@dylans
Back when I read a lot about early basketball, I read some where that the weave was run as far back as early pro basketball around 1900. If I recall correctly, 100, an old poster on the web site that this site descended from, indicated that Phog Allen had experimented with a weave some and run it some back in the 1920s even. Another early version of the weave was claimed to have been pioneered by the Harlem Globetrotters. The weave is kind of a generic word for players running cross court at one another from both sides of the court, one with the ball, and one approaching for a toss, or pass, or hand off. But it is important to understand that there are many ways to crisscross and in my opinion each of these ways of running the weave is what really constitutes a particular coaches invention and not the criss crossing and tossing itself. I suspect that there has been criss crossing and tossing the ball likely dating back to the very early days of the game.
The reasons for early origins of the weave may not be apparent to today's fans. In the days of layups it was a way to keep getting closer to the basket. But as the two hand set shot evolve was particularly helpful in getting two hand set shooters loose for a horizontal, sliding two hand set shot that would not be blocked back in the day. My dad, who played high school and a little college ball in the mid to late 1930s showed me the shot with the sideways slide many times. Still the weave kind of receded with the rise of early fast break basketball pioneered by Ward Lambert as far back as the 1920s, but really pioneered back when Wooden played for Purdue in the 1930s and likely by a coach at Wisconsin even earlier. The more contemporary conception of the fast break filling two or three lanes and going appears to track to John McClendon's innovations shortly after he left KU as an unpaid assistant and protege of James Naismith, if I recall correctly.
But it was supposedly Henry Iba that pioneered a fully systematized weave that was used as both an attack offense to get a shot AND as a stalling offense in the 1930s. It was Iba that used it to overcome opponents like KU with more talent than OSU (then called Oklahoma A&M) had. It was Iba that used it to slow down the pace of a game and reduce the number of possessions. It was Iba that refused even open shots until a shooter was completely open very near the basket. The Iba weave would repeat getting closer and closer to the iron until finally some one got a lay up, or the ball was brought back out front and the weave reset and run again. I saw the Iba weave in the early 1960s, long after it had gone out of fashion elsewhere and Iba was called an anachronism, when OSU played in the Big Eight Christmas Tournaments. It was the most boring, frustrating, offense I have ever seen before or since. But Iba was keeping games close with inferior players and hanging on to win it at the end long after everyone had begun to mimic Wooden's running game, or Dean Smith's multiple offense, both of which emerged by the early 1960s, or Knights motion offense, and Eddie Sutton's/Jack Hartman's/Don Haskins' 3-2 high-low emerged by the late 1960s.
After Iba retired, the Iba weave seemed to disappear pretty much in my recollection until Bill Self rethought it and frankly adapted it to enable the athleticism of contemporary players to shake free for a basket at a crucial moment the season before the 2008 ring team. Maybe others here will remember Self running it before that, but that is my earliest recollection of Self developing it.
Whenever he started running it, Self's weave differs markedly from the Iba weave I recall. The Iba weave was much more cross court-oriented with each weave nearing the basket in much smaller increments. The Iba weave was VERY deliberate, repeated many interactions, and as I said just kept repeating until it got within a few feet of the rim.
About the only thing Self retained from the Iba weave was players crossing and transferring possession.
Self devised the weave to be run out of the 3-2 high low initially and so he really never weaved with more than three players in the beginning that I recall. The Iba weave almost always involved four players as far as I can recall for I am recalling the Iba weave from 1962 at least, and Iba supposedly did not even invent the 3-2 High Low until the 1964 Summer Olympics. The Iba weave I recall weaved with 4 players with a post man. Alas I cannot recall what the post man's role was.
Also, the angle of the crossing is much "steeper" in the Self weave, than the Iba weave. Players are running out and curving around and then crossing often at near 45 degree angles of approach to the paint and the basket as they take their tosses. This I believe is why Self called his play the scissor's play rather than the weave early on. The players are cutting across each others paths instead of weaving. If you can find footage of the Iba weave you will likely notice the distinction I am making almost immediately. Self's weave more closely approximates what the Harlem Globe Trotters ran at times than what Iba ran, but don't hold me to that. Someone needs to go back and research this. And Self has elaborated it for a 4-1 set and included four players in the play more recently. And Self has been kind of subtlety dorking with where the tossing takes place. Early on much of the tossing occurred out in the middle of the floor. But now we also see the scissor/weave transfers occurring out on the wings AND in center floor. This scissors offense is much more complicated that it was back in 2008 for sure. We even see some screens in the lanes setting up the freeing of the players to start the scissors on a wing sometimes. Sometimes, I think if it were not for Self being able to dork around and keep adding bells and whistles to the entry into the scissors offense, Self might get too bored and go to the NBA. :-)
Finally, Self's version of the weave has something I don't recall at all in the Iba weave. Self's scissors play is run two different ways. One way the crossing players cross under each other and toss the ball to the player penetrating closer to the basket. The other variation is the player pitches the ball to a player cutting over the top. Sometimes the weave takes the ball farther from the basket and sets up a long jump shot. Other times it takes it closer and sets up a slashing drive into the paint. Here again, I think the Trotters did this some, but Okie State did not. But remember that the Trotters were weaving for comic effects and for chances to do schticks. Self has adapted this action for real.
Because of the differences cited above, I really think Self deserves to be called the inventor of the modern Scissors Play rather than the resuscitator of the weave. He seems to have borrowed some from Iba and some from the Trotters.
In some critical ways Self's play is NOT a weave at all.
Now, what needs more research is whether or not someone else pioneered the scissors play itself before Self.
Iba had an assistant at OSU that left and adapted Iba's slow down game to a much faster pace at either Oklahoma, or Oklahoma City University. I recall the man's name to be Doyle Parrock. I have long viewed Parrock as likely the missing half-step, developmental link between Iba's game and Haskins/Sutton/Hartman's version of Iba Ball. I do not think Parrock succeeded as a head coach and so returned to be Iba's assistant to near the end, of Iba's career, again, if I recall correctly. I have often wondered if Parrock maybe developed some version of the scissors play from the Iba weave and maybe that's where Self got the idea. Its just a hunch. I have no evidence of it.
What someone really needs to do is ASK Self about this issue?
He could clear it up instantly and definitively.
He is so knowledgeable he would probably contradict 2/3s of what I have laid out above. But that's okay. What is important is that we get it down from the master for the record how Self did it--where it came from, when and why?
Self is an amazing guy. What he is doing to and for the game needs to be recorded and understood.
Rock Chalk!
