Yes, I am Dan Wetzel.
Good to hear from you, Don.
@KUinLA, you are Don Yaeger, aren't you?
Howling!
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
I totally agree with you and with others now, where as I used to defend not playing these OADs. I don't believe anymore that OADs get any better over the course of a season, at all. It takes years to develop a persons fundamentals and skills to the high level that juniors and seniors used to attain by working diligently. There is no reason in the world to expect any lights going on, or fundamental development, to happen with OADs. They are what they are from the minute they hit town. You either find a way to use what they can do in the team scheme, or there is no point in signing them. Bringing them along slowly is an illusion. It is a residual belief that you can coach players up. There is no doubt in my mind that Self and his staff can coach players up. But it takes years to do it. Time and again what we see is Self and staff waste half a season coaching OADs up to fulfill roles that the eventually prove that they cannot grow into in one season. Then about December or January, Self says, "Okay, I was wrong. I can't change Andrew Wiggins into being a rah-rah guy and a take charge guy. So its time to let him be who he is." That translates out to: Andrew's posse is not going to let him play 100% no matter what I do, so we are just going to have to scheme to him playing 75% and take what he can give us. Or it goes like this: we have to quit trying to teach Joel how to play the game and instead just scheme everything to what he can already do. And so on.
OADs signed have to play from the first tip off. The team has to be schemed to what little they can do NOW.
Coaching is for all the 3-5 year players.
Forgot to add that Oubre would have likely been a monster without the knee injury that kept him off the floor early, healed just enough to show how much he could beast for awhile, and then reinsured and reduced him to a so-s0 player the rest of the way.
The deal with OADs is they will conceal their injuries if revealing the injuries compromise their draft ranking. We have every reason to believe that Oubre could have kicked ass all season with a sound knee, because when it appeared to heal briefly he went on a tear.
I agree that some OADs have high ceilings and low foundations. But UK and Duke proved this season that OADs, when healthy, and on teams given favorable whistles, can function at Final Four and Champship levels. And so I am starting to think that players like Andrew Wiggins, that I often cited as having a high ceiling, but a low foundation, were really just protecting the merchandize and capable of playing as good as the surrounding talent justified they play. To wit, had Joel Embiid not gotten injured, I am pretty confident we would have seen Andrew Wiggins perform in the NCAA tournament just about as well as he has performed in the NBA a season later against, shall we say, slightly better competition in the L. :-)
All comparisons to ring teams before last season cease to matter.
Before last season, the biggest stack was UK in 2012 and it ONLY had 6 draft choices.
It just doesn't matter what UConn did in 2014 and 2011, when there were no 9-10 stacks.
It just doesn't matter what louisville did in 2-13, when there were no 9-10 stacks.
A new era started in D1 last season.
Last season proves that if Nike creates a 9 stack and a 10 stack they both get to the Final Four and one of them wins.
Last season proves that great outside shooting teams like Notre Dame CAN'T get to the Final Four. Period.
Last season proves that MSU, which was in the first season of its migration to becoming a 9-10 stack, can make the Final Four with a hall of fame coach, favorable officiating, and can't remotely compete with a 9 stack.
Last season proves even teams with four footers, like Louisville, and Gonzaga, and Utah, but lacking 9-10 draft choices, can't get to the Final Four against the 9 and 10 stacks.
Even Wisconsin with one of the best footer centers recently, and the first true stretch 5 (Kaminsky) to come down the pike, and stocked full of great experienced outside shooters, AND a stretch 4 draft choice in Decker, can't beat a 9 stack of freshman and sophomore draft choices. NO WAY. Not with today's refereeing.
I will be bold here and say that no one has more than a prayer of winning the NCAA national championship against 9 and 10 stacks, unless they are themselves 9-10 stacks.
!Unknown.jpeg ↗ It was written by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger back in 2000.
Here is the summary of the book on Amazon.
"Explosive and controversial, this expos[e] uncovers the exploitation of college, high school, and even junior high basketball players by the billion-dollar atheltic shoe companies competing for national endorsements."
Could it conceivably still be like this 14 years later?
Or has it all worked out for the best?
So far as I recall, Brad Stevens apparently did it without dump trucks at Butler, so I don't think we can learn much from that comparison. About all we can infer from Stevens is that when you go to the Final Four twice without dump trucks, and refuse to move to an elite major where dump trucks might go, something about the NBA soon looks pretty appealing, even after you say you plan to stay at Butler forever. Hmm. Not sure what to make of that.
I do vaguely recall Trent Johnson did not get dump trucks to back up to Baton Rouge during his time there, nor do they appear to back up for him at TCU.
And Trent was an assistant to Mike Montgomery. And Mike Montgomery after leaving Stanford wound up back in the Bay Area for a time at Cal. And you know what? The dump trucks didn't back up there for him either, as I recall. Hmmm. Cuonzo Martin is now at Cal. Haven't heard how he is doing there, have you ?
May be something might be gleaned from some professional journalists comparing the impressive recruiting successes of Stumpy Miller at UA, John Calipari at Memphis and UK, Coach K recently at Duke, and what may emerge at MSU and Texas?
Heck, I think we all need to be studying these Nike programs to learn how to do what they do to emulate it at our adidas program.
Where there's a will there's a a way, right?
You know, I am in a lonely minority about the possible ShoeCo-agent complex influence on the recruiting process, and even I can only hypothesize about it.
Little bits and pieces surface from time to time to hypothesize with, but not enough to argue a theory.
The key thing we need is for some investigative journalists like Dan Wetzel, or others, to dig and publish what has evolved in recruiting, since the days of "Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth" was written by Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger and published back in 2000.
Oh, this is so fun!
Self is staying.
Just kidding about Cal and K, but if you think about Cal and K, their days really could be numbered.
To reiterate, Cal has failed folks big time that don't appear to like failure, or the unexpected. :-)
And Coach K? Well, bottom line, it took him a 9 stack of what Bo Ryan reputedly called rent-a-players, plus an apparently completely cleared path to the Final with an apparently favorable whistle to barely beat UW with only two guys that might make an NBA roster!!! Think about it.
Next season, if LSU were given the SEC stack (and it apparently has been) and Cal has to earn an SEC title, then can he and UK be taken seriously at all anymore? eve with Labissiere? I mean the jury is kind of in on Cal's coaching, isn't it? Without all the advantages, he might take you to the NIT and lose first round, right? He's not like Self who will find a way to win a conference title even with guys no other stack school would even sniff at.
And can the NCAA really afford to clear another path to the Finals for Coach K? What if Coach K doesn't sign Ingram? OMG! Coach K seems to be at that age that he has to have no competition until the Finals, then a favorable whistle, and a nine stack to pull it off. This is no exaggeration, is it? I mean he and/or his players appeared to have to resort to big time cheap shotting even with a 9 stack, an apparent path clearing, and an apparent favorable whistle? If you are thinking of backing up the dump trucks in Durham with what remains right now, which appears to amount to giving Coach K less than he had last season, how confident is that going to leave the powers that be feeling, eh?
And to reiterate: Coach Cheapshotashevski, no, no, no, just joking, I mean Coach K appears not in sight of being given a 9 stack again.
A recruit like Ingram, and his posse, have to think this through very carefully. Same with Diallo. Same with Brown and Newman. Even if they all go to UK with Labissiere, or if they all go to Duke, are they going to be good enough as a green wood to beat LSU? It looks kind of doubtful.
This apparent program stacking looks so easy at first, but like all apparent central planning emergent complexity catches up with it at times.
But if all the players remaining were all to go to KU, to go along with all of KU's experienced players, KU might well become the team to beat, even for Nike-LSU!
But Self has to find a 5 to reassure them and he has not done so, at least publicly. But what if he has behind the scenes?
I suspect this is why there are so sooooooo many mixed signals and so much gear shifting going on by the small but important flock of recruits remaining.
I suspect there is real uncertainty about where is best to go to contend with Nike-LSU.
A lot perhaps doubt Coach K can win without a completely stacked deck, which he can't have next season, because, well, it appears that the deck is stacked in Baton Rouge this year.
And many likely suspect now that Cal can't win even with a completely stacked deck, and they know he is NOT going to have a completely stacked deck next season with LSU in conference. Hell, you could give Cal everyone left and IMHO he almost certainly would finish second in the SEC!!!
So this raises UNC and KU into the picture as target programs for the remaining recruits to flock to--to bring strength in numbers to.
But UNC has a black flipping cloud hanging over it, because of the easy course scandal. Remember?
And any, or all, of them choosing UNC pours salt in the Jordan vs. Nike fault line in the greater Nike world.
This means that KU actually could be a face saving path precipitating least conflict and best possibility for beating LSU.
Go, Bill, go!!!!
I don't know. It seems like Self has to get some more bodies in here. He even says he does.
Oubre is one hole. BG ought to fill it, if he recovers. Svi ought to be a good backup and maybe blossom. But to master the obvious, Oubre was a draft choice now, and BG and Svi are maybe draft choices later. That seems a fall off that has to be compensated for somehow.
I know that Self is in the enviable position of being able to move Perry to the 3 to replace Oubre, but then he has a hole at the 4 to fill and no prospective stretch 4 to fill it with, and we know he puts a lot of value on stretch 4s. So unless new bodies are brought in, Perry likely stays put, unless it was a condition of him staying that he play the 3.
This brings us to the front court. Self says he has to get help at the 5. I believe him. He says Bragg is a 4. Diallo seems a 4 to me also. I have been kind of baffled by his desire to pursue Diallo. Diallo is good. But signing Diallo gives Self three 4s. The main reason then for signing Diallo seems to me to move Perry to 3 and staffing the 4 two deep with Bragg and Diallo.
So everyone goes after Diallo and Self pivots and goes after Ingram. This makes sense as a hedge. Lose Diallo and Perry stays at the 4. Sell Ingram on taking over the 3 for two straight draft choices and some really sweet informal endorsement and agent fee expectations.
And then there is this NEED at the 5. Thorne leaving means to me that Thorne found enough potential for big man overcrowding to settle for the Illini and Groce and his old recruiter and assistant coach. So: who could it be? Gotta be an overseas type, unless Thon Maker is the guy.
What I am saying here is that while we could fire blanks, it seems unlikely. And since Self is hustling hard there is reason to expect a few hits beyond Bragg. The real question to me is whether adidas wants to joint the stack party. As of today, I don't see a single adidas team across the country in a position to compete with Nike-stacks come tournament time. adidas has to at least be tempted to try a stack to ensure one of its teams gets to the Final Four. Without a Frank Kaminsky grade center on any of the adidas teams, the only seemingly probable way to get an adidas team in the Final Four would be to stack at least one adidas team.
If not Self who? If not KU why?
Pitino has had a pretty good stable of adidas horses for awhile now and won a ring recently. But Rick is getting a little older.
Self might be good jockey to deliver some horses to, especially if UK and Duke are apt to come up a little shy this time.
But who knows? Its all wild speculation until someone writes another book about how all this stuff is actually working.
Bragg is one. :-)
But we should perhaps infer that informal systems can work part of the time and then break down under specific situations.
Coaches and programs should logically look to the players that play for Power AAU teams sponsored by the shoe brands the universities are contracted with for recruits first. These are relationship driven recruiting.
But the huge stacking of talent at one program at each of the Power Five conferences not only prevents non stack program from getting even one of these kinds of players, but also leads to crisis situations where there may not be enough of these high quality players even for the stack schools themselves. So: in these cases, the stack schools have a very strong incentive to go poaching across shoeco turf frontiers; i.e., to raid players from the opposing brand's sponsored Power AAU talent pool.
This appears to be when noses get bent out of shape, old relationships reduce give way to bidding wars over informal net benefits, etc., etc., and players go from being leans with one brand to leans with another brand.
Hypothetically, I suspect Self was set to get one of either Newman, or Brown, who were reputedly adidas leans, but then Nike-UK panicked because of unexpectedly high departures, and crossed shoe turf frontier and went after both hard.
Similarly, I think Self was set to get Diallo, but then Nike-UK crossed shoe turf frontier and went after him hard.
I suspect the counter move for adidas-KU was to cross shoe turf on Ingram and go hard after Ingram.
What is "go hard after them" a euphemism for?
Hypothetically speaking, one guess appears to be signaling increased informal net benefit expectations after graduation. Since NBA salaries are kind of set, one infers endorsement revenue expectations and agent fees after college eligibility would be the logical things to alter informally to appeal to players.
I hypothesize that when the system breaks down, this quickly and chaotically defaults into informally bidding up the informal down stream costs of aligning these players with endorsement revenues and agent fee amounts associated with any particular shoeco-agent complex.
I think all the schools involved have big PT holes this season, the player's advisors saw it coming, and this is driving players to be willing to cross shoeco-agent turf frontiers. And the more this process goes on the more likely it is for informal net benefits rather than relationships to rule.
I guess KU will get Diallo.
I guess KU will get one of Brown and Ingram.
I guess there is someone out there that fits Self's description of a perimeter player (a 2 or a 3 TAD) that will surface that I have not heard of yet. Newman seems too good to be that guy. My guess is that there is another slightly better Frank/Devonte out there that Self will sign once the OAD stuff clarifies. He could be a Brewster Academy guy that reclassifies.
I also suspect Self passed on Thorne, perhaps because he got a line on a foreign center that will play 2-3 seasons.
But its all shot-in-the-dark hypothesizing, because the apparently critical information about informal expectation setting is not available, if it in fact it were the driver I hypothesize.
Rock Chalk!
Hypothetically speaking, of course, wouldn't you just love to be an agent runner carrying offers and counter offers on endorsement percentages downstream to the few remaining undecideds?
BREAKING: NBA ENDS DRAFT! OPTS FOR COLLEGE STACK SYSTEM WITH SHOECO-AGENT COMPLEX DUMP TRUCKS AT KEY FRANCHISES!
Unreal these rumors! 😎
Holy fecal matter!!!!!
Is Self planning on moving Mason to the 5, so we have some serious rebounding next season?!!!!!!!!!!
Frank, you are MANIMAL!!!!!!!1 2 3 4
1 MANIMAL is a contraction of MAN and ANIMAL!!!!
2 Manimal is an American action–adventure series that ran from September 30 to December 17, 1983 on NBC. The show centers on the character Dr. Jonathan Chase (Simon MacCorkindale), a shape-shifting man who possessed the ability to turn himself into any animal he chose. He used this ability to help the police solve crimes.
3 MANIMAL was a product of the shamelessly philistine mind of Glen Larson.
4 Glen Larson so loved the world that he gave it Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, B. J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider.
I suppose it is also only unfair to alert recruits that Coach Cal is reputedly leaving Kentucky and let them draw their own conclusions about what happens when Cal leaves a program without knowing about what happened. :-)
Ah, I wish I were young again and could go to University of Tulsa and get a cyber spying degree with a major in psy-ops and then role out as an embedded KU asset working for some outfit like ESPN. It would be fun to trade spins with other respected embeds in the sports media.
Spreading dis-information is so neo-neocon chic!
Howling!
(Note: this post and the thread it is attached to is a joke. It is only a joke. If it were real, board rats would be advised to tune their radios, and iWatches, to an emergency broadcast channel, where the ghost of Steve Jobs would appear in a black turtle neck and blue jeans in front of an Orwellian backdrop and tell us all exactly what to do before the private oligarchy can figure out how to preempt it.)
This head line is what we want recruits to see, when they look at our wildly influential website. :-)
I am going to reply to this constructively by starting another thread. Do not be afraid.
I love the introduction of asymmetric imagery into my posts. ;-)
Hope it was not due to eugenics.
Oh, no! The chalice in the palace with the brew that is true is no more? Or is it the vessel with the pestle? :-)
Olivia, you are still our favorite movie star and now you have a baby jay!!!
Olivia Wilde will not come to a KU game this next season, and so she will not get better.
And now, a moment of silent mourning. :-)
jSPN stringers have penetrated the inner sanctum of KSU basketball inside the Bramlage XPerimental Barn and we can now confirm that KSU basketball has decided to compete in DII. Interim Head Coach Bruce Weber tried to have his men's team merge with the Lady Wildlynxes but the KSU women's coach said she would not step aside so Bruce could build down the women's team AND the men's team.
DEVELOPING...
rat-torical question = PHOF
IT WILL ALL BE OVER WITHIN A WEEK.
PRUNE, BABY, PRUNE!!!!!!!!
Seriously, it is all kind of pathetic.
Baby Jay...PHOF
I really don't know. He has tremendous potential. But things happen fast today. You've got to be ready to be jumped by OADs the way Svi almost jumped Brannen. You have to be ready to hang around for another season, when the dump trucks come. Guys at UK will see daylight that seemed buried last season. Svi might have to wait a season if a hyper class were signed.
There is just more volatility in talent flow than before.
Bury Me Now on the Lone Prairie
My Hair Will Stay in Place No Matter What
Build Down with Me, Sugar
G.D.F.R.K.S.U.
Scholarship Players Are Overrated, Bitch
One Last Time I Want to Follow Bill
Post to Be But Taint
Time of Our Lives Compared to What?
Lay Me Down, Cuz I Have Signed Transfer Tyler Self to Take this Team to the Next Level
My Men's Team Could Finish Second in the Women’s Division If I Could Coach a Lick
Maybe Frank Martin Will Leave South Carolina and I Can Replace Him Blues
I’m So Lonesome I Could Retire
Dear Future Husband (You Can’t Coach so Good Bye)
Make Me an Angel that Flies from Manhattan
Surely Steve Lavin and Gene Keady Can Save My Butt
Shut Up and Coach
B**** AD Better Have My Buy Out Money
Talking Body (with a Dead Brain)
Take Me to Church (and Say a Prayer)
Blank Space (Under My Silver Hair)
Truffle Butter (Won’t Get Me No Point Guard)
Take Your Time, I’ll Lose No Matter What
Earned It (Whip Me Grey)
Trap Queen That Be Me
(Note: All fiction. No Malice.)
Svi got his shot at a fast track last season and blew it.
He is going to have to beat out someone above, which he might do, or else check back in with Fratello/Hill.
I forgot to add that Self signing a hyper class would not probably trigger an end to KU facing asymmetric seeding and asymmetric officiating; that would likely require basic reform of the system.
But it would fire a shot across the bow of those that appear to be stacking Power Five programs that more than one shoeco-agency complex can play this stacking game.
And that additional shoeco-agency complex would have a team lead by a coach that had been able to be very competitive without a stack.
And he would have enough impact players to force any officials appearing to do any monkey business down the stretch of Madness games to come out and utterly humiliate themselves to tip the action against Self and KU with no calls.
Rock Chalk!!!
As prisoners of our recruiting past in which KU rarely signs more than a couple top talents, and often gets beat out by UK, and Duke, we suspect that Self will be lucky to sign one more player. Most think it will be Diallo with Ingram an outside shot, and that would be for most a successful recruiting season: Diallo and Bragg.
But Self has made it clear that he is swinging for the fences this season again. After signing 4-star Bragg, and characterizing him as a 4, Self has said he is looking for a pro type wing (2 or 3) and needs some scoring at the 5. He lost out on 5 star Zimmerman and transfer Thorne. Self has thus put a full court press on Diallo, a face the basket 4, who looks too skinny and short to add what is needed at the 5. He stretched the press to include Malik Newan at the 2 and Brandon Ingram at the 3.
Mostly everyone has been considering probable, or worst case scenarios. What say we break out of the prisons of our recruiting experiences, as Coach Self is trying to do, and study the best case scenario.
First, why should we even entertain the notion?
Coach Self has been a make it happen kind of guy. What he decides he wants he often gets after a few tries. This is his third season of really swinging at the fences in an unlimited sort of way, and with the slots open to make some plays.
Board rats often disagree with what he sets his mind on, but it is has been a hard way to make a living betting against him getting what he wants when he bears down, and persists.
Coach Self wanted a team that could score by driving instead of trey balling. Many of us howled. But in the end, despite a blizzard of injuries, KU was an inside scoring team that won a conference title and got a two seed in the tourney.
Coach Self believes winning conference titles is the way to get the best seed and that the best seed is the best way to start the Madness. To this end, Coach Self pursues a win at any cost conference style of play and has won 11 straight titles. Many disgree with his approach, but none can dispute that what the man has wanted to do he has done.
Likewise, when Coach Self entered coaching, it was a time when defensive basketball was not the coin of the realm. Coach Self decided that defensive basketball was the way he wanted to play to win. He became the winningest coach in D1 for a significant period of his career as a defensive coach.
When Coach Self decided that he wanted to bring the greatest player of the last decade--Andrew Wiggins to KU--when everyone more or less said that he could not, Andrew Wiggins wound up wearing KU crimson and blue.
One could go on here quite awhile.
The point is that Coach Self has decided that he wants KU to play with as much talent on the team as Calipari and Coach Cheapshotski have. And he has pursued this with the kind of singleness of purpose that he pursued getting Wiggins, and all of 11 straight titles, and so on.
So: we have some reason to believe that he WILL accomplish this sooner or later. It may not be this season. But it could just as easily be this season as another.
To borrow a famous phrase: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
So: it appears Self's first hyper class could look like this:
2 Malik Newman
3 Jaylen Brown
3 Brandon Ingram
4 Cheick Diallo
4 Carlton Bragg
5 Pappagianis
That is six players including a double stack at 3, which of course is exactly what is needed when playing OADs as starters at a key position.
So let us look at depth chart combining those six with our returning players.
1 Malik Newman/Frank Mason/Devonte Graham
2 Brandon Ingram/Wayne Selden
3 Jaylen Brown/Brannen Greene
4 Perry Ellis/Cheick Diallo/Carlton Bragg
5 Landen Lucas/Pappagianis
I think this dog will hunt.
And it will not be one whit more crowded than either UK, or Duke, or Arizona, last season.
This could be the greatest escape from a recruiting prison in college basketball history.
Nothing is written.
Snatching incarceration from the jaws of freedom?
Here is what I am learning from this post. We all hate the idea of anyone not getting better, when they put in the work. Its unjust. We all love these guys and deep down want all of them to keep getting better, not just for the team but for themselves.
What the hell, Joe! Its clear to me we both love The Tray.
If Jam Tray is a guy we both fear might not get better, let's jump on his wagon and shout, "You CAN do it, Tray. You have come so far, don't stop now. You are just a jump hook, or a short J away, from getting loose with that drive you showed last season. And maybe that injury was keeping you from going after those boards that you seemed to be getting the hang of chasing for a game or two mid season.
There have been so many times big and small in my life, when it seemed hopeless and then it wasn't.
Go, Jam, GO!!!!!!!
Exactly.
And he really didn't give himself a chance to learn to play the game at KU.
He had to just play with what he already had.
And by jumping he deferred learning to play the game longer.
I understand why he jumped. Bad injury that could easily wreck his desirability in the draft, if the degree of injury slowed him the next season at KU. But he is such a huge talent that it is very sad that he could not get more development time. At least he got some serious bones. That's most important unless you are already independently wealthy. And he has so much talent that if his back permits, he will have a long career in the NBA even as a back up, during which time he can develop his skills to at least journeyman level and make as much money as Ostertag and Collison. He made the right decision to jump, but oh what might have been!!!
You are probably right about BG, but that part of me that believes in great talent + plus hard work = great accomplishment was holding out hope for him to shoot 46% from trey for a season.
Tyrell Reed shot 46% his junior season when he was not battling operable injury.
Brandon was firing away at 45-50% when his form was good and his hip was not making him hop on his trey atttempts like a rabbit trying to compensate for a sore joint.
I am saying my prayers for him to pull a recovery with hard work--he is an intense Georgia man--and for his 6-7 height to compensate for whatever pop he loses in rehab. And then for him to come out and jump an inch or two less on the elevation but be symmetric and steady enough to rip cords like the man without a conscience about shooting that he is.
I figure if he shoots 45-50% from trey instead of the 40.4% he finished at, then maybe he would not be the least improved player.
But I get sentimental about great shooters and guys trying to bounce back from surgeries.
I may not be totally objective. :-)
He was not an OAD. He was a project.
But I think he proves my point.
He most certainly did not improve over the season.
Self just realized that Wiggins wasn't going to play the way he wanted him to play, for whatever reason, and so Self moved the saddle onto Embiid and said, "We are done coaching you, Feet, don't fail us now." Self said before the season started that Embiid had the best feet of any big man he ever recruited, maybe the best he ever saw. Self road those feet.
Everything Embiid did at the end, he could do at the beginning.
Zero learning. Embiid just looked better, because they quit coaching him and started running everything through him tailored to what he could already do.
Unpredictability is just another item to be compensated for strategically. It is not a be all end all. It is not even that hard to counter.
All unpredictability is still something that has to occur somewhere and at some time. It is just a larger variance of what, where and when.
You just restring your defense to include the larger variation, or alternatively, you attack preemptively so the unpredictability can not come into play; this is the rationale behind preventative war doctrine. If you attack first, their unpredictability function plummets to zero.
And when you take away their predictability, then that opens up a box of worms for yourself that they then counter.
Nothing is a be all end all in strategy.
Whenever someone says it is not about this, it is about that, you've got them.
Because it is always not about this, or that, or even both, it is about everything.
And in motion.
I am torn on this issue.
I venture only a toss up between Jamari Traylor and Hunter Mickelson, among returning scholarship players, or an OAD.
OADs do not seem to improve over the coarse of a season. Instead, they seem to reach a point, when Self decides the hope for any improvement, no matter how much he tries to coach them; i.e., the hope that they might learn to play the game properly in a single season from coaching is dashed, and he just puts them in and lets them do what they could have done from the beginning.
I believe this is John Calipari's secret to coaching OADs.
OADs cannot be coached up in a single season.
They really do not get better at all.
They are just either denied being able to do what they can do naturally, or allowed to do it.
Every OAD KU has had has gone through this awkward phase of being coached that seems not to produce any measurable improvements.
Then at some point, Self says, "Okay, go play."
Many of us, including me, have rationalized this transition as players struggling with getting acclimated to D1 speeds and so on, and then suddenly, as Self says, "a light goes on."
I now think that is a lot of hogwash.
Every OAD KU signs should be put in the starting line up if he is better than another player, and allowed to do what he can do without any coaching to "develop" him as a player. They DON'T develop. They don't want to develop. There isn't time to develop. Their posses don't want them to develop. They can't rationally take any physical risks, beyond those that come from playing a fairly violent game, even when one protects the merchandize.
Play the mofo's if you are going to sign them.
Forget about them getting better.
They don't.
They just get less confused when the coaching stops and they are allowed to use the bag of tricks they are born with.
Tyler will improve the most, but no one will know it.
Tyler.
Strategy is a hard issue for most persons to think about, unless they are the kinds of persons that like to juggle a lot of balls in the air, while they walk to the store through a disaster area to try to get some MREs from a rescue truck that keeps moving around unpredictably distributing food to survivors.
The simplest, salt of the earth group of human beings likes for someone else to look at the situation, then be told what to do in clear, logical terms to achieve an objective. We are all in this category on most subjects.
The next group up in complexity likes to think in terms of a fixed context with some contextual fits, some fixed rules (rules are limits and incentives), in which interplay evolves. Such folks often think they are sophisticated and say: if we do this, then they will do that, and so what would we do next. These are the worst kind of game theorists.
The next group up grasps that context evolves along with opportunity sets with each play, again with lots of contextual fits and rules, and so play is evolving both to choices and changing contexts.
The next group up grasps that context not only evolves,, but can be channelled in its evolution, again with lots of contextual fits and rules, and that interplay evolves, as context evolves and that some players can channel the context and interplay more than others.
The next group up looks at what the last group works with through either rational or non-rational choice models of decision making. Previous groups relied on rational choice models. This current group gets all puffed up about their analytical acumen, because they dare to include non rational criteria for player choices.
The next group up says that choices are never entirely rational, nor entirely nonrational, but some combination of both and made with varying and evolving information sets subject to shaped and channelled game spaces and player choice and counter choice evolving down paths of play with both foreseen and unforeseen consequences feeding back into the evolution of play.
The highest group, at least that I have experienced, does what the previous group does but introduces intentional deception on both sides and compromise of regulation to the analysis.
Most persons that fancy themselves to be thinking strategically, are not really strategists, because they are not comfortable with getting everything moving in the game being analysed.
One needs to keep this sort of thing in mind when making assertions like: "Good defenses can stop any scheme," or "give me a great player...and I don't care what kind of defense you play, I can score."
They are simplistic assertions that fundamentally ignore the messiness of reality, especially when reality has rules and rule enforcers that grow compromised, various agents driving compromise, complex interplay, rational and irrational choices being made, and foreseen and unforeseen consequences being triggered in pursuit of even the simplest of goals.
Red Auerbach was about as wily and unblindered of a mind as has ever engaged in thinking about the strategy of the game. Thank heavens he was never on the side of one of America's enemies in a war. Because his was a brilliant mind. He kept his best prescriptive epigrams on the game conspicuously simple and conspicuously open ended; that is, indicative of an open ended strategic environment.
Red juggled a lot of balls as if it were a cake walk. He coached. He conditioned. He strengthened. He innovated. He drafted. He negotiated contracts. He cut persons. He fired persons. He won more titles than anyone else. He coached and built teams. He general managed and built front offices that operated and marketed a team. He part owned and built ownership structures. He managed with coaches and player coaches. He presided. He got the most out of all kinds of persons. He was smarter than everyone he worked with, probably by several orders of magnitude. He could communicate with illiterates and highly educated persons and everyone in between. Coarse as he could be, and often preferred to be, he was the only authentic renaissance master of the game that the game has ever produced. Period. No one. Phil Jackson finally exceeded Auerbach's record of 9 NBA championships and so far has 11. Jackson deserves the label of greatest NBA coach, because of it. But understand that Auerbach won 9 NBA rings as coach and 7 NBA rings as General Manager or President. Phil, stay in shape pal. You need to win 5 more just to tie Red. Red is up in heaven laughing every time he hears talk of Phil beating his record. No one else before or since comes close to Red Auerbach's combined accomplishments in basketball. Not Wooden. Not Allen. Not Phil Jackson. Not Pat Riley. All these men are fleas beside Red Auerbach and each of them would admit it.
So what did the greatest mind the game has produced have to say in a memorable way about basketball.
"Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up"
Notice that he implies no end to the dynamic. Notice that he is not overly specific. Yet its implications are infinite in all directions. It is not a judgement of what is right, or wrong, correct, or incorrect. It is a profound insight into what is. With the insight, go to work on defining and solving any particular problem you think you confront. Red was Sun Tzu with a cigar.
"Just do what you do best."
OMG, is this deceptively elegant, or what? Notice he does not specify that what you do best has to be the same forever, or that it has to change, or what it might be. Notice the unspecified "you" implies the individual AND the coach AND the team AND the organization.
"An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise."
The importance of this to strategic thinking is beyond ranking. Strategic thinking distills to thought about what could be if we read our situation clearly and play our cards wisely in a timely fashion. Performance is the fuel strategy burns to achieve its objectives and goals. Promise is the narcotic of strategy. Performance equals foundation and existing structure of a fort plus what can reasonably be erected in time for a fight. Promise is the high ceiling gun emplacement for the gun that will never be finished in time for the fight. OADs need solid foundations and tall first story walls, because their high ceilings are never going to be finished in one season. And so on.
From these three insights, plus tireless work, and more cunning in every aspect of the game than anyone before or since, and his share of luck, did championships flow like water from a deep, clear, and endless spring.
Avoid both the simple and the simplistic, for if they do not fit they will fail you for sure, and if they do fit, they were neither simple, nor simplistic. They were elegant.
Avoid the unnecessarily complicated--especially the baroque.
Elegance of fit is the goal.
Elegance is the truth stated with just enough complexity to accomplish feasible coherence.
Be as accurate as possible, but never over accurate.
Be as inaccurate as necessary, but never more so.
Perfect accuracy is for suckers.
Reduction is for dolts.
Elegance rules be it by design, or chance.
I became Cheick's friend tonight. I think it bodes well.
That is me. That is me: old as the hills and twice as dusty!
Historical determinism is sometimes comforting, if not always in conformity with shifting circumstances of the present.
Since 2008, Self has always struck out on the Elite 5s. Embiid was not an elite 5. He was a project that developed sooner than expected. Distilled, history tells us unequivocally Self will not a get an elite 5 this season.
History also tells us that Self also cannot sign elite 4s. He can sign 4-5 star fours that are 2-4 horizon players. But he cannot do it every season. His last signing was Perry Ellis. He has signed Bragg, who is a 5-star type. He once signed two in the Morri. So we can infer he has a slim chance with Diallo. But slim.
History tells us that Self can almost always sign an elite 3 about 3 out of 4 years. Thus he has a very good shot at Brown.
History tells us that signing elite 2s is a very infrequent occurrence. He has signed Chalmers and Selden and that's it in 12 seasons. Thus, Newman is a long shot 2, especially with Selden already at the 2. If he came, we would expect Wayne to move to the 3, if Brown does not sign.
History tells us to forget entirely about elite point guards unless a one flees an imposing program. But since the NCAA appears to no longer police the member schools in basketball, signing an elite 1 is a near impossibility.
I am not a historical determinist, of course.
But sometimes definiteness is a short term suave for short term apprehension. :-)
Following are lyrics to a sweet old song by Dusty Springfield that seems to apply to what Self has his coaches must be doing with Diallo, Newman, and Brown, and to board rats sanguine with this recruiting class if it consists of Bragg alone...
Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying
Planning and dreaming each night of his charms
That won't get you into his arms
So if you're looking to find love
You can share, all you gotta do
Is hold him and kiss him and love him
And show him that you care
Show him that you care just for him
Do the things that he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him 'cause you won't get him
Thinking and a praying, wishing and a hoping
Just wishing and hoping and thinking and praying
And planning and dreaming, his kisses will start
That won't get you into his heart
So if you're thinking how great true love is
All you gotta do is hold him and kiss him
And squeeze him and love him
Just do it and after you do
You will be his
Show him that you care just for him
Do the things that he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him 'cause you won't get him
Thinking and a praying, wishing an a hoping
Just wishing and hoping and thinking and praying
Planning and dreaming, his kisses will start
That won't get you into his heart
So if you're thinking how great true love is
All you gotta do is hold him and kiss him
And squeeze him and love him
Just do it and after you do
You will be his, you will be his
You will be his
:-)
Ah, Bruce building down and living up to the title Interim Head Coach.
Well, I admire both of your skepticisms, but...
Ah, I remember how at the beginning of last season many said last year's team was going to go deep and challenge for a ring because of Oubre, Alexander and Svi, plus Wayne coming back? Four OADs and TADs coming back. They said how it was young, but one of Self's most talented teams that couldn't lose 8-10 games? Ah, I remember how I said even before the season starts that while the team might do well in the tournment, it was going to lose 8-10 games.
2014-2015 record: 27-9.
And that was with Self doing the greatest coaching job of his career--of literally finessing half if not more of the W's with a crazy new offensive and defensive scheme--BAD BALL--that by the end of the season most non-stack teams were imitating. Even Self can't do THAT two seasons in a row. He has created this monstrosity of BAD BALL and now he is going to have to figure out how to beat it himself. And Bill "Dr. Ballenstein" Self needs a big infusion of talent to stay ahead of what he, Eyegor Ryan up in Cheesetown, have done to the game. Same for Eyegore. He has to find a Kaminsky and Dekker replacement in a hurry, because he is going to have to defend against other teams copying him, too.
No rest for the wicked! :-)
If Self does not sign anyone other than Bragg, this team is one injury to a starter, or a key backup, from a .500 team. And we have all learned that one injury would be a miracle of good health for a Kansas season.
We need Diallo for the 4 and 5. And we need a near footer at the 5 to go with Lucas and Bragg to make four for Bruiser Bridge inside. It takes four real bigs to compete with the stack schools and win, or else it takes a super stretch 5, like Kaminsky. Zimmerman was the only possible stretch 5 in this class and it will probably take him 2 seasons to get good enough to dominate (and he's only staying one). Labissiere seems to lack the touch for a stretch 5. And the guy from Australia going to LSU I have not seen, but he seems to have been the other possibility.
But coulda woulda shoulda didn't.
The invisible hand of recruiting--what I hypothesize as the ShoeCo-Agent complex--but which others attribute to some god like entity engaged in random runs at schools that are just coincidentally contracted with Nike and are positioned to dominate each of the Power Five conferences--has intervened yet again against all common sense, and cold, calculating logic, and even owl's bones and eyes of newts tossed on the hardwood floor by a black magic priest, and resulted in the winningest coach the last 5 years, the guy with a ring, the guy at the school with the greatest basketball tradition, the guy at the school with everyone's favorite arena, the guy at the school with now the best living quarters for athletes in the country, the guy at the school with the best looking cheerleaders, and the handsomest guy with the most charisma and tele-presence of any coach in the game being odd man out. I am expecting someone to argue that it is his breath.
Hmmmm. When are board rats going to wake up and view the asymmetric cream cloud in the coffee. Something appears not only asymmetric in the NCAA tournament seeding and officiating, something appears asymmetric in recruiting and has at least since KU's 2008 ring team.
Note: I did not say anything illegal was going on.
I don't believe for a second that what is going on IS illegal. If it were, it would long ago have been rooted out.
Not now anyway.
Improper and unfair? who am I to say? It doesn't look very fair from outside as a KU fan. But I am not objective. I am a KU fan.
What can be said objectively is asymmetry in recruiting appears hard to argue not to exist.
What I want to focus on is not Diallo as a great player, because Diallo is just one very athletic 6-8 or 6-9 tweener with no apparent outside shot and no apparent back to the basket game that has, like Joel Embiid, not grown up playing the game. He does it with athleticism. Bully for him. I want him on our team. I like athleticism. I like Diallo. But...
Diallo played in an All-Star game in which most of the big guys appeared not to be trying very hard. Did you notice that? Zimmerman could easily have shut everyone down on the court on both ends and he appeared to be just coasting and having some fun. No one was even passing into him much. It was like having a young Lew Alcindor out there and no one passing it to him. He apparently was not there to convince anyone of anything. Nor apparently was Labissiere. Nor apparently were most of the players on the floor. Most apparently were already committed to programs and apparently just playing to make sure the game could generate enough revenue to perpetuate the biased recruiting regime and system of net benefits to players, agents, agent runners, AAU coaches, D1 programs, and the NBA, that appears to be hurting KU's interests to some significant degree IMHO. What we were watching was apparently what in Bo Ryan's vernacular might be called a pick-up game of rent-a-players going through the motions with one tweener big--Diallo--trying to put on a show to see what he could squeeze out of the current bidding war he seems to be an object of--among KU, St. Johns, and UK.
This circumstance makes it very difficult to tell how good Diallo was. What if ALL the player had played much harder than they appeared to play? What if Zimmerman had dedicated himself to holding Diallo scoreless and keeping him off the glass? What if Zimmerman had blocked everyone of his shots, or at least most of them? We might all be saying, "we've got to do better than Diallo!" The point is Diallo is what is available to KU and KU needs SOMEONE. And so it wouldn't really matter if Diallo had not played because of turf toe, we would be in this competition for him, because, well, the alternative is Jamari Traylor and Hunter Mickelson.
As always, the question that perks up in me is: what can KU, St. Johns and UK possibly bring to the bidding war for Diallo at this late date that they have not already offered Diallo previously. I mean, according to the rules, they can offer Diallo a scholarship, a set of teammates, a role, some amount of PT and life membership in a team and university culture after he leaves; that is about it. What does he not already know? What can they offer him now, except maybe coaching smiles that have been more recently bleached white for the latest visit than for the last one? Is Diallo really at a point of indifference that can only be decided by whiter teeth?
I am assuming here that everything is legal.
What is Diallo looking for from Self, Mullins, and Cal?
What more can they give him?
Or what ice berg is rumored to be about to sink any one or two of these three coaches that makes a player think, "Well, hey, I've got to meet with them again and ask them off the record and confidentially about their roster, and the rumors I have heard that they are going do for this or that?"
What?
Diallo has understood from the moment that Mullins was hired, and from the moment that Mullins hired Slice, that St. John's was a local Catholic college close to his current home. If these were decisive factors, the decision would already have been made, right?
If playing with the most draft choices on a team with an opening for him to play as much as he wants to play were paramount, then his decision to sign with UK would already have been made. Cal always has slots. And he reputedly often is very frank about the role a player can expect in that slot, whether or not he follows through on his frankness. Meeting again with Cal is not going to help you measure his likelihood of fulfilling his frankness. If you doubted his words before, you'll have reason to doubt his words now, right?
If playing for the best coach with an experienced back court, a stretch 4 returning, a desperate need for Diallo to play 30 mpg, and a reputation for telling players they have to earn their minutes, were all litmus tests, then Diallo would have signed the minute that Perry decided to stay.
So: we may have to infer something else is being offered. But what?
We have to assume it is something legal.
We have to assume that the folks involved are too sophisticated for the reputed old Tim Floyd satchel of cash approach, when he was courting O.J. Mayo for USC some years back.
It just doesn't seem plausible that Chris Mullins and the Fathers are going to go to the wall safe and bring out the Samsonite brief cases with the laundered bills, and saying "forgive us father for we have sinned." I believe Mullins and the Father would deny they would ever stoop to such a thing to win a basketball. And I have no way of knowing if they would deny it if they in fact did get out the Samsonite, but as I said, I am assuming nothing illegal is going on, so I don't have to make any judgement about that hopefully far fetched possibility.
Likewise, no one has ever even hinted that Bill Self is paying players. No one not trying to smear him anyway. He's never left a single program with vacated seasons and a backed up recruiting septic. And he's been at ORU, Tulsa, Illinois and KU.
And to give John Calipari his due, outside the one reputedly unretracted story by a Chicago newspaper claiming a UK player reputed to be unibrow was once offered six figures to play for UK, no one that I recall has ever argued that Coach Cal is dumping bundles of Hamiltons in bridle leather satchels made in the old country in the hands of UK recruits either. No one has ever to my recollection ever tagged Chris Mullins, Bill Self, or John Calipari with a single infraction that they were found responsible for. Not one. And Self and Cal have been coaching a long time now. Cal has left a trail of vacated seasons, but to my knowledge the dots never connected to him.
So: what exactly is the bidding war about?
What new completely legal thing is Diallo being offered at these recurring meetings to be weighed by him, so that he can make the best decision in his own best interest?
I just don't know.
I can see why the coaches would partake in a ritual where nothing new was being offered, because it buys them and their programs media coverage even if they lose.
But what is in it for the player and his family?
No one is saying that Diallo and his family are starved for company. No one is saying that they are hungry enough to need to wait for Self to bring some of Cindy's latest batch of chocolate chip cookies. No one is saying that John Calipari is the kind of teacher that just imparts so much wisdom at each meeting that a young man would be a fool not to keep making him come for visits so he could pick his brain about how to play on the low block. No one is saying any of that.
All I know is that some schools and coaches are contracted with one ShoeCo and others with another.
And I read about coaches, like Rick Pitino, indicating that agents and agent runners and AAU coaches are in some hard to grasp way channelling players to some hard to estimate degree more to some schools contracted with certain shoebrands than to others contracted with other shoe brands. And that whatever it is that may be going on behind what seems an opaque veil, the NCAA reputedly finds it legal at least in the cases Pitino was reputedly referring to.
And I know that the repeated coverage of Diallo dragging out his decision helps brand him and bring him to more persons' attentions through the hype machine of the mass media. I suppose this could improve his Q-rating, if he has one yet. I suppose this could help develop him as an endorser down the road. But seriously. How many people are going to remember any of this 12 months from now? Even in this world of appearances and hype, isn't 99% of what we remember about a guy still what he does on the floor? I mean, right now, if Andrew Wiggins had gone to the NBA, and wound up in the D-League, I would hardly remember Andrew Wiggins more than Russell Robinson. In fact, I would remember him less. He would just be a guy that came through and protected the merchandise for an early out season. Its only because he is making it big in the L that I can get juiced about him.
Think about Dakari Johnson on UK. He was once so hot that Joel Embiid went to another school to get out from his shadow. Dakari was who everyone wanted. Now I completely forgot that Dakari was on UK's bench. The bench is anathema to a player's media presence. How might Johnny Cochran have put it? If you don't play, there is no way.
So: maybe Jay Bilas will take a crack at explaining what is being offered to Diallo down the stretch that he has not heard before?
And it has to be legal, Jay.
We live in the legal era.
I think your point is sound.
But Self already made the change to the new offense that fits the insufficient talent: BAD BALL
And though we disagree with it, BAD BALL, by going slightly around .500 down the stretch without a credible 5, without a credible 4 (due to a series of injuries), without a healthy 3 (Oubre's knee kept deteriorating until he simply would not put it at further risk of playing 100%), with an intermittent incompetent 2, with a point guard that had lost his pop, with Greene on a bum hip that obviously wrecked his mechanics the last third of the season (hell, his completely screwed up mechanics--especially the hopping one foot jump shot--plainly visible even before they announced the injury, and with out any other credible 3 point shooting down the stretch (due to a not at all usual team wide slump exacerbated by injuries, regardless of the origins one might assign speculatively), proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to have produced a vastly better record than either playing it Self's traditional way, or adopting Fred's pro sets, would have yielded. We would almost certainly have won only 1-3 games with Fred's pro sets, given the shooting slump and the injuries to our best trey shooters (Mason, Greene, Perry and Oubre), and likely would have gone winless with the abject lack of talent inside. So from a practical, what did we have to work with standpoint, despite you and favoring running action outside to get treys in large numbers, Self's BAD BALL proved wildly successful at .500, not a failure at all.
Further, though we would prefer the three point driven offense, you to a greater reliance, and me to an XTReme reliance on the trey, by the last two weeks of the regular season and the entirety of the tournament, most teams had resorted heavily to drive ball, and some, like Fred, actually simply copied the entirety of Self's BAD BALL scheme for extended periods of games. Even 9-stack Duke labored with Bob Knight's rule and spacing driven motion offense, and had to resort to drive ball and cheap shotting whenever it finally came up against a good team, which biased seeding assured it would not do until the Final Four.
And then there was UK's former Princeton on Steroids--the offense once known as the the Dribble Drive Mostion offense of ball screen threes, drives and pitches into the footers. Ha! Cal anticipated everyone slowing UK down with Drive Ball all season and so he pre-empted them by making his 10-stack of draft choices play as the slowest team in recent memory. Whenever the going got a little tough, Cal gave his draft choices cement tennis shoes and turned it into his 4 footers against the world. What amazed me most, was that even Cal gave up on the dribble drive off ball screens when it got really tough. He went to a six man rotation with drive ball dishing to centers.
We may not like it, but Drive Ball, started apparently by Bo Ryan, who started out relying on the trey a great deal, has morphed into a Drive Ball where 20 treys are about average, and 15 are not unusual, and Self's broader system of BAD BALL incorporating Drive Ball with 10-15 3ptas, and focus on total disruption of flow on both ends of the flow with half court offense and defense, rather than on strips and blocks, appears likely to be the next path forward in basketball.
What Shabazz Muhammad said UConn did to the superior team--get small leads by either shooting a trey or driving the iron, and defend them with driving for as many slow down possessions as possible without risking TOs, or treys, and just driving the rim from wherever on the floor you have an MUA, until they opponent catches up, is the future of college ball, so long as talent asymmetry persists in the form of ShoeCo-Agent complex talent stacks at one program in each Power Five conference.
What coaches preferences for Drive Bal,l and now Bad Ball, are telling us is that without a talent stack, and with so much fouling being permitted, that they cannot run any timed offense, like a Princeton, even any rule and spacing driven offense, like Knight's motion offense, or any passing offense, like Self's High Low derivation of Dean's and Larry's and Carolina Passing Offense, because defenses can disrupt any timing, and can drive any motion off the spots it seeks to operate from, and can foul any shooter shooting in any impact space created by a passing offense. So: the only thing left, unless you have four draft choice footers, and 5-6 draft choice perimeter players, is to play drive ball, and, as usual, Self has taken the scheme for the rest of us--Drive Ball--to its logical extreme that we did not grasp, so let's copy Self as usual, until some rules changes free up some other way.
What Self proved at the end of the season with .500 ball is that with BAD BALL you can break even with nothing at all, and if you've got the pieces, and they are healthy, it will probably be hands down the statistically optimal way to play, until the rules change.
Why is Self going hard for a pro type perimeter player in Newman he compares to BenMac in impact?
Why does he say signing one along with a 5 would put his talent level at KU as high as it's been in awhile?
Short answer: he has scholies to give and a hole at 5. But that does not explain the quest for the BenMac grade backcourt gun--the recruiting over Brannen and Svi. Uneasy answers?
Svi is not a pro type player next year.
BG is not a pro type player next year, after hip cuts and 4-5 month recovery.
And Frank and Devonte have their hands full at 1 and are not pro type players at 2.
Self is looking for two impact pieces--one each at a wing and the 5--and he seems to be at a full count--3 and 2--bottom of the ninth--and swinging away.
He is staring down a .500 season, if he strikes out.
He is looking at a potential ring team if he gets the bat on the ball.
All quiet on the Recruiting front for KU.
Thorne chose Illinois because his old Chorlotte assistant had moved to Illini.
Shown Miller liked UConn.
Diallo speaks French and Slal Labissiere does too. The French Connection!!!