@KUSTEVE
Great news about Garrett’s driving. He was kind of a blank slate waiting to be written on offensively. KU’s staff has a good record of finding ways for guys to offend that helps both them and the team. Occasional failures but mostly successes.
Controversial Hunch: Vick still being sharply underestimated. Self had him playing the domestique role last season and he got in a funk about it, but played the role well when positive. Guys that have done this role for Self as underclassmen have tended to have large senior seasons, even despite stormy stretches of impatient youth the next to last season. Look at it this way: Vick started and did pretty much everything one can do for a team as domestique for a Final Four team. He is a gifted athlete who has been in the toughening box. He has had an off season to work on his dribbling. Self may play OADs so as to get more OADs, but Self could give the keys to the Ferrari to Vick and know he could run LeMans and win. You know Self. He can play Charlie and Garrett with Dotson and Grimes, or he can play Vick 30, who has started in a Final Four with them, and rotate Garrett with known defense and a drive for 20 and rotate Charlie for all of them to keep ball handling as needed.
I see a starting perimeter of Vick, Grimes and Dotson if Dotson can handle D1 speed and violence, else Garrett.
I know folks doubt Vick’s dribbling/passing at point, but he is the best perimeter player on the team and, like Tyshawn once upon a time, offers an unparalleled MUA in athleticism/height/speed tradeoff in D1.
If Self can believe in Vick’s Head, which is probably hard for Self, Self has a championship perimeter to go with his flock of six bigs.
I believe Self, the river boat gambler, as Slayr calls him, will let it all ride on Vick at point to start. Even if Vick crapped out early, it would buy development time for the newbies.
Vick is ripe for the role.
And Self tends to try to scheme to get his five most talented guys that are sufficiently developed on the floor as starters.
Vick is one of those three perimeter guys out of the gate.
Self has to ride him, or spend a season with every guy on the team knowing the team could be better.
Self won’t let that happen.
Self’s only viable alternative is to give the keys to Grimes or Dotson and pray for instant maturity (and low TOS), which even Mario Chalmers, Josh Jackson, and Josh Selby lacked to be given the keys as frosh, and let Vick play the wing.
Don’t see Self doing this first half season except for development stretches against weak teams.
Vick fails the eye test for many, because he looks a little crazed with the stare and the hair. He also looked a little awkward ball handling, because he was obviously more overwhelmed doing all the chores than was Devonte before him, who made domestique look so easy Devonte’s junior season.
But I argue that, except for Vick’s funk (and its a rare KU player that doesn’t have one under Self’s relentless needle) and short trey slump, Vick did the domestique role as well, or better, than Devonte otherwise.
Vick is a right tail character, if you will. Most fans hate uniqueness, when it comes down to point guards. They will tolerate and even relish freaks elsewhere, but they want the eye test passed at point. Fans struggled with Tyshawn and Elijah, because both failed the eye test and legacy expectation of how the position “should” be played. They over focused on both those players’ traditional deficiencies and underestimated the benefits of their unorthodoxies.
But here is the proof in the pudding. KU crapped out in March with eye test orthodoxies, like Devonte and Frank, same as it crapped out with eye test unorthodoxies, like Tyshawn and Elijah.
I grew up with racial eye tests that said you couldnt start five blacks and win a ring. You couldn’t start a black point guard unless he was super human like Oscar Robertson. I grew up with eye tests saying Magic was too tall for point guard. I grew up with eye tests saying Bird couldn’t make it in the NBA because he was white and couldn’t jump.
I. DON’T. BELIEVE. IN. EYE. TESTS.
Vick is like many unorthodox talents. His flaws are used as evidence he cannot get better and do what his team needs.
This team needs Vick to lead it AND be point guard to become the best team it can be, or else Vick needs to have the greatest season a KU wing ever had and pray Grimes or Dotson can mature and protect and distribute instantly. No one else can make KU as good as Vick at point could make it.
Most are sure Vick can’t do it, same as most were sure Tyshawn and Elijah couldn’t do it. But Tyshawn and Elijah both led KU to titles and post season, same as Frank and Devonte did.
Vick da man!
He is about to learn what real loneliness is. He thinks being viewed as weird is bad. He thinks not being accepted is bad.
But just ask Devonte, or Frank, or Tyshawn, or Elijah, or Sherron, or Marcus, or Brandon, or anyone given the keys, when KU is down 14 with ten to go on an opponent’s floor and no teammate can hit shit, or find a weakness in his match up, or stop their best guy. Ask them how lonely it is when you take the ball and begin the long grind back everyone doubts can be made. Ask them how lonely it is when you come up short and have to face the reporters and your teammates are all showering and your coach’s eyes are saying: it’s on you dude. You wanted the keys. I can’t play for you. It’s your team. Find a way to make it work—to make them believe again.
