J
Agreed, certainly not iso ball.
The issue for me is that we can become system dependent, and especially at the end of the year at crunch time, when we need an alpha dog to make a play on O or D, we tend to refer back to the system as per the coaching.
This is high percentage and should be done during the season and most of the time, but when you are in the tourney for example, and your best players only shoot 4-5-6 times in an entire game and you lose (sound familiar?), mostly I believe it is because we are trying to ‘run our stuff’ and we need to go make a play.
The last few years, our best players have been shut down by the opposing team’s ability to read and counter our offensive schemes. When that happens, especially in single elimination, someone has to make a play on O and D.
I think we do not train this mindset enough during the season and so when the time comes, our best players defer to the ‘team concept’ to get a basket or steal a pass.
Our best teams - at least for the dance - in '08 and '12 had players (Chalmers, Collins, Taylor) who would attack and take a risk on both sides of the ball - play to win, not just play not to lose.
Playing the percentages and great fundamentals and team work and hi-lo and fall back half-court tough man-to-man defense is excellent. And it teaches and is a winning formula for sure.
But, there comes a time at year end, when the guys have to not rely on the system or run our stuff or play half-court defense…my hope is that with this group of players, we will push the envelop earlier and more often, force the action, even if we make mistakes, turnovers, missed steals, etc.
I am thinking this is a year we can go all the way but our tourney woes might improve if we have - not iso - but 'take ‘em’ attack mode on both ends earlier in the year. We have the players to do it for 40 min per game.
