Self Rediscovers Phog, or Your Bullwhip Won't Be Much Use from Here on, Indy
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(Note: blame @nuleafjhawk for this one. Not really. Actually it s just a response to his response to one of my posts. :-))
Exactly!
We are so fortunate to have Self and the wonderful players we have.
At the same time, we are so far through the looking glass here that everyone is screaming from the disorientation.
Self is taking this ship somewhere it has never been.
We are through a strait and in a new ocean.
He is doing it in a subtle way that no one, including his team quite grasps yet, probably because he is feeling his own way along.
Change and thinking hurt.
Trying to grasp what the metamorphis that is under way is like trying to squeeze mercury. It squirts in unpredictable directions every attempt.
What I like about this very hairy situation is that Self is the one doing the mapping and engineering here. He is fallible, but who would you rather be in uncharted waters with after the last ten years?
What I fear about this situation is that I just do not see how the pieces of mercury that he is working with are going to fuse into something capable of being a good team capable of beating ANY other good team on a night when that opponent is having a good game.
Of the coaches that have confronted the contraption that Self is gerry rigging as he goes, two smart ones–Dunphy and Cal–saw through it and stepped on its central struts and broke it. The two teams have quite different levels of talent. Thus talent is not the common thread of the two losses. It is good coaches with good talent not beating themselves that is the common thread.
Every win against a good team involved KU hanging around and the opponent beating itself. Both MSU and Florida self destructed. We did not beat them. They beat themselves and we were there to grab the W.
Dare I say it? This is Phog Ball reincarnated.
Most people today know that Phog Allen was the first genius of college basketball, but they do not understand what his genius actually was. Phog Allen was a genius innovator, on the one hand (note: virtually every form of offense and defense was tried by him first), and a genius at finding ways to let other teams self-destruct. The former genius of Allen’s is somewhat recognized, but the latter was what really put 700+ Ws on his W&L statement through ebbs and flows of talent.
What I and others in our frustrations with what Self and his team are NOT doing that perhaps they could be doing have tended so far to overlook is: there really are two ways to beat someone.
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You beat them.
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They beat themselves with your assistance.
Kentucky beats teams. It overwhelms them with talent. It plays how it plays. You lose.
But you can play to help your opponent beat himself.
The current team is 10-2, because Self apparently decided that this team lacks sufficient pieces to beat most opponents straight up, regardless of what offensive and defensive schemes they might try; i.e., they lack the pieces to try to beat most opponents the Number 1 way.
So: Self being the acutely flexible and highly educated student of basketball’s legacy that he is, Self has apparently gone all the way back to someone even the KU faithful have forgotten to develop a winning approach for his undermanned team.
Note: I am in this post going through the looking glass once again with Bill Self, as I have to do most seasons, sooner or later.
He had to drag me through kicking and screaming this time, because for a change I do differ with him about how this roster might best be used.
But here is the thing: I came to the same conclusion Self apparently did before the season started. Without Embiid, this roster remaining, lacked the necessary pieces for a champion that could find a way to beat the best at their best playing traditional Bill Ball–>Eddie Ball–>Larry Ball–>Hansen Ball–>Iba Ball.
The pieces weren’t there.
But where I defaulted to the 2000 Tulsa teams and the Wooden’s 1963 UCLA teams for models, Self apparently went back to Allen.
Allen’s one constant thread was how do I use my material to best let other teams beat themselves.
It was almost as infuriating and mystifying a way to play the game to opponents as was Self’s Tumble Weed Buddhism approach of the past ten years. Self let them set tempo. Take what they give us. Play it their way. 84% of the time opponents found themselves being able to do exactly what they wanted at what ever tempo they wanted to play at, only to find that Self Defense still biased the outcome to KU. The opponent walked off the floor bumfuzzled, whether the opponent had more talent, the same talent, or less talent. How did he do it? We got to run exactly what we wanted to? Why didn’t we win? How the expletive did they beat us. They defended really well, but other teams have guarded us that well. What the hell just happened?
I have gone on at length with what happened the last ten years and everyone knows what I think happened–how Self has done it the last ten years.
But this year is different.
Self Ball used to actively try to beat opponents “their” way.
Self Ball used to actively try to beat opponents even if it sand bagged until the last 10-7 minutes to begin trying, as was the case with the 2012 Finals team.
Self Ball has mutated, at least for this season.
This season Self has turned games into glass bead games of letting opponents beat themselves.
Self is no longer sitting on the bench trying to figure out how to win; that is now boring to Magister Ludi.
Self is now trying to figure out how to make other teams lose.
It is a subtle, but important distinction, if one is trying to evaluate his moves.
This is I suppose the XTReme logical extension of Tumble Weed Buddhism rooted in the Iba legacy taken finally across an arc to the other parallel wire of Prairie Basketball–the Forest Allen Mt. Oread Wire.
Two wires, one arc rising, the wind began to howl…
So let us not talk falsely now, the season is getting late…
For you and I have been through that and it is not our fate…
All along the Ball Tower, the board rats came and went…
If I were asked to do some abstract public sculpture about this I would find the highest point of land between Stillwater, where Iba coached, and Lawrence, where Allen coached, and I would build two 100 foot tall lightening rods about 20 feet apart and an awesomely powerful electric generator–a kind of super sized model of one of those Frankenstein movie contraptions where the white arc of electricity rises sizzling slowly up to the top before discharging and repeating again and again.
The abstract Neo Modernist art work of high tech hoopism would be on prairie with a post rock barbed wire fence around it. The entrance would be title cryptically “The Allen-Iba Tower: Iterations 1–>N.” It would be powered by a multi-hybrid driven electric generator using equal inputs in series from solar, wind, fracked coal gas. and burning cow dung.
It would look alien in purpose in the day light and menacing at night.
No one would ever get what it was about except a few KUBuckets.com board rats drawn helplessly to it once a year, like a bunch of Richard Dreyfusses drawn to Devils Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind .
The little sign explaining the giant sculpture would read: “First appeared on this site 9-11-01. Artist Unknown.”
After 9-11, America adopted a pre-emptive war doctrine in which America not only ceased waiting to be attacked, but ceased trying to win the wars it started. The approach seems outrageous and unthinkable, but that is exactly what was done. Start endless wars. Don’t try to win any of them. Hold our losses to a minimum, Hang around. Try to perpetuate the wars with counter terrorism actions until the opponent exhausts and beats themselves.
It is ghastly way to play at international relations. Sinister. Often indistinguishable from Evil. Becoming…“the enemy in the instant that we preach.”
And yet it works…in an awful way.
If we are willing to endure the price of riskinglosing our own way of life, our own freedom from Big Brother, our own constitutional process, our own right to privacy, our own unconditional right to free speech and habeas corpus, etc. Not saying its gone. Saying its being put at risk.
America no longer wins wars.
America creates wars and hangs around waiting for opponents to beat themselves.
It is a bitter tasting way to play the game.
No one gets to be Ike, or Patton, achieving decisive victories.
We have Petraeuses now. Ambiguities capable of great good and unthinkable evils, that then are marginalized from our collective wake because we cannot bear to think of what they have done.
But as I said, “it works.”
Once upon a time in a prairie long, long ago, a young acolyte of James Naismith, a Missourian named Forest Allen, proved the inventor of the game wrong. The game could be coached. But the young acolyte, a tirelessly curious and innovative type, stumbled, as if a character in an Indiana Jones movie, into a deep, deep insight, a knowledge that went back to the ancient past of warfare and competition. He discovered that the game could not only be coached, it could be coached not to beat opponents, but to help them beat themselves. It was a terrible dark discovery that few understood as such, because of the effervescent joy and optimism of the coach that discovered it. He was like Indiana Jones discovering the terrible beauty inside the lost arc of the covenant. He spoke of what he found in such disarming simplicities that it was hard to grasp the import of what he had found. He was like Indy discovering the terrible beauty of the holy grail and returning to Indiana U to teach sleepy students something that could not be comprehended without first hand experience. True knowledge, deep knowledge, is both beautiful and horrible. It is the character and intentions and uses of the those that discover it and live with it that makes for good, or evil outcomes. The weak can be destroyed by the deep knowledge. The strong can be made stronger and more virtuous and be delivered from peril by it.
Indiana Bill Allen is being tested this season.
He has become the father and the son recently in the midlife crisis.
But this is the holy ghost thing.
This is the big arc.
This is Indy standing on the face of the rock wall having to take the step onto the invisible bridge that may or may not be there, depending on how steadfast one’s character and belief is.
He has discovered the deep truth buried in a vault far under Allen Field House, a vault beside the vault with the basketball grail. In it were the secrets of the late Forrest Allen. It has to do with playing so that others beat themselves. It is a horrible beauty.
It is called winning ugly by those with the knowledge when speaking with the innocent.
It is called winning ugly by those with the knowledge that do not quite yet themselves fully grasp the difference between winning ugly and helping others beat themselves.
But, regardless, it implies the inner most circle of basketball hell and heaven, i.e., knowledge, has been reached.
And therein lies both hoops destruction and salvation.
Your bull whip won’t be much use from here on, Indy.
Now you have to make it up entirely as you go.
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@jaybate-1.0 How do you get Kentucky, this year, to beat themselves?
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I think we are not beating teams this year because we don’t have an identity. We are a team full of pieces. Sometimes several pieces perform well enough for us to let the other team beat themselves. Sometimes none of our pieces show up and we hand mutilation tools over to our opponents.
I think we don’t have an identity because we don’t have the interior pieces Self needs to form his identity… the hi/lo team.
I think we all thought a player like Cliff would quickly become an asset for Self’s hi/lo, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Cliff doesn’t have a “back to the basket” game. He gives us only outlier help… a put back off a rebound, an alley-oop here and there. Perry needs space to score. He has to utilize positional movement or he gets his shot blocked most of the time since he doesn’t know how to score standing in one position. BamBam is like a very rough Perry. He needs space to score and has to be in motion. Cliff works great in motion, as long as he’s not dribbling the ball (alley-opps are created from motion).
What this team needs is a full motion offense. Gone are the days where guys stand on the 3pt line, whipping the passes around.
We need all 5 guys to be in a constant state of motion (on offense). We need lots of screens… even some double screens. Guys running through the pack and exiting on the 3pt line ready to shoot. We need our post guys to stay moving, from the FT line to the baseline. Perry can be the exception and pop out for the 3 once in a while.
A full motion offense is the answer for teams that don’t have size. We have some size, but we actually play like a smaller team than we are.
If we could do this, and then go to a high-pressure defense on the perimeter, presses and traps, we should be able to beat most teams that outsize us.
Now that is an identity! And that is an identity that could make this team extremely dangerous even more dangerous to teams with size!
We have the perfect players to run this. We have all these guys with decent height and athleticism who can shoot the 3.
It has been great seeing Kelly come on, but not at the expense of Svi and Brannen. If last night was any indication, those guys are going to rust up from here on out sitting on the bench and will be of no assistance down the stretch and in March. That was what we experienced with Brannen last year!
In a full motion offense, we would need more guys to get minutes because we would need more substitutions so guys can get a breather. Also… players like Brannen and Svi are the perfect player profile for a full motion offense.
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@drgnslayr coach said last pm, that we need Svi and BG to be ready to step in for Selden.(not exactly).Oubre could very easily have an off pm and maybe Svi and BG will be ready! Self will be giving them chances. I don’t think not having an identity is necessarily a bad thing. (Kill me now)! I like we have so many pieces that could have great games, big guys stepped up last pm, we hit some 3’s. I think BG will have more great games, unless he’s doing something bad at practice or off court. I like the motion or flex offenses. Happy to see some running the floor. Really happy Perry didn’t quit last pm. This team will keep us guessing! Cliff has got to help us! Random thoughts for sure.
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I have proposed an identity for this team. Shoot all threes. Break completely out of the D1 box.
You have proposed an identity for this team. Yours probably makes more practical sense. Run a full motion offense. Heck, run the Princeton.
@HighEliteMajor has proposed an identity somewhere in between yours and mine.
Others have proposed staying the course and letting the traditional inside out identity evolve.
I just finally did what I always do when I try and try and try to figure out what Self SHOULD be doing and get no where. I toss all the assumptions and just sit back and say: what IS he doing? REALLY!
And what I come up with, slayr, is what I said above.
The only hypothesis that describes what Self has been doing is scheming and substituting not to beat to teams, but to do things that enable a team to beat themselves.
His approach every game this season is completely consistent with hanging around and letting opponents beat themselves.
He just wouldn’t do most of the things he has been doing with players, if he were trying to actually find the best 7-8 guys to beat another team with.
He is looking for the best 8 that hang around and wait for an opponent to beat itself.
Because that IS what they do.
I wish he were doing what you advise.
I wish he were trying my “every shot a trey” strategy.
I wish he were jumping on HEM’s approach.
But he always in the end knows more about his players than we do.
When guys aren’t playing and he is forced into playing them some, it quickly becomes apparent WHY he wasn’t playing them a lot. They usually have some glaring shortcomings–more glaring than the guys already in the rotation.
Again, my biggest excitement is that he is trying the secondary break, which I think makes a lot of sense to me.
The way he is coaching this team is this: keep picking up a couple baskets here with this nip, and a couple baskets there with that tuck, and so on.
The rotation players are the ones that he thinks can help the team hang around. The nips and tucks are designed to make it more likely to hang around.
But the underlying philosophy is apply and sustain the defensive pressure and wait for the enemy to beat itself.
Pure Phog.
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Our new identity song -
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@drgnslayr I like Michael! His music anyway!!!
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@jaybate-1.0 “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”.
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@jaybate-1.0 Ode to William Self, Mercury Squeezer: “To thine own Self, BE TRUE!”
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I’m tracking w/ you…well as much as I can!
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Does Self verbalize this strategy to the players? To his assistants? Does he do it with the Okie stutter good ole boy vernancular?
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@jaybate-1.0 I’m tracking with your theory here. I agree that Self is approaching games as you suggest. But I think it is a core tenant of Self’s overall philosophy.
Before I get to that, I wanted to discuss coach Self briefly. My perspective on coach Self (himself) is, I think, a bit different than yours. You said, "Self being the acutely flexible … "
I view coach Self much differently. I think coach Self is inflexible and dogmatic. In fact, in my years of following sports, participating in sports, and coaching sports, there are few coaches that (in my humble opinion) match coach Self’s inflexibility. I believe that a large chunk of great coaches are more inflexible than flexible. I think Self’s inflexibility is very comparable to Marty Shottenheimer.
I will admit that my opinion there doesn’t really challenge your theory on how Self is approaching this season. I might suggest your statement “Self being the acutely flexible …” is not really necessary to support your theory, anyway.
I think that your theory fits perfectly within the bubble of Self’s inherent inflexibility.
Why? As you stated, Self isn’t sitting there strategizing on how he might adjust to win games “Self is no longer sitting on the bench trying to figure out how to win” is what you said. I summarize your theory as Self simply looking to muck up each game, or seeking to play “grinders” as Self has said.
I can’t say that I disagree with that. And that is what concerns me (and you, and many of us). It always concerns me. In fact, it seems irrational to me.
However, I think that “mucking up” games and creating conditions for the opposition to beat themselves is a valid part of an overall approach. But it shouldn’t be more than half the focus. Part of your gameplan, to be sure. But my steadfast belief is that you have to affirmatively gameplan to “take” what you want. And you have to do that when you have largely superior talent.
I also think that the theory you have suggested is in large part the m.o. that Self has consistently had during his tenure here. This approach is largely tied to a defense first philosophy. The “muck” it up approach. He has found ways, much to our dismay, to play close games with very poor teams. To almost seem content in that fact. But we win an incredibly large percentage of all games.
Thus why Self is content to run his “stuff”, and rely on his “system.” Muck it up is the consistent m.o. But like Marty Schottenheimer, I believe that such an approach limits the top end that a team can achieve. It creates an artificial ceiling. And that, I’ll never understand.
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@jaybate-1.0 Fascinating theory. Self taking pages from Phog’s book. Being so utterly unfamiliar with Phog’s book I’ll just take your word for it. Btw, does Phog have a book defining his theories?
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Yes.
By Forrest Claire Allen listed used on bookfinder.com.
Basketball, (Athletic Institute series)
Better basketball; technique, tactics and tales
Better Basketball;: Technique, Tactics and Tales, (Whittlesey house sports series)
My Basket-ball Bible
Ask and ye shall receive.
He also wrote:
Coach Phog Allen’s Sports Stories for You and Youth.
Alas, this children’s book has become very collectible.
Around the same time–late 1940s and 1950s, LIU Brooklyn’s great coach Clair Bee made a career out writing the Chip Hilton stories and others. More relevant though is that Clair Bee also wrote important basketball coaching books about strategy and tactics and pioneered coaching clinics on same. Bee had an .824 career winning rate, at LIU. He ended his college coaching career in 1952, when the CCNY point shaving scandal eventually implicated some of his own players on LIU also. LIU shut down its basketball program and Bee moved on to coach briefly in the NBA. Bee was a great influence on Bob Knight, who reputedly defended Bee against corruption charges and argued that Bee was one of the greatest basketball minds produced early on in college basket. I would highly recommend getting one of Bee’s basketball strategy books though I confess it has been so long since I read one of his books that I would have to reread one to comment intelligently on his contribution. Clair Bee is the next guy I will study in depth, if I ever get around to digging into this stuff again. My recollection was that Bee’s game–spanning the 1930s to 1950s explains much about what came to be called New York ball, as practiced by Clair Bee and also Frank McGuire, which Larry Brown grew up amidst. And it was McGuire that went to UNC and hired Dean Smith before McGuire got run for improprieties.
Basketball has such a rich tradition and it is still sufficiently short that one can still hope to appreciate it in its full breadth, unlike so many other subjects.
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@jaybate-1.0 Thanks!
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@jaybate-1.0 - the " all trey " theory is really interesting. And I can’t tell if you’re joking or not! What I would like (LOVE) to see is the Ol Roy fast break offense. The instant the opponent has a made basket, the ball is thrown back in play and 3.9 seconds later we are laying the ball in or dunking it while the defense wonders what the hell is just happened.
This walking the ball up the court and then starting the Globetrotter weave is wearing pretty thin in my book.
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@nuleafjhawk didn’t we score 19 pts on transition baskets last game?
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Not joking about the all trey theory.
It contradicts all orthodoxy and common sense about diversified modes of attack, but…
Numbers don’t lie.
The same force that drove the unthinkable extinction of the mid range game should eventually drive the extinction of the short range game.
And it should happen with, or without a rim protector, and with or without an inside scoring presence.
And if a coach wants diversification he should only engage in it playing outside in, i.e., by long rebounds being converted to quick passes only to a wide open footer parked at the iron.
Bottom line, devise an offense with offensive action designed solely to create open looks beyond the trey stripe. Run the clock as long as it takes to get that open trey look and take it.
Do it in a 71 possession game.
Guard hard.
Defend to hold down their trey attempts to less than yours.
Regardless what size your inside players are, if you shoot >30% you are in the game by definition, regardless of whether your bigs are tall or short.
Shoot >35% and you win probably 90% of the time.
Shoot > 38% and you win 99%.
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@jaybate-1.0 You know I love threes … but it’s a 60-40 rule on threes. 40% is about as high as a team could shoot threes. You mention 38%. If you shoot 60% from two, you’ll be equal to 40% from three. KU has historically shot over 60% at shots near the rim, sometimes at 65%. “Near the rim” is key. Not ever two pointer, but just near the rim.
This, I think, is why Self subscribes to the pound it inside theory.
But of course, when you have team that can’t score at that rate inside. That is nearer to 50% at the rim, then you only have to shoot 34% from three.
Thus the inescapable logic of shooting more threes with this KU team.
@Crimsonorblue22 you responded to @nuleafjhawk as if the 19 points really mean something. Have you seen the prior 11 games? Here’s a very interesting insight from Landen Lucas, speaking about our secondary break:
“Instead of having everything kind of mechanical and robotic — you go here and you go here — it’s kind of go wherever, just make sure you get the ball side to side as soon as we get downcourt,”
This was apparently implemented before the Kent St. game.
But the real news is how “mechanical and robotic” Self demanded the secondary break to be in the first place, before that. Self is realizing we need to “manufacture” offense – his words. So he’s loosening the reigns on his secondary break thinking this can help.
The micromanagement of the secondary break is astounding to me. These guys aren’t children.
I just try to analyze the logic. If not being “mechanical and robotic” in the secondary break provides more offense, why not do it all the time? Good grief.
Self places an artificial ceiling on his offense, by demanding such a strict adherence to system. It’s a “one in the hand vs. two in the bush” philosophy. It’s extremely conservative.
I love this quote from an NBA scout about Andrew Wiggins, because it provides such an insight into the truth:
“In general, interesting kid. In fairness to him he played in a very restricted system at Kansas. All interchangeable parts with designated spots, a lot of structure. When he got the ball, there wasn’t a lot of room to create.”
The comment from Lucas is even more insight into what we already know.
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@HighEliteMajor yes I have seen all games. If you read the article from dec30 it says
“That’s what we were doing, trying to get it inside and we did a good job of moving fast. That was the first game we tried it. I think it can only get better with time. I think it’s something this team can be good at. When we are playing uptempo, everybody gets a little bit more juiced,” Lucas added.
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@Crimsonorblue22 Don’t get your hopes up. Let me ask you, why should that be the “first game (they) tried it?” Why script and make the secondary break so “mechanical and robotic” in the first place? This is one of those deals where I think I could hear any purported explanation and I wouldn’t buy it, but I’m all ears.
Self doesn’t even permit the team to try to break off of made baskets. They stand around waiting for the designated guy the throw the ball in most of the time.
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But almost no one ever shoots better than 40-45% FGs against a really tough defensive team. And this is why shooting 71 treys a game would guaranty a good defensive team of being in almost every game, and of winning most of those.
Now if a team can score 60% inside, then you cannot beat them regardless.
But that’s the same as saying if a team shoots 45% from trey you cannot beat them either.
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@HighEliteMajor I won’t waste my breath. We use to run the KU secondary break, spent a lot of time on it and we did really well!! Some kids need structure, some don’t get it in their hs programs. Bill is well - respected, IMO more than coaches that don’t have structure, and have really tall kids. Throw out the ball. I guess the structure didn’t hurt Wigs to much. I remember him saying he was surprised how much he needed to learn.
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@jaybate-1.0 a question, do you know how many 3’s ISU shot, at least the last 3 years?
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Here it is, Why do you ask?
2014-15 10 games 347-703 FGAs .494 97-281 3PTAs .345
2013-14 36 games 1062-2239 FGAs .474 301-840 3PTAs .358
2012-13 35 games 962-2111 FGAs .456 346-924 3PTAs .374
2011-12 34 games 864-1977 FGAs .437 193-630 3PTAs .306
Inference: ISU is also taking waaaaaay too few treys.
They would probably be unbeatable if they just took all treys.
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@jaybate-1.0 you were saying we need to take a bunch of 3’s per game, forgot how many, but crazy amount. I didn’t think to many teams took more than ISU, just wondered. Today they were 0-16, till the end and made 1. Wow! 1-17!
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Please recognize I am thinking outside the box here.
Self is a great coach and his way works 82-84% of the time the last ten years. I love him. I am not criticizing him in particular here.
All coaches should look into what I am talking about.
If I recall correctly, when the three point shot was first created there were several teams early, especially mid majors that experimented with shooting a large percentage of treys. The problem they ran into was that the mid majors then did not have good enough athletes shooting the treys to keep from being shut down on the outside by elite and major program players.
What I am arguing now is that if one is an elite major program, like KU, or even just a rising major, like ISU, one’s perimeter athletes are so good that they will be able to get their three point shots off with considerable accuracy even against the best defensive teams from the best programs. KU has incredible length outside on the wings. If an offense were schemed to create open treys, our guys would get 71 open looks by running the stuff for up to 30 seconds and pulling the trigger when finally open. 71 treys at 34-35% would probably feasible. And the fouls of shooters would be three FTAs, not 2.
I am pretty convinced the reason coaches do not try this is because they know it would marginalize the big man scoring and that would mean that big men would not be willing to come to their program. And the big men are the bread and butter of the NBA and of the OAD program.
So: even though what I am advocating should work mathematically, established coaches that are winning big with OAD bigs just are not going to try it. They have worked too hard to get to where they are being funneled OAD bigs by Big Shoe.
But when you cannot get three good bigs that are cornerstones of challenging for a ring, along with a good PG and one every game MUA on the wing, then you might as well try what I am saying that season until you can get your next OAD/TAD big rotation valved to you by Big Shoe.
At least that is my hypothesis.
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If ISU were to build a team around three point shooting, instead of just building a team that shoots a lot more treys than the competition, 1-17 would almost never happen for two reasons.
First, by shooting 71 treys per game, you would almost always offset any slump that occurred during a game. The worst thing coaches do is to give up shooting treys when the team is missing them. If you have dominant bigs inside, it is a workable tactic to stop shooting treys in a slump and go inside. But if you have these dominant bigs, you didn’t really need to shoot treys in the first place. But if you don’t have dominant bigs, and you stop shooting treys, then you really have the worst of all possible worlds. Shooting 71 treys per game would result in the same smoothing out of shooting percentage over the course of a single game that shooting 50-70 2pt FGAs does. THIS IS THE KEY: YOU CAN HAVE A SLUMP SHOOTING EITHER 2PTAS OR 3PTAS. IN EITHER CASE, THE GREATER THE N THE GREATER THE GREATER THE PROBABILITY THAT YOU WILL SHOOT NEARER TO YOUR AVERAGE. As N rises the effect of anomalous runs is reduced.
ISU shot a very scary 1-17. But do you understand how much more improbable it is for a team that averages 35% from trey to shoot the equivalent of 1-17 on 71 shots? On 71 shots it would be highly improbable that they would go 5-71.
There is no escaping the remote possibility of going 5-71 from trey, just as there is no escaping the remote possibilty of going 5-71 from 2pt land.
But statistically what happens is this;
2 pt shooting teams shoot to their averages, as n rises.
3pt shooting teams shoot to their averages as n rises.
I would rather scheme an offense to get open look 3s with weak big men than scheme an offense to get open look 2s with small big men that can’t shoot a high percentage.
And I would especially prefer this if I were playing an opponent that:
a.) shoots the usual mix of 75% 2ptas, and 25% 3ptas; and
b.) I can strip and turnover so that he has 5-10 few shooting attempts than my all 3pt shooting team.
Again, the percentages favor me, unless an opponent can really shut down my trey shooting, in which case I’m beat regardless, because my bigs can’t score on their bigs.
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@jaybate-1.0 you are definitely thinking outside the box! Did you see the ISU game? After missing that many early, they were to afraid to shoot anymore. Zero confidence.
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The thing about thinking outside the box is that the logic is either valid, or it is not. If the logic is valid, then it pays to go outside the box. Not if not. The logic on this seems valid. So: its time to go outside the box, not just think outside it.
All great shooters have to shoot their way out of slumps. They cannot “not shoot” their ways out of slumps. Shooting is a mechanical process locked up in a stochastic process. There is no escaping it. Shooters can develop mechanical problems that they have to fix to start making them again. But here is the key thing: the stochastic process, or envelope in which shooting occurs, would dictate slumps even if there nothing wrong mechanically. But mechanical problems often do contribute to the slumps. So do psychological issues growing out of either the random slump, or the mechanically driven slump. But sooner or later, the mechanical flaw gets corrected and the shooter still has to shoot his way out of a slump. The most frustrating slump of all is one where a mechancial flaw slump is embedded in a longer stochastic run slump, because the player has to take time to fix the mechanical flaw, and then gets no positive feedback for the fix, because he is still missing shots do to random error, too. It is a bitch and can wreck guys for big chunks of seasons, instead of just a week or so. I always thought Brady Morningstar’s mother of all slumps his last season was a mechanical slump embedded in a longer stochastic slump that then turned into a psychological crisis that finally still had to be shot out of.
See, there is no way to fix a stochastic run slump. It is what it is. Same for an individual, or for a team. The only way out is forward and shooting and missing as you go until the random error in your shooting has been expended.
If you are a coach and see a guy shooting the ball incorrectly, then you’ve got a mechanical slump. You pull him, correct him, and if he can’t correct it ASAP in the game then you pull him till he can work it out in practice.
But if you see a guy mechanically sound that is missing shots, you’ve got a guy in a stochastic runs slump and the best thing to do is keep feeding him the ball as long as the spread in the score permits. Keep feeding the guy and keep him shooting no matter how awful it looks, because getting him enough misses is the only way to get him out of it.
With an entire team schemed to shoot mostly 3s, you would have the same risk of mechanical and stochastic runs slumps, as you would if you schemed it to shoot mostly 2s.
The key to shooting slumps is to teach your players to expect them, the same way Self teaches players to play like shizz 1/3 of the time, average 1/3 of the time, and great 1/3 of the time.
Just as they have to learn to win ugly, they have to learn how shoot ugly.
They have to understand that they ARE going to go 1-17 sometimes, not often, and then go 9 for the next 17. It is how it is.
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@jaybate-1.0 did you see ISU game? They started having success taking it inside.
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No, but that is just the outside in effect. It works the same as the inside out effect. Even if you don’t score much inside, when you pound it inside, it will loosen the defense up and get you some open looks outside, when you finally go outside. But it is not efficient to waste your first phase of your game, whether you are playing inside out, or outside in. Efficiency depends on scoring both phases of your game.
This is why I prefer going outside and staying out there where every shot counts three. And when you shoot enough shots you shoot to your average and a 35% trey average is hard to beat if you guard and strip allow them 5-10 fewer shooting attempts.
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@jaybate-1.0 I’d love to see a team shoot 71 3’s. Changing the subject-do you live in ks where it’s really crappy out tonight? Just wondered.
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No, but its cold where I am, too.
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Come on man, give us some hint! I maintain you’re near DC…
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@VailHawk if you were a good special agent, you should figure that out. Is it a secret?
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I think cold is a good hint.
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3:25 p.m. today, KU locker room. Coach Self - “Uh uh, listen up, I’ve been reading KU Buckets and we’re going to make some changes to are strategy, Wayne, you are going to sit out this game, Svi, you’ll uh, uh, take his place. I want you to shoot at least 25 shots. Also, no more screens, to many fouls by the one’s setting them, Perry, you’ve lost it so Jamari is going to play your spot. We need to lose this game so that Brannen can find his shot, he just needs to forget about any leash and just keep shooting, don’t worry about playing defense. Also we are going to implement a new offense designed by Jaybate and HEM. I only want us to shoot three’s and play outside in. Finally, tell your OAD’s friends that they will no longer be recruited. Uh, uh, now go get em.”
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@Crimsonorblue22 It IS cold where I live, too. It got all the way down to 63 degrees last night.
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@KUSTEVE where are you? Enjoying that cement pond?
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@Crimsonorblue22 Near Tampa, Fl. It will be 83 today. I’m sorry.
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@KUSTEVE got room for me?? Enjoy!!
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@Crimsonorblue22 Absolutely…bring your swim suit…
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@jaybate 1.0 Are you Vivek Ranadive? If so, is the team in Sacramento or playing on the road (like Minneapolis)?
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No. But his is a fun name.
