jBIA (for OBO): Mickelson rumored working out at point guard...
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MEMO
Clearance Level: OBO (Official Beaks Only)
From: @jaybate 1.0, director, jaybate Basketball Intelligence Agency
To: Most Board Rats
Re: Special Agent Hunter Mickelson going undercover as point guard
jBIA embed @VailHawk was inserted via airdrop from unmarked white chem trail plane logged enroute from classified Colorado location to classified black airfield near Eudora into Allen Field House via classified airfoil suspended Fiat 500 Abarth that landed @VailHawk on Daisy Hill and let him drive to a classified jBIA front sub shop on 23 rd street before entering parking the field house parking structure, and accessing the interior of Allen Field House through a door left unlocked by paid informants on the field house janitorial staff. This insertion was accomplished by 02:30:14 EST 16 December 2014. Special Agent @VailHawk has just transmitted an encoded HAM radio signal (iPhone modified to HAM Radio bandwidth to avoid Edward Snowden compromised top secret communication channels) indicating Hunter Mickelson is being worked out at point guard for surprise scheme against an as yet unannounced opponent. Special Agent @VailHawk also reports that Jamari Traylor will be the 2 guard in this scheme. Please alert Special Agent @HighEliteMajor and lend him all coping support possible and in the event of myocardial infarction get him to the nearest non-university hospital honoring ObamaCare for special agents ASAP.
(Note: All fiction. No malice.)
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I only have a few minutes for fear of being detected!
I’m in the rafters far above Naismith Court and the view is breathtaking!
My ham signal is at four bars.
I can confirm HCBS is planning on trying “operation MickelPG” assuming we can get his back adequately stretched out. He dropped the ball once and Evan had to pick it up for him cuz he couldn’t bend over and get it.
Ok, i gotta go as i hear someone walking in,it sounds like the ghost of TT and it looks like he’s brought a female companion…stay tuned!
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How much is my per diem, again?
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4 bars it is.
Tomorrow at practice.
Find out if Frank will be the 5.
Or will it be Evan.
Damn the encryption.
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All the Coors you can drink.
Any co-eds that will double down on you.
And the jBIA Medal of Distinguished Service.
Per diem?
This is for love of the game!!!
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Fair enough. I stuffed my pockets w peanuts on the Gulfsteam after we left EGE…
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@jaybate I have thought about this long and hard. Mickelson should/could/might be used to initiate the offense. I’ve even thought about him as the backup point guard. I’m dead serious here.
I’m not saying in a dribble the ball down the court sense, or handling the ball. Or doing anything else that a point guard would do … but we should/could/might have him initiate the offense.
We do have to find a way to manufacture points because we simply don’t have any guys that can score conventionally. And by conventionally, I mean other than three point shots, because three point shooters can miss, and then what are you left with? We can’t live or die by an actual outside shot in basketball. That’s a sure fire way to lose to a team you’re supposed to beat in the NCAA tourney.
Now, what I mean by initiate the offense is make a pass. See what I mean? Mick will have the ball, let’s say out front – right, the same spot we tell our PG’s NOT to pass to bigs when they are coming down the court; this is different. though. It’s strategy.
Mick could then make a pass and intitiate our offense. What an advantage this will be, particularly if he is quicker than the guy guarding him. See what I’m getting at? We’re manufacturing points. Mick could drive if his guy isn’t as quick as him. And I’m guessing there will be no stopping him on his path to the hoop. But if not, he can pass to another guy. Get us going.
Now, since we play 3 out, 2 in, one of our perimeter guys may be in the high post. I’m not sure where Mickelson will go in the offense after he “initiates it” … maybe he remains as a perimeter player in the offensive flow. Haven’t thought that through just yet. I apologize. Of course, Mickelson’s defender will probably slack way off since Mick won’t shoot beyond 15 feet. And if Mick thinks about driving, his defender may be so far off that stopping the drive won’t be much of an issue, even if Mick’s a little quicker. Heck, Mick might get trapped by some overly agressive opponents. But those are details.
In thinking this through a bit, this is an opportunity for KU to manufacture points. You hear me, manufacture, synonym create. All that outside shooting stuff, particularly Ellis, is fool’s gold. You know, completely unreliable. Perhaps lucky, as some might say.
We might be on to something here. Does anyone else agree?
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@HighEliteMajor no.
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The concept, though tongue in cheek by us both in this thread, is actually very sound in principle and what I advocated several times before games started. It’s Wooden’s high post Offence that he won 3-4 of his 10 rings with. He succeeded with post men as short as 6-5 and up to 6-9. Some could shoot the 21 footer, some not. There is also a precedent within the Okie ball legacy that Jack Hartman used at SIU with Walt Frazier (think Selden here) at the top of FT circle as a high post/shooting guard where 90% of possessions initiate from–others bring the ball up. Hunter and Perry and Traylor and Oubre could each be good high post men and Selden/Svi a fine high post/shooting guard.
Seriously these are both outside in offenses that could work well with what we have left.
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@jaybate-1.0 Not trying to critique, but just pointing out that in Wooden’s day 6-5 to 6-9 was not necessarily short for the time.
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Frank earns a 2 minute gasser. Spread Greene and Oubre at the low corners. Hunter at the key. Svi and Selden bring the ball. Pass, pass, pass, SWISH!.. or… Pass, pass, pass, dribble, SWISH!
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@jaybate-1.0 but w/mick? Danny brought the ball up, but he was DANNY!
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Neither the high post, nor the high post/shooting guard needs to bring the ball up. though they could, if their abilities and circumstance required it.
Bringing the ball up is not a significant chore until a quarter of the way past midcourt; i.e., half way between the trey stripe and the mid court line, unless an opponent presses. The solution to pressing is always to keep a ball handler, and/or passer one pass away from who brings the ball up the floor. And of course this should be done regardless of who brings it up.
I have no idea if Hunter can put the ball on the deck, but many big guys can do things we don’t see, because the coach does not task them with doing it. Same goes for perimeter guys. For 3 years we had no idea Tyrel had a 41 inch vertical and could dunk on people until his last season when he had gotten strong enough up top to finish with his good hops, and when Self told him to start getting up. Brady was always a better ball handler than people credited him, largely because Self had better ball handlers and so wanted Brady concentrating on what he was good at. His last season, when ball handling began to be in shorter supply, he was asked todo more and did what he was asked effectively. Mario Chalmers was perhaps the most pronounced example. He was a 2 at KU that really only “handled” the ball on weaves his last two seasons. At the time some wondered about his ball handling skills. If they were good, why wasn’t he at the point? Answer: because we had guys that could play the point pretty well, but not the 2 as well as Mario could. So: Mario played out of position. We know this to be true in hindsight, because he played point guard part time for a couple NBA ring teams!
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“We do have to find a way to manufacture points because we simply don’t have any guys that can score conventionally.”
We don’t have any guys that can score other ways than the 3 ball because Self doesn’t teach offense.
Many of us have been howling for years how KU players never use a shot fake. Never. Perry finally used one and got an easy score out of it.
Just look at what KU players DON’T do:
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Use head/body/ball/eye/shot fakes
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Use a pull-up shot
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Use effective screens, including pick-n-pops and pick-n-rolls
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Crash the offensive boards
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Develop “hot spots” to score from
Self said it yesterday… his focus is defense.
He puts the least bit of effort into producing the most points on offense because he wants to focus on defense. He loves the grind games.
I understand where he is coming from. He just said it again… good offensive teams often don’t play good defense because they put their focus on offense.
The only flaw with focusing so hard on defense is that it takes SOME offense to win games. If we can’t create more offense from our defense (like on TOs that run out), then we have to focus harder on offense.
Most recruits want to go to a school focusing on offense.
Name a single KU player that really exploded their offense while at KU (under Self)? I can only really think of Marcus Morris being a guy who totally built his offense while at KU.
And what offense we do work on is team offense. Moving the ball quickly, building team assists. Eventually, a player has to stand up and take charge. Our offense is never built for that. The closest we came to that was last year with Wiggins. And, instead of actually developing offense around Wiggins, we just game him the ball and cleared out and told him to drive it. His offense was ugly (except for a few open-court slams).
Now Andrew is in the league, and he is already being coached by players like Kobe on his pull up. Gosh… I wish we could have him now!
It is frustrating when TV broadcast people yell out at KU what to do… “shot fake!” “pull up!”
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Interesting point. Thanks. I wondered the same thing awhile back. I went back and looked at some of the rosters of the Top5 or TopTen teams during certain seasons of the 1960s and 1970s. Didn’t run the numbers, just anecdotal observation.
Lots of length. By the 70s mmaybe more length than the era of the OAD. Often not much strength. Often not terribly athletic. But based on what I can recall, as good or better fundamentally in many ways. Recall slender 6-11 Walt Wesley who went on to an extended journeyman career in the NBA. There were lots like him between 6-8 and 6-11. During the Owens years, Owens almost always started two guys over 6-8, and rotated one or two more. And from what I recall standing beside these guys at the Big Eight Christmas tournament on the concourse, or meeting them in classes later in the early 1970s their listed heights were actual, not Self inches. And KU was hardly alone. All the Top Ten, and most of the Top teams started such lineups. First UCLA late in the ring run, then the ACC teams seemed to be the first to combine length, athleticism and muscle. And of course Indiana’s 76 ring team started a 6-7 2 guard–Bobby Wilkerson.
But by 1963, when Wooden started 6-5 Freddie Slaughter (a great leaper probably even today), the TopTen, certainly the Top Five teams almost entirely had long big men 6-8 to 6-10 tall, and by 1968 through the 70s guys were really getting long, and, as I said, a few were beginning to combine athleticism, muscle and length not just in the superstar players, but throughout their squads.
KU was of course a leader in starting long bigs with Born, Lovellette, and Wilt. But people forget that Harps early teams, which lacked enough depth and top perimeter players, started 6-9 Wayne Hightower at 4, and he had athleticism the equal of today’s players, and KU was not a top team those years. Walt Wesley was 6-11 and usually played with someone 6-7 to 6-9. And so on into the 6-9 6-10 run of Owens tandems (Suttle, Von Moore, Knight, Brown, etc.). KU was long, but many teams were nearly as long and ACC, Pac 8 and Kentucky and Indiana were thought much more athletic according to media of the time.
But what I found was that Houston, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, usually 2-3 Big Ten teams, UCLA, USC, Oregon State had serious length. I don’t recall what the Southwest Conference had for length in those days, probably not much because they did not take hoops seriously then. But the top 2 and sometimes top 3 teams in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 8 and Pac 8 had length.
So: while you are right that the long teams of these eras got to play a lot of short teams, once the small format NCAA tournament started, about all they saw were very long teams, EXCEPT for UCLA’s dwarf, 32-0, high post ring team.
And people forget that the Wicks/Rowe/Patterson ring team later in his run, while gifted and athletic, was not all that tall for the time. Wicks was 6-8, Rowe only 6-6, and Patterson only 6-9. But they were in my opinion the greatest (and maybe the last) high post ring team of all time, even though Wooden’s '63 runts were the more memorable for their short size.
The five teams I would have studied and borrowed from most to prepare for this season with the talent the team had was Wooden’s two high post teams mentioned above, Self’s 2000 Tulsa team, Maury John’s NCAA runner up Drake team with Willie McCarter, and Jack Hartman’s short SIU team with Walt Frazier.
Only Self’s Tulsa team was from the modern era.
But basic principles endure across eras.
I would not have copied any one team completely, but each team has pieces that could be fitted into the mosaic of a short champion.
KU’s shortness inside alone has never been the problem with this team.
The problem with this team is that because it is short inside, the basic pieces of a champion it is missing inside and outside make the shortness hard to compensate for.
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I’m curious if anyone has stats on average height over the years in college basketball?
I’m even more curious about wingspan. It seems like many players today have longer wingspans. Guys who are 6’7" but have a 7’3" wingspan? Sounds nuts.
Is there some kind of training gear used by kids that pulls their arms out longer?
The “Stretch-o-matic” perhaps?
It seems like coaching doesn’t keep up with the times. Players with 7’3" wingspans should be fouling out of games at a high rate. While they have an advantage at a distance from other players, up close, the length should be a disadvantage. Physics doesn’t work in their favor. They have to deal with more length and getting it out of the way. Imagine guarding someone with a broom handle. It’s great from 10 feet away, but doesn’t work good up close. It should be easy to draw fouls on those long sticks they can’t get out of the way in time. Coaches don’t focus on that… drawing fouls. It’s part of x-axis.
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jb / nucleaf Just an observation from Self’s comment during his weekly radio show. He mentioned the 2008 NC team was short with only 6’8"s. Then said Alexander needs to get better & also become more efficient when the team’s passing improves. He said “timing” of the passing will make it easier for Cliff & he won’t have to labor so much. Based on his comments, our coach is gonna make this team score inside without 7 footers.
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I agree that that is the mission. Teach our inside guys to score.
But I have viewed Self’s attempts to see the ring team and this team as similar in standing height as problematic.
Its good to do to keep the team hopeful and motivated and believing in their potentials.
But Jamari is about 6-6 and DBlock appeared to be a genuine 6-8. And DBlock was a pretty good natural rebounder and Jamari seems a better shot blocker, but his rebounding is so so.
And Perry seems at most 6-7 and Darrell seemed a solid 6-9. Shady never disappeared because of lack of physical talent. He disappeared from games mentally. Perry just runs into guys that are too big for him and that he can’t get up enough to score on. And Darrell seemed the better rebounder. Perry is a great spin move guy with a massively underrated trey.
And while Sasha and Landen both seem about the same height, Sasha was beast that could bash anyone around, where Landen so far is not.
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I think what is happening is that when all of the OADs are jumping so quickly, the coaches have figured out that wing spans and short necks are where your default to in searching out morphologies for guys that can play taller than their standing heights. Pre OAD/TAD you just looked for raw height and athleticism, but all of those guys are gone so quick.
Wigs and Oubre may just be random outliers.
But I sure would like to see some QA done on your insight because it seems really germane.
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Not college but NBA. This link has the average player height for NBA players fro a number of years.
