@HighEliteMajor
I am posing hypotheticals here and some premises that are not at all far fetched. I am not assuming these premises are the only ones possible. It is everyone else that is assuming away Bad Ball's value and that is a very reductive way of thinking about our offensive strategy for the coming season.
What I am assuming is follows.
I assume that Bad Ball is never the only option.
I assume Bad Ball is one of many options, at least after Self borrowed drive ball from Bo Ryan at UW and then extrapolated it to its logical extreme, as near total reliance on impact-space-shrinking BAD BALL.
I am inferring from last season that the results of Bad Ball can really only be rationally interpreted with high probability one of two ways.
The first way--the most conservative assessment--is that Bad Ball was at least as effective as any other option then feasible; i.e., it resulted in a best of all possible outcome under the horrendous injury and talent deficit circumstances. It resulted in a .500 stretch at the end of the season that salvaged the title, won two games in the conference tournament and won at least the first game in the Madness with a team:
a.) lacking a credible low block presence the entire season;
b.) a team decimated by injuries by the start of the late .500 stretch to the point that its best player (Ellis) was reduced to a punching bag with a charley horse (after being highly productive for a short stretch of playing Bad Ball in good health);
c.) its best trey baller on the wing (Greene) was playing operable and growing increasingly ineffectual from trey (or doing anything else for that matter);
d.) its best wing (Selden) could neither create at the rim, nor make open looks at the trey stripe reliably regardless of how KU attacked all season long (and he certainly did no worse playing Bad Ball than he had playing the various approaches Self had tried earlier in the season);
e.) the team's first perimeter backup--Graham--was injured down the stretch and saw his trey balling and play in general falter;
f.) the team's projected phenom on the perimeter--Svi--imploded into uselessness early and despite intermittent trials never recovered to be able even to fight over a pick;
g.) its second best player--Frank Mason--had played so many minutes, because of all the injuries to other players, that his explosiveness was leaving him and he could only really go hard for short stretches of games; and
h.) the probability of Frank slumping from trey down the stretch was rising with each game down the stretch, because he had not yet had his trey shooting slump all season.
The 500 stretch--it was kind of miraculous that BAD BALL yielded even a .500 stretch down the horrors of the injury jungle that took the team completely off the Burma Road and into passage overland by way of the jungle.
But my common sense, and my analytics, lead me to argue that BAD BALL was not just a wash with other possible paths Self might have taken, but an absolutely brilliant strategic improvisation to the most difficult injury circumstances and talent deficits Self has ever faced. And thinking this brings me to the other way of thinking about BAD BALL last season.
Let me restate the above.
The second and more probable interpretation is of course that BAD BALL by going .500 resulted in a vastly superior result to what would have happened with ANY other approach; that it salvaged a title, won two conference tourney games, and won one game and that no other offensive approach would have yielded half as good of a result.
Self could not call in Nic Moore and Julian Debose.
Self could not turn Wayne Selden around apparently in time for him to create at will and make everything okay under any system he tried.
Self could not depend on Svi's trey, because Svi could not stay with his own shadow over a pick.
Self did not have Mr. Keep the Ball Alive and score 12 garbage points without turnovers in Mickelson last season. When he put Mickelson in Mickelson always looked kind of good, but then his TOs and post guarding hurt more than he helped and he was not doing all the good things he did over in Korea. And he got a few looks under both the early style of play and the late style of play. Mickelson just wasn't ready for whatever reason.
Jamari injured his leg to the point he couldn't even do his one trick--exploding out of position on defense.
Lucas? Lucas was like a cadaver in the post most of the season regardless of whatever approach Self tried early or late.
Which brings us to Oubre. Oubre was a shell of himself down the .500 stretch. Self could have played clear out the side for Kelly every trip and Kelly would not have been able to do much more than he did. He had a bum wheel all season that got better briefly in the middle third and then reduce him to a decoy down the .500 stretch.
So: Self had Mason going good all season, Ellis finally finding his ass with both hands in the mid to late conference season, and Greene improving to the middle of the season and then playing operable the second half of the season and deteriorating steadily.
So: Self then had Mason and Ellis. But then Ellis got injured and was basically a shell of himself during the .500 stretch.
So: Self then had Mason.
And Frank had the lingerie and all the signs of wear and tear and gimpy knees from too many minutes played. And Frank played in bursts. And a betting man that plays probabilities had to be betting that Frank was going to slump sooner or later in the season from trey.
Now, I ask you: what offense could possibly have done half as well as BAD BALL did?
Maybe the Knight/Coach K motion offense, but that takes players a long time to learn and really only thrives with effective big men. Oh, and Self has never coached our guys to play that actually reasonably complicated offense a day in their lives before this season.
How about the Dribble Drive? Well, hmmm, wasn't that in effect what Self had the team doing? Putting on the deck every chance they got from all positions and driving it? And he had them doing it without having to junk the High Low formations and team them new formations and new reads, right?
Hey, what if Self had just stayed in the High Low Formations as he did, and he had listened to you and I urge him to spike the 3ptas?
Welllllll, down the stretch he would have had exactly one good trey baller (Mason) inching ever closer to a slump that was not either operable, or on a slow heal from a blown wheel, or concussed, or what have you.
Does anyone seriously think that green lighting operable Brannen Greene, or cotton candy knee Oubre, or leg injured Devonte, or exhausted Frank Mason, or Svi in a season long slump with no D, to salvage the season with trey balling was a remotely sensible strategy that would have won at more than a .250 rate?
I mean last season you and I could indulge ourselves in the statistical advantage of spiking the trey, when we did not know that Greene was operable, that Devonte was going to get injured, that Selden was NEVER going to come around in the season, that Oubre was NEVER going to heal during the season.
But Self knew.
Self was on the wall, as you said.
Self made the hard decision, as you said.
And he miraculously won .500 down a stretch that most coaches would have goose egged by trying to stay with the same old same old, or panicking and turning the injured trey ballers loose.
Self went waaaaaay outside the envelope and bought a .500 stretch that no other strategy I can think of could probably have achieved.
And the scary thing to those that don't like BAD BALL is this: if BAD BALL can win at .500 in that situation, it can probably kick as and take names later with everyone healthy and a couple of new big man adds that might actually be able to score if Frank drives and dishes to them.
With everyone healthy, and with the talent we have, I would really like to see Self spike the 3ptas to 25-30 per game, but really I would like to see all possessions start with a 3pta and then try other things on the rebound. It is so statistically sound it is goofy not to play it that way.
But even I will not rule out the possibility that BAD BALL might win at a higher percentage than any other approach out their with a full deck of talent in good health.
BAD BALL may be to this generation of the game what Dean's Four Corner's Offense was to the late 1970s. Everyone hated Dean's Four Corners Offense that started as a stall and then became an actual offense, whenever opponents tried to stall on UNC. Dean's four corners force a rules change to a shot clock and even then it still worked frequently. And Dean had the greatest talent of his time year after year for several seasons.
Good Lord!
If Self were to break out of the recruiting asymmetry and finally start getting the amount of talent that his expertise and W&L statement and ring suggest he SHOULD be getting, and he plays BAD BALL with the BEST TALENT out there, he might well go undefeated for several seasons.
It is a wicked, ugly thing to do to the game of basketball as surely as was Dean's Four Corners, but the rules permit it and it went .500 with a bunch of injured guys and modest talents that shouldn't have done better than .250 down the stretch.
The ugly, hated offensive strategies that get discovered occasionally are like vampires. They keep coming back to haunt the game until they finally prevail and the game changes the rules to stop them.
