The Harlem Globetrotters claimed Marques Haynes could bounce the ball six times per second.
In college, Haynes once dribbled the ball for more than 2 minutes to close out a game as pay back to an opponent that had previously run up the score on Sam Huston State coached by a young Jackie Robinson.
Catch phrase: "I'm Marques Haynes. I'll show you how!"
Thanks for the recon on Kentucky.
Always good to hear when the youngins are beatable.
Fathers never cease being fathers, you know.
I still do not expect Wigs to really turn it on until his second contract, when the big money rains. The first contract is only slightly more important than playing at KU. Same deal. He has to hit a few marks to make it rain. He hit one you mentioned.
This is all bidness for Wigs.
I haven't watched Uk enough to know what to expect. But I do think going against UK's big men will be a good test of Composite 5's strength and weaknesses.
@HighEliteMajor said:
But if we start going through stretches where we are averaging near 16 and not playing well offensively, that’s a different story.
Yep. And I believe he will ramp up the attempts.
I could never express gratitude equal to the joy the Trotters gave to my childhood.
They are one of only three things that make me smile and feel good inside every time I think of them, even now approaching my mid 60s, and I dare not speak of the other two, so, in a way, the Trotters are the only thing I will take to heaven, or hell, with me and say, if I've gotta be here in either place for eternity, please tell me the Trotters are here, too.
There are five players I tell anyone to watch, if they are new to the game: Marques Haynes. Curley Neal, Meadowlark Lemon, Wilt Chamberlain, and Pete Maravich.
Why?
Because these five men reveal the joy and beauty of the Greatest Game Ever Invented more than any of the others that I have personally witnessed.
People have never understood the Trotters.
The Trotters were the first performance artists.
They were to performance art what New Orleans Dixieland Jazz was to modern jazz.
They were the well spring.
But since most persons don't think they understand performance art, my next default in explaining their importance is this analogy: they are to basketball what the classic silent film comedians were to movies. They were almost impossibly gigantic artist working in a medium long before genius should have been able to do what they made seem effortless to do.
You can't do the Harlem GlobeTrotters now any more than you can do Charlie Chapin, or Buster Keaton, now.
Looking back we know these guys were folk artists combining towering artistic ability with a young folk art in ways that was too far beyond the rational for the intellectuals and critics of the time to grasp.
They were so funny and cathartic one can hardly describe it to persons now, same as Chaplin and Keaton were.
Meadowlark Lemon was the funniest.
Persons that have never tried to make persons laugh don't understand the magnitude of calling someone the funniest at anything.
This guy was funny in a way other comedians were in awe of.
Just like there was a Victor Borge of classical piano, there was a Meadowlark Lemon of classical basketball.
He was so funny no culture could resist laughing, whether they knew what basketball was or not.
Persons that have never tried to make persons from other cultures laugh don't understand the magnitude of saying the guy could make everyone from Russians to Watusis laugh.
Being truly, profoundly funny on demand in character is the toughest thing of all to do in all of the arts.
Many performers won't even try it.
Many comedians, even some of the great ones, can only do it for short stretches.
Meadowlark Lemon was hilariously funny for decades in every corner of the world.
And he didn't hide behind makeup.
The guy was all funny.
That he could also play basketball at a high level was insane.
Goodnight my sweet Meadowlark.
Drill a hole in ice on Potter's Lake, tie four M-80s together and tape to a long stick, light, push stick with lit M-80s through hole in ice and run to shore. Stop. Place safety goggles over eyes. Turn. Enjoy blinding geyser and cascade of ice slivers and chunks.
Break into Bill Self's McMansion and count how many pairs of adidas he actually owns.
Invite Sheahan Zenger to a bar to watch the game blind folded, so he has an idea what it is like to be a KU fan affected by his black outs.
Pass out zip lock bags of ant eater scat to three UC-Irvine fans in the field house and tell them that each is a gift of See's Chocolate from home.
Walk naked from AFH to the Wheel and warm up with a Hot Buttered Rum and blow torch.
Try shopping with American Express Traveler's Checks and see if anyone still knows what they are.
Go to the art museum across from the Natural History Museum and try to confirm if even one of the paintings is authentic.
Try to find women 79 years of age or older that do not have children that look like Wilt Chamberlain.
Go down to The World Corporation offices and shout, "What in the world were you people thinking?"
Snow shoe through a buffalo stampede.
Steal trays from one of the dormitories and go traying down the hill behind Snow Hall even if there is no snow.
Tell everyone you meet that you are a Hollywood producer that The Matrix is real.
(Note: all fiction and no malice.)
This is all much ado about nothing if Perry is making his treys.
KU goes 4 out 1 in.
Perry stretches the Anteaters with treys. If Perry is hitting, we will crush them.
If Perry is not hitting them, Bad Ball them.
jSPN reporter Jay Lingerwell just filed these Bill Self quotes about Cam Ridley from Bill Self's press conference.
"Cam's a little sore. Well give him the day off today, but he will be ready for the next game."
"We'll try to hold his minutes down to about 35."
"Cam's one of those guys that you don't want him to start thinking he's injured, or it takes him longer to get his pop back."
"To tell you the truth, I haven't seen the X-Rays. I trust our team of doctors. They are second to none and if they clear him to play, then I trust them."
"They haven't made a final decision on him playing, but he's really just nicked up. He will be fine. He's a tough kid."
"I looked at the bone. It was barely sticking out through the skin. Its really not that big of a deal. Lots of guys have played with this sort of an Fx before. We'll put a boot on him and he should be fine."
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
I feel sorry for him, too.
But I doubt Wayne Selden does.
I doubt Josh Selby does.
I doubt Tyrell Reed does.
Ridley ought to be a man about it and play through the way KU guys do.
Yeeeeeee Haaaawwwwwwww!!!!!
Conference time is at hand.
Way to bring the photographic evidence.
GUILTY!!!!
Yo, Shaka, get ready for your beating.
What went around is now coming around...right at that nose of yours.
Once upon a trey you dreamed twos away
Threw the bums short treys when time ran away, didn't you?
People call say 'no more Bad Ball, you're bound to stall'
You thought they were all lovin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was blockin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About C5 making you have to scrounge your next three
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without 20 3-ptas
Like a complete High-Low, like an Iba stone
Ahh you've gone to the dribble drive schools, alright Miss Calamari
But you know you only used to get deuced in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live down in the paint
And now you're gonna have to get used to it
You say you never compromise
With the short trey tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the 16 attempts in his eyes
And say do you want to make a three?
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, without 20 3-ptas
Just a complete High-Low, like a Iba stone
Ah you never turned around to see the back downs
By post offenders and the drivers when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other players set your picks for you
You used to pass third side for your Bill Self
But you carried on your shoulder a Steph Curry elf
Ain't it hard when you discovered that
Steph really wasn't where it's at
After Self took from you every three he could steal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To have on your own, with no quick trigger home
Like a Carolina high-low, like an Iba stone
Ahh trifectates on a steeple and all the quick trigger people
They're all drinking, thinking that the trey game is made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your trinity stripe, you better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in twos and the passing that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you've got no trinities to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a Carolina High-Low, like an Iba stone
(Note: Thanks and apologies to Bob Dylan)
:-)
Gathers and Baylor concern me, too.
Drew is a slow learner, but he has now had a lot of experience and so could finally be average on the bench!
Gathers makes them strong, where we are gerry-rigged.
I have a match and some starter fluid just in case. 😄
Good add. Head trauma is another category to consider, when skin shade does not change significantly.
Still other injuries unspecified for a time in the past lacking skin shade change include: knees, stress fractures, and bone spurs.
Mononucleosis also appears to go largely unreported, but the players get pale and lose weight.
Avoidance of specification seems to occur, when there is uncertainty whether the player will return to play through, or end his season.
At least Self has not yet said Vick is "nicked up;" that sometimes seems to imply disagreement over returning; I.e., Self thinking a player should "play through," while player and family think not.
One final unlikely possibility could be NCAA troubles. Vick was reputedly an LB guy initially that came to KU shortly before the feces got fanned in Dallas.
Oh, well, wait and see time.
When slender first year players get sick this time of season, my go-to hypothesis is adverse reaction to weight-gain dietary supplements. It has never been proven that that has caused anything, but the really weird shades Jeff Withey and Brannen Greene turned coupled with no formal explanation of what was the problem, has made me suspicious.
:mask:
Wouldn't it be sweet to hang a 20 point L on Shaka? Dang, it would feel good. :laughing:
Condolences to those close to Freeman. He clearly strongly influenced a lot of persons.
From my POV, he was well after my time and reading all of you folks fondly recall him made me feel kind of like a wooly mammoth thawed from a high school football glacier.
Whew!!!!
I mean, I can remember watching Al Woolard coach Lawrence, High, when Lawrence was invincible for a decade, and I was a whipper asking my dad if Shawnee Mission North, the school that I would one day attend ever be any good?
Then in my junior high and high school years Larry Taylor took over from Reese Pollard and at Shawnee Mission North and went on a tear winning ten straight state championships. We just manhandled Lawrence in those years and waited for the state championship game with a top Wichita school to test us and, of course, ten straight seasons we beat them.
Then my beloved Coach Taylor hung up the whistle and John Stauffer, my old jump coach in track took over, while Dick Purdy ran SM West to the top and former Taylor assistant John Davis ran SM South to the top. Then I heard Purdy wound up over at Lawrence and built Lawrence back into a power, and then came Freeman, or maybe I've got that all wrong. I had moved to the West Coast before Taylor even retired.
But the point is that I have been told that the Shawnee Mission schools are long gone and the Olathe Schools took over the mantle, but Lawrence High has kept at it over the long haul. For not being a football state, eastern Kansas has had a remarkable bunch run of exceptional high school football coaches since the late 1950s.
Can anyone tell me if anyone is on a roll these days in eastern Kansas High School Football?
And then
Texas is en route to becoming a strong, third, title-challenger, along with OU and ISU. I can taunt Shaka, but he is someone that has to be beaten before we can discount him.
The good news is the circumstances of KU's first meeting with Shaka January 23 greatly favor KU.
KU's preceding game is January 19 vs. OSU in Stillwater. While Self has had problems in Stillwater, OSU is a relatively weak team this season and that is three full days of rest and playing at home.
Texas, by comparison, plays a pressing WVU in Morgantown January 20, and then on two days of rest and a travel day plays KU in AFH.
KU needs to take that opportunity to beat Shaka and his Horns into the next century to get that relationship off on the right initial conditions.
Good point. Bad Ball is like any offense. Its effectiveness requires correct execution.
All sound offensive schemes require getting defenders moving in ways that offenders can exploit them.
The high-low Carolina passing offense requires getting defenders moving with passing.
Good ball requires getting players moving on the perimeter enough to get off the quick trigger trey.
Bad Ball requires getting players moving enough to jump into them WHILE Big Mama is in motion.
Jumping into a stationary Big Mama that resists reaching and just stands motionless with arms straight up Withey style yield either a charging foul, or an altered miss, or both.
This is why Bad Ball should always attack Big Mama back side so that Big Mama has to come across the lane (i.e., get in motion) in order for Frank, Devonte, Wayne, or Perry to jump into him.
Post Script:
In Perry's defense, he has probably been coached to limit his dreaming in the media to the cool humility of a Final Four, so as to avoid being labeled arrogant by the media always looking for a way to create some sparks. But if his goal really is the Final Four, then he needs to go outside immediately to the coldest outside court in Lawrence by himself and start imagining winning the NCAA championship with 2 seconds to go with THE SHOT. And he needs to make that shot a bunch of times on the snow and ice to really make it real to him, so he doesn't wake up in the Final Four thinking being a champion is just icing on the cake. Being a champion is what its about. Its what it is always about. For teams and for countries and for players and for citizens. Losing sucks. Winning without playing up to your ability sucks. Being a champion finally is the only lasting sweetness of accomplishment in the game beyond simply picking up a ball and putting it through the hole.
Yes, I have always been frustrated by folks that try just to get there.
Read or listen to all of the great and not so great players that have been champions, and think back to your own experience of the kids in your neighborhood that went on to productive lives. Listen to them talk about their childhoods and about how they pretended that the score was tied and that there were seconds to go in the NCAA, or NBA championship, and they took and made the winning shot. Its what human beings are supposed to do. It is the practical function of dreaming. A boy, or girl, is a damned fool not to dream.
I never dreamed to just get to the Final Four as a boy. I dreamed of winning it. I dreamed of being the one that made the shot. I didn't have the physical ability to make the dream come true, but at the few grade school and junior high levels, and one year of high school ball before I got injured, I played on champions at whatever level I competed at, and I made shots at the buzzers to win big games. And I have always been that way later. I may not always be the best, but I am there when it counts. You want me on your team, if you are playing to win. Even if you know you are better than me; you know that I will let you have all the credit you want, but at the buzzer, when the chips are down and the big money and all the work are riding on it, I am there, already having visualized my whole life being there, and I will do whatever it takes to go the final step. I have fallen. I have been beaten temporarily, even all my life for certain things, and I have even been beaten when people thought i had lost the final encounter, but I never quit looking for the next encounter...EVER...at anything that mattered to me. I will be laying on my death bed thinking of some way to win at some things that have eluded me. I know it. If I think I have the resources to keep playing and I think I can win, well, I know the difference of how I am and how most others are. And I know I have no fear of those few that are like me either. I like them. I don't mind competing against them because that just means one or the other of us is going to run out of time, not really win the ultimate match. That's why I loved those guys so much on the 2012 Finals team so much. They didn't lose. They ran out of time. But I liked the guys on the '08 and '88 ring team even more, because they didn't run out of time. That got it done.
But we all know the other kind of team. The kind of team that had all the marbles, all the pieces, all the advantages, but lacked the champion's competitive greatness. I would be proud to be on the 2012 team. They didn't lose. They ran out of time. But I would hate to be on the other kind of team. And we all know the other kinds of teams at KU. And I have been on some myself inside and outside sport. And I hated that more than losing and running out of time. I hated it more even than being on a bad team, which I've been on, too. I hated being on those kinds of team that lacked competitive greatness. Hated it. HATED IT!!!
Planning? As opposed to dreaming? You better plan for the disappointment of not making it, of finding yourself on a team of losers from time to time. Even on a good team, you better plan on coming back again and again until you finally make it. Frankly, you better visualize that, too. Coming back the second time. Visualize both. Visualize coming back as many times as it takes, too.
But dreaming? Dream winning it all the first time. Again and again.
I grew up with Hank Stram's Kansas City Chiefs making it to the first Super Bowl and playing okay for a half, but then getting beaten by an older, wiser and mentally tougher team--Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. Man, that was a bitter pill at my young age. I had collected Coca Cola bottle caps to get an AFL football. I had believed that the AFL could beat the NFL. I had believed that the guys in the AFL were the future and the guys in the NFL were the past. I had loved those impossibly red jerseys and the arrow head on the helmet with KC in it. The Chiefs were even newer than me. I was born in the 1950s. They were born in 1963, or so. The Dallas Texans, born in 1960, did not matter, except that the guys had come from Dallas, somewhere there could just as well have been New Delhi to me, to KC and become the Kansas City Chiefs.
I saw Joe Namath play his first professional exhibition game in the old Kansas City Athletics baseball stadium on Brooklyn Avenue and sat at the 47 yard line on the 14th row in the bleachers they put up for football season in those prehistoric times. I can still see the rookie Namath with working knees (not perfect even then for he had injured them back at Alabama) taking that 12 step drop with his hunched shoulders and football cocked loaded at the earhole of his Jets helmet with the unprecedented face mask cage for a QB, dropping, reading coverage, looking this way, looking back, looking that way, looking, looking, with Buchanan bearing down and finally when it looked like a sure sack, leaping straight up a good 36 inches off the turf and, and, launching one down the middle to Don Maynard with one face bar and an unbuckled chin strap on a post pattern against former LSU Chinese Bandit Johnny Robinson--the kind of guy most persons buckled their chin straps to go over the middle on--and completing it for a huge gain. A completion snatched from the jaws of a sack. THAT was sport. That burned into my mind forever what a great player was. A great player was someone who did great things in the midst of others doing ordinary things. It was not about hype. Namath had as much hype as anyone today, if you can believe it. He had had the full megillah of Madison Avenue moxie spun to make him the savior of the upstart AFL. But the difference between hyped Joe Namath and hyped guys of today is that hyped Joe Namath routinely did super things. It was unbelievable what he could do at the quarterback position. His arm would still overwhelm persons today.
THAT leaping throw was what my two friends and I practiced all summer in our yard games, until we saw the AFL get hammered in the Super Bowl by the Packers and Starr. Then we waited. And waited for Lenny, or Joe, to find a way to get to the Super Bowl and win the sucker. But here is the thing. We quit pretending to be Joe, until Joe finally got it done. Until he did it...
We crowded under a neighbor kid's ass and pretended to be Bart sneaking behind Jerry Kramer.
But then it happened.
Namath, Sauer and Maynard in the air and Snell on ground, Gerry Philbin in the trench, Ewebank on the sidelines. Joe Willie calling it. The Jets over the Colts. 1969. The year the balance tipped. The year that there was somethin' happenin' here went from being not exactly clear, to being so clear every boy in my neighborhood became Joe Namath.
The year my generation said the NFL is the past. Frankly, the year everyone in my generation said everything is the past. The year we said the future is NOW!!!! No matter the horror that surrounded it, there was victory at the center, and the victory extended from Joe Namath's cocked arm all the way to the moon's Sea of Tranquility.
I was Joe Namath a million times, maybe two million times, not at Old Municipal in an exhibition game, but Joe Namath in the Super Bowl against the Colts. Those Italian eyes and hunched shoulders and cocked gun looking down field, reading, reading, reading, overcoming everything, all the doubters, all the ridicule, even horrible knees. Johnny Unitas? Kiss my ass. The tire hung from the rope swinging from a tree limb and me alternating between 7 and 12 step drops, arm and ball cocked to ear hole...BOOOM!!!! Through the tire marked Maynard with three seconds to go in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl!!!!!
You gotta dream where you're going, because you'll never know till afterwards whether you've got the talent to get there. There is no bill of lading in the bassinet when you come home from the hospital that says, "this kid has the talent to win the Super Bowl," or this kid is a champion. Its an adventure of discovery, a tragedy of finding out you don't, or an exaltation of finding out you do.
Not everyone wins a championship...at any age...in anything. But that's okay. The only thing that's not okay is to get there and not be prepared to play like a champion, even if you get beat.
Everyone said Lenny Dawson didn't have it; that he didn't play like a champion in the first super bowl, but not me. I knew those Chiefs were good enough in 1967; that they had to get better and go back.
But everyone else? I got so sick of it. Everyone KNEW he didn't have it--except three persons: me, Hank Stram and Lenny the Cool. I'm not even sure Jack Steadman and Lamar Hunt knew Lenny had it. But Lenny? I can guaranty you, he dreamed as a boy of winning the Rose Bowl, or the NFL championship, or whatever represented the top to a boy in his youth. He had it. He didn't have the gun of a Namath. He didn't have the mentor of Bear Bryant. He had the cool. He had what Namath and Montana had. He had the cool. And he dreamed of winning it all at the buzzer. And he did it.
But Lenny the Cool got his ass kicked and got ridiculed the first time he got there...to the Super Bowl. Dreaming of winning, and working hard enough to win it, aren't enough. You've got to have the experience and talent, too. You've got to really have the better team. But you HAVE to have dreamed it a thousand times even to survive the horror of blowing up and failing the first shot. The dream has to burn so intensely that not even the horror can annihilate it.
So Stram, who no one believed in, and Jack Steadman, who no one liked, and Lamar Hunt, the supposedly lightweight Hunt who labored in Bunker's shadow, looked hard at what they needed to add to the team. This was their moment to seize, or to fold--to spend Hunt's oodles of money wisely, or not. It was the definition of the American way of handling defeat. Americans thrive on defeat, when they can spend to get better. Those that say that Americans only win and only love a winner don't know their asses from first base about this country. America has gotten its ass handed to it so many times the dollar should have a calloused butt on it. This country has been kicked in the balls, double crossed, and triple crossed by its own arrogant elites and by the arrogant elites of other countries more times than most countries. It has been humiliated and out maneuvered more times than anyone with an intact historical memory can shake a stick at. But there is something about a good butt kicking that brings out the best in a bunch of individualistic dreamers that grew up in a society that said any kid could grow up to be President and any kid might win it all, if he wanted it bad enough and got the right breaks. George Patton said it best about what defines Americans, which is NOT to say that other cultures don't have some of this, too. And it wasn't all that crap through a goose nonsense and all of that Americans have never lost a war drivel. The key was: its not how high you rise, its how high you bounce after you fall. America is an experiment in self-government--even when it falls into a police state as it is now and as it has become before at times. America is one with endless falling and perilous moments where those that do not love the experiment foreign and domestic endanger us and bloody our noses with tyranny's viciousness, and some times kill, torture, and imprison many of us. America is a climb with many slips and falls backwards on the way. We are a nation of hustlers, bounce back artists, of dreamers. But what we all really, really like is when things get so bad that we all pull together for a while and stick it to all the arrogant elites that have been screwing us royally (and I do mean royally) while we have been dreaming and scrambling up the often steep slope. Time and again in American history they elites have figured they had the new lie, or the new mind control technology, or the new intimidation tactic, to break us down and crush us into good little party members, or good little patriots, or good little consumers, or good little debt slaves, or good little tecehnotronic-cyber droids. And time and again they bleed the republic and treat it as a republic in name only, only to have the complexities they trigger abroad and at home come back to bite them in the elite, royal asses.
Stram, the prideful banty rooster in the red vest, and Steadman the bean counter, and Hunt, the disrespected youngest brother of the right wing oil barron, took the same approach that FDR, Marshall and King took to figuring out how to beat the Axis Powers after early defeats. The Chiefs were big and won match ups where they were bigger and faster and more skilled, and lost those where they were not as big, or as good. It wasn't rocket science. They knew Lombardi scoffed at their multiple formation offense, but that it had actually been an advantage, wherever they had been bigger and stronger. And so they kept the multiple offense that everyone scoffed at, as surely as FDR and King and Marshall kept air power, submarines and fleet logistics paramount, despite the hide bound scoffing of the ground army types and the surface fleet types. They just got better and bigger and more powerful and more skillful at everything at the point of contact. Stram, Steadman, and Hunt decided to get bigger and stronger and faster and better at every position. They decided to turn an offensive line into a massive irresistible force that could overwhelm the biggest NFL defensive line, and got bigger in the middle on defense and faster on the defensive flanks. Hunt started writing checks and Stram started making them bigger on the offensive line than anyone had ever seen. They made them so huge and strong and athletic that their pulling guards--Budde and Moorman--were as big as everyone else's tackles, and they kept man mountain offensive tackle Big Jim Tyrer as the standard to scale towards. They got huge and fast and hard. The multiple formations ceased to be about finesse and became about how to put superior athletes in superior positions versus defenders to manhandle and overwhelm them on every down, and then intermittently to run traps and counter plays and line slides that first fooled defenses, and then confronted them with overwhelming force. And every time they got a lead they began defending it conservatively with Jan Stenerud's toe. Never a possession without points should have been the motto of the media for the Chiefs. Instead, everyone complained there were not enough touch downs, but the overwhelming defense and the overwhelming offensive line meant an early lead, with 3 points every possession and no turn overs guarantied a win. The 1971 Super Chiefs were maybe the zenith of power football played the American way. Smash mouth not only with tough guys, but with overwhelming force. All NFL players were tough guys on the field, or they didn't get that far. Stram was the guy that looked through the Lombardis and Hallases and Landrys "philosophies" and said we are not buying this older league, greater sophistication, tougher guy crap. We know what this is really about. This is about who is bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, and hungrier. It is about who has been to the mountain top before and so has the experience to perform at a high level, when that high level is needed. It is about better players taking what they want, because they have worked hard to get there and have the match up advantage to take it, no matter what the opponent does. It is NOT about Lombardi's toughness, because Lombardi and his teeny little hat and furry little ear muffs never set foot on the field during the game. Steam didnt even wear a flipping coat. He wore a red vest with a sport coat. It was about a bunch of men on two teams coming together in titanic a struggle for absolute power of a line of scrimmage in a game space. It was about imposing and sustaining overwhelming advantage AND converging that with just enough deception to put them on their heels and then crush them.
It was about the Kansas City Chiefs--owners, coach and players--that had been disrespected as pioneers of a new league and a new, wider open way of playing the game. It was about what football is REALLY about: who was the biggest and baddest bunch of hitters in the trench, at the points of impact, not just in the trenches, but every where--down the sidelines, over the middle, in the trench, at the goal line, midfield, you name it. It was about total domination with just enough deception thrown in to get the opponent on his heels so one's superior force could knock them backwards, then on their backs, and then run over them until they didn't want to get up any more. It was about the fight for total domination of one team by another, about grinding them down with more weight, more strength, more speed, more athleticism, more skill, more hunger to wear the opponent down and then about breaking him.
But it all starts with a boy in a yard somewhere dreaming of doing exactly that for ultimate victory, and then growing up to find a whole organization of grown men who have dreamed the same thing, been doubted, been beaten, and come together to make the dream a reality with sweat, talent and competitive fury.
God help me, I do love it so.
One can only deal in probabilities in the future. Thus "Not necessarily" is mastering the obvious from my POV.
And the world is full of persons that get to the brass ring and waver because they never visualized the final step.
Aim where you are going so you are ready should you get there.
@HighEliteMajor said:
“I have a goal to go to the Final Four.”
This quote from Perry nearly nullifies everything you or anyone else writes about the team, or Self, pro or con, on how to develop AND win.
It means if Perry gets to the FF he will be beaten by someone who's goal was to get to the finals, or win the ring.
Landen starts.
Hunter and Jamari follow, if it's close.
If separation, Twin sushi sticks get to see what it's like to be shorter for a change.
Lots of help being practiced this game.
The more Big Mama sits the more Jamari and the Sushi sticks we see. The more Big Mama plays the more Hunter and Landen we see.
All of the C5 will be used to guard and rebound against him, because variety will keep him from getting "comfortable" and will fatigue him. The question is: will C5 guard him from the 5, or from the 4 and 5?
The answer will depend on three things:
a.) how much Perry can score and help;
b.) whether Frank, Devonte, Selden and the two wing gunners (Greene and Svi) can score enough to allow Self to sit Perry 15-20 minutes; and
c.) pace.
There are three ways to contain Big Mama:
1.) run him so he tires and plays less;
2.) drive into him (Bad Ball) to reduce his minutes with fouls; and
3.) double team him backside with the second post and front him with a wing.
These are the three things Self always does with a big load in the paint and then how he does them is contingent on a, b an c above.
If Self can get enough scoring elsewhere to let C5 play 4 and 5 for the 20 minutes Big Mama can play given his cardio envelope.
How will it go?
Usual starting line up.
First, long pass it up the floor for a couple quick trigger treys to steal a lead.
Second, Bad Ball to get some fouls on BIG Mama.
Third with the lead and some fouls on Big Mama sit Perry, play long C5 at the 4 and 5 and defend the lead with the Carolina Passing offense with the Wing gunners taking a couple kick out treys after 3-4 passes.
If separation, let the twin sushi sticks play C5 and get experience against a real giant.
If the lead narrows, return starters, pick up pace, repeat first, second and third above.
Season to taste.
Bake opponent to well done.
Garnish with walk ons.
Next.
Wayne and Perry need to play well from tip off to get the early lead.
Else this will be a long ugly game dependent on driving with as many cherry picks as possible.
We can outrun them if they give it. Our centers will run the secondary break on Big Mama.
• >40% Trey balling by us makes a blow out.
• <40% Trey balling and it's squirt and slog, squirt and slog.
And to all a good night.
@Lulufulu said:
KU got overconfident and lost to VCU.
I still say it was fatigue from chasing a Princeton team (Richmond) and the playing an XTReme Conditioned team coached to run long cuts that caught a bulked up KU with insufficient cardio fitness.
@Hawk8086 said:
Talent wins.
May I amend the above as follows:
Talent half-coached jumps early.
Talent well-coached starts slow, contributes to winning and jumps early.
Talent over hyped and/or injured struggles and turns into a 2AD, or more.
But even without the amendment, your point is well taken.
(Author's Note--RIP/DFW: I was long a statistical anomaly among QA types, because I actually liked analyzing and trusting small sample sizes others scoffed at for little, tell-tale insights obscured by the blurring mean of large samples. The trick to analyzing small N samples is not to over analyse them, recognize deduction as a legitimate tool that complements induction, resist the temptation of boot strapping oneself into hallucinations, and rely on common sense, rather than flee from it. It is good to use common sense to recognize what small n performances would be likely indicative of large n samples, and which are hopelessly distorted by small n sampling, and then think (but not overthink) about what remains. Why did I like this sort of approach so sacrilegious to doctrinaire quants? Because it moves the element of timeliness of processes front and center in a way large n samples over extended time frames do not do well. Our guys are developing. I want to know where they are right now. Not just the average of their season long performance to date. I am trading off reliability for timeliness, but I am cool with that when I have been watching the process unfold and so already know where we have been. So while this little look at numbers below may seem painfully unsophisticated to most and nearly worthless to those orthodox and religiously faithful to large N stats and their confidence levels, as well as very catholic in their assumptions of normalized distributions imposed on largely unknown distributions of universes, it suggests one tiny little thing that may be worth knowing moving forward.
While going small with Jamari against small bigs may get you some steals, and some mobile defense, even on his best nights he gives up not only likely gives up offense to Hunter and Cheick, but also rebounding.
This small N, one game sample under conditions most favorable for Jamari, suggests that size is part of what keeps Jamari from rebounding well, but that he apparently just doesn't anticipate well against any size of rebounders. And so it is perhaps no coincidence that in a game against a small opponent like SDSU, where Self resorted to Jamari fully 21 minutes, KU was actually out rebounded by SDSU.
Finally, I am not trying to discover anything new here. Anecdotal observation has long suggested that Jamari Traylor is not a very productive rebounder. What I am trying to do is quantify a little of how much he costs the team even in an optional performance not to diss him, but to point out that Self must view his post defense as the source of his net worth to the team against a short team like SDSU. SDSU shot only 42% from the field. So Self was apparently willing to barely lose, or break even on rebounding against such a short team in order to get a team defense in the paint capable of achieving that 42% FG. Its a series of small insights that might help us better understand Coach Self, why Coach Self wins big doing this sort of thing, despite losing the rebounding count, and why a composite center may be such a powerful weapon with this team of extraordinary shooters.)
REBOUNDING OF INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (aka C5) STANDARDIZED TO 30 MINUTES OF ANY PLAYER PLAYING 30 MINUTES AS A STARTER
Name/rebounds/PT*30m =30M Standardized rpg
MICK 3/8*30= 11.25 rpg
TRAY 6/21*30= 8.57 rpg
DIALLO 3/9*30= 9.99 rpg
BRAGG 1/6*30= 5.00 rpg
LUCAS 1/2*30= 15.00 rpg
And now for your visual comparison. Standardized Rebounds per 30 Minutes on the Y axis and player names on the X-axis.
And finally a little pie chart to give one some idea of the proportional contribution to rebounding against small-big man teams of the individuals comprising the The Big Hydra aka C5 aka The Inglorious Basterds.
It would also be interesting to do the above charts for the season, but I wanted a snap shot of where the 5 is in a single late December game that would favor Jamari Traylor, so as to establish a baseline for his largest probable contribution against a short team, realizing that against long teams his role in terms of PT and contribution is apt to diminish.
What interests me here is that against just about about the best match up for Jam Tray and the worst match ups (short, bouncy, high mobility bigs) for Mickelson, Diallo and Bragg, Mick and Diallo still boarded better than Jam Tray, and Bragg suffered about as expected. Lucas performance against short centers is deceptive here, because of from probably significant statistical distortion from how little he played.
Note: Obviously, Landen Lucas' contribution is a bit exaggerated by barely having played, but he does tend to rebound as much or more than the rest against the big teams. In any case, there is not much to be learned about Landen in this particular small sample, and that's that.
The BIA code breakers have not yet completely cracked the Enigma Recruiting Code used by players in these cryptic lists.
However, the latest hypothesis being run through a brutal processing routine in BIA's new quantum dot computer works on this premise:
Recruit with Petroshoeco Lean X lists two schools contracted with Petroshoeco X, with sequential order indicating rank preference, followed by two premier schools contracted with Petroshoeco Y that act as dummy preferences. The dummy preferences are included to provide face saving and CYA to all producer oligopoly Petroshoecos, Big Agency organizations, NCAA member institutions, and the NCAA for a system that might be in conflict with certain grey regulatory constraints.
But, of course, we at BIA would neither confirm, nor deny, any of the above transmission, or its contents.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
"Play the Best Player" beasts for another double double. :-)
@drgnslayr said:
“Inglourious Basterds?”
I like it, but it may not spread to on air usage.
Screw it. I'll go with it.
Sometimes Self seems to get bored, when he can beat a coach like Fisher with his best players and so he decides to rub it in by beating Fish with his lesser players. How else to explain it?
Diallo now is ready to begin playing more. He finally looked comfortable and not so hyper. The game slowed down.
And that baseline turnaround means he now has a money move.
OMG! When defenses start collapsing and he kicks out, it's going to be easy treys!!!!!!!
Two boneheads was all that kept him off the wood.
I shortly expect a solid showing by him.
He had a real mad on when he hit the floor the second half as a scrub. Self got him with THAT insult!
Cheick become very mad.
Cheick soon play better.
Cheick get situation now.
It will be interesting to see which Big 12 coach figures out how to stop C5.
If it were me, I would run a high post offense with a postman that can make the Trey. It solves everything, especially if you have good boarding 4 that can score inside. But no team this season has this....yet.
@CRH107
Yessssssss!
To death, taxes and day following night, add Joe Beastings (aka C5) getting a double double. Add 4 blocks and 4 steals from The Big Hydra, plus a hot shooting KU first half, and you've got the key autopsy results on how SDSU wound up toe-tagged in Bill Self's basketball morgue.
So far, there are only two things this KU Jayhalf team cannot do: beat IZZO and look good two consecutive halves. KU looked beautiful in half the first, but then homely in half the second. Defending leads is ugly business in Self's Multiple Offense 2.0, same as it always has.
The Fishman's Fishtecs thought they came out the second half swimming like Sharks, but they were shortly smelt in Self's slowdown machine--grunyon running nowhere in particular--one splashy dunk and then increasingly caught up in an ever thickening fluid dynamic of KU lead-defending.
Self's Mighty Jayhalves played the second half in calculated High-Low passing offense mode. Each possession was stretched, so that the Fishtecs had fewer possessions to come back with. As usual it worked but was about as pretty as watching herring be kippered and squeezed into tins.
By the end the Fishtecs were confused, scaled and cut up like so much chum on the bloody decks of a Blackman Billfisher coming back from a charter trip to the islands off Mexico.
And the Jayhalves?
They beat a decent team without a single Jayhalfer other than Joe Beastings hanging a thoroughly satisfactory line score.
Perry who looked like a designer suit the first half, shot well, but overall rebounded poorly, drove softly and resorted to his girlie man spins. He also seemed to tire easily.
Wayne Selden continued to master disappearing for extended periods, and reappearing for displays of impressive but inconsistent prowess.
Svi and Greene proved their sharpness against cupcakes is dullness against decent layer cakes.
Frank had another so-so game, but he remains good when needed.
Devonte? His game continues to be sound but not a full Monte. He just isn't smooth and offensively efficient still. Self recognizes the problem and ups his minutes in the driver's seat, so far efficiency against athletic guards eludes him.
Top takeaways:
KU looked better than it actually played the first half, because it made most every sexy shot it took.
Next, KU played better than it looked the second half, because it never looks good defending a lead.
Penultimately, KU can now win by sizable margin playing less than its best against a decent team.
Ultimately, KU can go on the road and keep its composure.
Absolutely receptive to any nickname that sticks and makes fans feel good about this strange and effective phenomenon!
JNew knows best..
As an aside, I can't believe those cheap bastards at CJONLINE can't get him a decent platform for the live blog. We have an award winning Kansas sports journalist sitting on the sideline! It's sickening. God will not permit this to happen.
First, in response to your question about money, in France, they used to say everything tracked to women and romance, but we Americans learned that scandals in France and America did not always track to women. Women just frequently triggered some exploitable misbehaviors in male dominated oligarchies that enabled the improper institutional pursuits of money.
But then we Americans had to learn a hard lesson. All big issues track not just to money, but to money and power and that there is a circular and self reinforcing dynamic between money and power. One is pursued for the other. And the other is pursued for the one. Round and round and up and up. Never enough money. Never enough power. And wherever one intervenes and looks in the circuit of the reinforcing circle, one does not have the full picture until once has mapped the full circuit of the money and the power beyond the initial point of inquiry.
Next
Thx for publishing the interesting list. The pattern of disparity in rank between skilled experienced players and the Sushi is both intuitively what one would expect of a system tilted to spit out inexperienced peak talent and develop the somewhat less talented. At the same time it is counterintuitive (at least to me so far) that such a system would be desired by NBA and tolerated by the universities of D1. Thanks for calling our attentions to it. It is yet another counter intuitive anomaly of college basketball today. Sooner or later, if we keep collecting these apparent anomalies, I suspect that they will cease to appear as anomalies and begin to appear as a pattern of some presently difficult to see and understand process. Whether we find the process desirable, i.e., good for the players, ethical, equitable to all the parties, inclusive to the parties that ought to be included and exclusive of those that ought to be excluded, or reprehensibly unfair, and so on, I cannot yet say.
Post Script:
Look where our guys pull up in transition to squeeze the quick Trey. It's always 1.0-2.0 feet from the Trey stripe. Even in transition, all you have to do is beat them to that spot and you will strangle off our Trey game AND our transition game. A talented defensive team will take away every one of KU's transition treys, then Self will take the two on the drive, or run the offense.
@JhawkAlum said:
With this style of play, a talented team can easily hold our attempts to the 8-12 if they focus on shutting down the long ball. If they hedge hard on screens, don’t double team the post, and don’t get sucked in on drives, that will shut down 80% of our attempts and forcing us to score in the paint.
Bingo! You have nutshelled it.
Self plays take what they give us.
What KU does in any given game depends mostly (entirely?) on what the opponent has the talent to take away.
This is why when Self talks to media he always discusses offensive changes as what we probably ought to do, not what we WILL do.
Self can read a shot chart. He knows we OUGHT to shoot all threes with our outside shooting depth, but he knows opponents will take it away eventually by forcing our guys to shoot treys 2-4 feet farther out. At that point he has to choose: run action to get the look near the stripe, or take what they give us inside. He runs the weave some, but mostly he goes inside.
Any team with the talent to guard the Trey stripe and play our bigs straight up will do so, and we will suddenly be in a grinder.
KU only runs when it's there. It only takes the Trey when it's there. when there's nothing there, KU grinds: either inside out with post feeds; or outside in with Bad Ball.
This is so predictable we could call it a differential diagnosis.
Wooden always took what he wanted.
Self always takes what they give us.
Both coaches once in a great while surprised important opponents by shifting gears, but shifting was rare.
Both ways work. If Self got a Jabbar and a Walton, he would be seasoned enough to hang banners consistently.
The beauty of a Jabbar/Walton is the opponent can't stop a Wooden from taking what he wants, and they can't take the inside away from a Self without giving outside!
OAD Skal doesn't play like an OAD, but we are told he will be drafted.
OAD Cheick doesn't play like an OAD, but we are told he will be drafted.
Last season, OAD Cliff didn't play like an OAD, but we were told he would be drafted, but he was not drafted, yet he was picked up by an NBA team.
OAD Ben Simmons, the most apparently real OAD big, chooses Johnny .600 and LSU over Hall of Fame coaches and elite programs. Simmons puts up numbers, but LSU loses.
OAD Jaylen Brown expresses adidas alliance, switches to Nike Cuonzo and Nike Cal and Nike(?) Harry, starts and averages 13.9 Ppg for 9-2 Cal and is almost forgotten in daily hype.
OAD Branden Ingram shoots 35% 3pta and 60% FTA, but starts and plays 29 mpg on a Duke team with a bunch of good Trey ballers, and ball handlers.
Below is a photograph of Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla taken in 1894.
What is less well known is that Twain and Tesla were trying to use electricity as a medium into the holo-movement that underlies reality in order to discover the source of James Naismith's invention of basketball.
Twain and Tesla often relaxed from the intellectual rigors of inventing by playing horse in Tesla's back yard.
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)