🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Johnny .600 aka J.600 aka Johnny Jones is on the verge of doing the brain-damagingly unthinkable.

J.600 is taking the greatest college basketball freshman, since Andrew Wiggins and going NOT .600 but .500!!!!!!!!!

Hmmmm.

What was Bill Self's record after six games with Andrew? I can't recall exactly, but it was above .500, wasn't it? Wasn't it above maybe even .600? Gosh, Bill's career average is .821. It might have been .821 after 6 games. Well, it might even have been 1.000 after six games. Bill is pretty good. And even Bill struggled some with getting a mix right with Andrew and in the end had one of his worst seasons with him. But that included a conference title, didn't it?

Johnny.600 is really making people forget what life was like before Ben. NOT!!

How can the powers that be that ordered the dump trucks to Baton Rouge live with themselves? How do they sleep at night knowing they sent one of the best young players to enter college basketball in ages to Baton Red--to the Bayou Bungles--to Johnny.600?!!!!!!!

What kind of asymmetric talent distribution is this?

I mean at least early on in the apparent talent embargo of adidas programs, well, the top players went to coaches that had better than .600 records.

I mean, Anthony Davis went to Kentucky!!!!!! And he did so whether or not the newspaper in Chi-town that reputedly refuses to retract its story about the incentivizing of monobrow happened, or not. And to The Squid!!!!!

I know, I know, I know! I know The Squid is not among the best coaches. I know the Squid can't win with your'n and with his'n. I know The Squid would be Gianni .500 most seasons with the talent Self has been getting the last couple years. I know The Squid went to the NIT and lost in the first round the only year he faced a serious injury to a key player, where as Self seems to face several serious injuries to several key players each season the last few years and still wins conference and goes to the NCAA tourney. But I mean at least The Squid is above .600 for his career and has gone deep several times and backed into a ring with six draft choices. I mean, didn't Ben Simmons at least deserve The Squid?

Did some body make a mistake with the GPS in the dump truck?

Ben coulda been uh contenduh!!!!!

We don't want that Ben should end up uh bum!

Great talent is supposed to advance in America. It is supposed to be propelled to the top in USA. Great talent is supposed to at least get Dick Harp and to double overtime before being chiseled out of a ring by the refs and Frankie McGuire's underground railroad in reverse, ya mugs understand?

Like, uh, I am callin' Big Julie in Chicago, see, or mebbe Rahm Emanuel, and I am explaining to their honorific-nesses that, like, see, Ben Simmons, well, he has talent and, like, he desoives the best, see, Big Julie? See Rahm? Like if we can get a guy named Barrack in the White House, and we can start up ISIS and ISIL before like they gets off da leash, you knows, well, and we can redistribute the most diversified wealth in human history in 1970 up so 95% of the wealth is in the hands of the top .5% of Americans mitts by 2015, like, Big Julie, Rahm-baby, surely we can orchestrate the dump trucks to take Ben Simmons at least to Lexington, eh? Large Julie, Rahmster-baby, listen to me. If we can do a lot split with the Godfather in Chi, for the President's house, like before he was Mr. President, how come we can't put Ben Simmons in Lexington, eh? I means, Rahm&Julie, we can even get President Obama to come to Mt. Oread and hang with Bill and the Jays, soze, like, why can't we maybe close our eyes and click our heels on our emerald-like slippers and get Bennie Simmons to Lawrence, eh? Why is dis not possible in the ways of the windy city? Or mebbe someone down at the Petroleo Club in Houston, eh? Can't someone on some side of the oil/central banking scam weigh in here and get Benny the Simms outta Baton Red? I mean, I know youz guys has your differences in many highly important matters, but surely, we can agree to let the great talents be coached by Coach Bill, Ratso, or Rat Face, or, well, Rickie P, Cry Me a River Roy, or what have you. Even The Squid, okay?

Bill Self and his staff might not be starting Ben Simmons (though I said that mostly for @HighEliteMajor's edifying amusement), but they would surely be hanging Ws at greater than a .500 type proportionality with Bennie the Simm. I mean, they are hanging Ws without him, right?

And, well, you just know that The Squid would probably have put Bennie the Simm at the 3, since he has Skal Labiscleariefirstie and he would already have scored like 65 points in each cupcake game and be 6-0.

Big Julie, Rahm-baby, I beseech thy and thou. You must like intervene in this issue on behalf of this talented kid.

You must free Ben Simmons!!!!!!!

Maybe this is the ultimate safety move. No one is going to rough up Ben when his team is smack dab in the middle of the conference. He'll still go number 1. He could quit now (and maybe should) and go number 1.

@benshawks08 said:

He could quit now (and maybe should) and go number 1.

PHOF!

Can we stop pretending that Calipari isn't an excellent coach? I don't like him either, but the results speak for themselves. He has taken freshmen-laden teams to four Final Fours in 5 seasons. It takes serious skill to do that. There's a reason top recruits go to UK; they win there (and also he's a sleezy salesman).

@jaybate-1.0 Honestly I have not watched them play a game. Highlights and have read post game AP wire.

But from what I've seen is I don't thinks he's coaching the team. Just letting Simmons do what he wants.

Remember there were a lot of people that wanted Selfnto let Woggins off the "team" leash to show off his skills.

Then came the game @WV and KU wasn't playing well and Self let him off the leash for what 41 and we lost.

Then people said it was Wiggins selfish play that cost KU the game. Or that Self sabotaged himself by letting Wiggins do what he wanted.

I just don't know of Simmons has enough around him talent wise to keep up with him and help him out. He may put up the best Freshman scoring numbers in years but will he make the NCAA tournament?

@JRyman Same with recruiting. First, Self lost his ability to get top talent. When Self started getting those players, we screamed to stop recruiting players who use KU as a pit stop and don't care.

We are so fickle!!

@Makeshift correct me if I am wrong but coaching implies teaching and development yah? Since when did Calipari develop his players? HIs OAD players? Calipari isnt an excellent coach, he is a hack that gets major bizz from the Petroshoe Co Nike dumptrucks unloading top shoe talent by the dozen onto his court.

They just lost, no, they just got their inbred arses handed to them by UCLA!! A team KU just beat by high double figures.

No. Calipari is not a good coach. He is just good at faking it.

@Makeshift said:

Can we stop pretending that Calipari isn’t an excellent coach?

I'm really not pretending.

Cal just hasn't proved he can win diddledy squat without a stacked deck, and even when he had a team full of ringers and the Number 1 draft choice and top Point Guard in D1 in Derek Rose in 2008 at Memphis, he couldn't beat KU.

Cal had to have the kind of edge he had over KU in 2012 to get a ring. Cal had to coach against a team without a single Mickey D, a team that used Conner Teahan as a sixth man without any seventh or eighth man.

When Cal lost even one key player to injury, his center, on a team where he had backups that were decent, he folded like a cheap suit. He wound up in the NIT.

I am not pretending at all about Cal. Cal is an above average coach at best. But there isn't any proof at all that he can do anything at all with average talent. NOTHING. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Find me some evidence that he can coach with lesser talent.

Hell, find me evidence that he can win more rings than Bill Self with twice as much talent as Bill gets.

The evidence isn't there.

I've looked for it.

And look at Cal's record of adaptability.

He still runs the dribble drive offense after all these years. People complain that Self doesn't change enough; that he sticks with his same offense too much. OMG! In terms of offensive schemes, Self is like Proteus compared to John Calipari. Cal runs the Dribble Drive and he runs a relatively simple version of it. There's nothing wrong with running it. But his teams look the same as they did in Memphis. The only difference is that whenever he has 3-4 footers he slows it down and pounds it inside the same as Self does, or anyone else would. Defense? I've never counted, but I have a feeling Cal is about as prone to m2m as Self is. They both have the same mentor in Larry Brown. They both believe in doing the same kinds of things. They both go after the same players. But Self has IMHO shown wildly more variation in offensive schemes than has Calipari.

Cal believes talent wins and says so. He long ago jettisoned coaching players up to learn systems. He just tries to get guys to play at what ever level they are capable of and hopes that because he has more of the top players than anyone else, he will win a ring. But the guy has only won one ring, same as Self. And about the same percentage of Ws. So: since Calipari is getting talent by the dump truck load, and coaching at another blue blood program, how can one infer anything other than that Calipari is: a.) not as good of a coach as Self; and b.) really just an above average coach with waaaaaaaay above average talent?

I don't hate John Calipari at all. He is a KU guy and a Larry Brown guy and I am like KU and Larry, so I like John Calipari. But without the talent conveyor that feeds his programs, he just would have been a coach off everyone's radar screens, or so I opine.

Ben Simmons is not even a real basketball player. He is a computer generated 3-D android kinda thing. The reason I know this ?

No Visible Tattoos.

@jaybate-1.0 Coach Self is like Achilles and Calipari is Hector. Calipari has to stack the deck in his favor to even come close to equaling Coach Self.

I dislike Calipari sooo much, its more of a genuine abhorrence of the guy. I am almost ashamed to admit he came from the Larry Brown coaching tree.

One last thing. I cannot wait for January 30th.

@Lulufulu I would argue that there are a lot of things that make up coaching. Calipari has proven to be good at a couple of them. He has recruited good players. He has been able to get a group of talented guys play hard and play good defense. He has managed the playing time expectations of a roster full of guys that all think they should play 30 min. a game and all be OADs and won a lot of games. A lot of the guys have not played that much and have stayed more than one year (which was not their expectation) and he has apparently managed that reasonably well.
Those are not easy things to do. I do not think that just any coach could do all of that.
I don't think he is a great coach. But he has done some of the duties of a head basketball well enough to be very successful. He has managed the business model in the OAD era very well.
I agree with you for the most part on the teaching and development. The most important part of coaching? Sure. But there are other facets which he has mastered.
I don't care for him. But I feel like I have to give credit where credit is due...even begrudgingly.

@jaybate-1.0 Agreed. Without top talent he would be average at best.

@nuleafjhawk

Howling!

@Lulufulu

Achilles and Hector!!!!!

Getting to the classic archetypes!!!!!

What makes Self so impressive to me is that he has this Achilles streak that extends right up to a breaking point, but then the Odysseus in him keeps him from breaking. Few coaches have this quality. Wooden had it. So does K. They go much farther with what they believe in, but then find a flexibility inside not just to bend a little, but redirect greatly, then once the stress is gone to come back on course to the objective, or the goal.

Also, if we can't cover it with the Greeks, we may have to dust off our pre-Hellenist research spectacles and see what the Cycladics and the Minoans have to say about our coach!!!!

LSU will have their starting guard back, (remember Bruce Hornsby, it's his son) soon, he had some early season malodies, and Craig Victor II, who will be eligible after the semester ends as an Arizona transfer. Victor was a #37 player several years ago. I think these two guys will help a lot.

I know everyone doesn't read all of my posts, I don't blame them, but I've seen Ben play twice now. He needs to develop a jump shot, I'm not sure if he's made anything away from the lane all season. He is fun to watch.

@wissoxfan83 Was waiting for you to post something to congratulate you on a great win against the Orange. Heck of a game.

@brooksmd To be honest, I only saw part of the 2nd half. After the Oklahoma debacle, I decided not to waste a whole evening watching as I had other things to do. Then I almost turned it off after we went down by 6. Glad I didn't. It's always extra satisfying to beat Syracuse.

@Lulufulu Coaching in college involves recruiting, development, x's and o's, team chemistry, occasionally father figuring, etc. Many components. Cal's style is more about one-year talented players, so it's less about development and more about getting them to play well together. But I think he does develop as well. I would not consider them stacked this year; I don't think he did much better at recruiting than KU did for 2015 (if at all). But I think by March they will be pretty dangerous. Fake it til you make it? Maybe, but if it gets the intended results, what's the difference?

@wissoxfan83

If I had known he were Hornsby's kid, I would have set up a scholarship just for him, on the condition Bruce would sing The Way It Is at each game against a ranked opponent!!