@KUSTEVE
The combination of the-will-to-efficiency scheme of play and Self practicing them into the ground (they looked like they had had a full practice the day of the Washburn game), plus all of the wraps this early the season, explains the step-slow appearance of Selden and of all of the guys.
Self and staff must really be bearing down on these guys. He has committed to getting them ready not just for UK, which they probably can't beat unless UK shoots it very poorly, but to try to give this team the best possible shot at beating UCSB, which has a big man and a maturity that is going to give this young, undersized KU team problems IMHO.
Self correctly perceived that this team's only hope is efficient passing constantly trying to get the ball into scoring position, not just into impact position. Frankly, this team appears most closely patterned off some of Bobby Knights lean-talent teams. They reminded me a hole lot of Knight's last 4, or 5, Indiana teams. Strictly business. Told from the beginning that their only prayer is toughness and efficiency. There is not a schred of ebullience and celebrating out there, even though several of these guys were joy juicing smiley face types last season along with joking Joel and easy going Andrew. This season? It is all grim focus on business.
Selden, ironically, is having the most difficulty hitting perfect pitch among the starters. But, again, I think that's because of tired legs and because Self is ramming this team into an efficiency form language starting with Ellis and Mason.
Ellis plays this way naturally, whenever he isn't going against tough defenders that send him into finesse spin mode. Self has clearly told Perry to cut back on the spin moves and cut straight to the score. Self is saying in essence, "Perry, you are my man. If you can't learn to be an extroverted razor edged fanatic on a team of exploding athletic freaks, then I am going to ram earth this team into a form of stoic, methodical, Perry Ellis walls of focus and hard work." To rob from "Chinatown," as I so often have lately, Perry, if we cannot bring the water to LA, we'll bring LA to the water, which is another way of saying if we can't bring Perry to the team, we'll bring the team to Perry. Perry's scoring is the water. Every team needs water. But Perry himself has to be rammed into the wooden team form as well, because Perry tends to stop playing this way, i.e., to his own strength, whenever someone, even some scrawny Ichabods muscling cause him to jump out of the ram earth form Self has rammed him into, and start spinning and finessing. But Perry is doing better at being Perry, something he has never been given a chance to get better at, as Self spent Perry's first two seasons taking him not just out of his comfort zone, but out of Perry's known universe.
And the cool thing is: ram earthing this team of hyper athletic freaks like in no particular order Mason, Oubre, Alexander, Traylor, Selden and Greene, is like connecting a bunch of coil springs together and then compressing them in the a wooden form of a highly efficient team that will, once Self eases up on the practice load, and pulls away some of the forms, be extremely efficiently formed to then begin exploding out of the form. It is a paradoxical approach to crafting a team, only to the extent Self is taking it, but Self is paradox in sneakers, so what else is new. He is the Tumble Weed Buddha. He is the Red River Vishnu restoring the Eddie Ball Order that he got too far away from last season. But frankly he is going beyond Eddie Ball here. He is going beyond Bill Ball here. The ghost of Henry Iba is lurking in this zealous, fundamentalist quest for un-ornamented efficiency.
(Note on the ram earth metaphor in the midst of all the metaphor mixing I am doing and about to take outside the envelope: just got done reading an arcane book on building the old ways with adobe brick and ram earth forms, and so that is where this ram earth form metaphor is bubbling up from for what Self is doing with this retro-team thing. For the uninitiated, ram earth building is setting up a wooden form of a wall space to be filled and packed and filled and packed with a sand/gravel/dirt mixture with about 10-20% clay content, so that when the wood forms are removed you have a strong, long lasting earthen wall that, if covered with a well drained roof with a 2-foot overhang and some stucco surfacing ought to outlast your own time on this mortal coil by quite awhile and meet building codes in some states, anyway.)
So, @KUSTEVE , what we were witnessing last night was a team with only parts of its forms temporarily removed (enough to let the team practice playing a game), so that it could move a bit, while still being held tightly in place. We saw a fully compressed, not yet fully dried team that had has been being driven so hard into its forms that it had no explosion in its legs and looked a step slow, make that two steps slow.
Mason gets what is going on and can do it, because it takes him completely out of his unconscious narcissism of using his awesome speed and afterburners first (the antithesis of being a point guard) and instead focuses him on the wholistic goal of running the team. Once the team cures fully into Self's desired form of maximum efficiency in all things, and Mason's habit of resorting first to his athleticism is permanently broken and reformed, THEN we will see Self have him begin to uncoil when appropriate. And when Mason begins uncoiling, so will the other players follow his lead.
This is particularly good for Alexander, who would foul out immediately, if he were not rammed into the form right now. Alexander is a big talent with a big man presence and attitude that will eventually allow him to be very dominant, but right now it would just foul him up to let him operate form free.
And though Oubre could benefit a lot from getting out of the form right now offensively, the fact is he is wearing the dreaded black knee wraps that signal sore knees in freshman stressed to unprecedented degree by learning Self Grade sliding M2M, after always getting by before with raw athleticism.
And so back to Selden.
Selden has a lackadaisical streak. He is naturally only focused intensely and coiled when he is about to do something and doing it. He has a problem with losing focus the minute what he is trying to do goes wrong. You can see his entire body language turn into an indifferent glide, instead of the intense uncoiling force that he was just a moment ago. Selden frankly needs this ram earth team form as much, if not more than the rest. And like Ellis he showed several times that whenever he comes out of the form and things don't go right, he reverts to losing focus and gliding, just as Ellis reverts to spinning and finessing.
E-F-F-I-C-E-N-C-Y.
E-C-O-N-O-M-Y.
E-N-E-R-G-Y.
E-N-G-A-G-E-M-E-N-T.
These are the 4 E's on the X-Axis this team must master to be able to then E-X-P-L-O-I-T athleticism on the Y-Axis at the D-E-C-I-S-I-V-E moments.
This team has to make efficiency its theme and athleticism its variation.
It aint sexy at AAU meat markets. And Cal will surely use it as a negative in talking to OADs (note: he seems not to have to actually recruit; that seems to be done for him, Cal is just a hostess seating players at his basketball restaurant that appear to have been driven their for him by a Nike bus. But I digress.)
The immediate danger forming a bunch of A-type athletics into a T-type team efficiency mold is that they will reverse the ordering of those two concepts not long after the forms are removed.
Why shouldn't these A-Types rely on athleticism first, last and always?
Because this group lacks the size inside, especially the dominant post man and rim protector, to get into a 40 minute campaign of athleticism vs. athleticism with any of the long and talented teams it will meet intermittently throughout the season. In terms of athleticism, it is a donut with a hole in the middle. It dare not play a style that emphasizes that hole in the middle. Instead, it must become controlled and highly controlling. It must confront teams with collective security, communal efficiency, so as never to expose the hole in the middle. And of course, being a Self team, it must also do so while being willing to play it any tempo the other team gives it.
Yet, fast or slow, or in between, this team must never play reckless, gambling high pressure perimeter defense, even though almost every player is well suited to playing exactly that way. Why not? Because of the hole in the middle. Every step, every pass, every dribble, every defensive position and every defensive slide, must obscure and shield the hole in the middle, while every savvy opponent will be scheme to get exactly there--to the hole in the O in Oz.
The great athleticism of the players must be turned to simultaneously guarding the trey stripe and the passing lanes, while at the same time masking the hole in the middle. Thus, you never want guys running and gambling on steals from over pressuring and over pinching someone far from the basket, unless the opponent has no big man. You want always to divide the great athleticism between stretching out and reaching backwards. This team is really going to play amoeba defense--stretching outward, but never breaking connection and the ability to flow backwards. Devonte Graham's steals were the ideal of this form of Amoeba defense. He was not gambling. He was seizing the opportunity of the amoeba being stretched in the right position to simply step in the lane and steal the pass. He was not at all out of position to recover and flow backwards to protect the hole in the middle.
This is no mean feat to pull off.
To the players credit, they appear to be buying in...so far.
And the guys that can do it best are playing most. Devonte Graham is not starting because he is a good distributor, or ball handler, or a great defender that can fight through D1 ball screens. He is going to have problems with all three of those things at D1 speeds against good D1 defenses. He is starting because the amoeba style of play is something he can do comfortably; that kind of fits his neutrally balanced court personality.
And the guys that struggle the most with amoeba style, Greene and Mickelson, the most either or guys on the team, are bringing up the rear despite their considerable abilities that both showed variously in the exhibition game.
Amoeba style is not for everyone. No style is. Pick a style and there are winners and losers. But everyone can learn to play a new style a little better all the time. It just may take some longer. Greene and Mickelson will get it.
And then there is Selden and Ellis. Both get the amoeba style of play. Selden can play it, whenever he does not get lackadaisical about something going wrong, or the flow of play going elsewhere. Ellis can play it whenever there is no blue meanie.
But things will go wrong, and play will flow away from Selden.
And there will be blue meanies for Ellis.
So: the real key to whether Self and this group can pull this style of play off, is whether Selden and Ellis can break their bad habits during their period of being ram earthed into the early season wooden form Self has erected, and just say no to their bad habits when he takes the wooden forms off and says, start uncoiling when its the decisive moment.
There is never a dull moment with Self and his basketball.
Now Self is going back to the future.
God only knows how he is going to pull this off against really good teams. Everything in my experience tells me it won't work against really good teams; that the team will not be able to execute this way when everyone is longer, stronger, faster, and without a hole in the middle.
But persons thought the same thing about some past teams with holes in the middle that went on to become terrific teams.
How long can he hide the hole in the middle of the doughnut; that is the question?
Knight pulled it off once.
Wooden pulled it off twice.
What else is there to say, but...
Go, Bill, go!!!!!!
