@HighEliteMajor
Agree with you down the line about how Self appears to be dealing with all of this.
But I want to put this in a bit of a glass half full context.
History records endlessly that there is nothing more difficult than escaping the prison of past success. Almost every war ever fought is the same plot: start the war fighting the last war and, if you are lucky enough to survive the catastrophes of doing so, then adapt most fittingly to new weaponry and context and get some luck and win. With few exception, so few I cannot recall any right now, this is the recurring plot of human warfare.
Formulas for success seem to be even more addictive than heroin, or nicotine.
So where is the half full glass?
Self seems to know the above about success being a prison is true. He seems to be trying to escape. Many attempts at prison escapes run into obstacles. It is not a simple clean process...this business of prison escape.
All prison escapes by definition requires that we escape the comfort zone of our cell. It is exhilarating to get out of the cell but as soon as we are out we realize we are in uncharted space and that space is kind of perilous because while we are out side the cell, we are not yet outside the prison. That takes some more work. And there are times when it may make sense to run back into the cell briefly while the spotlight passes our direction, before we resume our escape.
Self endlessly takes his players outside their comfort zones to get them to adapt and get better. Some times they cannot do it, or are slow to adapt, but I would say 90% of the time Self's players get better in increments small or large that in the end make them sharply better than when they came to KU, not just better at what they came good at, but transformed into more complete basketball players. This transformation is really at the heart of Self's astronomical success of winning 82-84% of his games at KU depending on which season you tally from. Other coaches get to 76%, or so, because their players only get better at what they were already good at. Self's relentless pressuring of his players to become more complete players in the end gets more out of what he has that most other coaches can consistently accomplish. Self takes less talent than Cal, K, or Roy, for three examples, but pushes it farther over the course of a season, or over the course of a career, to become more complete players, and so, more able to find more ways to win more games.
So: what has this to do with Self and a half full glass?
Self has forced himself entirely outside his own comfort zone the last two seasons.
By forcing himself out of his own comfort zone, he often gets in over his head and looks bad, just the same as his players do when he is forcing them outside their comfort zones.
Self takes a couple steps forward, and backslides, just like his players do, when they are operating in this very painful, very unfamiliar realm beyond what they already know.
What you and I have noticed about Self appears to accurate.
He IS ambivalent about not going inside out for the short trey and the open look kick out, just as his players ARE ambivalent about playing out of position.
He really DOES think three point shooting IS fools gold in tough games; that is the prison of his experience talking.
BUT...he really HAS reschemed at the beginning of the season, and then he really HAS junked everything and reschemed in an almost unscripted sequence of improvisations of late in which the team REALLY IS playing in unprecedented varieties of ways including both old and new stuff.
He really HAS put himself way out there beyond his comfort zone.
My old age makes me appreciate how difficult it is to push outside the comfort zone, when you have done something that worked enough that you don't have to push outside it again.
Self could easily walk away from all of this and be venerated as one of those all time greats that walked away at the top of his game. Everyone would ask him every year if he would come back out of retirement and lead KU to greatness again. He could be KU's Joe DiMaggio, who retired at his peak and was thereafter greater in memory than he ever was in real life.
Instead, Self has committed to continuing in the arena. Continuing to try to adapt to change. Continuing to try to engage in the thrill competition at the highest level in his profession. Continuing to try to help a small number of kids escape poverty every season. Continuing to try to use his celebrity to channel donations into various kinds of cause he believes in.
I often recall John Wooden in my posts. I do not do it because the past was better than the present. I do it because the past holds certain lessons that apply timelessly. I do it because Wooden once upon a time exemplified much that could be done, and much that was and remains inevitable in a coach's, or person's progression through life.
Wooden at 50 had never recruited, and never believed in recruiting. He had resisted recruiting, while all the other leading programs had long since made recruiting a basic part of their way of competing.
Wooden at 50 believed even more staunchly than Bill Self in half court man to man and no zone.
Wooden at 50 believed in the running game that Ward Lambert had taught him at Purdue 30 years before.
Wooden at 50 had won his way. He had always finished second with hardly any talent and everyone that knew west coast basketball knew that if he ever had talent even close to as good as Newell at Cal that he would mop up.
Wooden at 50 had integrated the game before anyone else in his first job at Indiana State in 1947. He coached at UCLA where he was allowed to play whatever color players that came to him and asked to be on his team.
Wooden at 50 was not financially independent, as Self is, but he was doing okay, and was quite satisfied with what he had accomplished, yet had a burning desire to beat those that were beating him only because they had sharply better players in much greater numbers.
Wooden at 50 did NOT want to recruit, or play ANY full court presses. He KNEW that he had proven he could play the game his way he could do very well doing it his way.
But Wooden at 50 knew the game was changing rapidly under him. He knew so many programs were integrating that he no longer could sit and wait for young African Americans to come to him. He knew the athleticism of African American athletes that he had relied on earlier than most was now changing the kinds of things that could be done on a basketball floor. He knew that basketball coaches were getting better and better at scheming offenses that could wear down half court M2M defenses with endless running of shuffle offense and wear down is vaunted half court pressure defenses. He knew that all athletes were getting so much better that his half court pressure defense was having trouble containing them.
But Wooden at 50 did NOT want to change. He had resisted pressure from him assistants and colleagues to change for 5 years at least. He knew what worked. He knew things were changing, but he knew how to tinker with what he already did to make it keep working a little better.
But Wooden at 50 also knew that if he did not change, he was certain to become an anachronism, a successful one, but an anachronism nontheless. And he had coached long enough at 50 to have seen many coaches become anachronisms.
Wooden at 50 did not want to become an anachronism. No one wants to become an anachronism in his or her profession. But it happens sooner or later if you don't retire, or get fired before it does.
Wooden was lucky in many ways, but he was especially lucky in one way. A former player, Jerry Norman reputedly got tired of the real estate business, where he had made some money, and wanted to get into coaching. He came to Wooden and asked to join him and Wooden was glad to have him, because finding assistants was actually difficult in those days, because pay was so low, and schools were opening so fast in college, juco and high schools that assistants quickly found head coaching jobs and living wages by stepping down a level. Norman reputedly immediately offered to be Wooden's recruiter. Wooden knew he needed more players than he had been getting just to stay competing at the level he had been at--finishing second each season. He consented to Norman recruiting, but gave him no budget.
After coaching for Wooden a year, or two, and proving himself to Wooden, Norman came to Wooden and said he had this incredible new defense-the 3/4 court 2-2-1 zone press; that high schools were running it California, and that it was a way to put more pressure on opponents and make what talent you had go farther. Wooden was diametrically opposed to pressing, because it was wasting a lot of energy guarding someone somewhere on the floor where they could not possibly score. It was a fool's game to press. It was proven over time. Wooden himself had proven it was not necessary to succeed and that logic told one that it was a net loss. And besides, other coaches winning championships were not pressing either.
Norman asked Wooden to let him try it out on the freshman team for a season as an experiment, and so Wooden could watch and study it for himself. The freshman team kicked as in its short season. And even then Wooden resisted. Yes, it was clearly a potent defensive weapon, but top flight players would break it down. Norman reputedly said basically that without a recruiting budget it was going to take him awhile to get Wooden some players and that he had to have something to sell to players that was different to get them. He had proven with the freshman team that it worked. And that Wooden should give it a try. I have heard the story after that two ways. One was that Wooden said okay, we'll give it a try this season. Another was that Norman threatened to quit and go get a coaching job somewhere that WOULD run the 2-2-1 press. Either way Wooden stepped out of his comfort zone and, in his somewhat monomaniacal fashion, said if we are going to try it we are going to commit fully to it.
The next ten champions in eleven years with every kind of size and combination of talent level conceivable is history. Two rings with short players with talent no better than the top teams and recruited without cash under the table. Six teams with two super players--Jabbar and Walton--with Gilbert reputedly paying the going rate for players. One team with unprecedented depth, again with players reputedly being paid the going rate. And one team starting NBA draft choices at almost every position, agains reputedly being paid the going rate.
The story is that Norman had to push Wooden constantly to stay with the press the first season, despite them going 32-0.
The story is that assistants Norman and Cunningham had to push Wooden to change to the low post offense, when Jabbar was signed. They had just won two rings with the high post offense. Wooden knew it made sense to shift to the low post offense, but Wooden never LIKED the low post offense. It wasn't who he was. It wasn't the kind of basketball he loved.
But just as Wooden had stepped out of his comfort zone and embraced the 2-2-1 press and recruiting, Wooden stepped out of his comfort zone and embraced the low post offense.
But as soon as Jabbar graduated and they signed Walton, Wooden jumped out the low post offense back to his preferred high post and frankly wasted quite a bit of Walton's potential as a low post scorer and rebounder, before finally consenting to scheme a single post offense where Walton's great mobility could be deployed variously between down low and up high. I am not absolutely sure, but I believe Wooden steadfastly refused ever to run the high-low, though he might have run it some with his last ring team with Richard Washington.
Wooden was so stubborn about the rightness and elegance of a single post offense that even after winning three rings with Walton, rotating low to high and back low, Wooden practically was orgasmic the following season when he went back to a single high post offense with Patterson out at the tip of the key (as it used to be called anachronistically, for it was by then no longer a key shaped FT lane and circle) and Wicks and Rowe on a double low wing offense, reputedly Wooden's own improvisation on his own single high post.
My point of this long digression about Wooden, is that until one is 50, one really never has to adapt one's thinking all that much, because one's thinking is product of the recent evolution of things and is by definition up to day. It is not until one reaches around 50 that one's thinking and approach can get behind the curve. Before 50 all one has to do to stay au currant is to keep nipping and tucking and borrowing this piece, or that piece from someone else. But from 50 onwards, it is pretty typical to find the world has changed and you have to make a decision about whether to stay the same, or change with it. Both paths have risks. The former turns you into a winning anachronism that eventually guaranties you become marginalized. The second confronts you with having to get outside your comfort zone to make the changes that are required.
Self IS outside his comfort zone. He has made that commitment. But he is having a damned hard time with it intermittently. A great coach has to trust both his ability to assess what players he has and then scheme who they can feasibly be in a way that can win as much as possible. He also has to trust his split second judgements in the moment of competition. But when you are operating outside your comfort zone, you are usually coming up with new schemes you don't necessarily like, and you are having to make split second judgements relative to these schemes that are not second nature to you. It creates an awkward phase. I am telling you I know it does because I was 50 once. There is no avoiding this awkward phase any more than once can avoid being physically and socially awkward as an early teenager at certain points.
No one talks about it, but it is just as real a fixture, or parameter, of human life, as the coming of age thing in early teen-hood. Some do it more gracefully than others. Some are more successful while they do it than others. But if you look closely, you will see them going through it no matter what.
So: I don't look on what Self is struggling with as a bad sign. I don't look on his ambivalence and backsliding as something that is a bad thing for him to go through. I look on this as signs of a man willing himself into this right of passage and taking his lumps and revealing his warts as he drags himself kicking and screaming through this re-birth canal that happens at this time of a person's life, especially in one's profession. The one's that don't go through it are doomed to anachronisms. The one's that do have a good chance of making it. Some don't make it. But I would bet that Bill Self is going to make it.
Each ten years of our lives is a new phase. Each phase starts with a transition with some peril and uncertainty. But some phases we are being drug kicking and screaming by others into them, others we are kind of smoothly transitioning through as if by force of inertia, and still others, especially this transition at 50, we have drag ourselves kicking and screaming through the change. We have sizable responsibilities to others by this time. Its not just us deciding to take the plunge as a head coach, because that was the purpose of becoming a coach in the first place. This change at 50 is becoming a different kind of coach than we groomed ourselves and were groomed by others to be. This change at 50 distills to something like: are we willing to go through a seemingly near total transformation, while carrying an entire program on our back as we do? It is the same within a family. At 50, you change the kind of father you have been. You have to. You are no longer dealing with little kids that have no say in what happens. You are dealing with 2/3s formed children that think they are fully formed. They have to be dealt with differently and frankly, you never prepared yourself for this phase. You thought they would either be half formed little kids and then some how self-transform into fully formed young persons. You have to deal with ambiguous little creatures that are not quite children and not quite humans. :-) You have to embrace ambivalence, because you really ARE ambivalent about how you feel and what you understand. You know you have to retool to get through this next phase and it involves trimming yourself back so you are not casting as much shade as before, and yet you know somehow you have from time to time cast a whole bunch of shade briefly to save these pitiful shape shifters in your world from the disasters of their own shape shifting stages of body and states of mind. And at some point, hopefully sooner, than later, you have to realize that the only way to do care for these weird organisms populating your home is to step outside of your comfort zone that got you to this point and do some shape shifting of your own.
Anyway, I like that Self is going through what he is going through. It is a good sign to me, even though it is kind of harrowing to watch. You don't get to be a wise man without going through it.
Rock Chalk!
