@lincase
I wish I were. I thought Oubre would go off for 20-30 last game, but the basketball god decided to humble me on that one. But...
I do think when players of great physical ability that have in the past done exceptional things, as the second bananas, go into extended tail spins as first bananas, either injuries, or toughening box tenure, usually explains the struggles.
Self keeps signaling what he is trying to break free in Perry.
But you have to translate Self-ese to recognize it.
Here is the way I translate what Self wants in a basketball player.
He wants a cool cat ready to explode under control in any direction to accomplish any thing needed on a basketball floor at any time.
The methodical automaton, no matter how skilled he may be at his menu of moves, is not the player that plays Self Ball the best.
Self Ball is about a pride of 5 big cats moving in for kill on a herd of whatever happens to be handy to eat.
Have you ever watched a big cat in a zoo pace around his cage?
That is what Self wants in a basketball player.
Big cats have enormous presence as they seem to both look at you and beyond you in their utterly controlled, restlessness.
Big cats can tangle with bears, or hunt impala.
They look for the weakest link and try to eat him.
But they will eat whatever is before them, even if it isn't weak.
Big cats prowl.
They turn on the speed when its necessary, but only when its necessary.
They stalk.
They never stop stalking.
They are relentless.
They only rest after eating.
They are fierce, but their emotions never get in the way.
Notice that Self physically is a striking combination of thick brow, square jaw, and broad shoulders, juxtaposed with skinny hands and legs. He's got some lion in him.
He has a sweet smile, when he's relaxed, but he also shows his pronounced fangs when he is amped up either smiling or venting.
Self is a tension between his female side and his male side--that's very feline.
He is a tension between muscle and finesse.
Self is a feline male that growls and purrs with an Okie twang.
And he was never able to move like the cat he was inside.
That's why he recruits the kinds of players he does. He recruits big cats, long cats--what he felt like but never was.
What did he say about Kentucky after losing the first game of the season to that 2012 ring team? He was practically oozing enthusiasm and envy even though they had just beaten him badly. He smiled admiringly and said, "Those are some long cats."
He wished he could coach those guys.
But compare that with this years UK beat down of his team.
No envy. No enthusiasm. This year's UK players are not his kind of players. They are just four big, long plodders, and perimeter players that really aren't cats at. They are just long types with talent, but no real feline killer instinct in them at all.
Talented as UK is this year, there is no Anthony Davis, or Michael-Kidd Gilchrist among them. Those two guys were Self Ballers on the wrong team. The whole 2012 UK team were Self Ballers on the wrong team. They were space creators and then killers. They may not have had the experience and polish that Self adds to his cats, but they had all big cat thing down. They were born big, long cats. Cal got'em. It didn't matter, because Self admires long cats, no matter who they play for. He doesn't care if they are muscled thick like lions, or think like cheetahs. He loves long cats. On his own team, TRob was a lion. EJ was a cheetah. Tyshawn was super Cheetah. Create space, kill! Create space, kill!
Coaches like Izzo that are all junkyard dog with spiked collars have his number, when ever they don't give him and his cats room to work. They don't bother with his paradoxes. They don't care that he can scratch the hell out of them with his long cats. They just move in and latch onto him and his players, and don't let go. A cat can growl and scratch and fling this way and that, but he can't create space and kill, when a junkyard dog, or a bear, or whatever has him in his locked jaws and won't let go.
Its the law of the jungle that underpins all the fancy sets and actions, all the strategy and tactics, all the philosophy, all the x and y and z-axis stuff, all the micro-bursting treys, and back to basket talk.
Long big cat?
Or junkyard dog?
Lion?
Or Bear?
Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali was a long big cat.
Joe Frazier was all junkyard dog.
Its not that one always has the upper hand on the other.
It depends on the day and the energy in the dog and the cat and the bio rhythms, and the injuries, and the age, and the experience, which one prevails.
Big cats don't like confinement. Even when they are close, they are looking for space through angles. They want room to work inside, or out. Everything about KU's schemes is about creating space to work.
There is a whole subculture of basketball that is cat culture. Pitino is cat culture. Calipari is cat culture. All the space creators, no matter how they say to do it, are big cats.
Big cats want create space because they are so quick in space. Its to their advantage.
Junkyard dogs want to cut off space, eliminate space. They want it to be about nothing but their teeth holding onto your throat, or hamstring. They want to hang on and use their weight against your struggle to tear you apart.
The only time big cats get in trouble is when they think they can be junkyard dogs.
The only time junkyard dogs get in trouble is when they think they can kill in open space.
All games like boxing, basketball and football are ultimately about these two primitive ways of competing and cooperating in environments of scarcity.
Why is boxing more primal than either basketball, or football?
Its not at all based on the hitting. Football is full of much more vicious impacts to the body. Boxing is only more severe to the brain, and as time passes, and science researches, we are learning more and more that football is very bad for your brain. You never see a boxer with a broken neck, or broken spine, or busted spleen, or a bone sticking out of his dermis. While not frequent in football, these sorts of injuries are not rare in football either.
What separates football and basketball from boxing in terms of primal intensity is the scarcity of one ball in the ball games, vs. NO ball in boxing. Its the same with bullfighting. There is nothing to fight over in a boxing ring, or a bull ring. There is just the kill, or be killed. The ball in ball games creates one degree of freedom between kill or be killed, and we the spectators and they they players create psychic space to ease our tensions. The ball, though instituted to the scarcity of one among ten players in basketball, and one among 22 in football, is at least something to focus on OTHER than kill, or be killed.
The ball in ball games gives us a crutch, something to focus directly on, whilst we take in the savagery at an angle, indirectly, if you will.
But I digress (for @wrwlumpy, of course.)
And the point of the digression was to lay in the nature of what Self is seeking to free in Perry Ellis.
Self keeps saying things like Perry is exactly what you would want in a son, he is hard working, conscientious, methodical, a perfectionist. And Self says that's all good off the court, but on the court it is not necessarily the best way to be.
Recall what Self said about Brannen Greene, who obviously drives Self to near distraction because of his wild hairs, which big cats seem not to possess either. Self frankly paid Greene one of his ultimate big cat compliments. He said Greene had no conscience. It was a startling declarative statement in its literalness. Self was characterizing what it actually takes to be a great shooter. You can't have a conscience to be a great shooter, because great shooters miss 60% of the time. If they stop to think about their misses, they could never be great shooters. Great shooters are like big cats. Have you ever looked in their eyes? Do they look like they are anguishing over what might happen if pounced on you and missed?
We are not talking here about human confidence, when we talk about great shooters. We are talking about the confidence of big cats. We are talking about the absence of confidence. We are talking about no conscience at all. We are talking about just the ability and instinct to pull the trigger. There is no end to it. This is why there is such a love hate relationship between great shooters and coaches. I believe it is why many coaches find excuses not to play great shooters, or at least not to start them. Coaches are control freaks. They don't like depending on players that truly have no conscience. I could hear in Self's words when he said Greene had no conscience about shooting. He was both in awe of Greene and in horror of him. He knows Greene is exactly what he needs, and at the same time that Greene is exactly what he does not want. Greene is a highly specialized kind of long cat. He is a shooting cat. Shooting cats are the fundamentally undomesticated wild animals of basketball. The truly great shooter can never be domesticated, not really. They can learn a few domestic tricks, like guarding their man, or running some stuff, and they can fool you occasionally into thinking maybe they are domesticated, but deep down, they are no more domesticated than a mountain lion.
Why do I go on so about Brannen Greene, when the issue is Perry Ellis?
Because what Self is trying to release in Perry Ellis is what Self is trying reign in Brannen Greene.
Perry is a paradoxical scorer. He is a scorer with a conscience. A scorer with a conscience, no matter how good of a scorer he may be, and Perry is a very, very, VERY good one, is no good to a coach bent on building a team of long, big cats.
Why?
Because as I said, scorers, like shooters, miss fully 50% of the time. (Note: Shooters like Greene miss 60% of the time because their shots all come from trey. Scorers like Perry shoot inside and outside.) And a scorer with a conscience, especially with one as severe as Perry's apparently is, is going to disappear about half the time in games after those misses, be they from just missing, or from having the ball crammed down his throat from someone bigger and stronger than him.
I am convinced that Self did not WANT to send Perry to the toughening box this season. Perry is probably never going to be a lion type, or even a tiger type, that tears even the most ferocious bear limb from limb; that's not who he is. But he can sure as heck be one helluva leopard.
But Self tried short toughening stints his first two seasons. He got him a lot of exposure, yet he protected him and let him develop naturally too. But nothing seemed to extinguish his conscience about shooting and missing. No amount of experience and hounding and button pushing seemed to release the leopard in Perry.
So: it is my layman's guess that Self finally just said to Norm, "Erect the toughening box out on the court, put some wheels on it, and hide the key from me and don't give it to me, no matter what he does, or what I say. Norm. Hide it." And Self decided to leave Perry at the mercy of unschemed for competition in a D1 jungle of big men as big and usually bigger than Perry, for as long as seemed within the bounds of humane treatment of another humane being that you love and care about and want to help take it to the next level.
Self apparently believes there is a leopard locked inside of Perry. And the lock and chain are his conscience, which is probably his greatest virtue and strength off the court, but may be holding him back on the sacred wood.
That's my take anyway.
