Self is a genius, not only at basketball strategy, but in addressing the media, so as not to betray what he is trying to do in his basketball strategy. 😄
Grant faced a similar problem late in the Civil War. He was among the most brilliant strategists and tacticians our country has produced. When finesse and maneuver could win the day in the West he proved himself brilliantly effective. When he came east, he read the vast difficulty of the situation correctly, and changed his approach profoundly and decisively yet consistently with his underlying principle.
He knew Sherman's March from Chattanooga to Savannah would be criticized as viciousness of a high order in its effect on civilians. But he knew he needed to defeat not one but two foes: the Confederate Army and the Confederate people and he had to protect Lincoln from as much criticism as possible while doing it.
He let Sherman terrorize the Confederate people on the way to positioning his army to put Lee and the Confederate people between a great hammer and anvil. Grant then began relentless pursuit from both directions that all sides called heartless and blood thirsty and strategically misguided until Lee and the Confederacy collapsed.
Grant took all the "blame" for the winning strategy and tactics by not explaining he had told Lincoln this was what it would take to win the war decisively. He took the media's wrath, so Lincoln did not have to, so Lincoln could survive and sustain him in his mission.
Self was keeping the mud off Allen and Iba, but both men would understand and applaud the brilliance of what Self is doing. Allen tried any and every kind of strategy and tactic he could think of over the years. Iba was the father of slowing it down and gumming it up, even as he was the father of the modern basketball offense. Great strategists and tacticians find ways to get it done. And it can take sensibility a long time to catch on to the brilliance and elegance of what many call ugly to begin with.
The awesome elegance of new ideas often overwhelms even its inventors, whose aesthetics are products of the time before their genius transformed possibility.
Oppenheimer said he thought of the eastern scripture "I am become death, destroyer of worlds," when he witnessed the first test of the atomic bomb that hastened the end of one war and bounded the USSR, then deterred world wars to date.
The responsibility of a great leader in competition is to get the most out of what he has within the rules and put his side in the best position to win, then get it done.
My father did not take his boots off for ten days on Iwo Jima. He did not change his uniform for three weeks. He and his fellow Marines did not fight pretty. They had to change how they fought in real time. It was not pretty. But they got the most out of what they had, and despite all the human error, they got it done. My father never did view Iwo Jima, or war, or competition as an aesthetic contest. He never saw Iwo Jima as a beautifully composed photo of a flag raising and he constantly reminded me not to think of any competition that way.
Basketball is a game capable of beautiful moments.
But it is not a beauty contest. Naismith and the rules never awarded points for beauty. The points are awarded and withheld by getting the ball in the basket and keeping the other team from doing the same--within the rules.
The deep beauty of what Self and his team are doing lies within the elegant fit of their strategy and tactics with their abilities within the rules.
The more tightly the refs call the game, the better Self's Bad Ball works.
Self's Bad Ball does not, like thug ball, depend on breaking the rules and refs swallowing whistles. Quite the contrary. It uses KU's athleticism to disrupt flow and then attack from all five positions. It challenges the refs to call the fouls and exploits both when they do, AND when they refuse to. Unlike thug ball, or even winning ugly, this is elegance and sophistication of a high order that is not yet smooth and flowing. This the elegance of chaos theory and emerging complexity. And these are the two most elegant scientific paradigmns to emerge the last half century.
Bad Ball is an experiment in altering fluid dynamics on wood.
There is as always the shock of the new.
Rock Chalk!
