@DoubleDD
P.S.: what I am saying here is you sound a bit like the British complaining about George Washington's guerrilla tactics, or Westmoreland about Ho Chi Minh.
Would you rather win, or would you rather things didn't change.
I wish the refs would call it fairly and recruiting asymmetries favored KU, but things have changed and we have to adapt or die, before we can start tipping the rules back our way.
The point of high-low is you get to exploit all of your athleticism at crunch time with more energy when you put it on the deck and go, AFTER passing to create the space, rather than congesting space with a dribble drive ball screen. And this is in fact what hAppens almost every trip, when a Self team has a credible low post presence AND credible wing threats and an experienced point guard.
God only knows what Self's high low would do with a Derek Rose, Marcus Teague grade point guard. Self has never been able to sign an OAD point guard.
Ku's problem last year was no low post presence worth passing into, so opponents over guarded the perimeter which forced Self into Bad Ball driving inside.
Self's High Low beat the Dribble Drive with Derek Rose, CDR, and a low post draft choice. Cal had the only future dominant pro on his side and lost.
Cal has been squandering OADs and TADs in record numbers with the dribble drive. It is a strategically unsound offense.
Ollie won a ring with the High-Low with only one top player at PG.
Self won the WUG with the high low without running any action at all.
There is little question any more that the High Low is the best flexible-formation core offense going.
Knight and Coach K and their motion offense have won more, but they have had to hold most of the aces to win big. Knight without the aces couldn't Match Self's .82 w&l. Coach K has failed to win conference titles and sustain a high w&l with THE MOTION, when his talent fell off too.
Passing beats screening over the long haul and leaves more juice for defense.
It seems proven to me now, after the flexibility the offense showed in the WUGs.
But others still cling to the hope for a better offense.
Defense, great guard play, and OAD footers are the trumps in the Madness.
No offense can overcome the lack of these created by recruiting, seeding, and refereeing asymmetry.
But it's not surprising to me that most coaches wind up Copying Self's offensive schemes.
You are telling me how it WILL be this year, when no one can know such things. Bad Ball salvaged a conference title, when everything went south. It even won us a game in the Madness, and took us as far in the Madness under adversity, as Good Ball has some years under healthy circumstances.
I on the other hand am just asking hypothetically, but plausibly, what if Self read the battle field and correctly assessed that the team's best chance to win a ring were to play Bad Ball? Would you rather go out early, or win a ring? Or even just go deep rather than go out early?
Self has already proven Bad Ball can salvage a title run when a team has lost much of its fire power and has no inside game.
Bo Ryan proved what it can do with a few talented players.
Imagine what it might do with as much talent and experience as most think KU will have this season!
Would you really want Self NOT to play BAD BALL if that were the way he thought the team had the best chance to win the ring?
Would you rather lose a ring and play Good Ball?
Interesting. Thx for commenting.
Setting Cliff's situation aside, and speaking hypothetically, I wonder if it would matter in penalties, whether a program were not to know it were playing an ineligible player?
Cal reputedly claimed not to know he was playing ineligible players at Memphis, the NCAA reputedly found no evidence to the contrary, and Memphis still got penalties. It appears there were documented violations committed by Memphis alums, so the situation seems not very analogous.
But my hypothetical and question remain: if a university unwittingly were to have played an ineligible player, would it have to vacate the games he played in, were it documented that the player were ineligible?
Or is this a grey area where the NCAA has lots of room to be flexible?
Not so hot. As I was making my sneak out, rod and ancient Plano in hand, my better half informed there were domestic and home improvement obligations with higher priority, so the fish got a reprieve. 😄
Glad you got a chuckle. I try to distinguish between what I know and what is reputed when writing about potentially sensitive issues. It seems the right thing to do in our remotely viewed Internet era. I mean to always, even if I forget sometimes. It seems an important part of accurate writing on the Internet, even though it can yield lugubrious prose. And occasionally it is fun and humbling to use it conspicuously and ironically to emphasize just how much really is not fully and factually known by oneself about a subject. It reminds one just how little we actually factually know about some of these reported subjects viewed remotely.
I am soooo glad for Cliff and the program that Cliff apparently caught a shot with a pro team and I so hope he makes it. He appears to deserve a break and this whole apparently unfortunate situation can hopefully guide future actions of players, families, Big Shoe, Big Agent, lenders, and the program to avoid such reputed situations in the future. I sure would have liked to have had Cliff on the sacred wood down the stretch last season, especially hearing a pro organization sees pro potential in him. Rock Chalk!
Self is that man up on the wall.
The one we want up on the wall.
The one we need up on the wall.
What should Self do this season, if Diallo can't score out of the paint, or if a season ending injury to Diallo renders the inside game the same as last season, only with Bragg being able to hit a few 15 foot Js in relief, but not really being ready to start and play 20-30 mpg?
Should Self go back to Bad Ball?
Let's get very existential and hypothetical here
Let me pose some questions that everyone hopes will not have to be answered.
Would you rather Self play Bad Ball and win a conference title, or play good ball and lose a conference title?
Would you rather Self play Bad Ball and go deep, or play Good Ball and go out early?
Would you rather Self play Bad Ball and win a ring, or play Good Ball and exit early?
How important is it to board rats that Self never play Bad Ball again?
You nailed Cliff's situation on the head with the comparison to Harrell.
I occasionally wonder if Cliff walking away and his family reputedly not providing some documentation the NCAA reputedly wanted was done to keep KU from being charged with having unwittingly played an ineligible player for part of the season and so having had to vacate the wins Cliff participated in and the conference title the team won?
I reckon I am not the only one to have wondered about this.
Have you, or anyone else, ever heard any scuttle butt beyond speculation about this possibility?
Any word on why Devonte didn't play in the WUG?
The apparent elevation and aggressiveness of the dunk in the picture seems to suggest he has probably been well for awhile.
Any scoop?
Yes,outside of the actual game action, and strategies, which always thrill and fascinate me, it is the overlap between the institutional and regime processes in sport and in culture/economy/government/private oligarchy that are next most interesting, at least to me.
Once one recognizes sport and entertainment have not infrequently played significant roles In historical transition from insular republic to extroverted private oligarchic dominated empire, what goes on in sport at home and abroad today has interest much beyond Xs and Os to teach us IMHO.
Rock Chalk!
:-)
I am going to be bold here and unilaterally wish everyone a nice day, and withdraw to go fishing.
I have nothing but love for everyone here including @JayHawkFanToo, even though I wish his alias felt better.
I really don't know why what appears to be attack graphics are being resorted to, but I guess if it helps one work through some thing or other, well, an alias has gotta do what an alias has gotta do.
Rock Chalk!
Do you know why @JayHawkFanToo appears to use attack graphics?
Avis?
There you go again.
Hung up on first and second.
Hmm, we may be getting somewhere here.
But the question remains: why does @JayHawkFanToo use what appears to be attack graphics?
No, no, no, I am not doing anything here other than being amused and having some fun with your attack graphics.
@Lulufulu said:
@jaybate-1.0 > @JayHawkFanToo . Pure, simple logic.
All this better than stuff is in YOUR head, not mine.
All these sensitive subjects are in your head, not mine.
All those macho challenges are in your head, not mine.
I am a peaceful, loving board rat.
I just don't have it in me to post attack graphics.
It would be bad form and disrespectful of the forum.
That's all I need.
I just sit here an laugh and watch you shoot yourself in the cloven hoof.
HOWLING!!!!
If you want loyalty get a dog; better yet, get two just in case one turns on you.--@JayHawkFanToo
Remember that ALWAYS when dealing with me.
I love it.
Everyone gets to see how the game works.
Keep it up @JayHawkFanToo.
We keep seeing which subjects set you off.
And the technique of response.
It is VERY interesting.
Thanks in advance.
Triple howling. :-)
I love it, when you expose yourself this way.
What was it @HighEliteMajor said about you again?
I love it when you resort to graphics.
It is an admission of limitation that delights me.
Again....
Funny, that’s how your writing makes me feel when you are trying your very best to be clear.
Howling!
You remain an incomparably easy tweak.
Why don’t you just be nice, when you are so challenged? Eh?
Double Howl!
Funny, that's how your writing makes me feel when you are trying your very best to be clear.
Howling!
You remain an incomparably easy tweak.
Why don't you just be nice, when you are so challenged? Eh?
Double Howl!
This ought to be pretty easy to sort through with a stat pac and some patience, which I and most of us thoroughly lack.
That being said, I suspect Self's more talented teams had just as big of winning margins (both average and standard deviations) as Self's.
Self's problem since 2009 and onwards has been that though he has signed quite a lot of talent some seasons, mostly he has been recruiting against a stiff current that has denied him nearly as much talent advantage over Big 12 teams as Roy usually had during his KU tenure.
You can't blow teams out frequently, when the talent gap between you and other teams lessens, especially in the injury riddled seasons.
And let's face it, gang, KU has been snake bitten with recruiting adversity and operable injuries the last 3-4 seasons especially, which is driving most of the remembering going on in this thread.
The combination of Self recruiting:
No projected OAD post men;
Increasingly short adidas stacks;
No projected OAD point guards;
Frankly weaker and weaker backup bigs; plus
lots of operable injuries to starters AND backup rotation players; and
frequently early departures that Roy had to contend relatively little with....
has left Self in a strategic position where playing to keep it close with injured players and a shrunken talent gap has made it tougher for Self to blow anyone out.
So: yes, I suspect there are fewer blow outs under Self, but I believe circumstances of recruiting and injury, especially recently, have channelled him toward a play it close strategy recently, and selective memory emphasizing the recent is exaggerating perception of the real phenomenon.
And remember that when Roy finally brought his system back to Chapel Hell and got greater numbers of good players each season he won a couple of rings pronto, while continuing his intermittent blow outs and getting upset.
So we have complexity involved here in the drive set producing the outcomes of both coaches and we have selective memory focusing on recent Self and late Roy.
Thanks for posting that biblical quote from Ephesians. I had forgotten that one. Those guys that wrote the King James version had a way with words. But the core meaning had its own strength, regardless of translation.
Ephesus, Turkey, man, I still have to go there before my time card is punched as "expired."
P.S.: Note that Kusadasi is 19 km. away from Ephesus. Could it be that the ancient spelling of Kusasdasi once used more caps?
KUSAdasi.
Were the Ancient Greeks and the Bible trying to tell us something?
History's mysteries.
Rock Chalk!
;-)
Yes, and I'm so awfully glad you caught the fun I was having. The accent I wittily affected for the amusement of others is an imitation of a recent dialect of our beloved tongue that I like to call NeoCon/NeoLib/Bilderburg Gibberenglish. Can't you just hear the Round Table crowd and MI-5/6 in the background and subtext?
The trick of imitating it is to combine the subtle, amusing, slightly arrogant indirectness of the Oxford diction with the deliberately crude directness, and sacrifice of elegance for cumbersome, self-conscious techno-speak of American Bureaucratic English. It is such a tricky balancing act, you know. It is dreadfully difficult imitating appropriated languages, but, WELL, a board rat's gotta technically do what a board rat's gotta technically do. :-)
The OED has not yet written up its derivation, at least, to my knowledge, but I have a sneaking hunch that its derivation is rather similar to the Oxford English contrived in Britain in the second half of the 19th Century, as part of its drive to create an English accent for those primarily engaged in the Crown's imperial enablement at home and abroad.
Carry on. :-)
Kaun keeps letting the process work for him.
Go, Sasha, go!!!!!
In all fairness, I can say that Cliff is my favorite OAD KU big man with a family member who reputedly took out a reputedly improper loan, and who was reputedly held out of a stretch run because of a reputed NCAA investigation, and who averaged less than 20 mpg in his sole season as a Jayhawk, and who was not drafted by the NBA.
It seems an elite club of one that he is apparently a member of.
:-)
Until The Big Red Dog makes nice with KU and Self, I suspect fans will wonder about the Big Red Dog.
The private basketball oligarchy that has selected the US Basketball governing bodies, ordered it to create the BIA, and after my attendance at Basketball Bilderburg's annual meeting, picked yours truly, @jaybate 1.0, to head the BIA, has asked me to pass on to you, @VailHawk, their highest award given to BIA assets embedded in mainstream media and in independent board rat media, also, for practicing the best black art disinformation in naming the BIA director himself, @jaybate 1.0, as a mouthpiece for the Big Shoe-Big Agent Complex, and asks that you next write that you, @VailHawk are a mouthpiece for Big Media-Big Gaming. This the private basketball oligarchy believes will complete a one-two punch of black propaganda that will so completely deceive fans and board rats that a crisis of confidence will ensue sufficient to allow the COB (aka Continuity of Basketball shadow basketball governing body) to justify declaration of martial basketball law and justify the suspension of dually instituted NCAA operation and indefinite replacement of the NCAA by the COB. The attorneys of the holding companies for the private basketball oligarchy have drawn up the papers for such a take over five years ago and have had them waiting for just such a fortuitous moment. The private basketball oligarchy and COB are about to enlist the services of former congressman Paul Ronn to begin speaking out to warn basketball fans of an imminent basketball currency crisis in hopes that Ronn's comments will in fact actually trigger the designed basketball currency crisis as part of a move to overthrow the NCAA and subordinate its member institutions to new central bank centric Division I ruled under martial basketball law by the COB apparatus under ground somewhere in Maryland, and with redundant facilities under Groom Lake in Area 51.6666666.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
BECAUSE
Much as it irks me to say it, until we beat them (and punch Vleet's nose out the back of his head), we aren't better.
They hold bragging rights and serve until we beat them and their scum sucking coach.
For this reason we better hope the NCAA schedules us against them early in March.
I want a piece of them worse than any second rate bunch in a lonnnng time.
Marsha is who Fizzouri ought to hire.
Talk about a match made in Hell!
Marsha would be like having an Antler as coach!
Oh, I want to beat him into a hand shake line and stamp beaten on his high forehead.
Bring me the head of Alfredo Marsha!
It's almost enough to make me want to waste a scheduling date on him....
But not quite!!!
You raise an interesting issue about Frank and his draft potential. It is interesting because it is a case that illuminates a lot about why so many top short guys play more seasons in college than top long guys.
Market demand in the NBA is driven by a players skills and physical package.
Lot's of short guys can play on the X-axis in the NBA. Heck, Mugsy Bogues proved a 5-3 guy can ball in the NBA.
@drgnslayr is right about the 80% of the game being played from an average of 6 feet 6 inches down on the floor.
But of the 5 positions on the floor on offense, there is some variation in that 6-6 number, some standard deviation in that average if you will.
At point guard, 5-3 inch Mugsy Bogues suggests that the quite a lot of the game is played from 6-0 down.
At center and power forward in the NBA on the other hand, we don't see any 5-3 guys playing, and only about once in a generation do we see a 6-6 center, so we logically infer that 80 percent of the post and power forward positions are perhaps played 6-8 or 6-10 and under.
In turn, maybe the wings play 6-6 and under.
My point here is this: height is still relevant, however much of the game is played at lower than leaping levels.
Further, height is particularly important at the post and power positions and there remains in our culture a lesser supply of persons of heights suitable for playing 6-8 to 6-10 and down, than there are persons of heights suitable to playing 6-0 and down.
It is a numbers a game, as they say.
Sooooo.....
Since NBA teams can pick up guys capable of playing 6-0 and down almost any time (there being a relative abundance of such players), and since guys capable of playing 6-8 to 6-10 and down are rather more scarce, two tendencies manifest:
1.) NBA teams tend to draft 6-8 to 6-10 and down capable talent whenever it is available; and
2.) NBA teams tend to pick up 6-0 and down talent secondarily, unless they are already stocked up on the former.
When all the teams are drafting with this tendency, short guys tend to have to prove themselves more and longer, and distinguish themselves with better numbers, in order to finally get a team to take a risk on them.
And since these shorter players are in a longer cue (including short players in the NBA, short players in D-League, and short players in D1), it takes them more seasons of stellar play to convince the NBA GMs to take them, unless they are freakishly talented in a relatively long package (Derek Rose, etc.). Even a 6-2 guard is apt to be picked ahead of Frank Mason. Even Frank Mason is apt to be picked ahead of Nic Moore. And so on.
I have always advocated judging players as the best of their generation and creating a hall of fame to house all of the greats that time has prevented from competing against each other.
I have my favs that I "believe" are the best across the generations, but I really don't "think" cross generation comparisons are decisively resolvable.
I "believe" Wilt would take Kareem, Lebron, or MJ in maker takes 9 times out of 1o. But hoops is a team game, so it is always doomed to variables impossible to measure and compare validly to talk about who is the "best."
In each of their times, I would start my team with each of them and build around them. Period.
And even then I would expect some to opt for Big Russ over Wilt, and I reckon there were players in the NBA during Jordan's era that were better in some ways the MJ. Same for Lebron. All of these guys required some super teammates and some super coaching, or GMing, or Presidenting, to win championships.
Only Big Russ and MJ won rings consistently.
And Big Russ won way more than MJ and even player-coached one, or two.
So, if I have to violate my own desire not to compare the greats across the ages and pick one above all the rest, based on the only way I could remotely compare them--based on making their teams win rings--Big Russ is the best and its not even close.
But I saw Big Russ and Wilt play dozens of times head to head when both were at their peaks.
Head to head, Wilt was better than Big Russ, but Big Russ was on the better teams that were, confoundingly enough, better in part because of Big Russ.
Basketball is a team game.
It ain't like track and field, or golf, or tennis.
Greatness lies ultimately in the alchemy of team.
But if you asked me who I wanted to build a team around today, well, it would be Wilt.
Whenever he was surrounded by top talent, he won.
He seemed more dominant than Big Russ, Kareem, Oscar, Magic, Bird, MJ, and Lebron to name a few.
I would pick the most dominant player to build a team around for sure, especially one like Wilt that had a huge baseball IQ and remodeled his game perhaps 4 different times in his career to help his teams.
One big difference that makes Wilt stand out among the players mentioned above is that he was the ONLY one of them that remodeled his game even twice.
It takes a demigod to remodel his game several times in a career and still dominate.
But the above being said, I am much more happy to say Lebron is the man now and enjoy him for all he is worth.
And in due time say Wigs is the man in his time.
And so on.
Bottom line?
I love them all.
P.S.: I am among those that still think Wigs WAS the greatest prospect since Lebron. Wiggins is a superbly talented basketball player on a path to becoming one of the all time greats. Go, Andrew, Go!!!!
Yes!!!!!!!
See my reply above, also.
FWIW, there is never a NEED to reply. There was no need for you to reply to my post. But it is always good to reply any time one has something to say in a civil way, right?
And, rest assured that I WANT you and I to retain our opinions and to express them and that neither of us ever has to fret about having a last word. There appears no last word on anything in this forum. :-)
And FWIW, there is absolutely zero chance that either of us could or would deny the other an opinion. I am not even sure it is feasible to deny someone else an opinion. In my personal experience as an alias, I've never had one of my opinions denied me by someone else, have you? And I know I don't even know how to deny anyone else their opinion. Don't even have a clue how to deny someone else their opinion. Wouldn't even want to if I could figure out how to.
Next, IMHO, we really don't disagree substantively that I can see, except on whether Wigs would have done better with Cleveland than Minnesota. You apparently think he was better off in Minnie and I am at least equally confident he would have done even better in Cleveland playing with Lebron.
But that's not really the essence of this IMHO. The essence has to do with whether or not Wigs was appearing to play something short of his performance envelope during his OAD season at KU.
You don't appear to dispute that he appeared to play below his full capacity during his year at KU. You just appear to opine that I am out to diminish what he did at KU.
Well, I can put you completely at ease on that issue and NOT EVEN deny you having your opinion.
And here is how.
I don't see how anyone could with a straight face doubt Wigs was performing something under his optimum while at KU. I mean, he proved he could throw big numbers up at a moments notice and then stop and work on other aspects of his game. He turned it off and on all season against lowly D1 players; then suddenly could perform big time against hardened NBA professionals. There just doesn't appear to be any other credible explanation than that he was apparently protecting the merchandize in D1. Heck, when I have watched him in the NBA, he appears to be still holding back some.
And you don't really dispute that, do you? Do you really think he just some how nonlinearly got to where he could torch some NBA players after not being able to torch D1 players? I just find that taxing credibility--a real stretch of imagination, if you will. I mean, most folks would say that Wigs could have gone straight to the pros and played were it not for the OAD rule. How could he light up NBA guys, but not lots of D1 guys? I just can't quite fathom that?
Now let's cut to the nub here and let me gush for you about Wigs, so you absolutely cannot mistake how extraordinary Wigs was.
Here is how awesome I think Wigs was and is. I think we may not see the full Wiggins package until after the start of his second contract--the one that brings in the mega-bones. I mean does he really owe the Timberwolves 100 percent effort and completely risking his body, since they are not yet paying him whatever the market will bear (only what the NBA draft apparatus allows), and they are a small market franchise with little chance to win big and so pay him whatever the market will bear? Should Wigs risk everything for the Timberwolves, who are not yet paying him nearly what the open market might bear. I mean this is a business, isn't it? In business, professionals tailor what they do for their client to what the client is willing to pay, right. Professionals have minimum professional standards they are supposed to observe, but the pros rarely go above and beyond those standards unless the pay is commensurate, right? You get what you pay for in business, right?
What we are talking about is a professional basing his service above a minimum professional standard consistent with his fee given what the market would bear.
You see: I feel extremely fair to Wigs and I aim to extoll what he accomplished perhaps even beyond what you appear to do. To me, it is absolutely awesome what he accomplished appearing to play at perhaps 3/4 capacity, or so. I mean how many other players could have contributed what he did as a freshman, at what at least appeared something like 3/4 capacity? He was a cornerstone of a conference title team. As you said, his freshman season exceeded even Danny Mannings. I can't think of another really good 17-18 year old, except maybe Lebron himself, that would have apparently played to protect himself from injury with an eye on the lottery, and still have been able to rack up the kind of numbers he did in the two image burnishing games he and his posse and Self at least appeared able to agree on to cut him loose in offensively. Who knows if this were how it really was, but it APPEARED that way.
Wigs was awesome at KU!
I have nothing but awe and respect for the way he and his parents appeared to manage his high school years, OAD year and his pro career so far. I mean he has almost zero wear and tear and he is already rookie of the year, isn't he?
Far, far, FAR from diminishing what he accomplished, I want to call attention to it. I want to praise it. Based on appearances, it may have been the most phenomenally productive, apparent sand bagging performance in the history of basketball.
Only a great, great, GREAT talent could have done it IMHO.
But of course this is entirely opining and speculating about appearances and it is not assertions of fact based on inside knowledge.
Neither of us really knows, no matter how much we agree on somethings and disagree on others.
Ain't that right?
Rock Chalk!!!
Cleveland hung in with a ton of injuries even without Wigs.
With Wigs, and a few less injuries, maybe even just with Wigs and the same injuries, Cleveland almost certainly would be hanging a banner.
I don't see how Wigs would not have made Cleveland sharply better than they were during the play-offs.
And careers tend to go better with championships won.
I reckon a championship would make Wigs an even hotter property than he already is.
Wigs increasingly appears to have been sand bagging at KU.
He apparently could have stepped in and had a very good season with any team in the NBA, I reckon.
Playing with Lebron?
My god, Wigs would hardly have been guarded at all much of the time with the overshifting and help needed to keep Lebron under wraps; that could only have helped Wigs.
Wigs might have scored quite a bit more on Cleveland than in the land of Chainsaw Ice Sculptures and no Lebrons.
It only seems logical that a player's scoring, or at least scoring efficiency, goes up when they get to play with a great player, instead of being the focus of another team's defense, while playing for a weak team.
Right?
On another thread there was some discussion of the FLAT FOUR observed in the WUGs, as if it were something new to understand.
Interestingly, the FLAT FOUR, i.e., four across the baseline and a point guard out front, is the original starting formation for Iba's High Low way back in 1964 and for Dean's and Larry's elaboration of it at UNC into the Carolina passing offense in 1965.
Think of the Flat Four as the ancient symmetric I-formation of High Low Basketball offense before the Flat Four shifts into one of several possible less balanced formations (e.g., in football the I-Formation shifts into the split T, the wing t, the power I formation, the slot I, wing I, the shot gun, and so on--note also that the shot gun is the latest base formation in many football offenses and they shift out of it, too).
In the High Low, the FLAT FOUR shifts into a variety of formations with three combos and 2 posts positioned variously.
The method of the high low offense is to do mostly the same things out of different looks, though as common sense suggests, various spots on the floor occupied by different types of players enable certain kinds of advantage more than others.
The FLAT FOUR is where UNC under Dean always lined up and started from for quite a few years. By lining up in the FLAT FOUR, your guys get to run to their spots and hopefully beat their defenders to those spots. Where the spots are that they run to (the shift formations) depends on the match-ups they have and wish to exploit versus another team.
Alternatively, your players can stay in their FLAT FOUR and a point guard out front can drive to the rim and which ever defender comes to help, then the point guard can dish to that teammate left unattended. This stunningly simple action out of this FLAT FOUR is surprisingly, almost maddeningly effective, IF your point guard can usually get by the man defending him out front.
The most familiar "shift" out of the FLAT FOUR is into two high wings to go with the point guard out front in the familiar three man perimeter. Along with this the two post men run to high and low blocks, or to a low block and a high post out between the free throw line and the top of the free throw circle. The post men can also line up low on opposite sides of the lane, or overload one side of the lane, or set up high on opposite sides of the lane.
Another shift might see the four out and one in formation, where a 4 and 2 park on one side of the perimeter around the trey stripe, and a 3 and a 1 park on the other side of the perimeter at the trey stripe. This is essentially two guards out front, and a stretch 4 and a 3 as "low wings." The 5 might set up at the FT, or on a low block.
Another shift might see the 2, 3, 4 and 5 spread fully to four corners while the 1 starts out front but quickly moves toward the free throw line and passes out to one of the four corners, then runs back out to the front to receive a pass to repeat and so stall. This is Dean's formation for his classic four corners stall. Again, maddeningly simple and effective.
Further, one can start out in any of these "shift" formations, and then shift into any of the other formations, or even back into the FLAT FOUR, as circumstances and match-ups encourage.
The idea is two fold: use shifts to give your guys an advantage in getting to the spots before their defender can, and keep your opponents from getting too familiar with what you are about to do.
Put another way, all of these "starting" formations, and all of the "shift" formations are just ways of getting your players to the spots on the floor where you have think you hold greatest "on-the-spot" advantage, if you can get their first. Also, its easier to pass to some one coming to a spot, rather than to someone that has been standing on it for 10 seconds with a defender hanging on him.
Whether one starts and stays in the a formation, or starts in one and shifts to another, then just one of three things happen:
a.) you pass the ball to try to over shift the defense so as to create an impact space; or
b.) you run action, usually some kind of pick away, or a ball screen, etc.; or
c.) you let someone go one on one and create their own shot.
Self likes to do A first.
Then Self likes to vary doing B, or C, if A does not get someone open.
Doing A, i.e., passing the ball to overshift a defense is actually the heart and soul of the High Low Offense that Iba invented and that Dean and Larry (and Bill Guthridge, too) developed into a widely copied offense.
Not that the two posts, and the formations are NOT the distinguishing characteristics of the High Low Offense aka as the Carolina Passing Offense.
The distinguishing characteristic is the primary reliance on passing to create open looks, and the conscious, systematic division of passing (aka ball movement) into perimeter passing and in-out passing as the two means of overshifting defenses into leaving open looks.
The principle is simple: a defender cannot move as fast as a passed ball.
The corollary is: a defender sliding side ways may be able to cut off a passed ball one direction, but he cannot possibly recover on ball reversal, unless he hedges way out into the passing lane to force the pass far deeper, in which case the next pass can go inside, which forces all players to fall back, which leaves a man open for a kick out. It is maddeningly simple. And can be maddeningly effective with highly athletic players that can pass well.
Note also, and perhaps most importantly in the sense of Grand Strategy, that deforming defenses with passing is the low effort way to create open shots, and being the low effort way to do it, leaves one to expend lots more energy on defense, rather than offense.
Think about this for a moment, for it is vital to understand because it reveals why the High Low Offense aka the Carolina Passing Offense will always over time be the most desirable and enduring offense, whether or not it is played with two post men, or two power forwards, or just one in and four out, or whatever.
Pay attention now.
Iba realized that no matter how much energy one expends on offense, one still only gets the points of a basket and/or a FT.
It seems so simple.
But its simplicity obscures the brilliant depth of the insight.
If you only get a basket no matter how much effort you put into scoring, then what you ought to do is put the least energy into getting that basket you can. If you put in one more ounce of effort than is absolutely necessary, you are essentially wasting your energy budget.
Now think about this: where on the court can increasing expenditures of effort buy you more scoring, or at least more chances to score?
Answer: on defense.
Now do you see why Self believes in expending maximum energy on defense...why he says offense starts with defense, why Self is constantly exhorting his players to play harder on defense, when the team struggles? For a given ounce of energy, one can lower an opponent's FG percentage more than one can raise one's own FG percentage.
In fact, the more you pass the ball around the perimeter and in and out of the paint, the less you run around and bang around, and so the more energy you have for defense.
All offenses running lots of constant motion and action, especially the Princeton, are bound to lose the energy budget game to the High Low Offense. Self will tend to be able to expend more of his energy budget on defense than a Princeton team can expend on its defense. A good passing team beats a good action team, if the defenses are equal. It is so brutally stochastically biased in favor of the High Low Offense that one wonders how folks ever got off the beaten path into "high action" offenses in the first place.
The more energy you expend on defense, the more you reduce the FG percentage of the other team and so the more stops you get. The more stops you get, the more chances you get to score. Elementary my dear Watsons.
If you could raise your offensive FG percentage (or PPP) more by expending more energy than you can lower your opponent's FG percentage by expending more energy on defense, then of course you would expend more energy on offensive action. But playing conventionally, i.e., shooting about the same percentage of treys and twos as your opponent, you are a damned fool to run anything but the high low passing offense, and its many variations. Over time, given equal talent, you will prevail by expending more energy on defense than your action running opponent can afford to expend.
Self will not rely so heavily on BAD BALL in the future (unless injury and lack of talent were to force him to again), because there is an underlying energy budget problem with BAD BALL. It expends too much energy on offense, unless one holds the ball most of the shot clock to hold down the trips, so that 4 out of 5 of your best guys can rest on the court before one attacks. But that really messes with players' minds and gets them out of attack mode.
Self will go back to a passing offense as surely as night follows day in a 30 second clock.
Never the less he did learn some important lessons in the WUGs about the positive psychological benefits (scoring confidence) of letting players get on with attacking and with limiting the amount of reads they have to make.
Frankly, if I were Self, I would rely on passing EVEN MORE and action even less under the 30 second clock with the widened lanes.
And I would rely more on players creating shots almost entirely and use designed action EVEN MORE SPARINGLY THAN IN THE PAST. Maybe only use action after time outs, or after a made FT, or what have you.
KU's players played and shot confidently under the 24 second with few reads and almost no action.
Thus, Self should use the passing offense to create a 24 second possession and then play it like they did under WUG rules and see how it works.
I suspect it will work great.
But old habits die hard, as I indicated yesterday in another post.
All for now.
Special Agent @VailHawk,
You are hereby instructed to come up with a Tweener Logo for this season's KU Jayhawks.
jaybate 1.0
Director, BIA
Agreed with the caveat that exceptions prove rules. :-)
I think BAD BALL offended Self's sense of aesthetics--his sense of the beauty of the game.
He was Dr. Frankenstein creating something monstrous to get through a season that would have driven any other coach in the game today to an implosion season for sure.
Self did what he had to do.
Ingenious solutions are not necessarily beautiful solutions. I called Bad Ball by the name I did to call attention to its assault on the beauty of the game, even as it was making the best of a nearly impossible situation.
But Self (and all geniuses) have to at some point rely on a strong sense of beauty (aesthetics) to keep them from going completely evil with the genius of their strategic and tactical solutions. In science it is called elegance. Bad Ball was only elegant given the awful hand he was dealt. His traditional way of playing, muscular though it has become, is much more elegant and beautiful for a team with a more normal array of options and more normal level of health and talent.
All of this is a way of saying that he will revert to his traditional brand of High-Low Ball, likely with increased spacing due to the wider lane (I have changed and now think the shorter shot clock is likely going to be irrelevant). He will not revert to BAD BALL except for those short stretches when he decides no on can hit anything, or unless, as you say, Diallo cannot score out of the low post, etc.
Early on it will be some of both the WUG and the traditional high-low inside attack.
Ideally, he would like to run both, because it would cause so much trouble for defenses to never be quite sure what they were going to see on each possession.
But the reality of college players is that they barely seem to be able to master one offense in a season.
This team might be able to do both, since it is a bit more experienced than recent teams, but it is still green wood compared to his '08 team.
And did you notice how the team imploded, when he shifted from the four out WUG offense in the last game in the second half and went to Bad Ball? The team just could not make the mental transition at all.
So: as always, at some point Self will have to choose between his options of how the team defines itself--of "who we are."
And for all the reasons I mentioned about D1, I suspect "the man we want on that wall, the man we need on that wall," will make a rather unpopular decision and revert to his traditional high low game, but not to BAD BALL except situationally.
He may play a little WUG Ball too situationally, but it will be very intermittently.
Bill knows BIG.
If Diallo is as good as everyone says, Self is going to put a saddle on him and leave the fool's gold for the fools. :-)
And we are all going to be crying all season to a .82 or greater W&L statement.
Thanks for the link.
It is a funny thing about feasibility.
You can't get anything to happen, no matter how virtuous it may be, that writes off too many sunk costs.
You can't stop anything, no matter how good, or how rotten, that enables greater revenues and does not trigger too great of write offs of sunk costs.
It is the Tao of economics.
Self WILL revert.
He said he would.
He said we learned things in Korea playing the short clock, four out style that would make us better individual players, but we still need to be able to play inside; that is what he said.
The WUG was a totally anomalous situation.
30 seconds is an eternity, compared to 24.
There was no home court advantage; this is the opposite of regular season D1.
And yet everyone got to play on the same courts every game; this is the opposite of post season D1.
Will Self even try to play some the way they did in WUG?
Yes, because he always briefly tries to do some of both, when ever confronted with alternatives.
So: yes, he will start out trying to do both:
--play through the bigs some trips; and
--playing the four out perimeter games other trips.
Neither will go well as well as it did in the WUG, because of the longer clock, the vastly rougher play in the B12, and the adversity of playing on the road.
To reiterate: in the WUG, all games were on neutral courts where fans were never a factor.
Self has evolved the style of play he advocates to win consistently at home and steal wins on the road.
Low trips, few turnovers, and inside treys maximize the home court advantage. They let the crowd do the heavy lifting of disorienting a team into turnovers and bad shooting.
Low trips, few turnovers and inside treys on the road keep the opposing crowd out of the game and compensate for the unfamiliar rims for KU's outside shooters.
.82 is a sacred number in basketball number-ology.
Dan Brown will one day write a book called "The Self Code."
.82 will be the number that keeps popping up mysteriously in front of the protagonist's search for the hidden meaning of the game.
All of the folks on this site that shout conspiracy theory every time their attention is called to something that was really nothing but a 900 pound gorilla with a lamp shade on its head will say this number .82 is a part of a paranoid conspiracy invented not by Dan Brown, but by the Basketball Intelligence Agency, that Dan Brown is actually an unpaid agent for, and its off the shelf arm--the COB--the Continuity of Basketball parallel Division 1 located underground out in suburban Maryland somewhere, and COB's redundant facility under Groom Lake at a Black Installation called Area 51.6666666666.
"The Self Code"--soon to be a global best seller.
At this point, the NCAA appears to be operating increasingly with situational ethics on an ad hoc basis.
It continues to modify its standings on what it can and cannot do about rules violations.
It occasionally suggests that it lacks sufficient resources to enforce its own rules.
It let the NBA tell it when its players would be allowed to leave college for the pros--after one year of D1 ball. The NCAA did nothing.
It appears prepared to let the NBA tell it that the players cannot go pro until after their second season. The NCAA appears prepared to do nothing again.
The OBannon Case kicked the NCAA in its balls for its role in player likenesses being marketed without compensation for the players. Now it reputedly settled out of court.
Put another way, it appears to have changed its stance on compensation for players likenesses be used in marketing.
It is reputedly changing its stance and enabling separate power conference standards.
It is reputedly considering changing levels and forms of compensation for players while in D1.
The NCAA is constantly reconciling to outside and internal forces. Nothing about its rules are sacred. They are just rules with legacies stretching back to one of western culture's less holy institutions--19th Century Amateurism.
There is no reason in the world why it cannot also arbitrarily establish new rules for accepting players back into D1. None. Zero. Zip.
Think, people.
Take. Blinders. Off.
If Big Shoe paying UL $45M bones and UMich $60M bones and players being apparently tacitly allowed to have grey area relationships with Big Agent and Big Shoe before, during and after their times in D1, and Big Gaming and Big Media and the NCAA reputedly tacitly tolerating games being fit in broadcast windows by asymmetric whistles, and wonky seeding reputedly aimed at attracting eye balls, enabling stacks and weeding out teams that won't maximize eyeballs, don't ruin the game, how in god's green, but increasingly solar global warming driven environment, can letting early jumps that wash out come back and play hurt the game?
And to argue that the NCAA will not, or will never, make such a change is to ignore all of the situational changes the NCAA has been making and will continue to make to reconcile with its bottom line need for player talent to keep its product capable of generating the revenues the NCAA, member institutions, Big Media, Big Shoe and Big Gaming require it to give.
This is a cash cow we are talking about here.
Cows have to give milk.
To give milk, they have to have raw materials--grass, feed and water.
Players are the most basic raw materials of D1 basketball.
Gotta have them.
We are not yet to the point of staffing rosters with cyborgs grown at an experimental barn at KSU, thank god.
It is about the money.
AND...
Its about human beings.
This is one time when it can be a win-win.
Getting more of these NBA wash out players to come back and play and finish school is a GOOD THING!!!!!
D1 depends on a player supply of adequate talent level for coaches to put out a product that generates sufficient ticket, media and gaming consumption to keep this integrated apparatus spitting out the huge amounts of cash required to keep it going.
Why keep driving coaches like Self and Few to young foreign players, when we have all the domestic washouts they need without going overseas?
Why force the outsourcing of American college basketball, when it is completely unnecessary, if we just change one little rule in the midst of all the rule changing this is going on?
Players that have jumped early, played professional basketball and washed out, or just want to take a break and come back and finish now that they have secured a nest egg, should absolutely be allowed to return to play at the college level on scholarship. They should be allowed to play and go to school with whatever remaining eligibility they have.
This solves sooooooooo many problems that it is scandalous not to have been adopted long ago. And it pushes more of the good players around all of D1.
Frankly, doing anything else is patently absurd.
Persons in the private sector can stop working and go back to school any damn time they please.
College sports are part of the university academic product. Players go to school to take academic curriculum and develop themselves athletically. Sports are a profession that one prepares for with college.
Let's get on with it.
Even suggesting not to make this change one ought to put on a straw hat and spats and talk with a late 19th Century Oxford, or Ivy League, accent about the virtues of indoctrinating "amateurism" into the classes, so as to make them better able to "...work the colored" in the equatorial colonial regions. Chop, chop! Restart the Olympics, chaps. We Brits will be the Greeks and you Yanks can be the Romans, and we'll all have a grand time, and save a few quid by not having to pay the wankars in the process of teaching them a thing or two about team work."
PRACTICING LATE 19TH CENTURY AMATEURISM RIGIDLY IN THE 21ST CENTURY IS A DISGRACEFUL COLONIAL ARCHAISM.
This archaic institution of amateurism has some virtues, if we can prune away the imbecilic aspects of it.
There is no flipping reason why professional players that don't make it in pro ball should not be allowed to come back and go to school on scholarship and play D1 basketball, while they get their degrees. Allowing this will probably sharply improve the integrity and quality of the D1 game, and end a lot of the exploitative drama growing up around the decision when to jump. And it will sharply reduce the control of D1 Adam Silver and the NBA currently wield. And there is not a damned thing Silver and the NBA can do about it, except whine.
This is one change that could be enacted before high tea, chaps.
Let's get on with it, shall we?
I have always thought that sooner or later a player that jumped early and washed out for whatever reason would successfully challenge the the NCAA rule denying him the right to come back and play in Division 1.
Joel could be the perfect candidate for trying to break this stupid and arbitrary rule.
Joel could come back to Lawrence, and rejoin the KU team and begin playing in games.
What could the NCAA do to stop it?
Is the NCAA going to give KU the Death Penalty for letting a guy come back and get an education in hopes of bettering himself and restarting his basketball career?
Is the NCAA going to deny one of the greatest center prospects of the last three decades the chance to play in big man-starved D1?
If Joel came back and rejoined the KU team right now it would be the biggest story in college basketball for the entire season. The ratings of D1 basketball was spike, precisely because of the controversy. Everyone in college basketball would love the NCAA for flipping off Adam Silver and letting college players go pro and then return to college.
The NCAA would for once be regaining the momentum in the game of basketball over the NBA.
What would the NBA do?
Would the NBA sue Joel, KU and the NCAA for violating the NBA's cartel-like organization?
Come home, Jo Jo.
Let's get on with the business of winning that ring after you collect a few more paychecks, eh?
Let Self develop the greatest center prospect of the last few decades the way he should have been developed.
Then go pro.
And if the NBA refuses to re-draft you, watch the dollars roll in from overseas to hire your services.
The most important thing here is that there are no lions in Phillie.
I would hate for Joel to have to bare hand another lion with a broken foot.
The coach takes our blinders off and helps us see what should've been obvious.
Fascinating angle for at least two reasons.
Tweeners are less likely to be taken early by the NBA, so these kinds of players can be very talented and yet not leave us as soon; this is a great work around for avoiding being "the youngest team in America."
Athletic tweeners that can force play onto the X-Axis and make bigger, slower players guard and chase them create real problems for those bigger, slower players in a shorter time clock, faster tempo game.
Others will probably come up with more, but thanks for sharing that insight.
What the Hell, coach!
Tweeners might even be able to press a little. :-)
Naaah, what was I thinking!
But 1 and 2 might be very effective edges and counter plays in the age of asymmetric stacking.