@drgnslayr
It is interesting you use fixed technologies as a metaphor. Airplanes are designed, retrofitted with a few new subsystems and used until they are obsolete and then mothballed and scrapped.
I view the Multiple Offense as much more like the expressed doctrine and strategy of the Marine Corp.
Doctrine and strategy just keep being amended, or erased and rewritten to fit the technology, battlefield and opponent. But the Marine Corp just keeps coming in as teams and embracing tactics as strategy. It is what keeps them surviving until they can figure out the tactics that can become the new strategy to finish enemies off. It never gets old.
There is nothing to throw away except maybe the weapons and gear from the last war that needs to be replaced with new gear and weapons. So sometimes Self throws away the three point play, and sometimes Self throws away scoring on the low block, and sometimes Self throws away all perimeter action, and sometimes he goes back to perimeter action. If he hasn’t got a single big man that can rebound, he rebounds with his perimeter. If he had great inside rebounding he schemes shots that produce short rebounds. If he has no centers that can walk and chew gum, then he designs a post committee that doesn’t walk and chew gum. His flexibility is stunning. Where the notion that he is not flexible arose is hard to explain. I think it has to do with Self seeing clearly what his teams can and cannot do, and what they must be able to do, and what it does not matter that they cannot do, and stubbornly persisting in finding ways to enable them at what they can and must do to be winners, which they tend to turn out to be. Self’s teams always wins SOMETHING; that’s the difference between Self’s teams and other coaches’ teams these days. Other coaches, if the Petro gods bless them, win with a few more with stacks. One or two coaches actually are a little better at certain things than Self. But only Self’s teams win SOMETHING EVERY year.
The Marine Corp’s team philosophy and doctrine of flexible response and tactics becoming strategy never seem to age to me, or to them, or to their enemies, that mostly end up wishing they were the Marine Corps allies.
Self philosophy is play it any way they want via the flexible response doctrine of Multiple-Offense that morphs to take the many forms of High-Low aka the Carolina Passing aka the Four Flat, aka the 4 out one in, and so on. The opponent match-ups determine the tactics and over the course of a game the tactics become the strategy.
It never gets old.
No other active coach has kept winning at his rate for the last 11 seasons without stacks.
No other coach has won more rings without more seasons of superior material.
Self’s offensive schemes vary more year to year than any of the other ring winning coaches that I can think of, because the Multiple Offense is so flexible that he can vary it more that Knight’s motion offense, or Cal’s Dribble Drive.
Calhoun embraced Self Ball at UConn and won a couple rings with the Multiple Offense, Ollie won one, Self won one, Roy won two with a variation of it–it is actually doing well.
The only offenses giving it a serious run are the Knight Motion Offense that Consonants runs that Capel could not make run at OU, Pitino’s offense, which I have never investigated, and the Judd Heathcote oddity that Izzo continues.
I suppose if Bob Huggins ever finds a way back on to the recruiting gravy train and gets some guys that can not only guard but shoot, then his father’s idiosyncratic old offense might have some feasibility, too.
The Dribble Drive is already petering out. Cal has proven that it squanders talent. Even those apparently stacking the talent with Cal appear no longer to believe in it and Cal, or at least are starting to hedge their bets. They appear to be diversifying to LSU and Cal, among other places. I don’t know what Johnny Jones runs yet, but if I recall correctly he was influenced by Pitino. Cuonzo plays a variety of Okie Ball filtered through Haskin’s disciple Nolan Richardson that is frankly VERY close to Self Ball.
And if we are honest, Fred was running a 4 out 1 in variation of the high low, and when the going got tough, last season, he copied BAD BALL lock, stock and ugly barrel.
No, I have to say we have state of the art right now.
We have Picasso and he has a really big flipping palate and everyone is trying to paint like him, regardless of what offense they run.
And our Picasso is morphing through phases faster than most of us can keep up with.
Only genius is able to invent BAD BALL the second half of a season, then shift to Four Flat, and Four Out One WITH NO ACTION, only a couple of months later, and win a conference title on the one hand, and a WUG championship on the other–both times without most of the players he was supposed to need even to be competitive available much of the time in both seasons.
Its like a hat trick with only one hat.
Magic baby.
Pure Houdini.
