Cheick Diallo is only allowed to be cleared if he plays for a Nike program.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Yeeeeeeeeeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
After a military coup, a law is passed requiring all Americans to get plastic surgery so they look like coach K
Calipari gets another long stack and wins a ring by playing BAD BALL.
Self wins five straight rings, but is forced out for being too stubborn.
It is discovered that basketball invented at Kentucky
Dick vitale and Kaitlin Jenner replace Bob Davis, fall in love, and get married at center court in Allen Fieldhouse.
KU drops basketball to focus on football 😱💩
Coaches can only take away parts of the court that their players have the skills and athleticism to take away. Izzo's defensive players were recruited specifically to make it unlikely for opponents to get open, unchallenged looks. This forces them inside and take fewer outside shots than they otherwise would. The reality of the game is that parts of the court are taken away all the time. The reality of the game is that the opposing coach adjusts. The reality is that the original coach then counter adjusts. Over the course of the game, sooner, or later most times one coach find something to take away the other coach cannot counter adjust too very effectively without creating much greater vulnerability. So he is stuck in equilibrium strategy even though it may I very much doubt That KP's statistics are yet tuned to track this interplay. One coach has only to find the weakness of another coach briefly to win the game. Self wins 82% of his games in large part because he has had good players sit in a ski conducive to adjustment and counter adjustment, and he is much better at playing this back-and-forth contest between coaches. Game theory has long exposed the critical dynamics of back and forth interplay in two player games, which basketball is on a team level. Each move has impacts that alter the opportunity set of the other player. Over time, equilibrium strategy sets in. The object of a player in a game is to use moves to bias. which equilibrium strategy emerges, so that it is more favorable to one player than another. Statisticians that are not game theorists rarely measure and so take into account dynamics of interplay.
Quite a gallery. Quite a school. Add my wife and her dad.
"KU is a great 3 point shooting team as long as HCBS lets them play"
So far I would amend that to "...as long as Opposing Defense lets them play."
You hit that one on the sweet spot.
Shooting percentage is driven by:
1.) shooter comfort level (I.e., openness, distance, preferred angle, which distill to spot, and leg energy; and
2.) random variance around the shooter's average.
Versus MSU, KU was battling a good defensive team and coach capable of using physical MUA at each perimeter position, especially height, to sharply reduce KU's comfort level in most ways.
Further, KU's prior sky high Trey percentage meant KU was likely to be shooting back to its average.
The two factors compounded to drive KU's 3pt % down to 20%.
Against Chaminade, something nearly the reverse occurred--two factors compounded to drive it upward 50%.
Will the two factors always drive the same direction? No. Team development, oponent variations, and Complexity dynamics will combine to increasingly reduce frequency of this simultaneous driver direction. But the two drivers will always be at work.
Can Self anticipate their movement directions before games? Yes, with some probability.
Can he test his assumptions early in a game and achieve greater confidence in the two factors anticipated directions, once he knows what the other team will give him? Yes, with greater probability.
Could this process explain more Trey attempts against a bad team like Chaminade giving them the line? Yes.
Could it explain fewer Trey attempts against a good team like MSU able to guard the line and the paint? Yes.
It could also explain Self's actions when he might have more mixed anticipations regarding these factors.
It does not mean it is the best process to follow.
Note: I found your analysis paralysis post incisive and wanted to take awhile digesting it before responding.
Clearly stated. Add that good defensive coaches also scheme to deny spots to shooters, because most shooters are sharply better shooters from some spots than others. Add also that the best defenders CAN guard inside AND out, and CAN help inside AND out; then the issue is specified.
Going to a tourney with seeding biased for eyeballs, as Bary Hinson said, and apparently biased by Refs appearing to use no calls and phantom calls to manage some spreads and maybe some outcomes is like trying to win your girl a birthday present at a crooked carnival with a barker that doesnt like you.
What u r saying is one way to put it. 😄
Against Northern Colorado?
Cupcakes are meant to be slaughtered.
So when you slaughter a cupcake, how you do it reveals far more than that you do it.
KU slaughtered Chaminade 123-72.
It did it with 50% trey balling on 29 attempts and it did it going +24 on rebounds.
Were these tools of slaughter something KU can count on maintaining against a good team?
No.
KU has now shot a scintillating 3pta percentage against two cup cakes this regular season and shot an ice cold 20% against a ranked MSU. Dare we infer anything from an "n" of 3? No. Do we even hazard any hypothesis this early? Yes.
Hypothesis: KU is one of those good three point shooting teams that tends to shoot a good trey ball percentage only against sharply inferior teams that can't guard them worth a damn outside.
Next.
Rebounding--KU did to an incredibly mismatched Silverthorn front court something akin to what Kentucky did to KU in the first nightmarish game of last season. They got every rebound they wanted and a few they didn't even try for, because they were longer and stronger, quicker and better jumpers. They so outmatched Chaminade in the paint that Carlton Bragg could stay on a spot and actually body Silverthorns off theirs. Now, don't get me wrong. Hunter Mickelson defied the laws of mismatches and did not grab a single rebound in 12 minutes. Zero. Against Chaminade. That is like a diamond thief walking out of a jewelry store empty handed after the night watchman died of a heart attack. That is like a hungry shark passing up a meal of baby seals dipped in blood. That is like a hungry cat passing up free mice next to a dead cat. That is almost statistically impossible. But Hunter aside, KU went up +24 on reebs, and couldn't go up +24 on a ranked team, even if Self promised them James Harden money for doing so.
The only two things to be gleaned for sure from this basketball time waster in Maui are:
1.) its handwringing time about KU shooting waaaaaay back to average against the next opponent; and
2.) the first five minutes of the game KU came out inexplicably not guarding the trey line and got burned for awhile, and they better not do that against their next good opponent, or they are dead meat.
There endeth the post.
Each season I pick one troubled player, or one player that is not getting the breaks, but who is furiously trying to make it against all the odds. Last season I embraced Hunter Mickelson. Another season I embrace Mario Little. Before Brandon Rush recovered, I embraced him. After he recovered I embraced the player that started for him until Brandon recovered. When Brady got suspended I supported him. I don't adopt the guys that are a little down, or a little in the corner. I just cheer for them and find flaws in their games that could make them get better. I adopt the guys that are all the way down--the guys on the ropes with Drago bearing down on them--the guys about to lose their dreams, the guys with fire in their bellies that burns on the verge of consuming them BEFORE they learn to harness it. It doesn't always help, in terms of turning a season into a fairytale ending for such players. There is no way to overcome not being good enough. All of us sooner or later aren't good enough. Even Big Russ, Wilt and Michael Jordan finally weren't good enough. Father time, if not Father talent, is an ultimate opponent no one beats.
I ran out of talent long before I had to play and lose to Father Time in basketball. No one gave a shit about the end of my career but my father and mother and me. But I guaranty you I mourned the passing of my career as much as Big Russ, Wilt, and Michael did theirs. It is one thing--maybe the only thing--Michael, Wilt, Big Russ and I share in common--we all lost the last competition--each of our basketball careers ended. Finito. Over. Memory Hole.
These young men on the KU basketball team that are so much better than I ever was--they will one day, sooner, hopefully much, much later, be teammates of mine in losing the last competition. We are the biggest team in basketball--the team no one deep in their hearts ever thinks they will join--the team no one wants to be a member of--until they are on it--and even then a part of them wishes they weren't--but knows its the Tao of Basketball--it is the one way ride. It is the discovery that time's arrow points only one direction and its forward.
This team, it includes my deceased brother and father,. It includes many other dead Jayhawks: Phog Allen, and W.O. Hamilton, and Dick Harp. The only dead Jayhawk it may not include is James Naismith. I truly have never seen, or heard it documented beyond a reasonable doubt that Jimmy ever actually played the game he invented. And I doubt, if he ever did, that he ever played for another coach. He is the Father--the immaculate father.
This team, It includes the living too. The living in a kind of blessed basketball purgatory, where they get to cheer and be members of this team that lost the final competition of their lives. It includes Bill Self. It includes Roy Williams, Larry Brown, Ted Owens. It includes former Jayhawks like Dean Smith, Danny Manning, Jarrod Haase, Tad Boyle, and KU coaching disciples over the years too numerous and KU players too many to recall here.
The team is vast.
This team, it includes non Jayhawks, too. It includes Ward Lambert, Henry Iba, Claire Bee, Pete Newell, Frank McGuire, Don Haskins, Al McGuire, Ralph Miller, Tex Winter, Jack Hartman, Eddie Sutton, Bob Knight, Mike K, Rick Pitino, John Thompson and son, Jerry Tarkanian, John Calipari, Sean Miller...and so on. They all lost the last competition.
All of us that ever picked up a basketball and made a team, even if only briefly, we are all, like it or not on the same team now--the biggest, baddest, most talented and least talented team in the game. The team of players that lost the last competition; that finally had to quit going to the gym to please a coach, and win some moments on the sacred wood with the black lines and the orange rims with the white nets; that finally never got to be on a basketball team again playing the greatest game ever invented; the team that has only one opponent--death itself. Once you are on this team, you are on this team. This team is big and it grows bigger each moment. So far, anyway, even death cannot take away teammates faster than they are added each year. We are the Father of All Basketball Teams. The Last Team any of us will ever be members of.
It is from this vantage point, through a flat computer screen, that I experience and process Brannen Greene's reputed melt down and 6-game suspension, and place it in its proper (at least for me) perspective.
It is from this vantage point that I virtually adopt players like Brannen.
It is from this vantage point that I notice all these guys that I have adopted eventually made something of themselves, eventually transcended the self-made shit storms they became involved in during their time under the KU spotlight before their final competitions.
Why do I do this? Why do I care? Why do I love these players so? Why do adopt the most troubled among them, at least the most troubled from the outside looking in?
It is not as simple as supporting an underdog. Most of these guys have been massively favored by the basketball god in terms of physical abilities and talents. Most of them 60 will still be able to be better than I was at my best at 17-18.
I have often asked myself why give an aglet at the end of a lace in the eyelets of a petro shoe anymore about these guys? They are not even on my team yet. They have not even lost the final competition yet. They should be supporting me, not the other way around. They still get to play.
I am just a stinking, often incorrect, inconsequential board rat engaging in an ephemeral activity of posting on an internet basketball site. Its data packets will in time be lost to all, but the NSA, who will absurdly keep them stored in some deep cavern under Hutchinson, or Area 51 Nevada and never looked at, for centuries, unless some idiot in the national security bureaucracy mistakes this infinitely loyal citizen for a basketball terrorist. I am in short a basketball fan with no rational influence over these player's futures that I can discern, whatsoever.
So: why do I adopt and defend incompletely neural-netted guys that don't even know I exist; that are probably too young and too caught up in their own problems to care that I care about them?
It has taken me awhile and millions of words to explain it to myself, to distill it into something both understandable and true, at least to me.
I have had to wade through many self-deceptions and misunderstandings of the issue in pursuit of these diamond hard gems of insight.
Consider them not as your reasons, but as evidence that if you seek to know why you post, or what good it does, you too can find your own truth trodding down the dark hall I have virtually walked the last ten years.
The insights distill as follows.
Everybody needs as many people to care about them as possible, and I can afford to care about these players, so I do.
Player's growing up are part of the "amazing things that happen in that building" and our caring for them is a minor, but nothetless significant contributor to the amazing things that happen in that building.
The amazing things that happen in that building are part of the living myth of Kansas basketball, and that living myth knocks the callouses off the hearts of many and enriches the spiritual lives of all that touch it for any length of time.
Self makes mistakes with guys, but if he has enough chances to get better with a kid, and if a kid gets enough chances with Self, amazing things can happen to the lives of players in that building, and my caring remotely influences that, and even the hard core empiricists can measure the contribution by how hard it is for opponents to win in that building.
Once upon a time on a web site far, far away, a member of the Manning family reached out to me and thanked me for what I had written about former KU assistant coach Ed Manning, and I can never forget that, and so I can never quit believing that the messages in a bottle that I write, that we all write here, might help some good persons, somehow, struggling some times, against seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve a worthwhile goal.
A person struggling against seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve a worthwhile goal is the true definition of a hero.
Heroes matter.
Heroes that will one day be joining my last team matter.
We are all in this together.
I believe.
Go, Brannen, go!
Rock Chalk!
The deal with BG seems totally ok with me. Driven young persons put under great stress sometimes explode in ways they learn from and so avoid later. BG will be fine. Brady was fine after he made his mistake. Mario Little was exemplary after his mistake. BG wouldn't be worth a damn if he didn't explode sooner or late about the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune. Self is a teacher and a coach. They thrives on tempering the steel of such young men. One day BG WILL PLAY GREAT AND WILL GROW UP AND HELP A YOUNG MAN WITH SAME KIND OF COMPETITIVE FIRE!
This is really what sports was about before the money got into it.
Teaching young men with fire to harness it.
Bill will never quit on BG if BG won't quit on Bill.
Screw these chumps today with 5 rings, or Wooden with 10, I want Self to win 11 rings. And to do it we have to get him long stacks like Duke uses to get K his rings. And to get long stacks for 10 more years we have to break the apparent embargo and replace it with a new hegemony.
We need our own dump trucks NOW!
Eleven rings!
Enjoy enjoy pathetic attempts at site destabilization. Often fascinating to watch inept technique. Fun to laugh at.
Rock chalk!
Does any one remember me hypothesizing the NCAA might have an agenda other than eligibility in this clearance case? The hypothesis finally appears to have some evidence coming out to fit to it.
Guarding the basketball grail deep under the center circle of Naismith Court is not for the faint hearted.
Allen looks down from the shadows above the scoreboard and Jimmy looks in through the south Windows each afternoon.
Amazing things happen in that building.
Rock Chalk!
I used to hold your pov, which is still most probable, but...
Elite programs today are so valuable and so important to so many that it seems hard to believe Duke would dare entrust the program to any of the coaches you mention even though K might wish it. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
With Self Duke would be guarantied 82 to 85%, maybe 90%, plus several rings.
Duke has to have seen what happened to UNC after Dean left and they hired the weak candidates before getting Roy and winning two quick rings.
Self would be sure thing. So would Pitino, but Rick is a little long in the tooth.
How could anyone could think that Duke would NOT consider Self for its head coaching position, were Consonants to step down?
And if Self begins to perceive his treatment by KU leadership, alumni and fans to be at all career threatening, why in the world would Bill Self NOT at least consider the Duke job, if he received a feeler about it.
Let me be clear: Self is my guy and I'm behind him, beside him and in front of him. Period.
People need to understand that he is so good he could be gone in the blink of an eye.
The Duke job would seem to be coming up pretty soon. K may want to break Knight's total seasons record. But he may not. This season may be enough for him. Maybe not. Hard to say. Could go 5-6 more years. May be take off the whistle in two seasons. Knight took a powder in the middle of a season. Lots can happen quickly in these sorts of situations.
If K had a disciple that he dearly wanted to have the job, he might hang on indefinitely to keep Duke from hiring a great coach like Self, and get the job for one of K's disciples. But K is an Army guy and career Army guys are loyal to the Army, too. The Army is what goes on, not a specific officers' relationships. K might want Duke to hire the best man and that could well be Self right now, if Self wanted the challenge.
IMHO, Duke is currently the best job in college basketball, much as I hate to admit it, unless and until KU can figure out a way to bring in the talent level that Duke does.
UK is a good job, but one gets the feeling that there may be a super fund site under it for the next coach to deal with.
Monday morning quarterbacking is good.
Disagreeing with strategy and tactics are good.
Challenging who is playing and who isn't is good.
Trying to understand the dynamics of college sports, especially those dynamics that the mainstream media apparently choose never to touch with a ten foot pole is good.
Learning offenses and defenses is good.
But any criticism that argues that Self is anything but an exceptional coach laboring through a difficult stretch of obstacles apparently not constructed by him appears in XTReme Error to me at this time.
Any coach that came to KU under these recruiting circumstances would be laboring like crazy and probably not winning nearly as much.
By the way, I don't recall your alias.
If you're new, welcome.
Rock Chalk!!
We will get 2 OAD/TAD types as usual; because that appears to be tendency for a top adidas school.
The trouble is that is not enough to compete with schools getting short and long stacks.
A short stack is 3-5 per year.
A long stack is 6-10 per year.
There is no substitute for numbers talent over the long haul.
There are anomalous teams each year where less talent goes deep, or even wins a ring.
But the tendency is that you have to have a lot of talent consistently to frequently go deep.
2 OAD/TADs won't get it done.
It offers no margin for error; i.e., for injury, late neural net grow in, or personality conflicts.
You have to break in to the short stack, or long stack numbers, or settle for being an anomaly every once in a while.
No one likes to say it, but KU was an anomaly in 2012, like UConn was an anomaly two years ago. KU '12 fell a little short, because it didn't get the break it needed (no one could upset UK), but that's what KU'12 was.
Another thing no one likes to say is that the only consistent go deep teams consistently have the horses.
You can get a two year run out of a couple of projects that greatly exceed expectations, or out of a couple TADs and some good complementary players, but to tend to go deep and intermittently get upset, you've got to consistently have the horses.
KU is now a team that has to be an anomaly to go deep.
Its is not going to be a consistent go deep team with intermittent early outs with 2 OAD/TADs per season recruited and the rest of the roster filled with guys that back out of Towson State, that leave UArk, or are otherwise projects.
With the kind of talent Self is now able to recruit, he is building to be a Madness anomaly once in awhile, and win the conference title as often as he can.
And if he were to give up on the 2OAD/TAD per season stream and the 5-stars he can land, then he would be relegating KU to mid major status.
KU and he have the adidas contract, so there appears no reason for them not to take the 2 OAD/TADs that appear to come with that contract. They appear kind of givens.
And he might as well recruit the 5-stars, because he has the time and recruiting budget to do so, and because it gets him access to the occasional outlier that connects with him.
He can pick up the <5 stars whenever.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE STACKING IS ASYMMETRICALLY DISTRIBUTING THE TOP TALENT NEEDED TO CONSISTENTLY GO DEEP AND KU IS NOT ONE OF THOSE SCHOOLS BENEFITING.
KU NEEDS TO BECOME ONE OF THOSE SCHOOLS.
HOW IT IS TO BE DONE HAS YET TO BE DETERMINED.
BUT THE GOAL IS CLEAR ENOUGH.
I will go you one better.
He will be the coach of Duke, if Consonants retires the end of this season, or next, and he can get out of his adidas contract, or if it is a rolling, seasonal one year kind of contract.
IMHO, the key to Self's future departure from KU is the length of his adidas contract and his ability, or inability to extricate himself from it.
If he can get out of the adidas contract, and Consonants is stepping down, then Self goes to Duke and signs with Nike.
If he is married to adidas, then its off to the pros.
My hunch is Duke.
Duke and Self are a perfect fit.
Bilas has been laying the ground work for several years now.
I actually think the deal was supposed to happen a couple of seasons back, but then all hell appeared to break loose between Nike and adidas and that temporarily stonewalled any cooperation between them regarding accommodating Self's move.
Self moving to Duke would solve a lot of problems for Nike.
Self would continue Duke as one of two epicenters of college basketball; the other being UK. Nike needs two epicenters. Every principle always has to have two agents to avoid becoming too beholden to one.
Self at Duke would continue to keep Roy and the semi-autonomous Air Jordan sub brand of Nike on the hot seat at UNC, so that Nike could finally find a way to shorten the leash on Air Jordan/UNC.
Self at Duke would clear the way for Nike-Texas, Nike-Baylor and Nike-ISU to dominate the B12.
Self at Duke would even free adidas from having to stay married to a CST anchor and free up its huge commitment to KU and allow it to go courting another EST anchor team.
Self at Duke would help the NCAA by it no longer having to worry about the father of college basketball dragging down ratings each season by commanding so much coverage from it being an 82% winner. It would also free the NCAA seeding committee of having to always try to find a way of early-outing KU to keep better TV draws in the tournament.
Self at Duke would massively help ESPN/CBS/Fox by KU falling by the way side regular season and not being invited to play in the Champion's Classic, not playing in the Madness so often, and not taking up so many Big Monday and Game Day deals. Fewer small eyeball games.
Self at Duke would massively help Big Gaming. More betters in Texas if Texas schools start doing better in the B12 with Self gone.
And the beauty for all of these players is that even if Self were then S-Canned at Duke after two years, well, then KU would still be out of the picture, unless they lucked out and found a great coach that wanted to recruit under onerous recruiting constraints. Would Self have ever come to KU under these conditions? Not.
Self to Duke.
You read it here first.
I have no insider information.
I have read nothing to substantiate it yet.
I am only looking at the career and business logic of the major players that appear to shape the game right now and have hypothesized based on it.
Look at the Coach Consonant disciples. There's no one that is even remotely likely to be a great coach ready to keep Duke at the high level that its been.
Jeff Capel, or Self?
Johnny Dawkins, or Self?
Go on down the list.
Self towers over anyone of the disciples of Consonants.
And Self is huge on education and making players go to class, which Consonants has sold long and hard.
And the Edmond Kid has an Okie accent that can be quickly modified to more Y'alls.
And there has never been an Okie Baller that has been head coach at Duke and it appears part of the Okie Baller religion to take it to all the citadels of college basketball for Mr. Iba.
I mean how much would Duke like to have a handsome, easy to market coach for a change?
Self lacks the Army thing, but he has completely embraced the Marine Corp imagery and the Corp sells big time in the Carolinas.
And he and Cin could have a real plantation, not just a big McMansion.
And Bill could beat Roy like a stick for a few years and be king of tobacco road on a regular basis.
Bill needs players.
Nike-Duke has them.
Nike-Duke needs someone that can take the heat of replacing a legend.
Bill replaced a legend at KU once already...and did better.
This is why I have been harping on KU needing the B12 to get an EST footprint, why KU needs to solve its Big Shoe issue, why KU has to find a way for Self to get draft choices to Lawrence at the 1, 3, and 5 each season every season.
Gotta do it.
Or Bill's gone.
Will KU get another good coach?
Sure.
But they won't get another great one unless they can find away to help him get more talent in than the circumstances currently enable.
It feels like THE LEGACY is moving to another tipping point, another pivotal moment.
Its not here quite yet.
But its coming.
Rock Chalk!
(Author here, RIP DFW, @AsadZ made a reasonable post to me about my POV on Self and recruiting being wanting and increasingly old. It was a reasonable and fair post. I have tried to respond to it reasonably and fairly below. I figured I should make it its own thread partly because of the length of my response, partly because I thought @AsadZ's post took discourse on Self and recruiting and coaching to the nub of things, and partly to give @VailHawk something to count before the pig roast on Maui coming up! :-))
Great to hear from you.
My POV on Self, recruiting, and how he coaches, may be getting old, but it remains valid IMHO.
We don't need a new coach, unless a new coach can get us draft choices ready to play at the 1, 3 and 5 positions each season, as Cal and Coach K can get at UK and Duke.
Self is such a great coach IMHO that he is finding ways to compete with starkly lesser talent than UK and Duke,
I mean can anyone seriously dispute that we lack near as much talent on the team the last two seasons, as we have had in most of his tenure.
Can anyone seriously dispute that since the Morri teams, we have been getting by less and less, except for one season with Wigs and Embiid, and that that season we had no PG, and an operable 2, and a freshman 3 playing the 4 that wasn't anywhere near ready to start and play as many minutes as he did.
It is absurd to think that we can win as many rings, or go as deep as frequently, as UK and Duke, when our talent level is so consistently sharply inferior to theirs at the 1, 3 and 5 positions, and really at all of the positions and all of the rotation positions, too.
KU needs more talent. Self has proven that with comparable talent, even slightly less talent, he is equal or superior to any other coach of his time.
As Self's ability to attract draft choices at the 1, 3, and 5 has declined, Self has proven that he is extraordinarily resourceful and creative in finding ways to avoid the .5o0 seasons and the none conference title winning seasons that other elite coaches have endured even without facing apparent recruiting embargoes.
Self freed of this apparent recruiting embargo would likely now be winning rings almost every season.
I ascribe the trigger to be the stacking of talent at certain programs coupled with the apparent recruiting embargo on KU that leads Self to have fewer and fewer ready to play draft choices at the 1. 3, and 5, and less 5 start depth coming in at all positions.
A new coach with the existing adidas relationship seems not to solve anything. The most we could hope for is another great coach similarly constrained by the apparent embargo. The probable coaching change scenario would be a sharply inferior coach to Self facing the same apparent recruiting embargo. To put this in perspective, by this I mean that if even Cal, or Coach K, were enticed to take over KU, at this stage of either of their careers, with KU's current apparent recruiting embargo, they would not be able to win as much, win conference titles as much, or go as deep in the Madness as Self is doing. And hiring any coaches of lesser talent than K and Cal, would likely lead to a precipitous fall off in all the measures of success, assuming the same apparent recruiting embargo.
So: whether my position is getting old, or not, its likely validity persists and attempts to remedy the situation ought to be focused on how to break the apparent recruiting embargo, or alternatively, how to get draft choices at the 1, 3 and 5 positions onto the KU roster with similar regularity to UK and Duke.
If Self were proven to be the limiting factor, and if a coach could be found that could break the apparent embargo legally and ethically, then I would support asking Bill to step aside for a replacement. But this just seems like a simplistic, naive pipe dream, approach to the issue.
Self is a keeper in my book.
One on the threshold of becoming one of the all time greats--one still in a position to do what Wooden did, if the apparent talent embargo could be broken; that remains my assessment of Bill Self.
Wooden was reputedly on the verge of being forced out, or quitting, before he went on his binge. His first two rings were achieved by strategic innovations and attracting a couple great players. His last eight were reputedly achieved with Sam Gilbert beginning to pay UCLA recruits and players as much as sugar daddies at several other elite programs had been paying their players before UCLA's run and continued to during the UCLA run.
Let me make some thing clear now: I don't want Self to go over a moral ethical cliff here to get talent. I don't believe that would be wise or necessary. I don't want him forced down such a path any more than I want him forced out.
What I advocate its that the powers that be in this situation resume, or start, pulling in the same direction and devote all the resources at their disposal to finding a way to attract the same quality and quantity of talent that Duke and UK do. KU has faced such periods of disadvantage in recruiting before and found solutions. It can again. Nothing is written. Period.
Obviously, my POV is underpinned by the hypothesis that an apparent embargo operates to diminish KU's access to the player resources that it needs. It has been particularly effective at the 1 and 5 positions, and now seems to be spreading to be effective at the 3 position.
If one were to successfully refute the hypothesis, then my POV on the trigger for the talent shortage would be invalidated. and so KU and fans would need to formulate another hypothesis more fittingly explaining KU's deficiencies in talent and how to address them.
But I really do not see how one can argue against insufficient player talent, especially at the 1, 3 and 5 positions, being at the core of KU's recent problems.
Even when Self had Andrew Wiggins, he lacked a draft choice point guard, and had to work with a project at the 5 that first surprised everyone with rapid development, and then tragically was injured and so lost to the team. We need a draft choice 5 every season, not just a project that surprises everyone one time. So: even in arguably his best recruiting season, he was short handed at the 1, and 5, plus lacking in depth everywhere. And beyond that year, Self has been acutely short of talent that least two seasons. Period. And injuries made the short handedness a crisis instead of a problem.
The 2012 Finals team was the poster child for insufficient talent occasionally finding a way to go deep. With not one Mickey D, Self's KU team competed against UK stacked with six OAD/TAD draft choices. It was a level of asymmetry I doubted would be duplicated, but every year since, such asymmetries have occurred. College basketball has been fortunate that an apparently lesser talented coach like Calipari has been the one to hold all the Aces, for he has not been able to a capitalize on them, the way Self, or Coach K likely would have.
But back to my POV on this which you characterized as getting old.
The facts, if they stay the same, have no sell by date. They may get old, but they still constitute the reality upon which decisions have to be made.
KU isn't getting the players it needs to consistently do much more than it has been doing the last few years.
Last year, WSU was the more talented team and even if you were to argue otherwise, you could not argue that way persuasively after Perry was punked. Perry was punked IMHO for a very pragmatic reason. Perry was the only guy on the KU team standing between WSU and certain victory in a grudge match. KU teams earlier in Self's tenure would have had at least two or three Perry grade players on the floor, and sufficient bench depth to sacrifice a player in a counter punk. IMHO, WSU would never have punked Perry had KU been up to its old talent levels.
You pay many prices for not having enough good players.
It is not only about not having enough guys to match up with UK and Duke.
It is also, after a season of injuries, about being one punk away from not being able to match up even with a mid major like WSU.
It is not only about not being able to play Duke and UK even up, or not being able to over power most opponents by playing inside out in a way that enables our good outside shooters lots of open looks. It is also about having to resort to unconventional extremes of strategy that seek to play away from our weaknesses at the 1,3 and 5. It is about playing a half of Good Ball (4 out 1 in with lots of quick trigger treys and running) followed by a half of Bad Ball (spread and drive from the 1 through 4 positions to play for the short three) to avoid/defer the shooting back to average that occurs after a hot half, or after a previous hot game. Fans don't like it when Self plays BAD BALL, but every time he does it it is to avoid going 4 for 26 from the field on treys. Way better to go 2 for 10 or 1 for 8 and play BAD BALL for short threes. The only other statistically sound approach would be, as I have proposed, to shoot ALL treys all game, so that you shoot through the slumps during the games. BUT....Self's approach is less risky. By playing a half of Bad Ball, or even a game of Bad Ball, he is deferring the slump until the next game, which he hopes is an opponent that KU can beat even missing a bunch of treys. Self often waits and tries to shoot out of slumps against bad teams. It is imminently sane and sensible. But doing it eludes the notice of most fans.
It is not only about not being able to sign a highly successful OAD player that can lead KU to a ring his first season, and the TAD that can lead you to a ring the second season. It is, also, about HAVING TO sign the marginal OADs and marginal TADs that have a much greater frequency of not panning out, as soon, or at all, to try to do the same job as one of the highest ranked OAD/TAD types.
It is not only about NOT having to take risks on clearance risks and long shot glue players, it is about juggling and managing a team through the risks and more unpredictable development timing of having to sign and develop and fit together clearance risk players and project players that need weight gains, and players that need to develop even one credible offensive move.
It is sooooooooooo much easier to develop a talented team, and to make the product of it look so much more aesthetically appealing and reliable, than it is to try to do the same with out nearly as much talent.
To be blunt, Self is squandering his capacity for greatness at KU the longer he and adidas and KU are unable to sign and develop enough draft choice players capable of playing at the 1, 3 and 5, so that he has roster every season with those positions staffed and ready to go. An elite coach at an elite school should only have to worry about juggling glue players, not about not having draft choices at the 1, 3. and 5.
Increasingly, my definition of an elite basketball school is one that can have draft choices starting at the 1, 3 and 5 every season, not just every third season. And they aren't the long shot OAD/TAD types that will have to acquire a lot of seasoning to be effective. They are the kind that can start out of the box and be effective while learning on the job. And you have to have 4 or 5 of them on the roster each season to wind up with 3, because of injuries and behavioral problems that invariably arise.
KU is NOT an elite program by this standard.
But its fans want it to play like one and go deep like one, and have few early round upsets, like one, and so on.
Either the fans have to adapt to reality.
Or KU has to get more talent.
Either way, I don't think blaming Self for doing great coaching jobs with thin rosters makes a thimbles worth of sense.
Pitino is in essentially the same boat as Self, but he is in an EST part of the country, where there is much more regional talent close at hand that wants to stay close to home, so he is keeping his larder stocked a little better, but even Pitino is arguably in decline since the stacking has begun in earnest. But I digress.
I keep telling folks and no one is listening.
Calipari would be .500 with the material Self is coaching with.
K might be .600, but just barely.
Calipari can't win a ring with stacked deck.
Cal hasn't innovated on offense, or defense, since he started running the Dribble Drive his first year at Memphis back in 2000! Nothing. He has just reputedly relied on Nike, WWW, and CAA to get him tons of players.
Coach K has run his same Bob Knight Motion offense since 1980. Same Iba defense. Consonants' offense is reputedly tougher to learn than Self's bone head simple High Low with a situational weave and a dozen or so designated plays (pulled each season from a thousand page play book based on what plays work with that year's material).
Self's offense has only gotten even slightly complicated the last few seasons, when he complemented it with first BAD BALL and then GOOD BALL. And he apparently calculatedly designed both for bone head simplicity. Bad Ball is, duh, drive it from anywhere and collapse, don't expand the impact space. Good Ball is, duh, 4 out and 1 in and quick trigger the trey. Self is smart. He knows one year wonders and athletes of marginal ability can't master complex offenses. Even the high low is, duh, four passes around the perimeter, feed the post, turn and shoot, or kick out and shoot the open look. Nothing could be any easier than each of the three offenses Self has jerry rigged together to be used situationally. Its a wive's tale that the KU system is complicated.
KU's system has never been too complicated for one year wonders that actually were good enough to live up to their hype.
Self's problem has been that his one year wonders have mostly been sloppy seconds on head cases from imploding programs, or marginal OAD/TAD types.
Let me close with this:
SELF NEEDS MORE AND BETTER PLAYERS AND SELF KU, BOTH CONTRACTED TO ADIDAS, CANNOT SO FAR FIGURE OUT HOW TO ACHIEVE THAT.
WORK THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE.
DON'T CREATE ANOTHER ONE BY DRIVING SELF AWAY.
I am not at liberty to say, but I can say that I am not really saying this.
You got me excited by framing the issue correctly but then you leaped to a simplistic solution: the silver bullet of 25-75.
When Self is unable to sign three draft choice grade players at the three cornerstone positions of basketball: 1, 3, and 5, and have them developed and ready, there is no single grade of player to sign that overcomes that disadvantage, when UK and Duke do it every year, and, often sign 3-7 more.
There is rarely a silver bullet in strategy for structural obstacles amidst comtext.
So: Self is dealing with this on many levels, exactly as he should.
He has added two offences to his high-low: Good Ball and Bad Ball. These are intended to allow him to play away from the 1, 3, and 5 in a way the conventional High low does not.
He has moved to shooters, but plays away from them in games, when the law of averages says they won't be hot enough to win with.
He has moved younger with assistants in Jerrance and Aaron.
He has move abroad to Hill and Fratello.
He has moved to summer play to get his team more development time.
He has emphasized weight training.
He has taken more risks on long shots like Mason (low ranked conversion from 2 to 1) and Diallo (clearance risk).
And he has to make every move anticipating the apparent embargo will then counter his counter move.
The goal is a moving target.
And bottom line the real mission has to be to find a way to break the apparent embargo and sign draft choices at the 1, 3, AND 5 and have them on the floor and ready to play, not a year away.
BIA Memo
To: @VailHawk:
From: the Director/janitor
The Agency has been staging Operation Paper Airplane--a third degree of freedom cyber war game in which my alias is replicated a million fold in a pico second around the global cloud to test a new cyber warfare doctrine of counter-site destabilization. All posts since the MSU loss by @jaybate 1.0 have not been by @jaybate 1.0 including this one.
I never feel spoiled rotten. I feel we are accomplishing what hard work deserves and working to get better.
I have no concern that Self's system is a problem. Give Self a long stack like UK and Duke had and its ring city. Give him and his system the talent Duke and UK have had and he would have added several rings.
As James Brown sang....
I FEEL GOOD
LIKE I KNEW THAT I WOULD!
I FEEL NICE
LIKE SUGAR AND SPICE!
For some, but for others it troll-dom. 😃
From Camp Destabilization course catalogue:
Site Destabilization 101--Learn to redirect responses and allege others of redirecting.
No prerequisite. 😄
I'm really ok with this winning power 5 conference titles every year, making a run every third or 4th year and ringing out every 10 years.
I especially like never going to the NIT.
It's all good. I wouldn't swap places with Stanford hoops for all site destabilization course credits in the world, would you?
HOWLING!
The clear inferences here are three-fold:
a.) neural nets not yet grown together;
b.) Brannen lacks high seriousness about KU basketball; and
c.) he really must be one helluva shooter and prospect for Self to put up with this much shizzle.
Howling!
Oh, oh, now I have to run to put some thing on the quick wash cycle. My TGIF KU t-shirt.
Looks like we all need KUBuckets.com bibs to protect our threads.
Rock Chalk!
@DCHawker said:
Yes, but
But in the "yes, but" category of rhetoric...
Yes, but in what has he done for us lately? He has won two conference titles the last two years and gotten into the Madness during his "down years."
Next.
Believe me, I WILL!!!!!
And I will hold this close too...
And this...
And this...
And what will you be holding?
Yeeeee Hawwwwww
I love the smell of trolls in the morning.
Did someone else get suspended that I missed?
PHOF!!!!
I live there. Does this mean I have to leave it?
HOWLING!
Have @HighEliteMajor and legacy 3 Brady Morningstar do a blind folded present exchange of broccoli florets and endangered venomous snakes with out telling who will get which.
!14-profileimg.jpg ↗
@HighEliteMajor Avatar
!iur.jpeg ↗
Brady Morningstar
!brocflor.jpeg ↗
Broccoli florets
!GABOON VIPER.jpg ↗
Endangered Venomous Snake (Gaboon Viper)
Have Bill whistle a stop in practice and scream at the top of his lungs: "If we don't start making bunnies I am going to Namibia and roast quail eggs on old Volkswagen hubcaps while singing Superstition under a cabana the color of Burnese Mountain Dog irises next to a strange rock outcropping in the Namib Desert!!!
!quail eggs.jpeg ↗
Quail Eggs
!iu-1.jpeg ↗
Old Volkswagen Beetle Hubcaps
!namibrock.jpeg ↗
Strange Rock Outcropping, Namib Desert
Say: Yo, Jamari, we need you running on all cylinders, and figure the new dorms must be TOO nice for you to get a good nights sleep in, so we bought you a 71 AMC Matador to sleep in.
!dorm.jpeg ↗
New KU Basketball Athletic Dorm
!amcmat.jpeg ↗
AMC Matador
Require that everyone that comes to AFH wear a blue shirt and a weird animal hat.
!blue t.jpeg ↗
Blue T-Shirt
!weirdanhat.jpg ↗
Weird Animal Hats (imagine 16,000)
All for now.
Coach Self better be working on some effing stuff to bail my petunia out here defending him!!!!!!!
Any time I can get a laugh from you, I will happily pick up the cleaning bill...and send it to @VailHawk.
Agreed.
New rule.
First basket has to be a trey.
Second has to be a dunk.
Then Coach Bill gets to run whatever he wants.