God will not permit this to happen another year.
--General George S. jaybate 1.0
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
Trying figure out why Self is meticulously handling the minutes of a player early in his career is sometimes not easy to do, but Self has a pretty good record bringing these guys a long in the way that he does.
There is a body of psychology that argues that the best way to introduce persons to tasks is to orchestrate the introduction so that there are only positive experiences; that negative experiences early in a learning curve sharply impede the progress of a person. The person begins to have to master not only the new task, but the negative experiences--two things instead of one. Even if they are confident, resilient types and don't lose their confidences, their rate of learning the desired task is slowed, because they are splitting their attentions between two tasks and often doing neither well, as a result.
The approach has even been extended with some success to filming them in their practice efforts, cutting out all of the footage of failures, showing them only their successes, and showing the successes a few times with praise. It is amazing the positive results it gives.
Coaches have long done a version of this when they show a player tapes of other players, or teams doing things successfully the way the coach wants them to.
But coaches have also tended to use tape of performance to focus on the short comings of players and say, "this is what you need to get better at.
I am starting to believe that the way to teach these OADs and other freshman, who face such steep learning curves entering D1, is to do as follows:
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Identify what they need to get better at.
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Tape them repeating the task 10-20 times, or as many times as one needs to wind up with five properly executed efforts.
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Edit out all the failed efforts.
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Combine the five successful efforts and show it to them repeatedly praising them and pointing out the various aspects of how they are doing it right.
Where I am headed here is that these guys are just on campus too short of a time to deal with what they do wrong in a negative way. The learning is just too slow.
I have a feeling that if Cliff and Oubre had been worked with this way from the moment they hit Lawrence they might not be complete players, or anything, but most of their major deficiencies would already be improved to adequate.
From adequate to good is another step up in proficiency. That next step might take some good old fashioned negative criticism and ass chewing. But I think this positive approach focusing on their own intermittent successful attempts of getting it right might get these super players street legal for D1 sooner.
Glad you relayed the phactoid about Phil.
Phil knows Dennis.
But I will tell you this: Daly brought Rod along slowly and quietly early on in Detroit, so Thomas is not really that far behind Rodman's curve.
And if both guys went up for a rebound, and got to the ball at the same time, compare arms and shoulders and tell me Thomas would not rip the ball and Rod's arms out of the sockets in a tug of war 36-40 inches above the wood.
Next, neither guy would get a single board against Wilt in a one on one,50 attempt rebounding contest. And they might only get one out of 50 against Big Russ.
Rod was the best 6-7 rebounder I ever saw.
Bill Bridges was the best 6-5 rebounder I ever saw.
And Bridges did it with two bad knees before they knew how to do surgeries.
Bridges was a beast.
Its like Broadway understudies.
Keep getting better while you are waiting for someone to get sick, injured, or be too tempramental.
Damn Lump, you have created a flipping art form.
Question: Who endowed Lafayette Colllege?
I don't know.
But Hank being a grad makes me want to know. :-)
Truly stunning.
Two guys probably averaging 14-15 reebs a game.
And with those two on the same team, Self might have told one to focus more on offensive rebounding.
It would have been a devastating duo.
TRob is a stud and will be a fine NBA player before he is finished.
He has to find an adidas team and coach, if he hasn't already.
Or he has to go Nike.
He has developed a little slowly, because he had to learn how to score on and guard guys taller than him on a regular basis. Rodman went through the same thing. And Daly and he just decided to skip the scoring, because Rodman was a good stick back scorer even without any money offensive moves.
He is likely to be this generation's Bill Bridges, only better because of good knees.
But the bottom line is that he is an extraordinary basketball player looking for the right teammates to plug into. He is a player with a rare combination of strength and speed and jumping ability mixed in with the rare "knack" for rebounding.
Any NBA player that can grab 16 rebounds in the NBA that keeps his nose clean will first become a staple of the NBA, and then when paired with a superstar, will become a near superstar himself.
One day he will terrorize the NBA as the second, or third banana to a super star, as Dennis Rodman did, but with much more strength and athleticism than Rodman had.
He is an absolute man that still does not quite realize how special he can be, when he commits to the master craftsman tradition of the greats of the NBA.
A brilliant insight written just right.
Forest Allen came to a similar conclusion in a much narrower dimension of height in the mid 1950s and advocated a 12 foot basket. He argued that the game was not invented with the expectation that footers would play and substitute dunking for shooting and layups, and goal tending for X-axis defense.
No one listened to Allen, because they liked the dunk and it was easy too outlaw goal-tending.
But the principle of the solution applies to what you are articulating.
Sports rules, especially its rules of dimensions of the game, permitted actions and equipment, are parameters that lead to the way the game is played.
If the rules, permitted actions, and equipment are yielding a game with wide spread injury, then the rational and humane choice is to alter the parameters to eliminate the injuries.
The reason I gave up on football is that I see no way to alter the parameters to end the head injuries that EVERY player is incurring to one extent or another, without ending up with something that is not really something approximating football.
Hence, its better to stop football and invent a new game.
I understand that sunk costs in football make this unlikely in the short term, but over time football is doomed, unless the head injury situation is solved. Science is going to get better and better at delineating the adverse affects of playing football. Over time, the game will wither away from ever decreasing participation, until it becomes something akin to boxing. Not really a sport. Just a quasi-criminal betting enabler.
Always remember the Mezo-American court in the Yucatan you and I so wonder about. It is empty. The sport died. The local kids in the barrios are not putting up vertical rings and playing Mezo-Ball in Mexico.
Sports, especially games, that do more harm than good wither and die overtime in most cultures in history. Sometimes they only die completely when the culture itself dies, but die they do.
Alternatively, sports, especially individual contests, endure. Athenian civilization was eclipsed by Rome. Rome was eclipsed by Byzantium. Byzantium by the Seljuk Turks and so on.
But track and field continues, sometimes suspending, but never really going away.
About the only team game that might be said to have transcended succeeding cultures is soccer though I have never studied soccer.
The great hope I have for basketball is that it might be the first team sport I know to survive succeeding cultures.
But the very thing you describe--the athletes outgrowing the parameters of the game to the point of inevitable acute injury--pose a grave threat to it ever doing so.
And this is why leadership with sunk costs in the game--leadership and those others making huge monies out of the game--should now look seriously at changing the parameters of the game to come as close to making it free of acute injury as possible.
There is no reason not to change from wood to a synthetic that is engineered in conjunction with shoes to enable compression to protect joints.
There is no reason not to apply engineering standards to physical training to govern the upper limits of athletic performance so as to avoid the injury threshold to joints.
Not everything one does in training has to focused on breaking limits in a team sport.
The pursuit of excellence within injury free limits can be and ought to be the way the game is continually redesigned.
Think about it.
Naismith drew up the rules for a non-contact sport without tackling precisely to avoid the injuries that would occur from boys trying to play football in doors in the winter time.
This purpose of Naismith is at the very heart of the virtue of the game.
Basketball is a game about how to play and compete without the purpose being to bludgeon an opponent, or oneself.
We don't need a game to teach us how savage we are.
We need a game that teaches us, enlightens us to, how wonderful we can be to each other even when competing.
Basketball played the right way does this.
Basketball continually redesigned to produce this outcome IS basketball.
That is the essence of the game.
Continuity with that essence is the only moral/ethical justification for continuing the game.
The resources put to it could otherwise be better spent feeding, clothing, housing and educating our people.
But the good news is there is every reason to think that the game can be continually redesigned to achieve the profound purpose Naismith designed into the game from the beginning.
:-)
I am not an inventor. :-)
Timely question, pun intended. :-)
In an ideal D1, Self might not have to worry about protecting Mason's minutes, or Mason.
But in the D1 I observe remotely, Self appears right to try to protect both.
KU didn't have very good luck with Wiggins and Embiid as critical players without comparable backups, did it?
Wiggins appeared to get the roughing up treatment so frequently that Andrew appeared to play to protect himself much of the time. (Note: one recollection is of an apparently unprovoked face punching of Andrew during a game.)
Regarding Joel Embiid, he was, of course, first roughed up for half a season, and then apparently thrown to the floor and injured to the point of ending his only season early.
Roughing up crucial players to see if they can be intimidated has long been part of the game, but in the current era where more aggressive play has appeared to be normalized, roughing up has appeared to have had to be intensified to achieve comparable degree of effect. Same apparently for cheap shotting.
Let's put it this way: Frank is going to get a lot more physical treatment than he would have had were Devonte available (for however long he may be out), as a backup. There is just greater incentive to see if he can be fouled up. or otherwise diverted from action. This puts him more risk of fatigue, fouling, wear and tear, and injury.
The greatest risk of all for the season, of course, is Frank getting injured and lost for the season. And he already is reputedly playing through a sprain. If Frank goes out, then the team apparently would have to be completely reschemed, and with Devonte maybe out for the season, too, then even with moving Selden, or Evan to point, there is a distinct loss in ball handling capability and effectively no depth behind either Selden or Evan, unless Svi and Green suddenly become nifty ball handlers. Svi at least seemed headed in that direction for a time, but something has happened the last 2-3 games to suspend his development. If Svi resumes progress, Self will be able to patch and stitch something together. But if Svi is for some reason out of the picture, then this becomes a worst case scenario that can only be prevented by protecting Mason in the first place.
And I wonder if the conspicuous inclusion of Jamari Traylor into the combo-guard committee that Self expects to use to cover for Devonte's absence, were intended to signal to teams that if anyone goes after any KU combo guards, because of how thin KU is now, they should expect to see some comparably physical play returned subsequently.
All speculation at this point however.
Regarding Napier specifically, did anyone back him up that discouraged attempts to rough him up?
Whatever, protecting Mason from wear and tear and from fatigue-induced injury, and from roughing up, all seem wise at this point.
Thx all.
Thank you very much. I will stand pat with jaybate 1.0, But I will keep in mind your kind offer. Happy Holidays to you and yours.
Hello, sir. It has come to my wandering attention that my alias shows up as jaybate 1.0 when I make a post, but, interestingly enough, when I type the body of my post and use the @ it comes out looking like this:
Even if I manually enter the 1.0, only jaybate is highlighted.
This might confuse some board rats looking for pithy, satiric, amusing, basketball wit and gaiety under jaybate 1.0 and finding instead some dreary, loathsome, uninspiring, prattling by a board rat named jaybate.
Now I don't know who this @jaybate character is, and I recall you have mentioned him before, but @jaybate just ain't jaybate 1.0.
I have grown quite affectionate about the ridiculousness of the 1.0 in my correct alias--jaybate 1.0, and I wish to keep it, if you do not mind, as site administrator, and it is within your means of making it appear consistently as jaybate 1.0 with the @.
Put another way, for those trying to follow my posting, and for whatever reason they may do so, be it for good or ill, that they might wish to follow my posting, please remember the following.
jaybate not equal to jaybate 1.o
With or without the @ sign.
That is all.
Except for...
As always, love your site.
Nope.
Ain't gonna be nobody's pitibull. :-) :-(
I am a gentle, happy board rat.
You can call me that, of course.
But ain't gonna get lumped in with @JayHawkFanToo.
And if you ask me to call you a pit bull and lump you in with @JayHawkFanToo, I will try to talk you out of it
I love you, pal, but I am not going there with you either.
Rock Chalk!
P.S.: And I can only speculate, but I doubt @HighEliteMajor will want to go there either. ;-)
I think what is happening is that when all of the OADs are jumping so quickly, the coaches have figured out that wing spans and short necks are where your default to in searching out morphologies for guys that can play taller than their standing heights. Pre OAD/TAD you just looked for raw height and athleticism, but all of those guys are gone so quick.
Wigs and Oubre may just be random outliers.
But I sure would like to see some QA done on your insight because it seems really germane.
I agree that that is the mission. Teach our inside guys to score.
But I have viewed Self's attempts to see the ring team and this team as similar in standing height as problematic.
Its good to do to keep the team hopeful and motivated and believing in their potentials.
But Jamari is about 6-6 and DBlock appeared to be a genuine 6-8. And DBlock was a pretty good natural rebounder and Jamari seems a better shot blocker, but his rebounding is so so.
And Perry seems at most 6-7 and Darrell seemed a solid 6-9. Shady never disappeared because of lack of physical talent. He disappeared from games mentally. Perry just runs into guys that are too big for him and that he can't get up enough to score on. And Darrell seemed the better rebounder. Perry is a great spin move guy with a massively underrated trey.
And while Sasha and Landen both seem about the same height, Sasha was beast that could bash anyone around, where Landen so far is not.
Hey, the last thing I meant to tell you to do was not to speak freely.
I was just trying to write to you about how hard it is for anyone to think without using their own words as containers for their own thoughts. Thoughts take shape through words at least to some degree.
To answer your question as best I can...
@HighEliteMajor was apparently writing about Self's coaching.
@JayHawkFanToo was apparently writing about @HighEliteMajor.
Do you see the logical disconnect in subject matter?
(Note: This started out as a short response to 'slayr's comment in another recent thread about some of the things Self is not coaching that 'slayr perhaps wishes Self would coach more of. It grew into this wide ranging beast of a meditation on genius, myth, basketball, great basketball coaches and Bill Self. Its long even for me. But there may be some kernels worth grinding for your own flour. Rock Chalk! )
All you say is true about things Self is not coaching, but we are 8-1 with the second toughest schedule in USA.
And our only loss is to a non D-1 endorsement holding tank team of 10 OAD/TAD reputed Nike Leans.
The problem of having a genius for a coach is always that when the genius coincides with the fashion of the day, things are hunky dory, but when fashion passes the genius by, or the genius gets out too far ahead of fashion, then even though the genius keeps winning big, any stumbles he makes are sneered at as him being too this, or too that, or to old, or too young, or to focused on one thing, or too focused on another.
Having a genius for a coach is never a guaranty of contentment among the fans once the fashions and the approach of the genius are not in synch. Quite the contrary, the genius frustrates everyone then, because he keeps winning in ways that are not stylish and not in ways that keep up with the coaching Jones.
Most people say they want to be lead by leaders and innovators and pioneers that are brilliant and even geniuses.
But that is not really true at all.
They want to be viewed by others as appropriate, as just trendy enough, as in fashion, as safe, as secure, as in NOT an outlier that can be blamed for anything beyond the bad luck that plagues us all. In business I saw them all the time. They wanted persons to have confidence in them. They wanted to look like they knew the right suit to wear, and just the right amount of finesse in the tie. Not too much. It was especially noticeable at the high tech firms that were supposedly such great innovators. Most were actually painfully conventional in their new conventions. Casual, but not too casual. Always trying to be out head just the right amount. Always trying to copy not too far ahead, or too far behind, the next killer app. They want ass coverage above all else. They are into camouflage. They want to blend in with their surroundings. If they are conventional they want to blend in with convention. If they are part of a new convention, they want to blend in with the new convention. The number of unconventional persons in business is always exceedingly slim. The few you meet have to stay in the closet and try to blend in. Thinking outside the box, especially on the cutting edge of high technology, is almost unheard of except a very few geniuses. The rest of them are just clones with high speed processors--not innovative thinkers. When things go badly they want to revert to what works, but not move ahead to what works. They want to get back inside the parameters, not move the parameters, unless they are ordered to and then they move the parameters whether moving them makes sense or not. They would much rather be conventional in tough times, than unconventional in tough times.
Self is a dead give away as a genius. He tries to force persons, including himself, outside his comfort zone all the time. He is also a radical in sheep clothing. He is the only kind of radical that matters too. He tries to make persons get better. This is the most radical path open to human beings. To get better at anything is fundamentally destabilizing to the status quo of any field. To alter the status quo introduces risk to those in power of that status quo. All power holders that are not geniuses themselves, are fundamentally risk averse. They only time they take risks is when they fundamentally misread the risk return matrix and believe they are taking no significant risk.
To get better oneself makes others look less good; that's the nub of it. You are making them have to work to stay up with you. By trying to get better all the time, you are making others work and change and there is nothing more feared and dreaded and resisted among many persons that having to work and change. It is anathema on a deep psychological level.
Genius forces persons to change, or fall behind; this is why genius is at once marveled at and marginalized whenever possible. Sometimes genius that might give one an edge is exploited for a time, and then shunted off center stage into an R&D mode. Sometimes it is fired. But always it is viewed warily, and always it is "managed" by those that its getting better might impact adversely.
Look at Steve Jobs. Conventional men that actually viewed themselves skillful managers in a "new" sector, literally kicked the only guy in the room smart enough to make them all rich beyond their wildest comprehensions out of the corporation. They almost did it with Henry Ford twice, before finally marginalizing him with his own family, the only thing his genius could not bring itself to outmaneuver finally. Henry Ford saved Ford so many times it is ridiculous. Bill Gates is a genius despite all the rightful criticism of him. Bill Gates built an empire out of nothing but a cribbed operation system. He structured it so brilliantly that it could be mismanaged for a decade into near mediocrity and still spit out more cash than anyone can rationally reinvest. The conventional men said he was all wrong, almost every step of the way. They hungered for him to step aside, so it could be run right. Now they have come back to him, because they really have no idea how he did what he did, and he does. And he is slowly retaking control of Microsoft in a way utterly different from the way he did it before his had successor Ballmer tried to manage it. Genius always does it differently; that is the essence of it. Not necessarily better, but often times, but always differently.
Genius often starts as a dork noone wants to emulate.
Have you seen pictures of Bill Self as a 2 guard at Okie State?
But at a certain point in its career, its brilliance often leads to it being emulated and so becoming fashionable.
But genius is restless and genius cannot do it quite the way others do it. Genius is great at cribbing. Genius is not great at pretending to be something cribbed. Genius takes and transforms what it cribs into its own, usually something vastly better.
Self was really a paradox from he beginning--a near fundamentalist Okie sprung from the liberated 70s and 80s grown recruiting slic; he was an odd ball with a bad knee, who recognized genius when he saw it, having been counseled by one named Iba, to put one foot in the basketball sexy present of Larry Brown and another foot in the Okie Past of Iba and Eddie. He was too square and twangy for coasters and too frat boy for some Midwesterners, but he could produce Ws at out of the way programs and produce lopsided W&Ls at better programs. Then he won more than anyone for ten years and got a ring, so he had to be copied. Copied by the biggest and the best, by peers and by old guys trying to limp the last years to retirement. Copied. Borrowed from. Stolen from. And being a genius he was smart enough when young to know that you might as well make a big deal out of sharing it, because it was going to be stolen if he didn't. Self has always understood the good old boy origins and tendencies of coaching.
But outside the genius, the thing about Self is that he has such a traditionalist streak--a strong connection to basketballs storied past--and such a streak of genius for transforming anything he touches into something uniquely his, that he was never going to stay in synch with fashion. It was only going to emulate him and then move on as fashion does.
Calipari is a guy with one connection to the basketball past--Larry. But Cal has only ever appeared to use that connection to further himself, not to continue a legacy. Cal is tied to the present. This is not a bad thing at all. It is just one of many ways human beings are. He morphs with the present. What ever can be done is what Cal does. Traditions, and ethics, and rules, are not continuities with the past to be built upon and extended, but rather constraints of present. Such coaches tell the present whatever the present wants to hear. They are unburdened by the past of the game. That was then, this is now. They act like they are not even sure why others care about the past. There is nothing wrong with this POV. In fact it is admirable to some degree, just as trying to connect with the past is admirable to some degree.
Cal is certainly a genius too. His genius differs markedly from Self's. But he is every bit as unique in my estimation. He is a genius of discontinuity. Self is a genius of continuity. Ask either to behave else wise, or try to copy them and beat them their own forte, and you are dooming yourself to failure, unless they are having an off season.
Bill Self morphs with the times too, but, as I said, he is trying to create a continuity between his genius and the basketball past. Cal could care less about perpetuating such continuities.
We are watching something very mythic play out between Self and Cal. Neither is probably aware of playing out a myth. They are simply living their lives and they play out to a certain extent on a mythic level of the game and on that level there is a certain mythic dynamic involving them. This happens from time to time in sports.
They are, so to speak, mythic brothers born of the same coach--Larry Brown--but Brown himself was/is a complicated mixture of many branches of the Allen coaching tree and the New York/Frank McGuire coaching trees that have come over a century to dominate and define the way the game has come to be played.
Brown is McGuire and Kansas McClendon/Smith filtered through North Carolina, which is both.
And Brown came back to Kansas and begat Bill and Cal.
In case you hadn't noticed, this basketball myth I am describing is very vaguely (as myth is want to be) bearing some similarity to John Steinbeck's novel, East of Eden, about two sons vying for the love of an aloof, defended father with high standards and an ex-wife that became a prostitute. Think of Brown as the distant father. Think of basketball itself as the thing of fallen virtue--the greatest game ever invented, become deeply, maybe irreversibly prostituted. East of Eden is a reworking of a biblical myth of brothers, Cain and Abel, and likely others I do not grasp; of brothers that love each other and hate each other, and compete with each other finally destructively for the rewards of a remote father, and in the case of Steinbeck's novel, without the steadying effect of a virtuous mother to provide them the love and tolerance that their remote father is not up to supplying alone either. It makes their relationship volatile and conflicted, despite the surface appearances to the contrary. The brothers are in effect damned by the asymmetries between father and mother. It is a tragic myth--a warning to all parents and to all children that this mythic conflicted must be managed well, to minimize its great potential for destructiveness within families. It almost goes without saying that this is deep, deep, deep cultural mythos. Every brother that's had a brother, and a father and mother with any kind of asymmetry and dysfunction between them at all, knows the Cain and Abel myth plays out in the strangest most unexpected ways at the most unexpected times to small or large effect. Its one of the bible's most enduring stories for a reason, and is so, whether one believes in the bible or not. Whether you are Billy Graham, or Carl Jung, or just Joe Baggadonuts with a brother, this story resonates and persists in its significance. And if one ever takes the time to look deeply into it, makes one view one's brother with more richness, wisdom and disturbance.
As one's sleeping dreams often attest, when one is caught up in a myth, one does not necessarily play only one role, nor is everything simple and easy to understand, nor entirely coherent.
The realm of myth is a kaleidoscopic one, where meaning and meaninglessness form, transform and reform without inhibition.
Hence, I don't want anyone to take what I am describing too literally.
Bill is NOT Abel. And Cal is not Cain. Or vice versa. They are both probably some of both, as my brother and I were, too, and as every pair of brothers I have gotten to know in my life were too. And as more than a few pairs of young Turks that come up together in any profession, or in parallel, were to some extent or other.
Not everyone buys into mythology.
Some buy into religion.
Some buy into animal faith.
Some buy into agnostic scientific rationalism.
Some buy into pragmatism.
Some buy into nihilism.
I buy into religious faith in the existence of life playing out on both scientific rational realm and the mythic planes, some times so obscurely in the case of the latter that their outlines cannot be clearly grasped, other times starkly, but most times with a mixture of clarity and mystery, so that one cannot help but notice, but can only make out certain facets at any given time.
I am someone that does not believe in myths.
I find them.
I don't look or them.
I find them without looking for them.
They are just there, frequently informing reality in inexplicable ways and operational in the darnedest places.
I am not an ideologue about their existence.
I am not trying to convert you to believing in any thing.
I am just sharing what I observe.
I have noticed so many over the years, and read a few books about them, that I just consider them ordinary phenomena. Like patterns of ocean currents, or weather patterns, or evolutionary patterns, religious patterns, or what have you.
I notice patterns.
I have learned to use statistics to weed out the misperceptions among empirical phenomena.
Myths, like strategy, and tactics, and love, and greed, and megalomania, and saintliness, are only partly captured by statistics however, and statistics often are not up to quantifying their causes at all.
But myths are patterns IMHO.
They are just there sometimes...operating.
They are not right or wrong.
They are not alchemical.
They are just distinguishable patterns informing our world and our perception of it with certain implications.
Nothing more.
But nothing less either.
KU basketball is not just a game with rules. It is not just team with fans. It is not just a sports program within a school. It is not just an enterprise formed of a constellation of contracts with a cycle of cost, expense and revenue yielding net benefit. It is all of these things to be sure, but it is something more. The more is NOT a religion, because no one really believes in anything about it in the way they do a god. Nor does anyone doubt it the way a god is doubted. What the more seems to me to be is a living myth. It is an observable recurring activity informed by a mythical dynamic among those involved that regenerates those that live it and in turn it becomes self-reinforcing.
Though robust and persistent, it is hardly unbreakable.
Kill us all and it will end.
Poison the well of it enough, as power brokers seeking to control, or eliminate it, in search of bettering their net benefits, are want to do to such myths in history, and it will become poisoned and finally cease to be the good that it was.
We human beings can and do destroy anything that we set our minds to destroy. Presently, the only things we have not figured out to extinct is the universe on the big end, and any number of small to microscopic pests. Outside that, we are become death, destroyer of worlds. And we could destroy the small pests, by destroying our world, but cannot yet figure out how to whack them without whacking ourselves. In time, no doubt, we will.
This destroyer of worlds thing is why we have been such a pox on ourselves and our planet so frequently.
Some of the worst of us in history have been incredibly nice to their family and friends. The destroyer of worlds thing seems to be at least a hidden gene in all of us.
We have this fantastically, almost absurdly large destructive ability evolved, or perhaps randomly mutated, in us, that we can and do regularly, destroy the much of the very best we and the world have to offer. Some times all I can do to cope with it is just repeat its characterization in a kind of autism as self defense, which is after all, what autism really is, a self defense mechanism evolved by those most sensitive among us to protect them from the pain of too much, or too little stimuli.
Myth protects us some this way. Or perhaps the recognition of it does.
Regardless, on some much weaker and more vaguely perceivable level than the myth of college basketball, or the myth of KU basketball, there seems to me to be a basketball myth playing out right now between Brown, Bill and Cal.
Trinities are as big in myth as in religion.
I have no idea where its going. But I feel in my heart and mind that it is going to play out constructively rather than destructively or tragically. It is a small myth in comparison with the living myth of KU basketball. But it is big enough to be found--to be distinguished--by me anyway.
It is a few eddies swirling downstream past Larry in the river of college basketball. It has some chaos. It has some strange tendencies. It plays out in emergent chaos. In time the energy that triggers and sustains it will slowly exhaust and the eddies will merge invisibly back into the current of the river of basketball. But I see it now. Unmistakably...to a degree.
Which brings me back to Bill and how frustrated some are growing with him and his genius and his 82-84% W&L statements, and his ring, and his 10 titles, and his perhaps increasingly unfashionable way of winning at the game of basketball.
Self isn't stacking 10 deep with OAD/TAD PetroShoeCo leans yet. We don't know if its because he cannot, or because he does not want to, or because the Petroshoeco he and his school are contracted with cannot produce 10 each season for him.
Self is concentrating on defense and the high low, which by the way is still what he is operating out of, whether he is running the perimeter action, or the interior action, or what not. It is Iba's high low developed for the Olympic team in 1964. It is Dean Smith's high-low Larry brought to Dean from his stint with the Olympic team. It is the high low Larry and Dean renamed the Carolina Passing offense and infused with some McGuire actions and Bruce Drake Oklahoma Shuffle actions. It is the high low that Larry infused with Naismith/Allen acolite John McClendon's ABA action from Denver. It is the high-low that Larry brought to Lawrence and that Self and Cal learned from Larry. And it is the high-low that Self learned an Eddie Ball variation of, that Eddie and Don Haskins and Paul Hansen were probably working on before Iba formalized it for the Olympics. The high low is a mythic structure informing the flow of almost unlimited varieties of action. Self's playbook is reputedly 1000 pages. All of the dribble drive can be absorbed by it. The high-low playbook has no upper limit.
Self is Magister Ludi playing Herman Hesse's glass bead game on a level far higher than most.
There is no other way to explain him being 8-1 with this year's team against the second toughest RPI. Take off the hype lenses and really look at what he was working with, even before the injuries, but especially after.
Think about him winning a Big 12 title with Naa Tharpe as his point guard and the next Lebron protecting the merchandise and a kid from Cameroon with great feet that knew next to nothing about the game, and his only other good player playing on a bad knee. Who could have won a league title with what he had last year with Embiid and Selden injured as long as they were?
Looking back no one else could have gotten to the Elite Eight with Simien's team. No one. That was the biggest collection of bailing wire and a money move on the blocks maybe of all time.
No one still has a clue how they came back from 8 or ten down against Memphis and Derek Rose. Believe? If that were all there were to it Self could just say believe every game. Every coach could.
And of course his greatest magic act of all, assuming this year's dwarf team doesn't win it all, is the 2012 runner up and conference title winner and 30 game winner. Not a single Mickey D on the entire stinking team. Not one. Zero. Zip. Null set. His flipping sixth man was Conner Teahan! There isn't another coach alive that could have finished runner up with that bunch. I doubt there is even another coach in the history of the game that could have.
Self is a genius.
Just like Allen was.
Just like Iba was.
Just like Knight was.
Just like Wooden was.
And in each case, the game spiraled off away from them and the way they coached the game. Each was an anachronism well before the end of his career.
People forget that the game was already changing away from its brief, unsuccessful emulation of Wooden five, maybe ten years before he quit. He was just lucky he kept winning rings with his full court zone press and his bank shooting, and emphasis on defense. The game went another way entirely. He was just such a genius that he could beat the game of basketball even as it changed and he went out of style.
Remember, it was Knight that said you don't play an opponent, you play the game of basketball.
Knight was a genius and knew. Mortals play mortals. Geniuses finally have to beat the game itself, or try, for once you have beaten opponents long enough, it is no longer a challenge. You have to begin to play the game. The game copied him longer than most, but finally compare Duke's play today with Knight's ways. Not the same.
Coach K I do not address here, not because he lacks genius (he possesses genius in spades), but because I don't like his form of genius enough to have wanted to contemplate it...yet.
Iba was outright disrespected and treated to his face as a dinosaur even as he kept winning way more than he should have with drastically inferior talent. There seems to be something deep in the Iba grain of coaching that eventually gets bored with winning with good talent; that can't remain stimulated without trying to beat not just opponents, but the game itself with inferior talent. Knight did it twice. That is the really incredible and enduring legacy of Knight. Wooden only really did it once. Maybe that was the only way Knight could think of to eclipse Wooden.
The coaches that recognized genius, though, they elevated and venerated the dinosaur Iba to the end. When someone was needed to figure out a way for amateur college kids to beat professional Russian teams, they turned to Iba, even though the college game had passed him by. Iba at that time had been coaching against the game of basketball instead of opponents for about 15 years at that time. It had been that long since he had bothered to go out and put together top talent.
He didn't look like a genius by the time I saw him coaching in the Big Eight Christmas tournament games, with guys that really weren't good enough for Oklahoma Baptist, much less the Big 8. He looked like a craggy old bear growling on the sidelines. I didn't get it then. Since Allen had been retired, most opponents probably bored him. Trying to beat the game with lousy players was probably the kind challenge required to keep him going.
You see, in a business, which is what college basketball is, you get fired for being out of style. No one can win all the time. No one can win all the rings, not even Wooden. Style, keeping up with the fashion, in business ultimately counts for more than genius, or excellence. Genius and excellence are largely hated and disposed of in business, as soon as possible. Why? Because excellence sets too high of a standard that takes too much work to emulate, and because non-geniuses cannot adequately emulate genius by definition.
Thus, genius tends to have a short fashionable shelf life.
It burns brightly and then is jettisoned, or marginalized.
Sometimes it marginalizes itself out of boredom with the old challenges.
Think about the great geniuses of coaching.
They rarely were at the top of their professions and held in high regard for more than ten years.
They did not cease being geniuses.
They ceased to be in fashion. The game evolved in ways they did not want to evolve in and their genius bought them the opportunity to not have to change with the fashion of times, but rather change in the idiosyncratic way they chose.
Iba probably learned intricacies of the weave that no one else ever will. The weave finally was Iba's glass bead game. For awhile, he got to the point where I don't believe he even cared about anything else in basketball but the weave. Maybe defense.
Self appears to understand exactly what I am writing about here.
He always says he won't be coaching for as long as some of long career types.
He always says he is happy at KU and he will probably stay at KU as long as KU is happy with him with the implied constraint so long as he is not bored.
But he knows genius is rarely popular for long.
Genius can slug it out and use its genius to outmaneuver lessers for quite some time.
But their welcome wears out long before their ability to outmaneuver expulsion.
Phog Allen was obviously a genius, who used his wiles to stay on as long as he could. And he even found himself a second career to protect himself from the vissitudes of genius growing unpopular and viewed as no longer with the fashion trend. And he was thought of as an old embarrassment that needed to be forced out by the end, at only 65, even though those that knew him claimed he was as creatively and competitively innovative and driven as ever. God only knows how he would have further enriched the game with Chamberlain.
Self doesn't have his players do a lot of things that other coaches mostly do. It is the nature of genius not only to do what others do as well as they do, but to do other things they just don't do.
Self keeps telling folks as a younger coach he wasted too much time on things that didn't win games; many of those things were what kept him fashionable, looking less like a genius and more like a cool, young conventional talent.
Self is throwing away more of coaching than most other coaches ever know or retain.
Self is doing things increasingly his own way and as one does that one begins to be increasingly unfashionable, increasingly hard for fans to understand, increasingly frustrating when things aren't going as well as sky high expectations created by the media coverage of the genius might expect.
No, Self doesn't coach the head/body/ball/eye/shot fakes. I suspect he has decided they are superfluities, inelegant approaches to winning, uneconomical movements.
No. Self doesn't coach the pull-up shot, because he likes the higher effective shooting percentages of the short shot and the long shot, whether they are working in the moment or not. Heck, he probably is excited by the challenge of figuring out how to make guys that shouldn't even be playing in the paint able to score inside when the opponent knows what's coming. Genius is weird in what it embraces as a worthwhile challenge. Remember what I said about Iba growing fetishistic about the weave?
No. Self doesn't coach effective screens, pick-n-pops, and pick-n-rolls (though he did exactly this the first half against Utah, and ran pick-n-rolls with Cole's teams, and the '08 ring team endlessly). People used to say he ran the pick and roll too much. Genius often does things too much in order to show that conventional notions of too much are not relevant to winning.
Yes, Self hates screens because they congest space, rather than open space up for great athletes to impact elegantly within.
No, Self does not crash the offensive boards, because he thinks releasing safeties get more stops and possessions than second shots on stick backs. Its the percentages thing. Don't know if he's right, but he wins 84% of his games thinking this way, so if he isn't right, he is at least on the geniuses path of doing it pretty well in his own unique way.
No, he doesn't develop hot spots to score from 8 feet out to 23 feet out, but KU's shots do cluster heavily 8 foot and in and 23 and out.
No, he doesn't focus on offense, because he has found a way to beat most of the teams by focusing on defense.
Yes, he obsesses on defense, apparently because he is fascinated to see just how little scoring you can do without and still win 80% of his games. Its how genius is. Gotta have something to organize your thinking. Simply beating opponents isn't enough any more after you win a ring. You're playing the game, like Knight said. Not saying its right. Just saying that's apparently what is going on.
But the problem is the game is changing and moving more to offense again.
And he is responding, but because he is a genius with FU money, he is responding with both defense and an idiosyncratic approach to offense.
Of course he could press and beat more opponents and win more rings.
But that's been done by Wooden, and Wooden is "not who he is."
He is an Okie Baller.
Gotta find a way to beat the game with Okie Ball, not opponents.
Its the only way to connect the genius to the legacy through playing against the game.
Or so it seems.
Interesting point. Thanks. I wondered the same thing awhile back. I went back and looked at some of the rosters of the Top5 or TopTen teams during certain seasons of the 1960s and 1970s. Didn't run the numbers, just anecdotal observation.
Lots of length. By the 70s mmaybe more length than the era of the OAD. Often not much strength. Often not terribly athletic. But based on what I can recall, as good or better fundamentally in many ways. Recall slender 6-11 Walt Wesley who went on to an extended journeyman career in the NBA. There were lots like him between 6-8 and 6-11. During the Owens years, Owens almost always started two guys over 6-8, and rotated one or two more. And from what I recall standing beside these guys at the Big Eight Christmas tournament on the concourse, or meeting them in classes later in the early 1970s their listed heights were actual, not Self inches. And KU was hardly alone. All the Top Ten, and most of the Top teams started such lineups. First UCLA late in the ring run, then the ACC teams seemed to be the first to combine length, athleticism and muscle. And of course Indiana's 76 ring team started a 6-7 2 guard--Bobby Wilkerson.
But by 1963, when Wooden started 6-5 Freddie Slaughter (a great leaper probably even today), the TopTen, certainly the Top Five teams almost entirely had long big men 6-8 to 6-10 tall, and by 1968 through the 70s guys were really getting long, and, as I said, a few were beginning to combine athleticism, muscle and length not just in the superstar players, but throughout their squads.
KU was of course a leader in starting long bigs with Born, Lovellette, and Wilt. But people forget that Harps early teams, which lacked enough depth and top perimeter players, started 6-9 Wayne Hightower at 4, and he had athleticism the equal of today's players, and KU was not a top team those years. Walt Wesley was 6-11 and usually played with someone 6-7 to 6-9. And so on into the 6-9 6-10 run of Owens tandems (Suttle, Von Moore, Knight, Brown, etc.). KU was long, but many teams were nearly as long and ACC, Pac 8 and Kentucky and Indiana were thought much more athletic according to media of the time.
But what I found was that Houston, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, usually 2-3 Big Ten teams, UCLA, USC, Oregon State had serious length. I don't recall what the Southwest Conference had for length in those days, probably not much because they did not take hoops seriously then. But the top 2 and sometimes top 3 teams in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 8 and Pac 8 had length.
So: while you are right that the long teams of these eras got to play a lot of short teams, once the small format NCAA tournament started, about all they saw were very long teams, EXCEPT for UCLA's dwarf, 32-0, high post ring team.
And people forget that the Wicks/Rowe/Patterson ring team later in his run, while gifted and athletic, was not all that tall for the time. Wicks was 6-8, Rowe only 6-6, and Patterson only 6-9. But they were in my opinion the greatest (and maybe the last) high post ring team of all time, even though Wooden's '63 runts were the more memorable for their short size.
The five teams I would have studied and borrowed from most to prepare for this season with the talent the team had was Wooden's two high post teams mentioned above, Self's 2000 Tulsa team, Maury John's NCAA runner up Drake team with Willie McCarter, and Jack Hartman's short SIU team with Walt Frazier.
Only Self's Tulsa team was from the modern era.
But basic principles endure across eras.
I would not have copied any one team completely, but each team has pieces that could be fitted into the mosaic of a short champion.
KU's shortness inside alone has never been the problem with this team.
The problem with this team is that because it is short inside, the basic pieces of a champion it is missing inside and outside make the shortness hard to compensate for.
Neither the high post, nor the high post/shooting guard needs to bring the ball up. though they could, if their abilities and circumstance required it.
Bringing the ball up is not a significant chore until a quarter of the way past midcourt; i.e., half way between the trey stripe and the mid court line, unless an opponent presses. The solution to pressing is always to keep a ball handler, and/or passer one pass away from who brings the ball up the floor. And of course this should be done regardless of who brings it up.
I have no idea if Hunter can put the ball on the deck, but many big guys can do things we don't see, because the coach does not task them with doing it. Same goes for perimeter guys. For 3 years we had no idea Tyrel had a 41 inch vertical and could dunk on people until his last season when he had gotten strong enough up top to finish with his good hops, and when Self told him to start getting up. Brady was always a better ball handler than people credited him, largely because Self had better ball handlers and so wanted Brady concentrating on what he was good at. His last season, when ball handling began to be in shorter supply, he was asked todo more and did what he was asked effectively. Mario Chalmers was perhaps the most pronounced example. He was a 2 at KU that really only "handled" the ball on weaves his last two seasons. At the time some wondered about his ball handling skills. If they were good, why wasn't he at the point? Answer: because we had guys that could play the point pretty well, but not the 2 as well as Mario could. So: Mario played out of position. We know this to be true in hindsight, because he played point guard part time for a couple NBA ring teams!
The concept, though tongue in cheek by us both in this thread, is actually very sound in principle and what I advocated several times before games started. It's Wooden's high post Offence that he won 3-4 of his 10 rings with. He succeeded with post men as short as 6-5 and up to 6-9. Some could shoot the 21 footer, some not. There is also a precedent within the Okie ball legacy that Jack Hartman used at SIU with Walt Frazier (think Selden here) at the top of FT circle as a high post/shooting guard where 90% of possessions initiate from--others bring the ball up. Hunter and Perry and Traylor and Oubre could each be good high post men and Selden/Svi a fine high post/shooting guard.
Seriously these are both outside in offenses that could work well with what we have left.
Yep. If I understand @HighEliteMajor, he is pretty confident that that is what Self is doing, or maybe pulling the legs of other coaches, by giving them something else unorthodox to prepare for, that he will never use.
@HighEliteMajor's argument is essentially that Self thinks out loud some in news conferences about what-if scenarios--sometimes his thoughts, and sometime fed him by reporters. For a time, he thought the way to best use Selden was popping up at all positions on the floor, but then he didn't do that. @HighEliteMajor probably thinks it was because it was just a fleeting notion. I think it was something he considered, when CF was still with the team, and he expected Selden to get his pop back. But CF left and Selden didn't get his pop back, and so Self decided to let Selden and the team fall into more regular positioning. It is very hard to say which of us is right on this.
But @HighEliteMajor has in his favor Self's history of talking about trying unconventional things and tending not to try them, like moving Marcus Morris inside and Mario Little outside, and vice versa, depending on which one had the biggest MUA in a post up, or trying AWIII at the 4 and then abandoning it, and so on.
The only example I have in my favor of saying Self is serious about these things, is Self playing the nation's number 1 pg recruit Josh Selby at the 3 and leaving him their an entire season.
So: as I frequently have to do with @HighEliteMajor because he thinks things through pretty clearly, I have to split some hairs to get where I am trying to get to while at the same trying trying retain the bulk of what he has soundly worked through.
I think @HighEliteMajor is right Traylor won't be a ball handling guard to a point--the point up to which Mason is playing satisfactorily and Selden/Evan are soaking up the 5 minutes blows each half that Frank will require. Up to that point, I think Jamari is a misinformation ploy to give other coaches something to think about.
But beyond that point, say, if Selden gets fouled up, or Evan can't stand the heat, or most ominous of all, Frank goes down for an extended period, at that point Self really has to begin to look at radical options of players playing out of position.
Remember that Self has said repeatedly that right now Mason is KU's best rebounder ON THE ENTIRE TEAM. If Mason goes down, it is not just ball handling and some trifectation that is lost, but rebounding, too. Whomever, or whatever committee, has to replace the rebounding too. Selden might be able to grab some. But Selden already grabs some at the 2. So if Selden slides to the 1, who can grab boards and guard at the 2? My hunch is Self is thinking that Traylor might be able to, if he didn't have to handle the ball too much. But with Selden needing help handling the ball, who could help, since Traylor is not a sound dribbler? I reckon it will be Svi at the 3 that will pick up the ball handling slack with Selden at the point and Svi at the 3. Why not Greene instead o Traylor? Because Greene's defense is just too sketchy to rely on him full time. Greene is the gun you bring in. Why not Traylor at the 3? Because the 3 is traditionally the wing initiator of the offense, and Traylor's skill's don't seem up to that challenge, where as Svi's, or Oubre's might be by February.
Which brings us to Oubre. Oubre is slowly getting better. Oubre has a crazy wing span. Oubre is probably an inch taller than Traylor. Oubre would be fine at the 3, but kind of wasted at the 2. But Svi can play the 3 and shoot the trey better than Oubre. And Oubre could actually be more effective at the 4 defensively than Perry, or Traylor. And Perry can start at the 5 and be a high attempt trey shooting 5, then slipover into the 4, and play tandem with Cliff Alexander. And when Perry could not score on an L&A, then Oubre could simply guard the 4.
But doing all of this hinges on finding a way to utilize either Traylor or Oubre on the wing. And you seem to get more out of Oubre on a 4 that out of Traylor on a 4.
So, yes, if Mason goes down, or more spookily, if there is already something wrong with Svi that has forced Self to marginalize him from the team's future, then things really start coming down on Jam Tray's shoulders to move out on the perimeter.
All the Coors you can drink.
Any co-eds that will double down on you.
And the jBIA Medal of Distinguished Service.
Per diem?
This is for love of the game!!!!
4 bars it is.
Tomorrow at practice.
Find out if Frank will be the 5.
Or will it be Evan.
Damn the encryption.
Thx.
To all, Self has no choice here but to move outside the box at least in terms of contingency thinking. If there is an injury to Frank Mason, and if I were an opposing coach I would be telling my guys to drive on Frank, scrape Frank off, pick him every which way from Sunday, back Frank down, post Frank up, on the offensive end, and then spend the entire defensive possessions kicking his ankle, stepping on his feet, shoving him all over the place and tripping him, and occasionally just putting him down. He is the only credible PG Self has in the team chain. Break the link and the team chain comes undone. Period.
Almost no one could be expected to stand up to the kind of beating Frank is going to be given as long as Devonte is out...nobody. And Frank is being asked to do it on an angle that's already sprained!!!!!!
This is real Marine Corp stuff.
We are momentarily on a nice safe beach head after some previous tough battles. But now its time to go into the jungle and we're going to have to go i without a full platoon. Think about what this team was supposed to have.
Embiid. Gone.
The Myles guy now at Texas. Not there.
Selden with his pop back. Not there.
Conner able to play 1 or 2 and gun 40% from trey. Not there.
Oubre another Wiggins. Not there....so far.
Cliff a dominating power 4. Struggling at the 5. Half there.
Lucas with a credible post move and a 20 Minute man. 10 minutes and no post move.
Mickelson a credible rim protecting 5. Totally NOT THERE.
Svi a possible OAD, or TAD. First there then NOT THERE.
Greene a Ben Mac grade gun. Not there for four games, there for two, Not there for one, there for one.
Devonte supposedly our starting point guard by January. Maybe gone for the season.
I say it again and again. No other coach in America could possibly be 8-1 with this.
It is utterly incomprehensible how it has happened.
Unless you buy into one of two things that JNew has argued.
Luck.
Or toughness.
The only think I know is Self called in the Marines early and they are not called in for luck. They are called in for toughness.
Every year when you think you've lost your mojo for KU basketball, because they haven't got this, or you've seen all of that before, then the craziest things start happening and suddenly KU is caught up in a season as dramatic and unique as any before.
I love this game.
I love this team.
The statistics are that it should lose two of its next three close games.
The statistics are that this team should crash and burn in conference once the coaches get to study the perimeter action and the way KU is going to eventually create driving lanes.
The statistics are you cannot win starting a 6-7 3 at 5 and a 6-6 3 at 4.
But the Marines have always been about statistics only in the broadest sense. Don't go in without 3 to one superiority, but once they are in, victory is always a horrific product of collapse and improvisation, of tactics become strategy, of the unforeseeable after being borne, then suddenly sifted through for the unforeseen path through the nightmare.
Difficult comes easy.
Impossible takes a little longer.
Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
Go KU!
Rock Chalk!
The only think I know is that he would be tall enough to throw it over the top of most point guards and into the post. :-)
It is one of the most frightening prospects I have ever explored. :-)
Probably even me. And I thought of it. :-)
Communication out of Allen Field House is beginning to sound a bit like that coming out of besieged Khe Sanh combat base in the Vietnam War between 21 January and 9 July 1968.
Elements of the Third Marine Division and the First Brigade, Fifth Infantry Division of the US Army were strong enough to resist the siege by 2-3 divisions of NVA regulars, strong enough finally to break it, but not strong enough in new General Creighton Abrams opinion, to prevent another siege.
Allen Field House is being besieged by a season of playing at a height disadvantage inside and the injuries from the siege, especially at point guard, where Mason is playing on a sprained ankle, and Graham is out with turf toe, and Conner Frankamp is out with an acute desire to be a point guard at WSU, leaves the KU perimeter as thin as Khe Sanh eventually became before a combined force of Marines and Army from outside Khe Sanh spearheaded an attack on NVA forces and liberated the combat base just in time for Abrams to "shut her down."
Self seems to be pulling together a force of Wayne Selden, Evan Manning and, yes, Self has repeated that Jamari Traylor is an option, to spearhead an attack to break the siege on the hobbled Mason.
Self's repetition of Traylor as a possibility could well give board rat @HighEliteMajor a pulmonary embolism, for @HighEliteMajor has already posited that serious consideration of such an option might be grounds for Self seeking psychiatric assistance involving therapeutic use of psychotropic drugs, or some similarly playful hyperbole . (Note: which is continuing to make me intermittently split a gut laughing hours after first reading it.)
As yours truly grew up under the leadership and occasionally harsh tutelage of the can-do Marine Corpse spirit, yours truly has been sounding warnings since early on that Self's call in of the Marines to counsel his team before the season started carried within it certain grave implications for the season this one might become.
Few, I think, took me seriously.
With the Marines, like anything else, you have to take the good with the bad. Their greatness is a sword with two edges. They can real estate with the best of them, and they can withstand sieges for sure, but there is something about the leatherneck spirit that can also lead them into sieges and slaughters in the first place. It is not so much that they lead themselves into them, but rather that leadership commits them to them, because the Marines will go.
Khe Sanh was a good example.
Likewise, if Self cannabalizes his bigs and orders Jamari Traylor into service as a point guard Jamari will most assuredly go into harms way as ordered. Its the Marine way. Run at the pill box with the machine gun firing and toss a satchel charge in to save your buddies? OK.
And though @HighEliteMajor may be quite ready to insist that psychotropics are now in order for our beloved coach, I would remind him and others that what we are witnessing really is the Marine Corp way, scary and mad as it may sometimes seem to the Sempre Fi uninitiated.
Recall that I have told folks in the past that in the Marine Corp tactics can suddenly become strategy at a moments notice; that any one, anyone at all, may suddenly be grabbed from the duty they are trained at, and be tasked with the most unlikely duty in the very heat of battle. Training? Instruction? Fuggeddaboutit. Just get her done. And though this sort of thing happens at desperate moments in other branches it is not necessarily a sign of total desperation in the Marine Corp, because...
The Marine Corp trains for desperation. It assumes desperation is SOP. It indoctrinates its men to expect it. Nothing is impossible. Or as they endlessly repeat: the difficult comes easy, the impossible takes a little longer. The reason that is such a big epigram for them is that they are routinely asked to do the impossible. If there is a job no one else in their right minds wants to do, send in the Marines. They take a certain amount of perverse pride in it.
The shock of of the idea of Jamari Traylor redeployed as a ball handling combo guard might be slightly relieved if I relate one old war story from my late father, then green Second Lieutenant of the Third Marine Division, 9th Marine Regiment, Company C, Motor Transport Battalion attachment, in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, formed at Camp LeJeune, shipped out from San Diego, CA and reformed on Guadalcanal, shortly after Guadalcanal was secured. After some getting familiar, they were transported up The Slot of the Solomon Islands around 1 November 1943, and disembarked at Empress Augusta Bay, landing at Cape Torokina Point, aka Torokina Point, Bougaineville to take a third or so of that large island for an airfield, while leaving the larger Japanese force on the far side of the sizable jungled, swampy, and mountainous island essentially in tact. The airfield was for land based air attacks on Rebaul, the then stronghold of the Japanese Navy in that region. This operation came on the heels of success at Guadalcanal and many subsequent Naval and island actions, mostly small in the Slot thereafter.
Second Lieutenant jaybate beta, father of @jaybate 1.0, was trained to organize trucks, jeeps, and a small number of bull dozers into a unit capable of creating a primitive road from the beach to Marines already a goodly distance into the jungle and engaged in some unexpectedly intense fighting that was depleting their ammunition and other supplies at an alarmingly fast rate. The Second Lieutenant came into his first invasion without combat experience and knowing only that there would be little resistance and a short road was to be graded through a grove of palm trees. The fire fight was well inland and danger would only be present once the trucks and jeeps carrying supplies had driven on the new trail a mile or two inland. The Second Lieutenant served under a green First Lieutenant and an old Captain with brief WWI combat experience and a notorious drinking problem.
Coming ashore, the Second Lieutenant suddenly was confronted with news that maps did not indicate a quarter mile wide ribbon of swamp starting about an eighth of a mile into the jungle and stretching the entire length of the beach. He was also notified that the First Lieutenant had been injured in an accident descending the cargo nets and that the Captain, who had come ashore somewhere down the beach was suffering from the DTs.and from a flare up of malaria contracted during formation and training on Guadalcanal. This the Second Lieutenant,who was barely shaving at the time, and barely filling out his combat fatigues after having contracted and battled some dyssentary on Guadalcanal, was now in command of an element of a motor transport battalion attached to support a Marine Rifle company engaged in a fierce battle a couple miles inland across a swamp that in the prior 24 hours not one single vehicle of any kind, either tank, bull dozer, jeep, truck or otherwise had done anything but sink in. As the Second Lieutenant reconnoitered with his Chief Warrant Officer, and a Sergeant, the Second Lieutenant was informed by a runner and subsequently by radio, that at that moment it was imperative that the Second Lieutenant's brand new trucks deliver ammunition and medical supplies to the front line of attack one way or another "immediately if not sooner." When the Second Lieutenant informed his superior officers both on the beach and inland that an impassable swamp not on the map made such an order impossible to carry out, the Second Lieutenant was told in some of the most colorful and certain language he had ever heard that he would either find a way across the swamp, or be escorted to the Brig, and some mention of Portsmouth Naval Prison was also invoked. After conferring with his Chief Warrant Officer, who actually knew what he was doing, the Second Lieutenant concluded that threats were real and that the mission at hand had to be undertaken regardless of its seeming futility. In turn, the Second Lieutenant ordered jeeps and teams up and down the beach to look for the narrowest width of swamp. Shortly, this location was identified and the convoy, such as it was was assembled in a single file line without separation and in full view of any enemy aircraft, all in contravention of all prior training, and the Second Lieutenant ordered the jeeps to commence gunning their engines and driving one at a time head first into the swamp, then for the driver to get out of the jeep and stand aside while the next jeep was driven from a long running start into the half submerged jeep already mired in the swamp. Many privates, corporals, lance corporals, and a sergeant or two remarked that the Second Lieutenant seemed to be even dumber than they had believed him to be, and they had believed him to be barely above functional moron, as Marine noncoms and grunts are want to think about young, untested 2 Louies. Over the next few hours the battering ram process proceeded without interruption moving only progressing from jeeps to ten wheeler trucks. As the lead jeep was slowly rammed a few feet farther out by each impact, by the time it reached near the mid point of the swamp, the Second Lieutenant order the scavenging of steel cables from as many disabled, or abled but unattended vehicles with wynches on the beach not belonging to the Second Lieutenant's outfit. Shortly, a rather long chain link of winch cables was strung from the lead jeep's winch to the nearest palm tree cluster on dry land across the remaining swamp and the winch on the battered jeep was used to draw the pitifully beaten and swamped vehicle to dry land. The process was repeated agains and again until it was time for the trucks. Half a dozen jeep cables were attached to the long steel cable reaching from the truck to dry land and six jeep winches were used to drag the 10 wheeler across the swamp. With a ten wheeler across fast work was made pulling the rest of the trucks to dry land. And then a several trucks were used to help draw the bulldozers across whenever they bogged down. And then all the vehicles followed the bulldozers plowing through jungle the rest of the way to the front, where ammunition was dispensed amidst all hell breaking loose, after which angry Marines killed many Japanese and took no prisoners that my father recalled.
To put the Marine Corp in perspective, there were no medals for this little act of get her done. No citations. My father actually said he did not even get a pat on the back or a job well done. It was just next.
Why did he do it that way? I asked. Had one of the old Sergeants seen it done it that way before? No. It just occurred to he and his Warrant Officer to do it that way. It was the only thing they could think of at that moment. So they did it. And it worked. And that was what Marines were expected to do. One Major did say to him, "Well, you really fucked those trucks up, Lieutenant." But other than that they just got on with it.
My point here is that Self is trying to hold this thing together with whatever he can think of right now, and his guys know it, and his coaches know it, and what keeps them going is that that is what he is expected to do, and what they are expected to do, and so they just get on with it. This is the Marine Corp way.
How do you get it done?
Any way you can.
Lance Corporal Traylor?
Yes, Lieutenant.
Yesterday, you were a 5.
Yes, Lieutenant.
Today, you are a 1.
Yes, Lieutenant, what does a 1 do, Lieutenant?
Hell if I know, Lieutenant, Chief Warrant Officer Dooley, who used to know once said, "You drive at the rim and if you can score you score and if you can't you pass it to someone who can.
But, Lieutenant, I only know how to dribble with one hand.
As of now, Lance Corporal, you now know how to dribble with both hands. Now go get me some W's Lance Corporal, and be quick about it. I am depending on you and know you will not let me down.
Let me put it this way.
When I go to a bar, they don't card me, they carbon date me. (rim shot!)
When I tell a nurse what year I was born, she asks CE, or BCE? (rim shot!)
When I make love to a woman, she whispers in my ear, "Viagara,or Androgel?" (rim shot!)
And when I go to a hooker, I negotiate to pay by the minute. (rim shot!)
Let me know when you want me to write some jokes about how young you seem!
jk!
So being paid for baseball is allowed but not basketball. I figured as much, but wondered if someone could confirm. Thx.
when you're starting point guard is playing through a sprain, you have only a walk,on backup and something strange going on with Svi, and your coach is talking about playing Jam Tray at guard, and you are only nine games into the season, yes. I wasn't concerned until Self quit plAying Svi and left him out of the solution two straight stories. Something is up with Svi; this smacks of injury or grades or pro ball in Ukraine. Naa could help. But there probably is no minor league loop hole.
PAul Drake?
It is clear that playing the NBA ends D1 eligibility.
It is clear that playing in a pro league overseas ends D1 eligibility.
Is is absolutely certain that playing in the NBA D-League ends D1 eligibility?
Is there any possiblity at all that KU could argue Tharpe has eligibility on a loop hole about the D-League?
For instance, Xavier Henry's brother played in the minor leagues of Major League baseball, he was allowed to come back and play D1 basketball.
Could Naa be brought back, because of the desperate situation of point guard with Devonte out?
Hey, what do these UK people think they are doing.
They have the best talent.
They have the best dorms.
They have the biggest arena that is not a dome.
They have have the best whiskey.
And now they have the best RPI, too?
God I hate this kind of level of excellence.
We are like Rocky going up against Apollo Creed.
Come'on Rock!!!!!!!!!!
MEMO
Clearance Level: OBO (Official Beaks Only)
From: @jaybate 1.0, director, jaybate Basketball Intelligence Agency
To: Most Board Rats
Re: Special Agent Hunter Mickelson going undercover as point guard
jBIA embed @VailHawk was inserted via airdrop from unmarked white chem trail plane logged enroute from classified Colorado location to classified black airfield near Eudora into Allen Field House via classified airfoil suspended Fiat 500 Abarth that landed @VailHawk on Daisy Hill and let him drive to a classified jBIA front sub shop on 23 rd street before entering parking the field house parking structure, and accessing the interior of Allen Field House through a door left unlocked by paid informants on the field house janitorial staff. This insertion was accomplished by 02:30:14 EST 16 December 2014. Special Agent @VailHawk has just transmitted an encoded HAM radio signal (iPhone modified to HAM Radio bandwidth to avoid Edward Snowden compromised top secret communication channels) indicating Hunter Mickelson is being worked out at point guard for surprise scheme against an as yet unannounced opponent. Special Agent @VailHawk also reports that Jamari Traylor will be the 2 guard in this scheme. Please alert Special Agent @HighEliteMajor and lend him all coping support possible and in the event of myocardial infarction get him to the nearest non-university hospital honoring ObamaCare for special agents ASAP.
(Note: All fiction. No malice.)
@JayHawkFanToo (note: not sure if I should include @DoubleDD and so on here, or not?)...
With all due respect, read, don't just look at, what @HighEliteMajor just wrote a few posts above that, I confess, made me howl with some laughter, which he can do when he wants to, though I admit he is rather more serious than me, and so doesn't partake in mirth making as often as me. And while you read understand at the same time that he and I may not see things exactly the same.
Here is my analysis of his post.
Its lucid.
Its reasoned.
Its strong.
Its conditioned.
It assumes Self isn't serious.
It implies, I, jaybate 1.0, or most anyone else, I reckon, must have a hole in the head to think Jamari could be a ball handling combo guard, or that Self would actually play him as such. I rather enjoy that kind of candor. I grew up in a rather blunt family and so it kind of makes me feel supported by a two by four in the forehead, as was the convention of discourse in my beloved family.
But there is more to @HighEliteMajor's post than just a righteous braining of jaybate 1.0.
In un-minced terms it indicates a conviction that Self would need a psychiatrist to administer him psychotropic drugs, if he meant what he said about Bam-Bam playing ball handling guard.
This seems to me as reasonably and acceptably posted as his prior post, but then I am a free speech guy.
If I read your past comments correctly, his post might tread on falling beneath the threshold of sufficient respect that you indicated should apply in remarks about Bill Self, again if I understood you correctly, that his prior post, too, was lacking in respect, or something to that effect.
I am not sure how to advise you here, or if you would want my advice. But as a team player and aware that you appear to have a heap of concern about some particular level of respect being accorded Coach Self, I feel bound to try to glue here.
It seems a pickle to me. I infer you want him to attain a certain level of respect of Self satisfactory to you, but what can he do? I do not recall that you have not posted "@JayHawkFanToo's Standards of Respect in Posting Regarding Bill Self" yet, so, well, he and all of the rest of us kind of have to fly by the seats of our pants and skirts regarding meeting your standards, you know?
Or did you post "@JayHawkFanToo's Standards of Respect in Posting Regarding Bill Self" somewhere and I missed it?
I mean until I and others read these standards, it seems almost impossible to know when we might be in, or out, of compliance with your standards, and whether or not they make a lick of sense. I mean what if your standards included having to post a photoshopped picture of each of us bowing down and kissing Bill Self's hand, when ever we wrote something critical of Coach Self. I can't speak for others on this, but I just don't know if I would agree to observe that standard, you know?
But be that as it may, bear in mind that reading @HighEliteMajor's post might tempt you to be simply polite and itemize tell @HighEliteMajor he/she ought to show more respect in order to achieve sufficient respect for your standard for, you know, his analysis of Bill Self on this issue of Bam-Bam as a ball handler. Some time the issue of ball handling gets plum lost in all of this evaluating proper levels of reeeeeeespect.
I don't want to fly under false colors. I am jest a leeeeeeeetle more optimistic about Bam-Bam's flexibility regarding ball handling as a combo guard, and the probability of it occurring, than @HighEliteMajor appears, but not by a large amount. I sort of see Bam-Bam aka Jam Tray aka Jamari Traylor playing a little 3, when the opposing 3 is a big 3, and Frank and Wayne are at the 1 and 2, and they are able to handle most of the ball handling chores themselves, so Jam Tray could focus on locking down a high scoring, long 3. But I wouldn't be at all surprised, if you and I were nicely to ask @HighEliteMajor about this--without trying to tell @HighEliteMajor that he had to meet (the perhaps eventually to be published?) @JayHawkFanToo's Standards of Respect for Posting about Bill Self--that he might even budge jest a leeeeeeeeeeetle bit on this and say something like, "well, jaybate 1.0 and I have disagreed over this sort of thing forever, and I'm not backing off a micron on my conditioned psychotropic therapy assessment, but, well, yeah, there might be a slim possibility--and I mean cigarette paper thin--that in exactly the right situation, with exactly the right number of people fouled up, and the right guy at the 3 for Bam-Bam to guard, well, Self MIGHT do it, but...I still say we should just put this to rest here and now and say in all probability it is Self just talking to hear himself think," or something like that. Capice?
And by gosh, in any case, I will in advance defend your right to tell him how to write what he means, i.e., I will defend your right to try IMHO futilely to modulate the respect level he shows so that it fits with your apparently unpublished standards of respect for posting about Coach Self, because I believe in defending free speech, even that attempting (or not) to modulate the degree of respectfulness in another's post. But, if you were to post about modulating his diction and tone to achieve your desired level of respect for Coach Self, well, hmmmm, I might once again feel compelled to remark again that it seemed like bad manners, etc., to do so. And I would of course expect you to defend my right to say you were evincing some bad manners, because I believe you too support the virtues of free speech, at the very least, as protected under the first amendment, and perhaps even farther.
I just don't know you that well.
Anyway, what do you think of our chances of sweeping "fayette and Temple?
Rock Chalk!
Howling!!!!
I'll miss your insight, but I can already say this without equivocation.
Enjoy your free time.
Bye.
How so?
Careful. @JayHawkFanToo may give you a list of words to say more tactfully what you said about Self. :-) @JayHawkFanToo gets really sensey about "absurdity." It appears a red flag word, along with some others. ;-)
Howling!
@JayHawkFanToo is surprised. 😄
Poor @jaybate 1.0 is not so surprised.
Try thinking without words..