@nuleafjhawk
A good game is building a 15 point lead with ten to go and spending the lead at 1 PPP to shorten the game and win by 5-10 with the opponent making 1.25-1.50 PPP.
At least this is a good game in today's game, where young teams have to play 40 games of defense and intense bodying for the first times in their lives. They have to play alot of 2 games in 3 days, and occasionally 3 in six. The season starts sooner, and runs later and finishes with 3 games in three days in senseless conference tournaments. Then good teams have to play March Madness stretching into April.
D1 is kind of NBA Lite instead of D1. Coaches and players are spending lots of time trying to conserve energy and play long benches and avoid high possession games frequently to keep gas in the tank for the Monday night game after the Saturday game, or what have you. And all the while they are doing this they are doing it with a bunch of critical contributors that have never been through the grind of even one NBA Lite season. And if you are lucky enough to have OAD/TAD grade players, those guys appear to be protecting the merchandize for draft day from the git go.
So: it just doesn't make sense to try to play balls to the walls, and a coach of OADs can't, even if he wants to, unless he takes a Nike stack of 9-10 OAD/TADs.
But there is another layer to this beyond NBA Lite and OAD/TADs protecting merchandise.
The game has come under the dominant influence of two really great coaches that believe in a highly controlled, highly efficient approach to the game descended from Henry Iba: Coach K and Bill Self.
They are coaching the game the same way.
They build leads and then spend the leads shortening the games to win.
Duke and KU both build sizeable 15-20 point leads and then spend the lead to win by 10.
Duke just played Florida State. Duke had 9 flippinging reputed OAD/TADs and walked away from Florida State, but then tightened it up, just like Self does when he has 3 OAD/TADs and is playing teams with none.
By the end of the game, Duke looks threatened by Florida State, who draws close, but can't get a lead.
Why? Because every time the lead gets under a certain point, Coach K, and Self, loosen it up and go to more productive offensive activity.
The coaches are dialing the action up and down the offensive productivity scale. Possession shorten when the lead gets thin. Benches shorten. There is more three point shooting, more transition squirts, more defensive pressure and trapping to force TOs and strips, and less playing to stretch possessions out longer at both ends of the floor.
Once the lead is restored, then they tighten it up again and begin spending the lead with lower productivity, longer possession offense, and less disruptive defense more focused on forcing the opponent into longer possessions.
When they are trying to build leads, they are lengthening the game into more frequent and shorter possessions.
When they are trying defend leads, they are shortening the game into fewer and longer possessions.
Duke could have blown Florida State out, but then Florida State would have been incentivized into putting Duke's runaway OADs on the floor, risking injuring them, same thing Self faces against B12 teams with no OAD/TADs.
If you let the lead narrow by lengthening possessions on both ends, it statistically increases the probability of you winning AND it saves the face of the opposing coach and takes away his need to get physical with your superstars.
It is not that we never have big wins. It is that they really only happen if we are shooting lights out in our tightening it up mode, getting a favorable whistle, and the opponent can't hit the broad side of a barn. Crushing oponents is not longer the goal of great teams. "Playing right," as Self said in stories yesterday, takes care of winning. Playing right now involves all of the things I have out lined. Playing right leads to building 15-20 point leads and then playing right leads to spending the leads to wind up winning by 10-15.
America is a different country now than it was 50-60 years ago. We don't declare wars and demand unconditional surrender any more, because we mostly fight asymmetric warfare, where we often have to resort to small foot print force structures fighting counter terrorist strategy with a lot of fighting dirty. To declare war, and to demand unconditional surrender in the nuclear age just wouldn't cut it. Unconditional surrender would often lead to nuclear war and everyone loses in that. So we fight counter terror warfare and we fight filthy dirty. And we don't want to declare war, because that would tie us to a lot of international and rules of warfare that would either prevent us from fighting dirty, or get all our leaders and soldiers charged and convicted of war crimes. So: we just don't declare the wars any more. And we don't try to win. We just try to convulse our adversaries into chaos, and keep them there for decades on end, and let them exhaust and defeat themselves.
Basketball isn't the same game it was 50 years ago, when John Wooden and UCLA sought to crush opponents with overwhelming force and win by 20 at the end. Seasons were shorter. The game was called tighter. Opponents couldn't resort to punking your superstars. Your superstars weren't always jumping in one season. Now most coaches just try to win and help the other coach save face, so he isn't provoked into calling in the Hurt Locker plays, or airing your dirty laundry.
Shoot the trey, transition when you can.
Build a lead, spend a lead to defend a lead.
Cal could have beaten KU 150 to 50.
He kept it 70-40, or whatever.
Don't let the close scores fool you, when the talent of the two teams is asymmetric.
The games aren't as close as the scores suggest.
