch the master of the straight and narrow.
I am to lazy to check out Consonants first ten years. I suspect Consonants might have had a comparable first ten years at a major. And he has won 4-5 rings. So: again, Self has his work cut out for catching another reputed non cheater.
Among other reputed non cheaters, there are Dean and Roy. Self is one ring from equalling and two from exceeding them. Equalling at least seems probable.
But you make a key point: to win again, he has figure out the Madness principles and the logics required to make them operational come crunch time.
Self was not a great player. Neither were the other great coaches mentioned above, except for Wooden. Wooden understood profoundly what playing great required. But understanding it, did not grant him the instant ability to coach players to great team AND great individual performances simultaneously. And there in lies the key to greatness of the greatest of the great coaches. He learned how to get great team play and great individual play simultaneously and more often than anyone before or since. It isn't even close.
Self not having been a great player seems to have driven him to substitute probabilities and strategy for that lack of first hand experience of how to get great team play and great individual play simultaneously. In this regard, Self is not different than Knight, or Consonants, Smith, or Williams, or Rupp, or Allen, or other great coaches. Self has just systematized the substitution of statistical explanations for team and individual play.
The moment I heard Self say that everyone plays good a third of the time, bad a third of the time, and mediocre a third of the time, I feared for his ring accrual in the long term. I feared he was conceding too much to the probability distribution to ever find a way to bias it to attaining the ultimate objective sharply in his favor.
The ultimate objective is now for me creating teams capable of simultaneous great team and individual performances under high stress circumstances against every kind of opponent for 6 games.
Self argues logically from his premise that that is impossible and so you train to grind on your mediocre and bad nights and rely on athleticism to fly high on your good ones, The only constant is defense. (Note: his apparent assumption that defense can be played great every game is either invalidated by his 1/3-1/3-1/3 premise, or could reasonably be extended to offense IMHO). And whenever you meet an under matched opponent, you send them out flat to skew the emotional distribution highest for the best opponents. This is 180 degrees opposite of one of the greatest players of the early era and greatest coach of all time. But Self is one of a long line of great coaches that have made that assumption to more or less of a degree. Self has just purified it to stark essence.
Self's brilliant, transposition of Wooden took great genius on his part. But great genius, while it is something I marvel at and admire, is rarely the personality type that consistently stays on the mountain top for long periods.
Orson Welles made the greatest movie of all time. Every movie he made evidenced his demigod level of genius. But in the end, Orson Welles was not the greatest director of film history.
Self made Wooden's choice after the 2012 runner up title. He took the probably repulsive (to him) steps needed to level the playing field in terms of recruiting.
But he has NOT done something Wooden also did.
He has not radically altered his defensive strategy from half to full court defense, or some equally radical alternative.
And he remains wed to the 1/3-1/3-1/3 philosophy that generates high winning percentage but with an obvious structural error factor over the course of six games that Wooden's principles and logics of endless pursuit of peak performance at both team an individual level came to eliminate.
Wooden's teams did not have to get hot for 4, or 6 games. Wooden's teams were trained and programmed to operate at maximum efficiency all the time, whether they were shooting it well or not. Emotional lows and players with widely swinging personalities were selected out. Wooden sought players with fire in their bellies, because he knew how he had learned to direct the fire in himself to sustain burning intensity for as many games as it took and not one but several of his teams went undefeated. Wooden would absolutely kick ass in today's 6 game tournament. He would easily win 10, maybe 15 rings in a row in this format, because this format practically guaranties the early outs of so many great coaches that approach the game from a wide swinging level of play, rather than consistency, as Wooden did. Self's 1/3-1/3-1/3 approach is being modeled by so many now. Everyone believes the psych research that peak performance is not sustainable that they ignore the fact that Wooden proved it was for up to 30 games a season and most definitely for short bursts of 4 to 10 games.
Self cannot be Wooden.
But he can evolve who he is as Wooden evolved who he was.
Self has already taken the first step by leveling the recruiting playing field as much as he can.
But now he has to find a way to take the 1/3-1/3-1/3 from a March weakness to a March strength. He has lead everyone into its weakness. Now he has to be the first one to figure out a way beyond it.
He has to in effect draw two graphs: one of team performance and one of individual performance. They have to coincide with lower lows. That is all, but that is everything. No more inefficient wasting of high individual performances on lesser teams. No more inefficiently low team performances. A higher foundation has to be built in level of minimum performance expectation.
There can be no more superstar performances like Andrew Wiggins against Stanford ever again. There can be no more Thomas Robinson first halves against UK in 2012 again. Our fans foolishly focus on the weak link hypothesis that has always proven fallacious in all forms of strategy; that any organization can be no better than its weakest link. Fallacious! A team is no stronger than the lowest level of performance of its best three players. All glue men can always be compensated for. The only fatal flaw in any team is its great players playing at less than their best when their best is needed. Period. That is the bottom line on that issue. Everyone has to be at their best when they need their best, but the glue guys by definition are going to get pasted from time to time. And those times are when the great players on the team have to play to their potential. They have to show up with competitive greatness of a kind Self probably never once evidenced himself, because he was at most a slightly above average player.
It does no good to recruit great players and then coach them to perform according to assumptions about normal players.
Self has to let go of the idea that great players are 1/3-1/3-1/3 types and coaching them accordingly. Andrew Wiggins didn't need button pushing. He needed great expectations and benching until he would play to his potential. Period. Great players have to play great every time their competitive greatness is needed. They have to do it within the team scheme. And they have to do it now. Chamberlain and Jabbar and Russell and Robertson were great the moment they stepped on the floor, because they required to be by their coaches. Great players playing great only occasionally either are not great players, or being told to protect the merchandize. A great team cannot get near winning a ring without great players playing great. It is axiomatic.
It was clear that Andrew Wiggins was a new level of greatness Self had no clue about. He admitted it. But Self had to go through such a contact to learn what he didn't know he didn't know. When Wooden finally got great players he understood their greatness completely. Like Knight, Smith, Williams, and others, Self has to learn about greatness of players, because he wasn't one.
But Self also has to find a new unfair advantage strategically, too.
Easy to say, hard to do. Wooden couldn't bring himself to press until his job was in danger and Jerry Norman convinced him to do it by testing it on the JV. Self has no JV. Not having a JV is really killing innovation in basketball. Young coaches produce innovations. They need a low cost environment to innovate. Self cannot afford to do it in prime time, but he also cannot afford not to innovate for the home stretch run of his career. If he doesn't, he will wind up like Knight. Tilting at windmills of corruption, or "teaching the game," instead of advancing it decisively.
But with all my comments, the point remains: Self is LSD on wood as a protean force in the game. He keeps changing in ways we don't catch for months or years after. The last season or two the acid seems to have weakened some, but in fact the magnitude of the changes he is making are greater now than at any time of his career. He is a genius in basketball coaching. If he doesn't burn out, some more great things to marvel at are in store.
But to win the rings, he has to fix the error factor in March inherent in the 1/3-1/3-1/3 approach.
And he has to come up with an unfair advantage strategically.
Do those two things, with the leveled recruiting playing field, and we're looking at another King.
Fail to, and we are looking at a genius that may or may not win another ring.
It up to Bill and to do it he has to have the kind of steeled will that Wooden had to continue to develop under control in the face of crazy idolization and crazy criticism.
Nothing I am saying is intended as criticism of him however this plays out. KU basketball is blessed to have the guy for as long he can do what he already does. Anything else is icing for this fan.
Wooden made it clear.
Greatness in coaching team sports is based on the embrace of the paradox of great team play and great individual play simultaneously occurring.
He also made another paradox abundantly clear, one few recall.
One cannot win rings by focusing on winning rings.
One can only win rings by focusing on what it takes to win rings and working until one cans sustain mastery of what it takes at a higher level than can other opponents one faces.
There in lies the mystery of basketball.
And perhaps of life.
