You have been away a very long time. Where have you been posting?
Regarding Manning, JT had Hoya Paranoia.
Danny can have the Freakin' Deacons.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Yes, and it feels like he may be about to let Jamari start hoisting a few from outside.
Jamari?
Yep. Jamari took one or two the last game. I don't think they were treys, and looked bad, but they were 18 footers and that's usually how Self has had his bigs work up to the triceratops.
Self has to have someone else that can approximate Perry, when Perry goes out for a breather, or gets in foul trouble, and it seems Jamari is going to get a shot..
To be able to drive the blocks--Self's term for attacking the rim with bigs from outside--the post man has to have at least shown an outside jump shot that has to be honored some.
Also note: Perry is now part of the 3 man weave expanded to a 4-man weave. Self clearly liked what it added, because they used it frequently the second half against ISU.
Self has to keep the opposing bigs honest with all this three balling.
He has to keep finding different ways for our short bigs to make running attacks at the rim.
The 4 man weave is a great way to do it, because it forces an opposing big to start sliding and chasing away from the rim AND can force him into switching off onto a wing, or even the point guard. I have been really surprised that more board rats here did not jump on the significance of thing.
This 4-man weave is going to be crucial to beating a team like Kentucky, Louisville, UA, Duke, or Gonzaga with a load of footers.
And before we are through we may see a five man weave.
Self has tried running the floor end to end with the bigs and that worked very well, so he has that in the quiver, but he can't do that both ends of a two game weekend in the Madness.
Self has to figure out how to move footers either way fro the rim, or at least get them moving around near it..
The weave is the thing.
Now he is working
Please do. Tell the kids they have a good future.
Cool, thanks for sharing that bit of childhood.
You were most fortunate to hang around the fantasy factory at that time.
Sam Fuller could make war movies move.
And Ty Hardin should have been bigger.
And Claude Akins in any 1950s pic is worth a look.
Remember also Jeff Chandler played in The Jayhawkers. Good movie idea wrecked by Fess Parker, who later put a lousy piece of architecture down on East Beach in Santa Barbara and called it a hotel. Its still there stinking things up.
(Added subsequently for following comment.)
Cherkaski Mavpy? Is that the phonetic spelling:-)
So: who produced this image? Fascinating.
You forgot Marvin Gaye. :-)
Also, must HOWL!
Howling!
But not Kaddishing.
Only Allen can do that.
T. S.. Eliot. Click!
You are way ahead of me then. Hat's off to ya and your gramp.
-->Interim KSU Head Coach Bruce Weber is in a real jam. KSU is nearing the time where it needs to hire a permanent coach and Bill Self has not moved any where lately that Bruce could follow him to.
-->Interim KSU Head Coach Bruce Weber continued: now Bruce has to make do without his leading scorer and a player not to be named here later, because, well, because the players violated some team rules. No word on whether the devil made them do it.
-->ACC: the conference from hell--Anyone notice that Danny Manning is taking quite a pasting this first season at Wake Forest in that devilishly difficult, 15-team ACC? His Evil Elders, er, Demon Deacons are 11-12 overall and 3-7 in the conference from hell, which leaves him in 12th place. The good news is his team has won the last two against penultimate cellar dweller in ACC Hades, Virginia Tech, and 8th place NC State Hell Hounds, er, Wolf Pack. Watch out Danny! The ACC appears to be the devil's play ground. Say your prayers and stick to the straight and narrow.
-->ACC: the conference from hell continued:--NC State appeared on the rise for awhile, but no longer in the conference from hell. Perhaps NC State would like to join WVU in an eastern division of the B12? Maybe the devil made me say it?
-->ACC: the conference from hell continued--its getting hot down there. Syrexcuse bans itself? What's next? UNC banning itself?
-->ACC: the conference from hell continued--Syrexcuse Self Banning Ritual. I read the ESPN story and I still can't quite figure out what all they are banning themselves for, except that Fab Melo seems a part of it. Further, Jim Boeheim appears ambiguously caught up the paradoxical realm of Syrexcuse banning its team from post season play, without banning them from regular season play, and without appearing to ban Jim Boeheim for anything. Will Jim Boeheim join the new wing of the "I didn't know" hall of fame for coaches? This new wing is for those that didn't know anything about what they were self banned for!
-->ACC: the conference from hell continued--Coach K, ironically the coach of a team called the Blue DEVILS, who reputedly did not know about the jewelry tastes of one of his players a few years back, appeared quick to defend the virtue of Coach Boeheim and new conference from hell member, Syrexcuse. Interesting that Roy Williams has apparently not spoken out similarly.
-->ACC: the conference from hell continued--Break out the shamrocks. Notre Dame, which could have joined the comparatively saintly Big 12, but instead opted for joining a conference of souls apparently in need of saving, finds itself flourishing in its association with the damned. Glory, glory be, the lads with the luck of the Irish find themselves fly fishing in the conference equivalent of the River Styxx, and are in second place. Perhaps they will resort to an exorcism to move above Virginia in first place. First place in the ACC is also known as the outer most ring of the inferno. All is fair in the nether regions, when fighting the devil himself. Imagine Notre Dame ahead of Louisville, Duke, North Carolina, and Syracuse. Its a miracle, Father, though the fires be a wee bit hot right now.
-->Things are so devilishly bad in college basketball that the broadcasters that report the players getting suspended are getting suspended. Yo, Greg Anthony, have your agent talk to Hugh Grant's agent and get some public relations tips ASAP, before someone nicknames you the solicitor general and it sticks.
-->Replacing Greg Anthony with Bill Raftery is like swearing off hookers and ordering a Bushmills.
(Note: all satire. No malice.)
Damn, coach, your molars must be getting round as cue balls! :-)
@icthawkfan316 said:
Being drafted on potential is almost always better than being drafted as a known quantity, because almost no one lives up to the hype
An important insight.
If that patch is on his uniform, he was remarkable.
Learn everything you can about your grandfather's life before the war, his war service and experience good, bad, or indifferent, and how he dealt with it afterwards.
He was probably an absolute man, whether he viewed himself that way or not. Based on what little I know--not the movie, but what little I have read--what he experienced was different than most of the rest of American combat soldiers of World War II. In some ways, it foreshadowed the warfare of Vietnam.
Don't let where he went, and what he did, die, even if it seems inaccessible to you, or others in your family. It wasn't and isn't, if you try. Write as much of it down as you can. Ask everyone that knew him about what he was like before and after he served. Search on line for his service records at DOD, or the Army. In time, if you look long enough and deep enough, you will come to know him, and through him know your father and yourself, and much of what effect, good and bad you have had on your children. War is trans-generational in its effects on families. And what it did to men, whether known about, or forgotten, understood, or not, continues to echo down the generations, for better and for worse. You owe it to your family to find out what you can and use what you can learn to help you family keep getting better.
Criteria for being the next jaybate 1.0:
1.) graduate of KU;
2.) love The Game and The Legacy;
3.) have at least a thimble full of brains;
4.) make the length fit the content;
5.) never participate in organized iLynchings of football or basketball coaches;
6.) be amusing at least sometimes;
7.) do it for free to give back to the game, the school and the state that helped you grow up "the right way";
8.) encourage interactive journalism;
9.) don't forget who your Daddy is;
10.) love the players; and
11.) support limited identity posting.
Good to hear from you.
Rock Chalk!!!
PHOF^10
~Ford will hide inside his right shoe and send shoe lace semaphore signals to his players without the refs knowledge.
~Ford will have Forte wear short shorts and risers to fool Frank into thinking Forte is 5-7.
~Ford will announce he will miss the game because of flu, but then hide among a crowd of Stillwater Little People entering the arena and coach from behind a cup of Gatorade.
~Ford will try to convince the refs that Forte should get four points instead of three on his long shots because Forte is short enough to talk to Ford eye to eye.
~Ford will unleash a horde of nanobot Cowboy mascots designed to trip up KU players running the floor, but instead, they will slip harmlessly between he cracks in the floor and KU will win handily.
~Ford will have his players announce to the media that they are taking no prisoners over 4-10.
~After losing, Ford will fail to hang himself with a rope meant for a 4 footer.
(Note: All fiction. No malice.)
The thing about Wilt was, he just couldn't jump and he wasn't strong enough.
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Wigs is proof that some guys with long necks can overcome them and play even taller than they are.
Of course, it helps to be able to jump out of the gym.
So glad his management seems finally to have green lighted him.
He will slowly, but inexorably overwhelm the NBA. I expect his career to go like Michael Jordan's did. 3-4 seasons laboring getting all his skills in order and plugging a few gaps, then he gets his Phil Jackson and its off to the races.
Rock Chalk, Wigs!!!
Hey, did I say that? I deserve a...PHOF!
And thanks for that awesome picture of Coach Allen at the field house. I don't recall seeing it. But I sure do recall seeing those nets a few times, when my pop would take me to the field house during the day time on a non game day.
He is very smooth and has a conventional jump shot both of which are rare for footers.
But that long neck, plus the rounded shoulders, means he probably should be a stretch four if he has the footwork needed.
I like him and would love to have him on our team. I just don't see him as a dominant shot blocker, unless his arm measurements are crazy long like Cole's.
The other thing he has going for him is he seems intelligent.
He reminds me of Raef LaFrentz.
Another guy he reminds me of is that forward that played for Rick Majerus at Utah. Superb college player that didn't translate too well to the pros. But Zim seems taller and so much more likely to cut it.
Glad to know that that software tracks that. The answer to my question about players points per foot, or points per mile, is actually quite handy. Thanks for the heads up.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
Zimmerman better have some springs and long arms to play near the basket, because he has a looooong neck and that means he plays less like a footer and more like a 6-9 guy from the shoulders down.
The trap of playing the WVU is thinking that only two point baskets on breaking the press are all that are needed to beat WVU.
OU's key to success was getting outside and inside treys, plus making WVU turn it over; that is the only way to overcome the WVU press, if you refuse to press equally.
Huggie is using the press to make you turn it over and to make you lose your legs to shoot treys.
Why is he doing this?
Because his team is lousy at trey balling.
Huggie has to beat you most nights with 2ptas and some FTs.
To do that he has to reduce your total FGAs by turning you over, AND by making you too tired to shoot a high percentage of treys.
If you have enough trey shooters on your team to keep resting them during the press, over the course of the game you are going to break the game open if you just keep draining treys.
But if you keep settling for 2ptas the entire game you are playing into his trap.
Self will have the guys take all the short twos he can get early, while he shortens the game the first half, but at some point, he is going to rain treys to take the lead.
Shorten the game up front. Then shoot the trey. And transition when you can to build the lead. Then shorten the game and spend the lead doing it.
You win.
Its the same formula, whether you are playing a pressing team or not.
That's what is ingenious about what Self has come up with this season.
P.S.: the press in some ways favors KU's approach this year, if KU can protect. Why? We can't score inside B2B. We have to attack the blocks to get a short shot. So: the press makes it even easier for our short bigs to run and jump at the basket. Frankly, if I were Huggie, I would surprise KU by not pressing the first half at all. Hope and prey you keep it close; then fritz KU out with the press the second half. That will discombobulate Self's game plan.
If I may distill this, the only way we can keep opponents from focusing on our bread band butter way of building leads--the trey--is to run and jump at the basket with our bigs, because they are too short to score inside without a running start. :-)
It is fascinating, but if one reads history thoughtfully, not totally surprising.
At least since the time of Rome, private oligarchies and their agent representative governments have understood the power of sport to entertain, captivate, unify and distract their peoples from their own capacities to influence the business of government and business.
In short, the leaders of ancient Rome understood that the spectacle of sport was conducive to competing with religion and theater in conditioning the people to identify with the group and so believe they had a strong common interest and benefit in sacrificing for that common interest.
The early middle ages came to be dominated by the rituals of the church and discouraged great stadium building and to some extent the mass secular arts of theater and music outside in the amphitheaters, because they associated sport with paganism and dissent into barbarism that befell Rome.
The institution of the Olympics of Greece were lost to Rome and the Middle Ages. The institutionalized Roman spectacle sports were lost to the Middle Ages and up to the 19th Century.
We have the architects of the joint British and American Empire of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries to thank (or blame) for the reascendance of the secular, mass spectacle sport.
They clearly understood that their emerging global empires were going to be riddled with conflict because of the greatly diverse cultures they were trying to lord over and the increasing speed of communication and increase in killing power of weapons.
They sought to introduce institutionalized sport to build esprit d' corp in their own peoples to make them more willing to fight wars of empire and to tolerate non-democratic administration of conquered lands.
Sports indoctrinates values of cooperation with "your" side and conquest of your opponent. It also indoctrinates the idea of on-going, institutionalized competition--what might be called tolerance of permanent limited war.
The architects of British and American empire--the form of hegemonic empire that we now live with--saw that track and field, soccer, American football, and American basketball all had this potential for binding the masses they would be leaders of into team members willing to fight for the empires. I suspect that in America they saw the same in baseball, but realized that baseball was already its own business, and they needed to subsidized competing games like football and basketball through public schools and universities, to get control of the whole cultural and empire function of sport. And they understood that sport was a pleasing entertainent that distracted their peoples from the inequities among them resulting from empire building.
Sport gave us all something to talk about and distract ourselves with, whenever they had to do things that we might not like, or that we might find not in our own best interests.
They apparently thought it worked for the Romans for quite a long while, why not give it a go,eh, chaps?
Some British diplomats even said in the late 19th Century, but especially after WWI, England can play the role of Greece advising Rome. And America can play the role of conquering Rome. And our peoples and the peoples we conquer can be kept fit, entertained and distracted from the often unfair, often vicious business of empire.
Institutionalized sport, in short, is crucial to the administration of empire both at home and in the conquered lands in many ways.
What I will always wonder is: did James Naismith ever grasp this? He was a well educated young man from one of the academic seats of the empire building ethos--McGill University of Canada, which was the equivalent of being from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton in USA, or Oxford, Cambridge in England under Great Britain.
Whatever.
Its the greatest game ever invented.
Whatever uses it may, or may not, have been put to.
Rock Chalk!
One more thing, about the NBA players having the wealth to migrate into ownership.
In Hollywood, and the car business, "the talent" tried to move into "ownership" frequently. Early on they failed frequently in Hollywood. Someone like Ford succeeded for a time in the car business, but eventually his heirs had to to turn Ford into a conventional corporation with a more and more diluted family interest. The rest of the car corporations are to greater or lesser extent "corporations" rather than talent owned.
Once the Hollywood studio oligopoly of the early era broke down, there was a brief window where both talent agencies, and talent partnerships rose to the fore. The talent agencies rose to a monopoly, then receded to oligpoly. The talent partnerships mostly collapsed. But some prevailed. Spielberg/Geffen/Katzenburg succeeded. Lucas kicked ass and now essentially controls Disney. Scorcese, and DeNiro have succeeded on smaller scales. Cameron seems mostly a fabulously successful independent film maker, but I don't follow the biz anymore, so I don't know about him and the new wave of cable and internet and TV based filmmakers.
But still the latter day studios, as financial entities and wholesalers dominate the business in getting access to distribution. And even as the internet increasingly drives content distribution, the theater chains stay closely held beyond the control of "the talent."
And in all entertainment, you are heavily constrained by your distribution channel.
For "the talent" in the NBA to really make a go of it, they will have to get more control of distribution, which may, or may not be feasible in the interrnet era..
You are onto something here with Nowitzski and Love. Dirk 's the first footer I recall where his team got behind him being a Mobile Big Man Attack Platform working outside in. Others more astute about the NBA may be able to name others before him.
Certainly some like Ralph Sampson, and Danny Manning, should have been developed this way and were not.
Perhaps Bill Walton before his injuries could have been perhaps the best ever at this sort of game prior to Nowitzski. Bill had a great touch, but his coaches mostly wanted him B2B inside.
Robert Horry comes to mind as an early outside threat that might have been trained to play outside in and been hugely effective.
Garnett had the most incredible athleticism, but never seemed to have the touch needed.
Outside in is the future of all basketball until an inside three point line is created, and even that might accelerate the tendency of outside in.
The future of basketball is to shoot all first shots as threes. And eventually to shoot all shots except the rare shot with 5 seconds to go and no one open to take a trey, as treys.
People thought I was being eccentric earlier in the season.
But the first team to field 5 trifectates with two trifectate subs will prove my hypothesis. I am confident.
In 30-40 years, maybe only 10-15 years, the game will be 75% 3ptas and 25% 2ptas, or even more lopsided in favor of the trey.
And the near footer mobile big man attack platform shooting the treys will be the gold standard for positions 3, 4 and 5, and if @drgnslayr were right about big man footwork in other games enabling ever more mobile big men, then we absolutely will see the near footer 2 and the infrequent near footer point guard.
Why?
Because the taller you are, as a trey ball shooter the better.
The ultiimate trey ball shooter is a good ball handling 2 that is a footer and 6 inches taller than the 2 defending him. Pass it to him and he can get an open look trey even with 5 seconds to go on the shot clock with no shake and bake.
This array of trifectate footers at the 2, 3, 4 and 5 will become feasible as the game globalizes and billions more players grow up playing soccer and basketball early and get selected toward basketball.
Eventually the game could migrate to trifectate footer point guards, but it doesn't need to for a much longer time.
As long as I am crystal ball gazing here, the interim period on the way to this future game is going to see a rebirth of the running hook to be run late in possessions when there is no open trey to pass to.
Going to iron will simply become too risky for the great talents health, so the running hook is the way to get nearest the rim and draw a foul, without getting injured.
Iba foresaw where everything had to go in 1964 at the Olympics, when he created the High Low passing game that put an end to the centrality of timing offenses he had worked so long to perfect himself, before having the epiphany of the untimed passing offense.
Iba was the visionary genius. Iba was Moses that delivered the game to the modern game of controlling the T-axis, and ending reliance on strict timing offense. He could not enter into the land of milk and honey, for he was too much a part of the timing offense himself. But he created the passing offense and Dean and Larry perfected it.
For a time, everyone thought you had to run to win.
But right now, the only reason the pros play as fast as they do is the shot clock.
The game distills to shorten the game up front looking for an angle to build a lead; then build the lead how ever you can, and with the three point shot you build it with the trey, then shorten the game while defending the lead. Repeat the formula as often as you have to do it to get to the point where you can shorten the game to the buzzer.
Shoot the trey, transition when you can, defend the lead.
The pros follow the formula to a tee, but with a short shot clock.
Self follows the formula to a tee, but with a longer shot clock.
When there was no shot clock, Dean Smith followed the formula to a tee by stalling whole games even with the most fabulously athletic players.
The major successful exceptions to the formula were Wooden running and Auerbach running tp break teams' wills to compete.
These appear to be the two ways to play the game, and the Iba way appears to be prevailing increasingly over time, as the money in the game increases, and the desire to protect the merchandise in creases at college and pro levels.
I am not smart enough to say what is right or wrong, or what might work better, or not.
I am just barely smart enough to understand that what happens over time is what is most feasible to happen, whether it is wrong or right, for the best, or for the worst.
Humbling.
Maybe even scarey at times.
Requires a lot of animal faith to change with the times.
And a lot of old time religion perhaps helps, also.
And some cunning never hurts.
And you've got to be willing to walk through the looking glass from time to time.
Rock Chalk!
Distance monitors is an absolutely flipping brilliant idea that never occurred to me and here is why I would want to do it as a coach.
I would want to compare points per foot run (PPFR) among players at the same positions. I would want to learn whether to coach maximum, minimum, or middling motion to achieve scoring productivity.
I would also want to compare team totals to ascertain the same thing: what is the most point productive way to play the game: more running, or less running?
Then i would want to use the overhead camera data collection technology to quantify which angles of running produced the most points.
There is so much still to study in the game!!
Your idea that the NBA game is fast rings true with me, but then I ran into this interesting quote from Withey in a CJonline story. Withey said the first year in the NBA is a huge learning experience. He said he was hurt most of the season and so mostly watched and learned from the vets. Withey then remarked on playing more this year, though still not a lot of minutes because the Vets ahead of him were healthy and playing well. Then Withey reportedly said effectively that the college game was faster, had a lot MORE running up and down the floor--a lot more reckless abandon. I thought this was quite remarkable and I dialed up a couple NBA games since reading Withey's quote and I have to say he may be right. about the speed of the current pro game. I don't watch much pro ball the last few years. But it appears to have slowed down some from 5 or so years ago when I last watched with some frequency, and a whole lot from running era of the Showtime Lakers and before them the Wilt Lakers, and before them Big Russ and his Celts.
Have you, or any one else seen any tracking of average length of possession in the NBA across the decades, or of late? I wonder if the game has slowed down since the NBA allowed the zone?
Super fresh angle on my post. Better than mine!!!
Long term, a lot of this comes down to how the current bonanza and instabilities tie to and impact Big Gaming-Big Media, and how they tie to and impact Big Shoe-Big Apparel-Big Oil on the other.
(Note: Big Shoe-Big Apparel-Big Oil is the Big Variable. Big Apparel is really the only way to long term soak up the over supply of Big Oil being created by the technologically driven migration inexorably away from singular dependence on oil for energy for transportation and heavy dependence on it for heating and food production. Genetic engineering allows us to move away from petroleum based pesticides and herbicides long term. LNG, solar, wind and geo thermal guarranty we will inexorably migrate off oil almost completely for heat. Tesla proves electric cars and trucks and trains are feasible now. And there is zero need for oil to generate the electricity for transportation. And LNG once brought under proprietary ownership and infrastructure distribution an replace oil for backing central banking reserve currencies as well as oil. And environmental laws can be contrived to rationalize denial of use of a lot of oil by emerging economies that might choose non compliance. But a market use is needed for oil to reduce the oversupply created by migrating off transportationing with it, growing food with it, and heating with it. We are never going to completely stop using oil because it is increasingly understood to be a renewable, abiotic energy source behind the bogus hype of it not being; that is not how these migrations work, but we are going to migrate away from such singular dependence on it. But we have to have an alternative demand for it to ease the shock to sunk costs of the migration. This is where Big Apparel comes in. Big apparel has to be created in order to migrate the world off cotton, linen, and wool, all of which depend heavily on petro herbicides, pesticides and petro feed for critters, to get us wearing petro apparel. Migrating the worlds growing population and expanding population in countries emerging as advanced economies is an important step in soaking up the excess oil supply created by migrating off of its usage in the conventional ways mentioned above. Getting the earth's population buying new clothes and shoes every season made of petro fibers can and will ease the political economic shock of migration away from oil in these other more polluting uses of oil. We can greatly control pollution of refining oil at the refinery. Its out in the fields and tail pipes where it really fouls up the atmosphere and the ground water. Petro clothing will create a different set of environmental problems, but they will be at least different and with less strident constituencies at first, and so we will opt for the path of lesser resistance and deal with those problems when we get there. It is the way of humans dealing with problems. )
Is it better for either/both to see a succession of ownerships and control to a new player-owner oligarchy, or to use certain investment management firms working with untraceable bailout monies and other less savory monies to restore order in the hands of a thinned out old ownership order. History suggests the latter.
The main thing is: everything had to be destabilized in order to get it rationalized for globalization of the game and its vastly increasing gambling, endorsement and advertising capacities.
The real money in sport long term is rationalizing institutions and ownership and financing regimes into orders more coinciding with emerging regional and global orders.
There is no reason, say, for the gambling control of legal profits and reputed money laundering activities in Big Gaming in Italy, say, not to be integrated with gaming around the world. In fact it must be, or local political and economic opponents will free ride on the regionalization and globalization and upset the process.
The pro leagues of Europe and Asia and Africa will have to be brought into some kind of order to avoid free riding and destabilization from outside. In this regard, the sports Bidness sector is just a microcosm of other business sectors undergoing rationalization to changing regional and globalization constraints.
D1 and the NBA ARE BEING DESTABILIZED into succession into more rationalized orders--better for some, worse for others. It will be called many things--the invisible hand of markets--even though the markets are only situationally allowed to function, conspiracy--even though no one involved is hiding any thing they do, and dynamics of managed regionalization and globalization--which is what all the economic policy papers at respected think tanks for half a century or more have been calling for.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I have been reading about the history of the first 50 years of the game and one thing stands out above all else: there has been an endless series of efforts to reorganize the sport into more rational orders. The pros, the AAU, corporate, gambling and media, schools and players have been competing for their interests From the beginning. The only real loser has been the YMCA, which was a hotbed of the game for 30 years at the start. Wish the YMCA lawyers could claim intellectual property rights and re-enter the frey. 😄
There used to be a lot of these tall, skinny guys that could shoot well, move nimbly, and wanted to play outside. Rick Suttle in the 70s and Manning in the late 80s come to mind at KU alone. In fact, it used to be many if not most tall big men WERE skinny! Remember Ralph Sampson? 7 foot outside shooter with good footwork and not too strong.
I wonder if the key is that these kinds of players have been taught to think there is more future and less injury playing outside, and that they have a lot more leverage with coaches more desperate for top talent than 5-30 years ago. Before a coach just needed to get one Thon Maker and he would have him 4 years. Now a coach has him one year before an agent gets his fee for moving the player to the pros and PetroShoeCo endorsements. So: a coach has to find a new Thon every year.
What would you do if you were Self right now, and you knew that as middling as Cliff has played, he were still projected a first round draft choice and still jumping. I wonder if he (or any D1) might not be tempted go to Cliff and ask for a commitment to come back another season, and if he wouldn't commit, he might cap Cliff's minutes where they were (unless Cliff improved no linearly) and begin developing Landen and Jamari more for this season and next. We will probably never know though.
The longer the OAD RULE goes on the more I think the NCAA ought to start a graduate division that adds 4-7 years onto a players eligibility and helps them pursue graduate degrees. D1 appears in a bad position now.
The Soccer Hypothesis? Interesting again. I can see how it might explain it. Why do you think coaches like Barnes at UT go along with playing guys like Myles outside even as they say their teams would be better with those guys playing inside, but guys like Coach K and Self and Cal keep making these guys play inside, and winning by doing it?
KU has been winning titles 10 straight seasons and 3 titles in 4 years for 25 seasons. We have at least 4 ten year cohorts of fans that have grown accustomed to almost nothing but a high probability of a win and a likely title. Our coaches have been talented, popular characters for 25-30 years. Our success is fun and envied. Our corporations and private oligarchs have mostly enabled and shepherded us instead of trying to take us over. The Grail is under our court. Move the circumstance to Stillwater, or Norman, and it would be the same.
End our winning ways for five years and things would get ugly quickly with frustration and attendance would fall. Ten years and it would all be a distant memory of a gone time.
D1 full houses at current prices require corporate entertainment fans and rich folk to attend. They go for a fun experience. Watching some top talent win 82% of the time keeps the rich and incorporated butts in the seats. Period.
KU's cadre of serious basketball fans that love the game good or bad is big enough to fill the place but not rich enough, or local enough, to fill it at current prices. Most serious fans stay connected through media and see a game a year, or a game every 5 years. Or when given tickets.
Losing kills attendance in NY, LA, Columbia, or Lawrence in any sport.
Pauley Pavillion attendance sags in the midst of 10-15 million persons, when UCLA struggles. There are enough persons within a 20 minute drive from Pauley Pavillion, each with enough money to buy Pauley Pavillion, to fill it for any game. But they don't, and UCLA has a great sports heritage in most sports. Only winning now and recently keeps houses full. Integration with Jackie Robinson at UCLA before the Brooklyn Dodgers? Who cares? Great football teams in the golden age of sports? Who cares? The greatest run in college basketball history in the 1960? Who cares? Rings in the 90s and four straight FFs in the naught decade? Whaddaya won for me lately? Who cares?
Mediocrity puts attendance in occasional big crowds and lots of 3/4 to half full with early departures.
Sport is entertainment.
If it's not entertaining, persons and corporations find something else that is.
Bottom line?
KU has won 10 straight titles and looks to be headed to an 11th.
Why pay big money to go to a basketball game, when your team hasn't won in ten years and it appears it won't this season either, whether the OKC Thunder is there or not?
Next.
The old studio system in Hollywood became unviable in large part, because talent agencies over time increased the cost of talent too much for studios to maintain great hordes of talent.and develop and subordinate it for the long term to the business agenda of the studios. The studios sewed their own doom by exploiting the talent for decades by underpaying it and bullying it. Agents operating in bigger and biger talent agencies began to liberate movie stars from servitude to the studios by getting them bigger and bigger contracts, free agency and eventually more and more favorable movie packages, more and more control of who they worked with, etc. Is this what is happening to D1 and the NBA? The studio system produced a golden age of movies and movie stars that has never been surpassed in quality and durability of product and stars. Actors, directors, and craftsmen and film making have gotten better technically but the stars and films are not as captivating and brilliant and enduring as they once were. Are D1 and the NBA past their primes? Has the game and it's sports heroes entered a long decline of improving individual abilities and globalizing blockbuster bottom lines that never converge to produce stars as bright and teams as great ever again?
"Never let it be forgot/
That once there was a Camelot."
Nickname Alert:
THE DIFFERENCE MAKER.
Very interesting observation. So: what is driving the phenomenon of several big man prospects not fitting the mold? Is this a Lebron Effect? Are big kids wanting to be like Lebron? Are highschool and summer game coaches letting them? Are agents and agent runners finding this role easier for OADs to excell at sooner and so become mega stars faster that generate big fees for agents sooner? And are the agent fees believed to last longer with less wear and tear on the merchandise playing the non traditional role outside, than the traditional banging role inside? Or is this just coincidence?
Let's ask the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima how the Jarheads walked through Cushman's pocket.
Um, well, we can't, because they did not survive the battle.
@globaljaybird
@REHawk
@icthawkfan316
Self wants to rest Frank more than all three of you combined and raised to the tenth power, but...
Defending leads requires shortening possessions AND maintaining a 1 PPP average, while the opponent plays BTWs and shoots treys every which way but loose and gets to 1.25 to 1.5 PPP.
To achieve that measly 1 PPP the ball has to get across mid court, then be held, for 30 seconds, or so, and driven to the rim and either shot in an inside trey, or dished to an open look trey. Doing all this against a pressing, scrambling, pressuring defense,can easily result in TOs.
It also requires keeping 3 70-80% FT shooters in the game for ball handling in the press.
It also requires guarding hard without fouling on the other end to keep the clock going and prevent a lot of freebie baskets.
So: who among KU's perimeter players can:
--shoot the trey;
--make 70-80% of his FTs;
--protect the ball during a press; and
--drive it.
Self thinks Frank and Devonte can do all of the above.
And he needs a third.
He hasn't got a third.
But he does have Mr. Lack of Conscience from trey and the FT line: Brannen Greene, who, suprisingly, is a decent dribbler when not trapped.
So his choice is Brannen, who is money at the line, but shakey on D, or Wayne, who is shaky at the line, and Svi, who the last time he took a trey accidentally banked it in.
Self is making a choice: he is reasoning that when an opponent is down 10-15 and closing with threes, Brannen can guard the trey stripe as well as Wayne and shoot FTs much more accurately. If the game gets within 1-2, he brings Wayne for D and brings Brannen for O. Svi is in the Absolute Zero Cooler with Hunter.
So: since Self is strategically committed to the build a lead/defend a lead model, there really is no time with a lead that he can take Frank out, except for the most minimal breather first half or mid point second half, and then it is a huge risk to the PPP needed for the defend a lead strategy to play out favorably.
So: what does Self do help Frank through this ordeal.
Self always uses the weave to let our guys jog around, rather than go directly into explosive mode driving the ball. Three man weaves are a relative breather, when Frank does not wind up driving the ball. And they force a lot of sliding by the defenders.
Self knew he had a VERY tired team, and a nearly spent Frank vs. ISU.
So: Self went to his first ever (that I recall) use of the four man weave. It forces the opponent to slide even more. And it makes Frank only have to jog one weave out of 4, instead of one out of three.
Isn't Self thoughtful. :-)
Its like Frank Merrill telling his Marauders on the way to Myitkyina that they don't have to run their they can weave there on a jog. Its not much, but its something...maybe just enough to get them to their objective.
Self this season is about "just enough."
He is about: if you can't win, don't lose.
Find the moment to build a lead that can be defended.
This is not about stepping on people's necks.
The Nike stacks we are up against are too big to step on their necks and win.
Self and is team have to be about "just enough" this season.
He and they are trying to figure out how to beat UK with 10 OAD/TADs and Duke with 9.
Self only has 3...about one game in 3. More often he has 1, or 2. Sometimes just one. We have to hope that gets better, that we get to three, but "let us not talk falsely now/the hour is getting late..."
Self can't develop a strategy based on a deeper bench, or even a shorter bench. He doesn't have as much depth, or a first five with as much talent. Period.
But what he does have are the Jarhead Jayhawks, or for you Army fans, Merrell's Marauders.
Yes, we are trying to win an eleventh conference title, but this whole conference round robbin is really an exercise in learning how to play this way--a way NO other team in the stacked category tries to play, or has to play. Self is trying to turn a vice into a virture, which is what Marine Corp strategy is all about. It can be done. It is what George Washington did in the revolutionary war. It is what Ho Chi Minh did first against the French and then against the Americans. Claire Chenault did it with the Flying Tigers in China before WWII. Chenault: we don't have as many planes as the Japanese and our planes aren't as good as theirs in a head to head dog fight. What do we do? Answer: First we pick where we engage and when. We decide when we fight, not them. Second, we attack from above, out of the sun, where they cannot see us, and where our overweight obsolete planes use gravity to accelerate our attack to speeds that the agility of their planes cannot be an advantage against us. We are flying at high speeds in straight lines and their agility no longer matters...if we shoot accurately. It worked. It worked magnificiently. It worked throughout the war, when we had better planes. It even worked in Korea some with propeller planes against jets briefly. Then we got faster jets and just went after them anywhere from any direction and forgot the strategy. Then we got our asses tagged over North Vietnam and had to create Top Gun School to relearn the strategy and tactics of dog fighting.
The right strategy and tactics can overcome an enemy for brief decisive engagements.
The tournament is that kind of warfare--a series of two game tournaments--6 single decisive battles.
There is a slim chance it will work, and Self has found no alternative that he believes fits better.
So: he has to out-efficient and out elegant our opponents (even when elegance involves ugly-ing things up) with his best guys shortening games, building leads, and defending them and hope to force them into keep their best guys on the floor too, only less efficiently.
It is a brilliant idea.
It might even work. :-)
But sooner or later its going to come down to a near death march by KU's best players, and an opposing team's best players, and most likely they are going to have one or two footers.
And our very own Frank Merrill believes that when that moment comes, his guys used to playing this way all season, will hold a slight edge over a more talented team that is not used to playing so many minutes per game...in a decisive engagement....once.
Like you only need to win by one point in any game, you only need to beat UK once. You don't have to be better than them seven times. Just once. And that's good, because 3 OAD/TADs don't beat 10 OAD/TADs in a best of seven. Ever.
The mission of this team is to drag opponents, especially superior ones, in defensive straight jackets into close games, then build a slight lead outside in, then play cat and mouse about when they will start defending it, and then draw the opponent into a kind of long possession quick sand and ugly hand to hand combat as each are sinking, and hope that they and not our Jarhead Jayhawks drown first.
This is the mission.
Who is willing to go to Myitkyina?
Think of Frank Mason, as our Frank Merrill on the wood.
!433px-Merrills_Marauders.svg.png ↗
God help me, I do love it so.--George Patton
Yes, what Self is doing, if I am correct, is very provocative and nerve racking until you get what he is up to, and even then it still makes my palms sweat a bit.
But if you stop and think about, it is less risky than trying to keep making three point baskets playing at a fast pace.
But we are conditioned to think that they way save our selves is to run faster and faster until we escape the peril.
But sometime back in prehistory some cave man figured out that you can run as fast as you can and still not outrun a Cheetah. You can never build up a big enough lead for a cheetah.
So: you have to resort to strategy and tactics. Best not to try t0 outrun a cheetah.
Best to deny it the advantage of its speed.
Self denied ISU the advantage of its speed many ways.
Self denied ISU its great three point shooting skills by reducing the number of possessions...by spending his lead to reduce the number of possessions, even though he knew that doing so would reduce his points per possession, because KU is not such a good team taking its time and scoring inside.
But I am convinced that Self either has guys calculating how many possessions the game can be reduced to and still win, making only 1 PPP, or he uses some heuristics in his head to do the same.
I built a spread sheet a few weeks ago and it is amazing how much reducing total possessions with you scoring only 1 PPP and your opponent scoring 1.25 to 1.50 PPP assures you win.
It is also empowering to think this way as a coach and a player.
You have more control over your defense than you do over your long ball shooting late in a game.
You are more in control of your destiny on defense. You are investing your lead in increasing the probablility of winning.
If you think of it this way, you won't be stress free, but you will have less stress than if your team is trying to make threes on tired legs late and missing. :-)
Yes, I saw it. And the anomaly of it made me alert to a lot of other contact that seemed to start with the ISU press. Presses don't have to be physical to work, so when they are physical, they stand out a great deal. It provoked me into trying to hypothesize a possible explanation of the phenomenon.
Hypothesis: what if the contact with Frank were, hypothetically speaking, part of a broader effort by ISU to physically degrade KU, once the game was out of reach, in hopes of making KU lose a game or two coming up.
I don't believe the apparent roughness of the pressing had much chance of winning the game for the, do you?
But, to continue hypothetically, it might have had a chance of taking someone crucial, like Frank, already reputedly playing with injuries, to the point of maybe only being able to play 20-25 minutes the next few games, instead of 35, and so contributing to a KU loss.
To distill the hypothesis, what if since ISU couldn't beat KU, the next best thing were to be to get KU in a condition where someone else might be more likely to.
Not very sporting of Fred, if that were in fact the reality.
Getting to it, but having to go back over a lot of histories to distill it reliably. havent forgotten you. Been through 40-50 coaches dating back to 1900 and sifted lots of irrelevant stuff for occasional nuggets. i know the answer generally but trying to find what I don't know I don't know takes time.
Significantly, OU did not let Huggie stop OU transition.kind of amazing. Shoot the trey. Transition when you can.
Huggies dad's offense has been adapted to 4 out much of the time.
(added subsequently to original post.)
@JayHawkFanToo, see below the comment of @sfbahawk. Between the two of you you are on the right track.
Protection and rebounding buys you the chance to build a little lead and defend it.
Shoot the trey, transition when you can, then defend the lead.
And right you were and remain, Coach.
Will UK's and Duke's OAD/TAD bench go pro without having played much?
Will Cliff Alexander go pro without having mastered the basics of college ball?
Is Coach K destined for worst coaching job of the season taking 3 losses early with 9 OAD/TADs?
Since haircuts turned Kelly, Wayne and Landen's games around, is it time for Jam Tray to go to the barber pole?
(Note: it's not keeping it short that matters, as Kelly proves. It's the gesture that works to show willingness to do whatever it takes to get better!)
Does anyone else notice how confidently and well Brannen has been dribbling late in the game to draw fouls? We may have a real NBA 2 on our hands end of next season, if dribbling gets a leeeeetle more ambidextrous and defensive footwork is cleaned up with weight training and agility drills. Slide to class. Slide to meals. Slide to the Wheel!!!
I'm starting to think the announcers are "chipped and dripped."
Uncle is reputedly workng on a lot of embedded chip and sub dermal, pharma release tech to mind and body control dog faces and jarheads on the way into and in combat. Command and control between the ears and in the tissues stuff up and down linked by micro wave bounced off cloud layers sprayed by white, unmarked tankers flying above loitering A-10 Wart Hog drones...on a clear day you can control forever stuff.
So: sometimes I think the announcers are just sitting there chipped and dripped--part of the Internet of things, only in suits and dresses--appropriated, embedded bio-units being over ridden remotely, and shizz is porting out of them from flipping SKYNET...Deep State gibberish designed to glaze our eyes like tiny donut balls full of aqueous humor...Dunkin' Donuts for the eyes in a totalitarian game state.
"Yes, Brad, no, Brad, the Quin Snyder years, they made MU a major power...Holly, Holly...Marist is a Mecca of hoops....Doug, didn't you once score a hundred against Murray State...the gun is good, the penis is bad...Holly, Holly...Boise State invented the pick and roll...Mars must have a basing structure as a fortified flank before moon minerals can be mined...Fran, Fran...deus Space X Machina...Florida International has the best fans...obedience to the private central bank...the first dunk by a little person was by Herve Villachaise in a 109-38 game between Vanderbilt and Loyola Marymount...Holly, Holly...what do your players need to do differently the second half?....ISIL's new state surrogate team runs a 2-3 matchup zone and wears Mephistos...Fran, Fran....UMKC has the best hoops legacy...abiotic oil is the devil's work...Jay guarded Ralph Sampson in the post once...electric cars cause psychosis...Holly, Fran, Dick, Doug...Tarim Basin does not exist..Ball State was named after the game...the game that I love was started by Vinnie the Abacus Mardelli in East Sandusky at the Sons and Daughters of Cinque Terre sports Festival....he who controls the past...Holly, Holly...the fans of Texas are upon us...hi, I'm Brent Mussberger and I'm chipped, dripped and Deep State equipped, er, re link, retransmission code 999 ionosphere bounce, Brent Mussberger program/broadcast routine a99.374e...
(Note: all fiction. no malice.)
Score on WVU even once and they are in trouble, but oh my are they strong.
Well, I feel 900 years old sometimes!!!😄
And I've got an old Barbour waxed cotton coat with a hood that I could pretend in.
But no, I better stick with just plain old jaybate 1.0. 😇
XCLNT idea to watch and digest it. I got a lot from that. Thx.
You mentioned OU as possible loss. It made me think about why I thought Self would beat OU and win out, when the odds are against it. :-)
Its a long mediation and only a little about OU at the end....
Self has been feeling his way along this season. He has effectively admitted it a couple of times now.
But at the same time once each season for the last two and this one--basically since he began his midlife crisis and passed through it--he has repeated this for whomever would listen. To paraphrase: I used to spend way too much time on things that did not matter to winning. I am focusing more and more on what matters.
This has been the voice of a gregarious control freak overwhelmed with the search through minutia trying to explain early exits and concluding that a search for elegance is the only answer.
The search for elegance is always what separates the clones of their teachers from the self actualized.
This is the sign of a great mind begining a voyage of discovering the final level in his profession.
Achieve elegance in your thinking and your living and you can deal with the complexity of anything.
Self has reduced the game to creating leads and defending them.
Its why there are so many close games.
Its why occassionally there games that he crafts big leads all the way to the end.
Teams that can score a bushel in a hurry require one to keep building a lead to within 3-5 minutes of the end.
Teams that cannot score in bushels require only a 10-15 point lead that can be defended the rest of the game, always with ten to go, often from half time and sometimes the last ten minutes of the first half.
For our Magister Ludi, teams that cannot score are games to practice defending the lead against teams that can score.
Self has refined the game.
The reason he was up so late working on the game plan for ISU was the game was vital to win. He was not building a complicated plan at all. He was up late trying to build and elegant game plan, one that involved putting Fred in a straight jacket of no running ASAP.
Self knew the inside out would not produce points. He did not care about building a lead. He was putting Fred in the straight jacket of no running. Once the jacket was on Fred, from then on it was just a matter of building a lead with trey balling and using a lot of bench to keep the trey baller's legs fresh for the second half.
The reason he was up late was because he had to anticipate different ways to slip the straight jacket on Fred. Each way Fred might have started the game had to be considered, so the straight jacket could be slipped on and fit properly.
The three balling is what you do once the strait jacket is on. It is a defensive straight jacket. But just as defense starts offense, offense starts defense; this the part Self always leaves out intentionally. You never give away your secrets as a magician.
OFFENSE STARTS WITH DEFENSE.
DEFENSE STARTS WITH OFFENSE.
BASKETBALL IS THE MOST TIGHTLY CIRCULAR OF TEAM SPORTS.
ITS CIRCULARITY IS ITS ELEGANCE.
Plug into the elegant circularity elegantly and you are Magister Ludi.
How do you win?
By leading at the end.
How do you lead at the end?
By building a lead before the end.
How do you build a lead?
By shooting a higher PPP than the opponent.
How do you build a higher PPP?
By taking more open and more productive shots?
By making the other team take less open, less productive shots.
How big of a lead do you need?
The smallest amount that can shrink to a one point lead in the remaining possessions when you stretch out the length of possession, shoot the worst you reasonably will, and they shoot the best they probably will.
Basketball is not about winning big.
It is not about being the best you can be.
It is about working to get just enough better that you can win by 1 against anyone you will play.
All that matters is winning by one point.
A greater winnning margin is wasteful--and waste is inelegant. It means you did not properly defend the lead by spending the lead and reducing possessions.
A one point win is the greatest elegance.
As Self said early this season what difference does it make if you beat some one 100 to 80, or 70-50.
He was pointing to what the game was beginning to mean to him.
Scoring margin is all that matters.
The least scoring margin is the most elegant, if you managed the game to achieve it.
This is the elegance that Bill Self is moving toward.
Bigger scoring margins are insurance.
But how much insurance does one need?
Just enough.
So while a 1 point winning margin is perfect elegance, it does not account for insurance risk. A five point lead against average teams is plenty. Against great trey shooting teams you may want a 10 or 15 point policy.
Its all risk management.
If you have studied insurance risk and investment analysis and project feasibility, Self's quest for elegance fits, makes perfect sense.
Look at the rules of the game. You get a win, or a loss, whether you win by 100, or by 10, or lose by 10, or a hundred.
You get a win, or a loss, whether the score is in 20s, 50s, 70s, or 90s.
Self says he used to think to much about things that weren't apart of winning.
Notice, he no longer talks about put your boot down on someone's neck and finishing them off.
He has stopped thinking about that because you get a W, whether you step down on their necks, or not.
All that matters now is bringing energy, aggressiveness, skill, and intelligence. These are what build leads. These are what defend leads.
Self has gone back to the roots of the game.
I already noted earlier in the season that he had gone back to Allen to dust of "you don't beat opponents, you play to help them beat themselves.' That is elegance.
But he has gone back to Iba for building leads and defending leads, and making all decisions be about getting the minimum lead needed to defend for a 1 point win wih 4 insurance points.
The bigger the lead you build and the sooner you can start shortening the game--start defending that lead.
But it works at the beginning too. The longer you can stay even with an opponent stretching out early possessions and making him stretch his early possessions out, the shorter the game is, and the shorter the game is, then the less lead you need to build, and the less time you have to defend it.
Basketball exists spatially on X ,Y and Z axes as @drgnslayr says. X is end to end. Y is up and down. Z is side to side. These are the 3 dimensions of space. Most coaches coach on those axes. They draw up neat Xs and Os to play out on these axes. They are the visible dimensions. Fred Hoiberg is very good scheming on these axes. As @drgnslayr notes, Fred is doing something brilliant there, something Self is studying and learning from. He is introducing a professional style of motion and use of space on the X , Y and Z axes. It was a new thing to Self from the moment Fred got to Ames. But now Self has largely learned how to guard it, and learned how to use it in his offense.
But Fred is getting an education from Self and Fred is struggling with it. Fred is a spatial guy, like Self used to be--before the quest for elegance took Self onto the T-axis--time.
The T-axis is time.
A game has 40 minutes of back and forth through space.
The time is filled with possessions.
The number of possessions of a game are an accordion of time you can scheme on as a coach.
Self shrinks that front end of the game. He builds a lead. He shrinks the back end of the game.
Sometimes builds the lead at the start, then defends it for the first half, then builds it the second half, then defends it. Some time he waits the whole game, then builds it and defends it 3 minutes.
He wins because while everyone else is scheming the spatial part of the game, which Self is scheming within too, Self is scheming on a dimension that only a few of them think is important, and then only at the end of games, and among those, only a few really get the strategic and tactical implications of the accordion effect.
Why don't they get it yet?
Because they are trying to beat people bad; that's why.
They are playing the game as if a win by 20 points was worth more than a win by 1 point.
When you think this way, you always compress the accordion to try to get as many points as you can, not the fewest you need.
Many games Self is scheming on the T axis of time almost by himself.
About the only thing opposing coaches think about time is time outs, TV timeouts, and time to go down the stretch--the last five minutes.
Self is playing every minute of every game as if it were an accordion effect.
Fred knows Self is doing this. Fred knows it works. Fred has only beaten Self once, if I recall correctly, and it was at home.
Fred wants to learn what Self is doing--this accordion thing on the T-axis, from opening tip off to the last second of the game. But Fred is all into space. And Self is pulling him out of space and into time, and time in Fred's experience of basketball is something you try to cram more and more action into, even as you are spreading it out in space. You spread it out to score more.
But Self doesn't want to score more.
Self wants to score just enough.
Its a spooky concept that Iba apparently thoroughly figured out. He may have even been the first to really work through it.
And Fred is having as much trouble with that concept as Self had buying into outside in--into spreading it out first to attack.
Something great is happening in the synergy of Bill and Fred.
But right now, Self is way ahead on the T axis and caught up on the X and Y.
What has this long meditation to do with OU?
Kruger is an Okie Baller.
If anyone can get directly clued into to what Self is up to its Kruger.
Kruger is smart--as smart as Self in most ways--even wilier in a few. Jack Hartman had a fabulous intellect for scheming guys open, for shaking them loose. Find old tapes of what he did with Walt Frazier. Later tapes of what he did with Mike Evans. Different strokes but all master strokes. Kruger learned that from him.
You're right, OU is possible loss.
But Self has selected his players, and trained his players and taught his players to play on the T axis, because, quite frankly, his bigs aren't very good near the basket on the X, Y, or Z axes. So: he has borrowed form Fred and moved his bigs out to where they are good at some things in the X, Y, and Z space--outside in.
But the real game that Self and his players are playing is played on the T axis. And the team's accordion is played according to a criterion of elegance.
Shrink the game, build a lead, defend a lead by shrinking the rest of the game. Buy just enough insurance.
If Self can pull Kruger out of space and into time the way he pulled Fred, hang another W.
Win out, Jayhawks, win out!!!!!!!
Self has been feeling his way along this season. He has effectively admitted it a couple of times now.
But at the same time once each season for the last two and this one--basically since he began his midlife crisis and passed through it--he has repeated this for whomever would listen. To paraphrase: I used to spend way too much time on things that did not matter to winning. I am focusing more and more on what matters.
This has been the voice of a gregarious control freak overwhelmed with the search through minutia trying to explain early exits and concluding that a search for elegance is the only answer.
The search for elegance is always what separates the clones of their teachers from the self actualized.
This is the sign of a great mind begining a voyage of discovering the final level in his profession.
Achieve elegance in your thinking and your living and you can deal with the complexity of anything.
Self has reduced the game to creating leads and defending them.
Its why there are so many close games.
Its why occassionally there games that he crafts big leads all the way to the end.
Teams that can score a bushel in a hurry require one to keep building a lead to within 3-5 minutes of the end.
Teams that cannot score in bushels require only a 10-15 point lead that can be defended the rest of the game, always with ten to go, often from half time and sometimes the last ten minutes of the first half.
For our Magister Ludi, teams that cannot score are games to practice defending the lead against teams that can score.
Self has refined the game.
The reason he was up so late working on the game plan for ISU was the game was vital to win. He was not building a complicated plan at all. He was up late trying to build and elegant game plan, one that involved putting Fred in a straight jacket of no running ASAP.
Self knew the inside out would not produce points. He did not care about building a lead. He was putting Fred in the straight jacket of no running. Once the jacket was on Fred, from then on it was just a matter of building a lead with trey balling and using a lot of bench to keep the trey baller's legs fresh for the second half.
The reason he was up late was because he had to anticipate different ways to slip the straight jacket on Fred. Each way Fred might have started the game had to be considered, so the straight jacket could be slipped on and fit properly.
The three balling is what you do once the strait jacket is on. It is a defensive straight jacket. But just as defense starts offense, offense starts defense; this the part Self always leaves out intentionally. You never give away your secrets as a magician.
OFFENSE STARTS WITH DEFENSE.
DEFENSE STARTS WITH OFFENSE.
BASKETBALL IS THE MOST TIGHTLY CIRCULAR OF TEAM SPORTS.
ITS CIRCULARITY IS ITS ELEGANCE.
Plug into the elegant circularity elegantly and you are Magister Ludi.
How do you win?
By leading at the end.
How do you do you lead at the end?
By building a lead before the end.
How do you build a lead?
By shooting a higher PPP than the opponent.
How do you build a higher PPP?
By taking more open and more productive shots?
By making the other team take less open, less productive shots.
How big of a lead do you need?
The smallest amount that can shrink to a one point lead in the remaining possessions when you stretch out the length of possession, shoot the worst you reasonably will, and they shoot the best they probably will.
Basketball is not about winning big.
It is not about being the best you can be.
It is about working to get just enough better that you can win by 1 against anyone you will play.
All that matters is winning by one point.
A greater winnning margin is wasteful--and waste is inelegant. It means you did not properly defend the lead by spending the lead and reducing possessions.
A one point win is the greatest elegance.
As Self said early this season what difference does it make if you beat some one 100 to 80, or 70-50.
He was pointing to what the game was beginning to mean to mean to him.
Scoring margin is all that matters.
The least scoring margin is the most elegant, if you managed the game to achieve it.
This is the elegance that Bill Self is moving toward.
Bigger scoring margins are insurance.
But how much insurance does one need?
Just enough.
So while a 1 point winning margin is perfect elegance, it does not account for insurance risk. A five point lead against average teams is plenty. Against great trey shooting teams you may want a 10 or 15 point policy.
Its all risk managemen
If you have studied insurance risk and investment analysis and project feasibility, Self's quest for elegance fits, makes perfect sense.
Look at the rules of the game. You get a win, or a loss, whether you win by 100, or by 10, or lose by 10, or a hundred.
You get a win, or a loss, whether the score is in 20s, 50s, 70s, or 90s.
Self says he used to think to much about things that weren't apart of winning.
Notice, he no longer talks about put your boot down on someone's neck and finishing them off.
He has stopped thinking about that because you get a W, whether you step down on their necks, or not.
All that matters now is bringing energy, aggressiveness, skill, and intelligence. These are what build leads. These are what defend leads.
Self has gone back to the roots of the game.
I already noted earlier in the season that he had gone back to Allen to dust of "you don't beat opponents, you play to help them beat themselves.' That is elegance.
But he has gone back to Iba for building leads and defending leads, and making all decisions be about getting the minimum lead needed to defend for a 1 point win wih 4 insurance points.
The bigger the lead you build and the sooner you can start shortening the game--start defending that lead.
But it works at the beginning too. The longer you can stay even with an opponent stretching out early possessions and making him stretch his early possessions out, the shorter the game is, and the shorter the game is, then the less lead you need to build, and the less time you have to defend it.
Basketball exists spatially on X ,Y and Z axes as @drgnslayr says. X is end to end. Y is up and down. Z is side to side. These are the 3 dimensions of space. Most coaches coach on those axes. They draw up neat Xs and Os to play out on these axes. They are the visible dimensions. Fred Hoiberg is very good scheming on these axes. As @drgnslayr notes, Fred is doing something brilliant there, something Self is studying and learning from. He is introducing a professional style of motion and use of space on the X , Y and Z axes. It was a new thing to Self from the moment Fred got to Ames. But now Self has largely learned how to guard it, and learned how to use it in his offense.
But Fred is getting an education from Self and Fred is struggling with it. Fred is a spatial guy, like Self used to be--before the quest for elegance took Self onto the T-axis--time.
The T-axis is time.
A game has 40 minutes of back and forth through space.
The time is filled with possessions.
The number of possessions of a game are an accordion of time you can scheme on as a coach.
Self shrinks that front end of the game. He builds a lead. He shrinks the back end of the game.
Sometimes builds the lead at the start, then defends it for the first half, then builds it the second half, then defends it. Some time he waits the whole game, then builds it and defends it 3 minutes.
He wins because while everyone else is scheming the spatial part of the game, which Self is scheming within too, Self is scheming on a dimension that only a few of them think is important, and then only at the end of games, and among those, only a few really get the strategic and tactical implications of the accordion effect.
Why don't they get it yet?
Because they are trying to beat people bad; that's why.
They are playing the game as if a win by 20 points was worth more than a win by 1 point.
When you think this way, you always compress the accordion to try to get as many points as you can, not the fewest you need.
Many games Self is scheming on the T axis of time almost by himself.
About the only thing opposing coaches think about time is time outs, TV timeouts, and time to go down the stretch--the last five minutes.
Self is playing every minute of every game as if it were an accordion effect.
Fred knows Self is doing this. Fred knows it works. Fred has only beaten Self once, if I recall correctly, and it was at home.
Fred wants to learn what Self is doing--this accordion thing on the T-axis, from opening tip off to the last second of the game. But Fred is all into space. And Self is pulling him out of space and into time, and time in Fred's experience of basketball is something you try to cram more and more action into, even as you are spreading it out in space. You spread it out to score more.
But Self doesn't want to score more.
Self wants to score just enough.
Its a spooky concept that Iba apparently thoroughly figured out. He may have even been the first to really work through it.
And Fred is having as much trouble with that concept as Self had buying into outside in--into spreading it out first to attack.
Something great is happening in the synergy of Bill and Fred.
But right now, Self is way ahead on the T axis and caught up on the X and Y.
What has this long meditation to do with OU?
Kruger is an Okie Baller.
If anyone can get directly clued into to what Self is up to its Kruger.
Kruger is smart--as smart as Self in most ways--even wilier in a few. Jack Hartman had a fabulous intellect for scheming guys open, for shaking them loose. Find old tapes of what he did with Walt Frazier. Later tapes of what he did with Mike Evans. Different strokes but all master strokes. Kruger learned that from him.
You're right, OU is possible loss.
But Self has selected his players, and trained his players and taught his players to play on the T axis, because, quite frankly, his bigs aren't very good near the basket on the X, Y, or Z axes. So: he has borrowed form Fred and moved his bigs out to where they are good at some things in the X, Y, and Z space--outside in.
But the real game that Self and his players are playing is played on the T axis. And the team's accordion is played according to a criterion of elegance.
Shrink the game, build a lead, defend a lead by shrinking the rest of the game. Buy just enough insurance.
If Self can pull Kruger out of space and into time the way he pulled Fred, hang another W.
Win out, Jayhawks, win out!!!!!!!