🏀 KuBuckets Archive

@REHawk, I agree that Joel should stay, especially with an enforcer like the Chicago guy coming in. Mbah a Moute may want Joel to jump for the money, but good lord, Joel has within his grasp an NBA career of the first rank if he avoids being the African equivalent of Chocolate Thunder aka Darrel Dawkins. Dawkins most definitely have come to KU for a couple of years to develop some kind of a game. Bigs and skinny wings need the development time more than guards. The ubiquity of stunningly strong, long and athletic big men in the NBA just wears anyone down that is not thoroughly hardened before hand.

Notice I said "and skinny wings." Andrew Wiggins should IMHO come back. He is the antithesis of UK's great 3 on the Davis team that had the NBA body that was already physically matured and reputedly came from the tough side of town. Andrew's body appears in just one year almost certain to go through a metamorphosis even without Hudy. But it is going to take him a year to grow into that metamorphosed body and Hudy's weight program can keep the transition channeled and avoid one part of his body overwhelming another part of his body, so that at the end of a year he can pretty much walk into the NBA knowing that below the brain case, at least, he is playing with a body equal in toughness to the NBA guys. Toughness is the key distinction. It is not enough to be able to run and jump with those guys in the L. You've got to be able to take contact every game.

Neither Andrew, nor Joel's, families appear destitute. So I believe they should both stay on another year. Any injury either one might get would leave them the same place Brandon Rush was after his knee injury: still a top 15 pick. And in both players cases, both would be sharply more likely to step on the floor and be productive from the git go, so that by the time their second contract is to be negotiated, they are studs that teams will break the bank for long term, plus the endorsement deals will get juicer sooner.

@drgnslayr agreed on Craft. A real pain unless he's on your team. :-)

@JayHawkFanToo Thx for the Jeff Withey bulletin. He has the tools necessary to play well in the NBA, IF, and its a big IF, he has the social/leadership skills and courage, to build the cadre of teammate support necessary to protect him from being physically beaten up and punked. There appears an unwritten rule around the league that no one gets to play well enough to take another man's meal ticket without physical assault sooner or later. The players that can withstand the physical assault with the aid of loyal teammates become professionals in good standing in the NBA; those that don't are cowed into staying backups and never really competing against with respect.

Put another way, Jeff will have to play on a team that is willing to punk one of theirs, when they punk him. It is not enough to be willing to fight on your own; that is a given. You also have to have teammates willing to fight to. It is the law of the jungle in the NBA, even for many stars early on.

Bird was punked brutally many times until it became clear that:

a) Bird was willing to play even dirtier than those that tried to intimidate him; and

b) the full breadth of his team was willing to go to war for him too.

We saw this with Isaiah on the bad boys. It was never enough that Isaiah could be a dangerous customer, he had to have Laimbeer and Rodman and Salley willing to end careers of others to make Isaiah's act stick.

We saw this with Jordan and the Bulls early, before the Jordan Rules got enacted.

If your teammates buy into your being a professional to be paid respect, then after a period of punkings and counter punkings you can have a long career in which while you will encounter violence, it will not be aimed at ending your career and progress.

Ostertaag played on a team that would not go to war for him in part because Ostertaag would not go to war for himself.

Karl Malone would not get into it with Shaq to back Ostertag up. Nor would anyone else after Malone left, once Ostertaag had made clear that the response to getting punched out was doing nothing.

I am not saying Ostertaag could have done something to Shaq. Maybe from a money standpoint, his being willing to go along and be a cowed backup his career meant that he won the money game. That's okay. I might have played it the same way as Ostertaag. You never know for sure until you get in the situation, what you are capable of.

But it is written in stone that if you do nothing and your teammates do nothing, you are never going to be anything more than a back-up and part time starter collecting a check on a team of guys that will never back you up for the rest of your career.

Bird and Isaiah were great examples of players that were not physically imposing that were so willing to go to the wall, to pay any price in an encounter, to get even after the fact no matter how long it took, that both players became towering (often hated and feared) leaders in the combat of the NBA.

Bird and Isaiah made no bones about wanting to make you pay and then wanting to humiliate you for the rest of your career if you crossed them, or their team.

Neither Bird, nor Isaiah ever reached the level of revenue value to the NBA to be granted the Jordan Rules that fully protected them against mayhem directed against them.

To my knowledge, Jordan is the only person ever fully insulated from massive, career threatening retaliation in the NBA. But in Jordan's first 3 years, he was subjected to plenty of abuse. He just became so good so suddenly that he kind of leap frogged the kind of on-going abuse heaped on Bird and Isaiah.

The other exception in all of this was Magic Johnson. Magic got excepted from most of the abuse very quickly because he was under Jabbar's shield and because it became quickly clear that in Los Angeles and with his magnetic personality, he was a guy to be pretty much fully protected. And it also did not hurt that Magic was this physical freak on the level of Lebron that could defend himself unilaterally in all one on one grudge matches and he played on a Pat Riley team apparently taught to massively retaliate on any and all wrongs done to any one of its members.

Jeff, if he keeps blocking grown men's shots, and scoring on them, at his slight build, better be taking marital arts and getting his black belt quick, AND he better be playing for an organization that will go to the wall for him, or he is just one punking away from hospital time.

We all know Jeff is brave and tough, because he took tremendous abuse during college. But what is done in college is nothing compared to the NBA. And many teams in the NBA have cliques with no loyalty at all to other teammates.

If Jeff plays on a loyal band of professionals, and if Jeff takes martial arts and dishes out the chops and kicks that he is going to receive, and his mates back him up, then Jeff could play 15 years in the NBA and be the shot blocker glue guy on a championship team with a superstar. But if he can't get so he can dish it, and his mates won't punk back for him, he might as well start wearing a titanium cup and a hockey mask now to go along with the usual mouthpiece.

HALF COURT ZONES: CORE VS. TACTICAL USE

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man."

--George Patton

George Patton was a general that spent most of his combat life invading places, not defending places. He had overwhelmed many fixed defenses. Thus it is not surprising that he would use his bold eloquence to say something pithy and pregnant with insight about attacking and scoff at fixed defenses.

But even the pithiest and most insightful epigrams cannot capture the full truth of things. They are by definition reductions, most often from a particular POV with a particular prison of experience.

While I can recall no fixed fortifications that have withstood full scale, persistent assault by superior numbers over a prolonged period, if only because sooner or later some new offensive technology was discovered for attack, at the same time, I do not recall an instance in which fixed fortifications used, not to hold on no matter what, but rather to shape a battle field and an opponents path of attack and distribution of forces has not in fact accomplished it's end.

Put another way, fixed fortifications used as strategic ends in themselves are, as Patton's epigram indicates, monuments to the "strategic" stupidity of man, but fixed fortifications used as the "tactical and logistical" means to shape battle theaters and fields for eventual mobile combat in favorable locations at favorable moments are monuments to the "tactical" genius of man.

For example, Corrigidor fortress and Subic Bay naval base were never intended to be invincible. In peace time, they were places from which a relatively small investment in boots and weaponry could enable gun boat diplomacy to project sufficient force to enforce business contracts of USA's early transnational oligopoly producers (e.g., Standard Oil and its kerosene illuminant sales throughout East Asia, ALCOA's early aluminum monopoly, and more generally USA's maritime trade in a variety of industrial goods and raw materials).

But in war time planning, Corrigedor/Subic Bay were intended to force an enemy, be it the Japanese, or the British, to have to divide its forces at least between Hawaii and the Philippines, when planning any surprise attack. It never occurred to anyone that they could have withstood full scale, concentrated assault. Corrigedor/Subic Bay were largely beyond the "logistical" capability of the USA to sustain in the early stages of any surprise offensive that included an attack on Hawaii, plus a naval challenge of the the supply lines between Corrigedor/Subic Bay and Australia/New Zealand/Hawaii. Thus, despite the early fall of Corrigidor/Subic Bay to the Japanese, these fixed fortifications had already by definition accomplished their purpose of dividing Japanese force application. The Japanese had had to divide their impressive offensive forces to expand their regions of control in the Pacific, rather than concentrate all forces on Wake, Hawaii and so instantly be in position to begin locking down the west coast ports of CONUS in naval blockade, later in probable Japanese planning to be combined with an eventual naval blockade of east coast ports of CONUS by either a victorious German Navy, or an opportunistic British Navy that might have made pragmatic alliance with Germany and Japan in pursuit of joint subordination of USA. Never forget, USA pre war battle plans included the option of having to fight the British, instead of being allied with them. Such are the harsh realities of fundamentally anarchic, strategic international relationships. The enemy of my enemy can become my friend, and more importantly, my friend can become my strategic enemy with the right set of incentives when push comes to shove. (note: this is why all friendly nations spy on their allies as much as their enemies.)

So, jaybate, you say, what the hell has all this digression into fixed fortifications to do with half court zone defense in a flipping basketball game?

Answer: Zones to some extent (emphasize "some")) should be thought of as a basketball equivalent of the fixed fortification in military strategy.

To wit: a zone distributes five defenders on the floor in fixed zones on the floor; this means that the offensive team knows exactly where opposing teams toughest and easiest elements to attack are from the moment the offense recognizes the zone it is actually up against. Think about that for a moment. You know for an entire possession where the guy is that can eat your lunch everytime you take the ball near him and you know for an entire possession where the guy is that you can beat like a stick. Knowledge is power. It is advantage, if it is used, but not if it is not.

A zone is a fixed fortification of connected elements that is built on an invisible track that allows it to track as a five man battery with the ball moving around an arc, kind of like the guns in a five gun shore battery can move on an arced track (or a cluster of articulated turrets) that has a certain range of sweep of targeting, ships off shore move. Move your offensive forces over here, and the gun battery that is the zone moves there. Move back and the zone moves back. But the individual guns remain largely in their same fixed positions in the array.

Next, realize that somewhat like a fixed fortification in war, a zone has the quality of compressing concentration of force projection when its outer boundary is breeched. Get inside the first wall of a fort, and one encounters a designed "kill zone" where machine guns and rifles aimed out of gun slits confront the enemy with withering gun fire in a confined space. Big forts are designed to have several layers of these kill zones, too. Basketball zones simply compress when the ball enters the kill zones. Two men are suddenly guarding one. But if attack can be quickly redirected to another side, then fixed fortification that is a basketball zone can have difficulty redirecting the interior to stop and move to attack elsewhere.

Next, realize that as a fixed fortification, or a basketball zone, compresses to fight defensively within its perimeter, then beyond its shrunken perimeter its opponent is virtually free to position for further attack. Suddenly the offensive team can combine internal attack with now suddenly feasible mortar attack at the three point line, rather than 25-27 feet out...assuming it is capable of rapidly kicking the ball outward.

Teams that learn to play great zone defense (like Syrexcuse) try to be long everywhere but one position. And at that one position that short player is most often an incredibly athletic and tough human being. As five gun defensive battery, such teams become incredibly adroit at collapsing and expanding so as to hamstring even the best of offensive attacks.

But there is one defensive vulnerability that even the best zone defensive coaches have never been able to over come, just as generals have never been able to over come the same kind of vulnerablity in fixed fortification. The individual elements (i.e., guns) have to remain in a fixed array in relation to each other. And there in lies the Achilles heel of all defenses and of all fixed fortification. The offense, if it has the resources and time to persist in a varying series of attacks can eventually move its individual elements of attack (its offensive weapons) into positions where it hold match-up advantage over the fixed elements of the zone/fixed fortification, even with the ability of the zone/fixed fortification to sweep in arc into position of against a new point of attack.

If Bill Self knows where Cory Jefferson and Gathers/Austin will be in any given zone formation for the entirety of a possession, then all Bill Self has to do is move Perry Ellis out of Cory Jefferson's zone--a player Perry Ellis cannot offend effectively against--and move him into a zone with a player Perry Ellis can offend effectively against. Perry is a great scorer with many spin moves and good springs, so bigger slower players like Gathers/Austin are very prone to be outmaneuvered by Perry and to foul him for three point plays, where as Cory Ellis is capable of both staying with Perry's moves and then cramming his shots back down Perry's throat.

Next, realize that Bill Self cannot only move Perry Ellis, but each and ever player into such mismatches. And by so moving them, then can anticipate where the zone will have to deform the most to compensate for the mismatch and then coach his player with the matchup advantage deforming the zone about where to look for the open man created by the zone deformation.

Other things equal, over the course of 40 minutes of action, as an offensive team gets increasingly quick at recognition of the zone, then distribution of its players into the zones of mismatch, the offensive team holds greater and greater advantage, even with not very good outside shooting on a given night. And if one adds a hot shooting hand from trey in a given game, then the zone/fixed fortification virtually has no chance to prevail.

But jaybate, why does Syracuse win so much then?

Because Boeheim recruits L&As suited to play the zone, plus a skill perimeter player about as well as anyone in part because most other coaches are trying to recruit m2m defenders. Boeheim by doing what the others ain't can always keep his larder stocked with a lot of L&As suited to playing zone, but not necessarily well suited to playing m2m, because these are not being sought out by most coaches in such large numbers.

In turn, Syracuse is very, very hard to beat unless you are a team with an exceptional array of very good players that enable you to create 2 mismatch zones for most of a game, and have two good outside shooters to make Syracuse pay for deforming the zone to overcome your mismatches.

Now we get to the meat of the matter in why Self plays m2m as his core defense--the defense that he starts with and always comes back to. If Self has great m2m defenders capable of switching AND helping, he has the best of all defensive worlds, without giving an opposing the opportunity to create mismatches in known locations against known defenders. Self can bring help from many angles that can be quickly varied even during a single possession. Self can refuse to switch off if his defensive player has MUA on an offensive player. Self can switch, whenever an MUA occurs and help cannot be brought without too great of a loss at another position. And so on.

For Self then, the m2m is a core strategy and the zone is a tactic. He goes to zone for brief periods, when doing so may enable him to halt a point of attack at a weakness that his m2m has no means of countering, at least without some half time scheming. He goes to a zone to force some recognition problems briefly to get a stop. But Self is determined to come back to his m2m if at all possible, because he knows that giving an opponent more than a few trips looking at a zone will lead to the opponent putting their MUA player in a KU zone where a KU player is at match-up disadvantage.

Thus, Bill Self would probably agree with George Patton that half court zones and all fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man, but that tactically zones can accomplish useful objectives in brief application, but never as strategic solutions to the problem of winning.

Winning is ultimately about staying on the attack against the opponent's weakness until even the opponent's strong holds are so weakened that they can to can be attacked and overwhelmed as is tactically expedient. Thus Self's recurring preference for playing to wear down the opponents strong players, and getting them into foul trouble with ten to go, so that a team can be attacked at ever more points of advantage. Eventually the opponent crumbles from within. And if it can withstand the constant assault on its mismatches, then Self apparently reasons that at that point the game comes down to a great stop and a great play best done by great impact players, which he tries to stay as satocked up with, as Boeheim tries to stay stocked up on great zone defenders. And for Boeheim's part he too tries to stay stocked up on great impact players to decide the close games.

But one structural advantage Self always holds over Boeheim, whether he has the players he needs to exploit the advantage or not, is he knows where the match-up advantage for his players will be in the Syracuse zone much more than Boeheim knows where it will be versus Self's m2m.

Boeheim's advantage is that much more of the time he can bring two defenders to bear on one offender.

Who wins in a game between Syracuse and KU, as coached by Boeheim and Self, and where both coaches have a lot of talent and depth, largely depends on which coach in a given game has the best players for his particular core defense, and with the timeliness (and surprise) of each coach in springing his non-core defense (Boeheim his m2m and Self his junk zones) on the other, and with the degree of advantage held by each coach's impact players over whom they can be positioned against core, or tactical, defenses, at go get a basket time, if games stay close.

Neither approach can prevail everytime; that is a naive hope. There is too much emergent complexity in any basketball game for certainty of outcome based skillful adherence to effective strategy and tactics.

But if one looks at the winning percentages of Boeheim and Self over the course of their careers, you see that Self holds an edge. Not much of one, but still a statistically significant edge, and it is especially significant, since Self had to coach for quite awhile at schools where he could not rely on the talent and depth that Boeheim attracted to Syracuse, the only place Boeheim has coached. One could also counter that Boeheim has coached longer against top competition and so reasonably discount somewhat the argument that Self won with lesser talent. So: in the end, we are left with just the raw winning percentages of both coaches to make a judgement.

Boeheim is at .749 career. Self is at .756 for career. At Syracuse, Boeheime is of course also .749. At KU, Self is .833. Self's approach wins a little more overall and a lot more at a basketball heavy weight, with the caveat that Self has not coached quite as long overall as Boeheim, an not nearly as long at a heavyweight, and so his approach has not yet seen as much change as Boeheim's has had to contend with. But looking at Self's staggering advantage in winning percentage at a heavy weight program, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that Self's approach is the more effective.

What makes me finally side decisively with Self's extreme reliance on m2m is that among the game's greatest winners throughout the many eras of the game, Allen, Rupp, Wooden, Smith, Knight, Sutton, and Coach Consonants, these have all used m2m as their core defense and supplemented tactically (and sparingly) with zone. Thus, the proof is in the pudding to me.

But seeing the pudding, and seeing the proof in the pudding, are not the same as rationally understanding why and how the m2m defense should be the core defense and the zone should be the tactical complement, and not vice versa. It has taken me a long time of watching basketball, nearly 50 years of it, to come to be able to explain it in the terms that I have in this post.

And that length of time is perhaps why I never became a coach.

I never had a great mentor explain the why and how of it to me. And I have been a bit slow on the uptake. :-)

Rock Chalk!!!!!!

@drgnslayr slayr bringing it to people. Thx.

@tubertigertank, and thank you for explaining your very entertaining alias. Every man goes through a tube phase. Bully for you for shrinking yours! You probably can't get any sleep at all because of how handsome you are to your beloved.

And I respect you so much for getting your daughter through school and into the State Dept. She must lead a fascinating life serving our country. It is an awesomely positive reflection on the work you put in for her.

The situation with the AD and the TV contract is frustrating. The only justification for it is that KU probably has some regulatory obligations to the minor sports that included getting them some broadcast time. Paying cash to broadcast them might have been prohibitively expensive. Also, Zenger perhaps felt the need to pinch pennies after KU had to go to the alumni trough to shed Gill, then hire Weis, then raise cash to renovate the football stadium AND build the new apartment building for the athletes. It could have been as simple as he just did not want to go to the alumni AGAIN with so many other bigger projects requiring bigger funding and donations. Zenger has spent big to restructure Self's contract again, too. So maybe Sheahon had to look for a way to meet the possible regulatory obligation to the minor sports that did not mean shelling out a bunch of cash. He looked around the shelf and knew he couldn't get anything in trade for KU football, and the only thing he had to trade was some KU broadcasts. Maybe he figured people would stream the blacked out basketball games online.

But if Zenger did it just to cut a corner, when he didn't need to, well, then IMHO he made a bad choice. There are other ways to grow the minor sports. Go to the alumni of the minor sports and get them to make contributions.

Hard to say until more scoop on cui bono surfaces, I reckon.

@KUSTEVE Dads do leave a big hole when they go!

@globaljaybird That was a really great way to start my hoops reading day. And I don't think you are pipe dreaming even a little. Fouls and/or injuries and sickness will trigger the situation you are talking about sooner or later this season. And I agree with you that these back ups are going to be up to the challenge.

Regarding Tiny, he was a positively super PG who went on to Boston and Bill Fitch and Larry Bird and won an NBA ring as the leader of the team. After years of scoring big for the not so good Kings, no one thought he could fit in an ever win a ring. Boy did they misread a great talent. Put him with the Boston team and, like the great pro he was, he blended right in and delivered them to a championship.

Another thing persons forget about Tiny Archibald is that he played for Don Haskins at UTEP and that means that Tiny was an Okie Baller. Haskins is famous for the Texas Western aka UTEP team that beat KU and then UK for the ring, but young folks often forget that Haskins, who was one of the few guys that Bob Knight truly deferred to, was one of Iba's big three disciples: Haskins, Sutton, and Hartman.

Thanks for recalling Tiny for me and though it hadn't occurred to me to compare Frank with Tiny, I do believe you are right that there are parallels and that they could develop much further.

@icthawkfan316 Approx and skeet have been trying some different ways of aggregating links to news stories and links to threads started by our members. Your post may have gotten lost in that shuffle. I may have had one get lost too. They are trying to find a method of aggregation that keeps the manual load off them, since their roles are entirely voluntary, and something that keeps the home page as clean and quick to access as possible. The home page was getting clogged with looooooooog lists of posts, so, most recently, he and skeet decided to try gathering headlines in one clump, and thread starting posts by users in another clump day by day.

1) Headlines (each day's date): this link is where approx, skeet and we aliases place links to off-site news stories thought to be of interest (e.g., KUSports.com, CJOnline, KC and Wichita papers, and occasionally links to recruiting sites and national portals like ESPN);

2) Our Daily Threads (each day's date): this link lists threads community members start.

I usually check the headlines and daily bread links once or twice a day, and the rest of the time just go straight to the RECENT link on the top menu. I am also slowly staring to use the UNREAD link on the top menu a bit more.

We are making this thing up as we go. Try to remember that where as the commercial sites are using full time staff to "design" and create as much page information density as possible, we are doing the opposite. We are always trying to find elegant, low site maintenance ways to keep Approx and skeet as uninvolved as possible, within the constraint of the node bb/github open source community platform. And we are trying to follow the Google aesthetic model (not their surveillance model) that the less clutter the better. Hence the white background and limited palate of colors and graphics. Nested commentary is not supported by the folks at node bb/github without extra support, so that is why nested comments as you are used to on KUSports.com does not appear. UNREAD links is the work around. You can drag and drop an image into the commentary window with ease, however. Elegance is always a tug of war between over simplification and dullness vs. over complexity and tedium. As usual, others know more than I. I frankly am still learning it a bit.

My guess is your post got swept into a category

@icthawkfan316 We lack the steady trickle of lurkers here that lead to a lot of beat the gopher workouts. We also have slow periods, but also no imbecility. I am rather less of presence here, and something of a Johnny Come Lately due to some health issues, so slayr and HEM carry the mail most of the time. Approx and bskeet make the site run. A lot of good aliases contribute in smaller bytes and some that used to write less are writing more. Community size ramped quickly to 200 and then grew slowly to a current 266. No one beats up on anyone here. Fight club posting is planet. Very collegial. Look forward to reading your stuff.

@tubertigertank, it is rare when I get a warm and friendly post from an alias that ties potatoes (tubers), tigers (MU potential) and heavy WWII German armor (tiger tank) together.:-)

I will try to answer your question. Other folks can skip this response, since I've told it before a few times over the years. I used to use a photo for an avatar. HEM recently dredged one up off the internet either identical, or very much like it, thinking I seemed digitally misaligned without it. :-)

It was reputedly from Lucas/Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie. It was reputedly that movie's version of the The Holy Grail that Indie and his father found at the end of the movie. It was tarnished and blood stained. I liked that. I picked it many years ago as a symbol of KU being the place that the true spirit of the game of college basketball--played the right way, coached the right way, recruited the right way--was being preserved and protected. The idea was to remind myself and others that the Jayhawk faithful ought to act as the guardians of college basketball the way the knight of grail legend stands guard dutifully and humbly, in an out of the way place protecting the actual holy grail of legend. It occurred to me to pick that image, because it seemed a time when the game was getting ever rougher, corrupt recruiting seemed to be on the rise, TV and gaming seemed to be wagging the dog of basketball, and all manner of business dynamics were stressing the deep virtues of game IMHO.

As I often do, I tried to be somewhat playful with the idea at times. At one point I wrote about the basketball grail being located in a tomb under the center jump circle under Naismith Court and under Allen Field House. I wrote about hoping that one of my favorite posters, someone with the alias of 100, an alias that had reputedly died after years of posting and passing on his rare insights about the early days of basketball at KU, and about the game today, had taken over guarding the grail under center court. I wrote that I hoped when I finally die to get a chance to guard the grail with 100. And probably other things. So that explains how I came to be associated with what I call a "basketball grail" for an avatar, or what you called an icon.

Being that I am a rather strange combination of liking not to change things like an avatar for years at a time, plus a person that then likes to change for intuitive reasons, some time in the last year, or so, there was a situation at a prior site where in the avatars seemed to disappear for a time. This caused me to think about a new avatar. I like to paint with both analog and digitally, and so I cobbled up an impression of a grail that I liked and, if I recall correctly, used it briefly. Then I decided to step away from posting for quite awhile for a constellation of personal reasons, not the least having been health, and so I promptly misplaced both previous avatars. For awhile after returning to posting here at KUBuckets, I did not use an avatar. But then HEM, a self confessed button pusher (i.e., a coach :-)), posed a jpeg very similar to the old grail I used to use, and I suddenly felt like a party pooper not using an avatar. So: I suddenly felt like doing something fresh for reasons that always elude me, because I know on many levels that photo HEM snagged for me off the net better conveys my intentions. But as I get older, and the finiteness of life becomes more real, I am more inclined to do something original than something good. :-)

So: I dashed off the avatar you have remarked on and there you have it. It is a golden goblet, compressed in a reference to the continuing top down pressures on the game. Alas, it is rather closer to a martini glass than the traditional glass, though that was not an intended allusion, though I confess it might have been on a subconscious level. :-)

It is a bright yellow-gold to be both golden like the grail legend and yellow like the Jayhawk's beak. It brims with crimson blood instead of being empty, as is the religious grail for my grail signifies not the holy spirit (which I believe in and mean no disrespect to) but rather the blood, sweat and sacrifice that have gone into making KU basketball great and keeping it great. The crimson blood also is meant to suggest that guarding the basketball grail is not always fun and trendy. Sometimes one is perceived as being hopelessly naive and behind the times, the way sinners and the secular scoff at the old knight that wastes his life away guarding what seems to them an empty goblet. And the blood spills over a bit to remind that no guardians can be perfect in their vigilance. That they can make mistakes and must be ready to admit error and get better whenever needed. The blue background of course is the KU blue of imagination. So:there you have the probably tedious story of jaybate's avatar.

Rock Chalk!

@REHawk So hope you are right, Coach.

@approxinfinity I have tried to add my posts to daily threads, but cannot figure out how. Somehow mine are showing up though, in spite of my ineptitude.

Also, I just though a place to say thumbs up to stuff you try would be good, rather than bozo me starting a new thread to say good job, or I like what you have tried, etc.

@Kip_McSmithers, great photoshopping

I guess for Kentucky then, the parts are greater than the team...for now anyway. :-)

@HighEliteMajor, well said, especially regarding Self, where he is always playing a variation of 70 point take what they give us. He will play at 80-90 if that is what it takes to find the exploit in the opponent, or 50-60. He is looking for edges and will sacrifice anything for a more optimal trade off.

Except playing zone half court and 2-2-1 full court. :-)

I suppose exceptions prove rules. :-)

But the reasons I remarked on it specifically, were:

1) there are better coaches that are going to have similar talent that are likely not going to let him turn it into a FT shooting contest;

2) until Selden's knees get better, this team could have trouble guarding the trey stripe and so win the floor game.

Won't it be ironic if in the end, it is Greene's length as a defender that finally forces Self to gravitate more fully to Greene, than Greene's length as a shooter? :-)

"I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate."

Bill James

At ten I was playing against 18-year-old guys. At 15 I was playing professional ball with the Birmingham Black Barons, so I really came very quickly in all sports.

Willie Mays

I like to feel that I understand little things about sports.

Bill James

"Amateurism is the strongest form of discrimination in sports. Because it discriminates against the underprivileged, it discriminates against the poor. If we want sports to go back to the wealthy, let's make it amateur again."

Carl Lewis

"The commercialization of sport is the democratization of sport."

Andrew Young

"I won't predict anything historic. But nothing is impossible."

Michael Phelps

"Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up."

Red Auerbach

@justanotherfan Yes, but I would like to see them seeded lower than they deserve just to hear them cry about it. :-)

@Blown Re: UK, that great Anthony Davis team created huge expectations for young freshman teams that have followed. People forget that Jones and another player were sophomores and that that team didn't get well oiled until mid season.

This year's UK team is playing about the way a bunch of really good freshman ought to be playing; i.e., not as good as seasoned teams like Chita State.

Same with KU. We are doing about as well as anyone could reasonable expect for a team that's been playing games together 3 months and has 3-4 players trying to figure out what D1 is about.

Unreal early expectations for such young teams. March is a freshman dominated team's best hope for actually playing two halves like a real D1 team.

UK, and KU to a lesser extent because KU has Perry and Dir, are probably not done with the steep part of the learning curve; that still ought to be a month away.

We are just very lucky Self is so good at masking and at clever tactical adjustments at half time.

Therefore, we have to reserve harsh judgement of UK till then.

Though its always okay to call them a bunch of still billies and buccaneers. :-)

@RockChalkinTexas I liked it too and envisioned it getting more more complex in imagery over time. Only thing I did not like was that on my tube, anyway, the crimson appeared a red with too much pink in it. At first glance, I even thought it might be orange. I would like a bolder red to be used. Picky, picky, picky. As Dr. Zeuss said: only Yinks like pink ink. :-)

Should we create a feed back thread for responses to site innovations, or is there already some place where that is supposed to happen?

@REHawk I want what you want. Call the avatar slayr and I contributed to a collaborative product of connectivity--a connected art work not attributable solely to anyone. EyeJazz, if you can pardon the pun. Visual improvisation. That's cool. And innovative. At the same time, I confess to not being sure what it means to make my simple free throw circle into a gas pump, but perhaps on some level it ties into shoes and uniforms being made of petroleum based products these days. Whatever, I like the neo-Post Modern aesthetics that result. :-)

Hmm, one more thing. It might be cool to get slayr to give it just a bit of a downward squish of compression to introduce a bit of top down baroque into the Neo-Post Modern motif and maybe a touch more ornamentation on top. Ornamentation and compression might add something the form language. :-)

@justanotherfan First, I really like your contemplation about the reasonable threshold for too many made treys allowed.

Second, while any team is vulnerable to a hot trey shooting team, it seems that: a) some teams are better at guarding the trey than others; and b) some times teams have to make triage choices between guarding the trey stripe and guarding the inside. It seems to me that Tharpe and Mason are not likely to be great trey defenders, because of their heights, and Selden probably has not recently been a great trey defender because of what appear to be some knee problems. I mention this because it appeared to me that Bill Self opted for trying to overplay and deny the inside scoring of Baylor and doing so put extra pressure on Selden, Tharpe and Mason trying to guard that stripe. If I were correct in this, then it would be reasonable to infer that Self's strategy was in part responsible for the eventual trey percentage for the game, and the hot hand was responsible for it being so extremely high the first half and the cold hand were responsible for the lowness the second half. What I am trying to say is that Self could have committed more heavily to defending the trey stripe and the average of the first and second halves would have been lower overall. But he instead decided to take away Baylor's inside game, because doing so not only took away the high percentage first shots inside, but also Baylor's strength at offensive rebounding and sticking back missed treys. Self saw through Baylor's dependence on initial inside shots, plus stick backs on trey shooting and elected (gambled) on taking away the short shots and stick backs in hopes that the less well defended trey shooting would not kill him. Alas, KU, though it lowered Baylor's inside scoring significantly could not lower it enough to offset Baylor's trey scoring in what turned out just and average trey shooting percentage for the entire game for Baylor. Thus, to reiterate, Self had to resort the second half to the tactic of fouling their bad foul shooters inside, and keeping the ball our good foul shooters hands to win a FT shooting contest, since he could not win the FG/trey shooting contest. This was a classic cast of good tactics saving a foiled strategy.

It reminds me of what George Patton once said: good tactics can save bad strategy, but good strategy cannot save bad tactics. :-)

@HawksWin--As usual, everything I write is opining and speculation without inside information, or access to anyone on the inside, to my knowledge. And it was probably wishful thinking on my part that it could never happen, as CJonline's Ben Ward was quick to point out. And he was alas probably all too correct. But...

Andrew reputedly came out early. I believe that if its okay to come out early because you think you may be able to play at a higher level than high school, that it should also be okay to wait a year longer than planned to play more consistently with the expectations of yourself and your trusted advisors, rather than necessarily ploughing ahead to the NBA. Why does Andrew necessarily have to go to the NBA the end of this season? Why is it that necessarily the best thing for him and his family and his business potential?

Outward appearances suggest to this fan that his physique appears not as physically mature as Lebron's appeared when he went to the pros. Neural nets develop at different rates in different persons. Why do Andrew's necessarily have to be ready now? What is set in stone about going pro just because the NBA wants to make him an extremely high pick?

Money is a huge consideration, probably decisive. But earnings can be looked at different ways. Why is it written in stone that he has to grab the bones now to avoid injury? If injury risk were paramount, why didn't he just sit out this season of OAD play, put himself in a padded cacoon and come out a year later and go straight to the NBA to avoid injury entirely? Why is playing one season in D1 the best thing for Andrew and two seasons unthinkable?

During Jesse's blog it occurred to me that his folks are former athletes that know what it is like to compete at a high level. They can recall coaching and team dynamics. They probably understand some, or a lot of the dynamics of the various potential business forces pulling on their son's career planning. It just occurred to me that if he were my son and he appeared to be playing at some what less than what I had forecasted in my expectations, despite putting up good but not great numbers, well, if he were my son and it was thought that he could get to the hole anytime he wanted, but hasn't always seemed to, I would want to come and see for myself, lend him some moral support and try to reevaluate around now whether I wanted him to continue with the OAD approach, or ease back and wait a year. It occurred to me that if he were my son, I would want to meet with his coach and get his advice at this point in the season. If he were my son, if he were not doing all the things I and our advisors thought he should reasonably be able to do this season in D1, and be relatively happy and consistent doing them, then I would probably entertain staying an extra year, because the risks of injury would seem lower to me (a layman fan), than the risks of stunting his growth and getting him caught up dysfunctionally in further hype this season, and in the awesome rigors of the NBA (no boys allowed) next. I thought about it all and it occurred to me that the next Lebron, that could play like the next Lebron in the NBA next season, would go. And it occurred to me that the next Lebron, or Kobe, as slayr has recently modified his player development modeling conception of Andrew to, would wait until his play and physique suggested he could enter the NBA and play like the next Lebron, or Kobe.

If I recall correctly, Lebron started most of his first NBA season and did pretty well; that was not the case with Kobe.

What I like so much about slayr's re-casting of Andrew in terms of Kobe is that Kobe is also, a great one, but that Kobe had a gradual development process compared to Lebron. And Andrew and Kobe's games and body morphology potentials seem much more closely related than Andrew and Lebron. And last but not least, slayr was insightful enough to make clear that if Andrew were to model his game off Kobe that would involve retooling from a high injury risk, get to the rim guy, into a low injury risk create space for jump shooting all over the floor guy. slayr was apparently crafting an answer to those worries about injury that propel players to jump as early as circumstances will permit based on what they already can do, versus what they after some more work, should be able to do, regardless of their rates of maturity. slayr was apparently holding out a hypothetical career path consistent with greatness and huge earnings, but a modestly slower rate of development than Lebtron's career and with less injury risk. In turn, it occurred to me that were Andrew and his brain trust to consider slayr's IMHO astute insights about Andrew vis a vis Kobe, that they might come to view staying another season at KU as a reasonable alternative, given that injury risk would be minimized and Andrew could arguably afford the extra year, because he reputedly came out of high school a year earlier than Lebron, did not come from poverty, and maybe came at little earlier than the model of Kobe.

Andrew seems too great of a young player to let conventional wisdom box him into leaving early no matter what.

In my fan's opinion, Andrew should go the the NBA as soon as he is comfortable and able to find a situation in the NBA that might be able to simulate Kobe's early years with the Lakers, whatever might be even better fitted to what his development status were when he goes.

But from the outside looking in, the NBA today and its draft do not seem a place geared to taking Number One draft choices and making them subs their first seasons, 6th men their second seasons, and then starters their third seasons. For Number Ones, especially guards, they seem to want to accelerate them as quickly as possible into starting their first seasons, like Lebron did. But of course I do not watch the NBA closely and so I could be wrong in this assumption.

Nevertheless, is coming out immediately really the best that can be done for this apparently exceptional human being, not just player, that is Andrew Wiggins? It seems to me that he deserves to be cut some slack just because he is so exceptional.

But I'm just a fan and so, what I write, or what ex-player and now fan slayr writes probably doesn't (and probably shouldn't) account for much.

Still, when you see some one this exceptional, someone so obviously gifted in certain ways that seem not yet any where near mature capabilities, you want to wave your KU pendant from the cheap iSeats and shout, hey, can anybody hear me down there? Will someone consider cutting this exceptional human being some slack?!!!! Does he have to go so soon, when nothing is written?

I can at least imagine an NBA situation next year that could be a better trade off than staying at KU, But I can imagine a lot of worse NBA situations than being at KU next season. Unless some great NBA team has the ideal slot all set up for Andrew's unique situation, I sure hope Andrew's brain trust gives some consideration to Andrew staying another year, whether or not KU wins a ring this season, and considers slayr's remarks about Andrew in terms of Kobe.

Rock Chalk!

Self said FTs probably decided the game. Why?

First, KU achieved its apparent defensive objectives. It took away the rim game by guarding hard inside the arc and fouling shots taken there, especially off offensive rebounds, while at the same time giving short jumpers to a team that did not shoot those short jumpers very well. Essentially, KU took away one of BU's two strengths--inside scoring.

BU's other strength, trey shooting first went red hot the first half, then cold the second half to shoot back to its usual still decent trey average by end of the game.

Taken together, though KU really held down BU's inside scoring and forced BU into unproductive short jump shooting, KU's strategy did not work well enough to offset BU's great trey shooting.

To win by only ten, KU still had to make 89% of 29 FTs, and BU had to make only 45% of 20, even with KU's own high shooting percentages inside itself.

Without the great edge in FTAs and FT%, KU's defensive strategy and high inside shooting percentages would probably not have produced a W. This is why Self said FTs probably determined the outcome.

So: Why did KU get such a big edge in FTAs and FT%? Was that all just luck?

No.

Self stacked the FT deck and here is how.

Defensively, KU concentrated fouling on BU's bigs--BU's worst FT shooters. This biased BU's FT% down.

Offensively, KU, especially the second half, concentrated the attack through Wiggins and Perry, two good FT shooters adroit at drawing fouls.

In short, after KU accomplished its defensive strategy and only led by one, Self turned the game into a FT contest between two of our good FT shooters versus some of BU's worst.

KU won the FT shooting contest.

And the game.

But...

KU did not win the non FT shooting part of the game and that should worry Self a great deal for coming games.

BU showed KU is very vulnerable to good 3pt shooting coupled with strong offensive rebounding at a 64 possession pace.

Okie State showed KU is very vulnerable to a 2-2-1 zone press that exposes weak ball handling and slows KU's hurry up the court style.

Shortly, opposing coaches will combine these exploits. And KU may not make 89% of FTAs and the opponents may make 65-70%.

KU is definitely in the drivers seat after only five games, because of who they beat and where they beat them.

But Self is right to compare this to the early inngs of a baseball game.

KU has revealed some definite holes that other coaches will scheme to exploit.

Unless KU can get better.

And Self can keep pulling brilliant counter measures.

Historically KU has and historically Self has been able to.

But basketball happens in the present.

Go Bill, go!!!!!

@drgnslayr Self should not just hang a medium sized monkey on Marshall. He should add that Wichita State has the best talent in the country for winning it all. :-)

@drgnslayr Agree, attacking with Chery was the right move. Another was to always have his baseline bigs in his zone rotate Jefferson to whichever side of the floor Ellis was on. He had Ellis number the whole first half. Self goofed and waited till after half to move Perry away from Jefferson. It used to be called a match-up zone not only because you stretched to cover who ever was on the perimeter, but also because you paired up your big men with their best opposite. Not matching up Jefferson on Ellis was Drew's biggest single defensive mistake. I actually liked him shuffling the half court zones almost every time down the floor. I have always been partial to that myself and to masking any zone you stay in for more than two trips to look like something other than what it is before falling into it after the first pass to a wing.

Self's best moves were offensive. First, they quit trying to read the zones and just cut to two options. Rotate the zone around to Andrew and let him drive a seam on the extended zone, and draw a foul, or reverse to Perry hiding on the back side away from Jefferson, and let him slide down off the low block for an easy two. Perry on Austin, or the short wide body was a mismatch in quickness--the kind Perry likes (e..g, Georgetown). Getting Perry away from Jefferson took away Perry's expectation of being blocked and dominated, as he was in the first half. Second, though, it was very sharp of Self to recognize that the key to the game was free throws. And the key to free throws was fouling their bad FT shooters, and keeping the ball in the hands of two or our good free throw shooters. Very clever. Too clever for Drew to even get what was happening till it was too late.

Self's best defensive move was to just keep doing what they had been doing the first half and wait for the law of averages to implode Baylor's trey shooting. Self rightly reasoned that they had been winning by high percentage inside shots and two 45% trifectates. Self elected to stop their inside game and home they were off from outside. He probably figured Wigs could deny O'Neale a comfort zone from 3 and thought Selden, despite his knees, was tall enough to get a hand up to deny Heslip open looks. Wiggins did okay on O'Neale, but Selden got torched by Heslip the first half. Because Selden's knees appeared to suck, it is doubtful that any adjustments were made by Self regarding Selden's coverage of Heslip. Heslip just blew cold. Lucky us.

Drew was, shall we say, out-coached.

@HighEliteMajor Imagine how badly KU would have beaten Baylor Had Self adopted the 221 press also. It is the perfect defense for turnover prone teams. And wouldn't approved long ago that teams can play this zone press and intense high-pressure man to man defense every game for an entire season.

@drgnslayr copy and paste. And its even more amazing, if he's doing it with bad knees. Something has not seemed right about Selden in either the OSU, or Baylor, game. JNewell mentioned some knee pillows vs. OSU. But I figured those were being worn prophylactically, because he was going to start trying to go snag some 50/50s. But his line score is very thin and his get to the rim game seems muted, He's guarding, but not helping with as much range. You noticing anything?

Rack and lock. Brilliant! Thx!

@JayHawkFanToo: thanks for the assist. I meant to say "in the first half" regarding Jefferson beating up on Perry. It didn't matter. Once KU quit trying to challenge Jefferson with Perry and started keeping Perry as far from Jeffersons part of the zones as possible, it did not matter. Perry started setting up out on the trey stripe the second half, then away from Jefferson lower. Then BU turned to ice from trey, then KU just started rotating the zone to Jefferson's side and then slipping Perry down the back side away from him and getting his twos the easy way up close, where Jefferson couldn't dominate him, while Wiggins was challenging the other side and taking the banging and making the FTs. It was an awesome adjustment by Self and staff. If Perry can't handle Jefferson guarding him in the first half, keep him the hell away from him the second. Then FT offense and FT defense to win. I have no idea how KU keeps defending the FT this well, but Self is onto something! 😉

Really this game was very deceptive IMHO. KU won by 10 because KU succeeded in fouling their worst FT shooters and KU spent the second half making BU foul KU's best FT shooters, or at least the ones capable of 89% last night.

If Perry had been left butting up against Jefferson the second half, things would have gone about the same for Perry and Traylor, as they did in the first half--not very good.

The reason Self dislikes zone is because you can always do to a zone what he did last night. If a defender like Jefferson can stop Perry in his zone, you just move Perry out of that zone.

Drew got finessed last night. He focused so much on confusing KU's defensive reads with changing zones that he forgot to think about where Self was moving his chess pieces to turn it into FT contest. This was classic Self. He never could get his guys to recognize the different zones, so he just concentrated attack away from the mismatches and tried to draw fouls. Brilliant!

@drgnslayr

"My momma loved me, but she died."
--Hud

The KU-BU game produced a bunch of fascinating stats, and both coaches did some remarkable things, but the 10 point game was won and lost on the FT line. To wit:

KU 26-29 89.7%
BU 9-20 45%

KU's free throw defense was awesome as usual.

But KU's free throw offense was anomalously great.

Great free throw defense and awesome free-throw offense created a 17 point advantage that was so formidable even BU shooting 80% from trey the first half could only defer the inevitability.

Sure KU did some great things defensively. KU held BU to 38% FG. BU almost couldn't get a shot off near the basket and it was all done without blocks. KU just guarded hard inside.

Sure Baylor, for all of its seemingly two dozen different zone defenses it threw at KU, could not guard KU inside very well. KU shot 57.5%.

Ya see, both teams rebounded about the same, blocked and altered about the same, and stripped about the same and turned it over about the same.

And the fact is BU WANTED to take a whole bunch of outside shots, because they have two fabulous trey shooters.

And the other fact is that KU WANTED to take a whole bunch of inside shots, because they don't trust their outside shooting.

BU made 13 treys and KU only made 6.

The difference in the game was not the inside and outside shooting. KU and BU made the same number of FGs after all. And as I said, Baylor made double the treys, only because they like to take a lot more treys.

Its the free throws, stupid, to recall political strategist James Carville's "its the economy, stupid" advice to Democrats once upon a time.

KU's Free Throw Defense was as good as its ever been. If this game does not get researchers at CERN in Switzerland to begin searching for a sub atomic particle controlling free throw defense I don't know what will. KU's mind control over the The Free Throw Particle held BU to only 45% made. It was unbelievable!

And KU's Newtonian mechanics controlling its own free throw shooting was stellar.

In the end it did not matter really that KU spent the entire first half with absolutely no clue about what kind of sone defense BU was in. Didn't matter!

In the end, it didn't matter that Cory Jefferson ate Perry Ellis' lunch in giant gulps.

In the end, it almost did not even matter that Self and staff had no clue about how to attack the myriad zones the second half either. KU finally just gave up trying to read the zones BU threw at them and just started throwing the ball down low when possible and turning to try to draw fouls.

And make fouls.

But anyone can do that on a good shooting night.

What distinguishes this team is its ability to defend the other team's free throw shooting.

You really don't need great rebounding, when you have good control over your free throw defense particle.

Rock Chalk!

@globaljaybird OMG how could I have forgotten The Hustler!!!!!!!!!!!

Newman had a Four Bagger of anti-heroes. The Hustler has to go on the list.

"Let's shoot pool, Fast Eddie."

Oh, how he shot pool against Fats!

@JayDocMD Nope

@REHawk Ha! One upped by the coach!

@drgnslayr But I ain't letting AWigs out of the cross hairs here for a second.

Andrew, over here..................................................is hype.

Manhood is HERE!!!!!!!

Great horses run no matter what age they are.

@drgnslayr Dang, now I gottta go out in the damned snow again and shoot some baskets, slayr!!! You're going to kill me yet with this manning up talk.

Perry Ellis, you are being called out!

And he's doing it because you can meet the challenge if you finally decide to howl with the wolf man.

@drgnslayr Ooooooooh, slayr feelin' the steel. Ellis and Wiggins are now in the toughening box. YEeeeeeeee Haawwwwwww, watch them harden!!!! May take a couple of games, but the village smithey, William of Self, has got his black apron on and he's pumping the bellows and he's holding Wiggins' and Ellis' spines to the fire to get some temper!!!!! Yeeeeeee hawwwwwww!

@Lulufulu85 Bottom line, Keegs, or no Keegs, Naadir stayed on the floor with a draft choice PG and a coulpe very good 2 guards, when he was at point and wing. I have been a loooooooooooooooong time doubter of Dir, but he has produced. Its not his hot hand; that comes and goes. Its his ability to play well enough on defense that he can be helped. At some point, every player needs help. Chalmers needed help on Aaron Afflalo once upon a time and got it from BRush just like Dir was getting it from Selden, etc.

Naadir has some problems with assist to TO ratio, but we have learned the last two seasons that KU PGs just do have high TOs, because Self's Hi-LO offense refuses to set many screens, which means that the wing men and point have to make a lot of high risk passes all game long. Plus, since Self is playing saplings this season and has to K.I.S.S. in schemes, PG Tharpe has to make more TOs than he would if he had a full quiver of press breaking options at his disposal.

Tharpe has risen to the challenge. The opponents have chosen to overplay Selden and Wiggins of late and that has left Tharpe open. He has taken and made big time shots.

Nothing runs like a Dir.

I can't resist taking as stab at my own question. Drew should switch defenses regularly, because KU has evidenced trouble with reading, but any time BU gets up 5 it should stay in zone. Any time BU is down five it should go m2m. I think it will be about 50/50 2-3 zone vs. m2m the first half, then some kind of a zone Baylor has not shown to start the second half, then 50/50 the second half. Implied is a close game.

@drgnslayr Ouch, that scene still hurts. Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and Hombre. The Greatest Anti-Hero trifecta anyone ever achieved. Old Mr. Short Legs knew story and he could act a lick, or three, and he could handle a car. The movies miss him dearly.

@approxinfinity okay, good call IMHO. So: then how about this non sequitur:

"Agnostics do it without knowing." :-)

@Blown

"Board Rats don't sleep after losses...If anybody wants to talk at 4 a.m., meet me at KUBUCKETS"

LOL