More Paralysis And Disinformation: Lucas "Our Best Big"
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More of less what I said without the detail. I liked what you posted about Mari & Lucas with the red-shirt, correlates to the issue we have currently about playing time.
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Technically they are stuck behind Seniors right? I didn’t elaborate about talent and I believe you know my stance with both, I’d start them both going forward immediately.
Let’s look at the other 2 guys I mentioned in that same sentence…
Chase Jeter of Duke is stuck behind Plumlee & Jefferson, 2 career role players… Absolutely similar situation to Diallo and Bragg. For Duke to be its best wouldn’t it serve Coach K to play both Ingram & Jeter along with its 3 guard line-up. But yet a top 15 kid is sitting the bench while a career 2.3 avg point per game Senior is playing ahead of you? Doesn’t that sound familiar???
Justin Simon of Arizona is stuck behind a trio of Senior Gabe York- solid guard 2nd leading scorer, Kadeem Allen -Juco transfer who sat out last year 7pts per game, & Parker Cartwright - soph. top 100 guard. Neither Allen or Cartwright has lit it up so why is Simon a known defensive pest and big strong lead guard sitting the bench for a coach known for his defense?
I’ve more or less agreed with every single point you’ve made these past few weeks. And I’m glad you’ve had the courage to bring these issues up for discussion. But we need our own Coach to see them and stop these games he’s playing.
Wasn’t it him that said before the season that our depth is great but that none of them have separated themselves from each other? That we had 11 guys who believe they should play and realistically only 8-9 are going to get that game to game consistency.
Whatever logic he uses to determine that, its clear that he’s going to continue to play certain bigs minutes based on what’s happening in the game. I’m sure he had every intention of playing Diallo/Bragg more than 16 minutes total but when he focused on a singular part of the game (stopping #4) he used Lucas solely for that purpose because he did the best job guarding their best player that other than rebounds had little effect on why the game was close.
Its’ clear our coach has faults, it’s clear his own judgement is getting in the way of what us on the outside view as the best chance to win games and potentially win a championship. So how do we get him to understand, or get us to understand why he’s doing these things.
Do we need to start up the # FREE DIALLO or # FREE BRAGG Campaign again? What can we do?
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The reason Self wins so much is that he is brilliant, flexible, and ahead of the pack. He copies what works for them and is not fooled by herd mentality into copying what fails.
Take Calipari for one recent example. Call has probably had twice to three times as many OADs as Self has had and yet Self reputedly, as posted on this site sometime ago, has as the most, or nearly the most guys in the NBA. Think long and hard about that. What other conclusion can you come to than Self is doing a vastly better job developing guys for the NBA than Cal is. Whats the big difference in approach? Cal throws them straight into the starting line up first thing. Self lets them grow into their roles and acquire skills at a pace more fitting to their stages of development. Self lets someone that is advanced start immediately. Self holds others back and lets their neural nets grow in and their skills grow in.
Even Cal is starting to get it the minute they apparently cut back on the number of dump trucks he gets in Lexington. Skal is increasingly playing less right now. He’s played only 16-17 minutes a couple of games recently. Skal is just another super talent kid physically with neural nets not yet sufficiently grown in and not enough strength and skill to dominate it like the next Jabbar, or the next Wilt. People forget that Jabbar and Wilt spent all those early years actually playing basketball for demanding coaches that made teacher salaries, or worked the Borscht Belt summer teams in the Catskills, and saw their job as developing Jabbar and Wilt in their skills, not just introducing them to the right agent runners and agents, and petroshoeco schleppers. Oh, and Wilt even got the luxury of a year to work on his game in freshman ball, where he learned pressure defense from the guy that invented it, and went to school. Jabbar thought he was pretty well drilled, until he spent that freshman season with UCLA.
The insane thing about today is that today’s players have vast resources on developing not their skills as players, which the NBA often does not draft, but on their developing their potentials. Today’s OADs are culled for the right height, hops and running gate. They are introduced to the right agent runners, agents, and petroshoeco schleppers. These are the potentials that are drafted, so these are the “potentials” that are developed. The “actuals” are left for someone else to develop.
Going to these two week big man camps is a flipping joke. Have you ever tried to master anything in two weeks? Have you ever met a single 16 year old that could master anything in two weeks, or even take the techniques home and work on them 8 hours a day, 7 days a week over a summer and be ready for Division 1 play? No way. Not gonna happen. Never.
The current system is developing “potential” and leaving “actuals” for others down stream.
The current system is feasting off of the potential and leaving the players undeveloped. Its pathetic. And its why @drgnslayr keeps harping on player development as one possible way for KU to get better. Bulletin: KU and Duke appear to be the only places developing blue chip players, but he is right, they could both do much more. But as long as Self is behind the apparent recruiting embargo eight ball, he has to keep most of his coaches on the road recruiting even more than they used to need to do. So: what is Coach K’s excuse? He has dump trucks coming on a regular basis. Its an insidious system; that’s Coach K’s problem. It rewards the most potential, not the most actual. It rewards the longest stack, not the best team. Sure, a good team squirts through and wins a ring every now and then, but look at the tendencies. Everywhere you look you see potential being rewarded and not actual. Its sickening.
But this is not really about brain science, is it? Coaches have been coaching Self’s way for nearly a century, until big money and the NBA started vacuuming guys on “potential” and wasting an incredible percentage of them. This is the NBA’s fault. It is wasting these guys potential, as surely as any oligopolist wastes the raw material that it manages when it is in oversupply, given the production levels the system needs. Basic economics. We waste oil on burning it in cars for less than the unit price of a cheap bottle of water, and on free grocery bags, because oil exists in gross over supply relativ to the crucial production uses for which it is irreplaceable, and the energy oligopolists have to find controllable ways to waste what they dare not let others control.
And why shouldn’t the NBA oligopoly do it? It costs them practically nothing to do it. They are making (and perhaps laundering in some cases) vast monies that are obscured from, or simply underreported by, the media. Paying some underdeveloped sushi of an OAD $5-10Mil is NOTHING to these guys. They could just as easily wad up a $5M personal check and use it to start a fire in their fire place. Everyone please wake up. adidas can afford to give James Harden $200M to read a few cue cards and wear some tennis shoes. This is NOT cramping their bottom line, even in an EU recession. Anyone that knows a lick about money management grasps why the types of owners that predominate in the NBA scramble to get these franchises. We are not dealing with choir boys among the NBA owners. And these types of human beings aren’t sitting around trying to figure out how to develop these players to the best of their abilities. Capice? They are in it to treat them like an extractable, fungible raw material like coal, or oil, where waste is budgeted into the bottom line, just like usable units are, too. This is business in a noncompetitive market. Most of the NBA owners don’t even give a shit about winning, or putting a good product on the floor, any more than Ford, or GM or Volkswagen, cares about building the best possible car they can. Value engineering prevails at Ford, GM and Volkswagen. Now even at Toyota, too. Most NBA franchises are “value engineering” their raw materials into value engineered teams to satisfice in a non competitive market place. Its simple, people. They aren’t even a little interested in competition. If they were, they sure as hell wouldn’t buy NBA franchises fer chrisssakes. They are in it for money management and some ego strokes among their reputed fellow “deep entrepreneurs.” Period. Hey, look at me Louie? I got me uh NBA team. I own a bunch uh these guys. And I even got the dopes to front m cash and rent subsidies to build me a new freaking arena, eh? And my accountant, Julius, he says its helping me big time with the Feds. Yo.
So the system vacuums up these underdeveloped sushi OADs (HOW IS THAT FOR DESIGNED REDUNDANCY?) precisely because their accountants, money managers, game theory wielding economists, lawyers, and PR flacks have contributed their expertise so models can be run. And the financial models told them that the tipping point between too much waste and too much developed product with too high of a second contract salary comes when you grab them after one year of college. Screw if most of them are hopelessly unready for this system. Screw if it turns the college game into a joke and reduces the NBA to the National Undeveloped Basketball Association. This is when to take them to gore the ox.
If their analysts tell the NBA differently, then the NBA will start taking players at a different age. If their analysts say draft them at 12, then they will. If their analysts say draft them at 25, then they will. If their analysts tell them to try to reinstate chattel slavery, some of them would probably seriously consider doing it, before their political friends tell them, well, that’s just not palatable, even in today’s neo authoritarian, let’s engage in undeclared war on Muslims when ever the economy can stand it, kinda culture we operate here these days. Capice?
But let’s get back to Self and what he is doing out in the wilderness of Basketball Tibet.
Self is proving over time the original wisdom of player development; that is all he is doing. The difference between him and a lot of other coaches is that KU gave him the FU money he needed to do it this way, and he has enough character, and educational legacy (his parents were educators) to try to do what’s right for his players at least as much as his limited human wisdom allows.
But even Self is feeling the pressure of this apparent recruiting embargo. In the old days, Diallo and/or Bragg probably would be wearing rouge smoking jackets, because of how skinny, weak, and young they are for big men. Before the OADs days, even in the time I fondly recall as referees at least reading the rule books and trying to call the game somewhat like the rules suggest, big men had to be able to stay on their spots. I mean, staying on spots is not exactly rocket science as an aproach to playing offensive basketball. And being able to sustain a block out even briefly just kinda makes sense before running to jump for the ball right? But not today. Now, because Self has to play this Sushi, even Self has apparently decided that teaching even his long term guys to rebound is kind of stupid. I mean what is the point of teaching team rebounding based on blocking out, if two OADs/TADs of the four guys you have to rotate in the paint haven’t a clue about how to block out. You have to teach a new unskilled approach to rebounding, so the OAD bigs and the 3ADs and 4ADs and 5ADs can play on the same page. You have to have Jamari Traylor running around like some 6-7 inch Garo Ypremian shouting “I keek a rebound” each time he allows himself to be pushed under the rim as he runs around trying to explode out of one place unrelated to a rebound for a rebound neither he, nor his OAD friends, is in remotely the right place to grab, but which all might “leap” into without having to have any skill.
But I am whining, right?
So let’s get to morality concerning violence committed on the innocent, shall we?
Seriously, don’t you feel a little guilty about sending innocent boys into D1 action with blue meanies, after seeing what is done to young men in this game season after season?
I bet Self hated throwing Andrew Wiggins to the dogs his first season. I bet Andrew’s dad did, too, and that was probably a big part of why Andrew appeared to play 2/3s speed and appeared to actually run away from the blue meanies every chance he could. It wasn’t just to protect him from injury for the draft, though that was probably a big part of it. But how would Mr. Wiggins have like seeing Andrew wear the saddle on his back all that season when Andrew came out of high school a year early, and then had to literally get mugged for an entire season and have to learn to fist fight or wind up in the hospital; that’s what it would have been like for Andrew had he put the team on his back. What father wants to see his son punked all season long just because the NBA analysts decide this is the best system for their bottom line?
This entire OAD system needs to be reformed and reformed NOT by the NBA, or the NCAA, or most of the current basketball NGOs looking at this situation, which all appear to be compromised in whom they serve.
The game has to find a handful of untouchables and give them some research money and tell them to figure out what is best for the players, and then try the exact system they recommend for five years before revising it, unless those untouchables say to revise their own plan. The untouchables have to be drawn from a countervailing element of society that know something professionally about this phase of child development, and whose continued career statuses depend on doing the right thing for these young men.
What is going on now is a scandal both because it is unnecessarily ruining a bunch of young men’s potentials, and also because it is dumbing down fans into thinking that this new normal is the way it has to be.
Rock Chalk!
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Thanks for hanging in there Jaybate. I’m too tired.
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Current brain research says that the average person’s brain is still significantly developing especially in the pre-frontal cortex all the way up till about 25. Some earlier, some later. Research also shows that learning is best done when facing challenges (playing through mistakes) but feeling successful (managing expectations, setting them up to succeed). This is a delicate balance.
So yes, Diallo and Bragg should play more. But certainly not indiscriminately. You can’t just put the best players on the floor if it is not best for them. Bragg is most likely not lottery this year anyway so giving him time to grow and learn in small steps is best. Diallo on the other hand will eventually have to be put into the fire. But maybe game 2 is too soon.
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It’s a double edged sword, I tell you. A double edged sword.
We want Coach Self to improve in his understanding and exploiting of matchup advantages. We want this because it will undoubtedly make KU a much better team and that will result in more wins, particularly in March, which means more banners in AFH.
But it cuts both ways.
If Self improves in this aspect, he immediately becomes a prime NBA coaching prospect. Right now, his stubborn devotion to system over talent and matchups makes him a poor NBA fit, which is why the Self to the NBA rumors have virtually disappeared over the last few seasons. Self remains at KU because there really isn’t a better college job, and he would be a poor match for the NBA.
But Self could learn from the NBA game. In the NBA, they measure defense based on a rate statistic so they can determine how many points a team gives up per 100 possessions. This means that you can play a slow pace and give up very few points per game, but still have a weak defense because your PPP (points per possession) is high.
The thinking of preferring to win 60-50 is flawed. If you give up 50 points in 40 possessions, your defense isn’t good. You just played at a slow enough pace to still manage to win. It looks good from a points per game perspective, but you weren’t really getting many stops. There just weren’t many possessions.
On the other hand, if you give up 70 points in 100 possessions, yeah, the points per game doesn’t look great, but that points per possession is elite level.
So let’s go to the numbers:
vs. Northern Colorado - 72 points allowed, 56 shots attempted, 26 FTs attempted, 21 TO forced.
vs. Michigan State - 79 points allowed, 60 shots attempted, 16 FTs attempted, 16 TO forced
vs. Chaminade - 72 points allowed, 69 shots attempted, 21 FTs attempted, 14 TO forced
vs. UCLA - 73 points allowed, 59 shots attempted, 21 FTs attempted, 11 TO forced
vs. Vanderbilt - 63 points allowed, 56 shots attempted, 15 FTs attempted, 11 TO forced
vs. Loyola - 61 points allowed, 61 shots attempted, 20 FTs attempted, 21 TO forced
vs. Harvard - 69 points allowed, 57 shots attempted, 15 FTs attempted, 19 TO forced
By the numbers, Harvard was one of our worst, maybe the worse defensive game of the year. If we don’t force 19 turnovers (a result of playing fast) we lose that game.
Lucas had no blocks and no steals in 24 minutes. He had 8 boards, 5 points and a turnover. That’s not good production for your “best big man”. Simply put, Lucas, like Morningstar before him just simply isn’t productive enough to merit playing more than 15 minutes per game unless he is surrounded by superstars. Lucas could play, and play well, and he won’t put up 15 points and 12 rebounds. He just isn’t that guy. So there is no reason to play him 20+ minutes because you will never get that big performance from him. Might as well play him 12 minutes, get 4 rebounds and a bucket and call it good.
The same can be said for Traylor. He and Lucas really should be splitting 10-12 minutes per game, not playing that each.
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@justanotherfan hey Pitino might be available, he’s fast, really fast! He always has loyal coaches too!
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That’s what she said…sorry, couldn’t help it…:D
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@JayHawkFanToo kinda what I meant, extreme sarcasm!
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@justanotherfan Great analysis there on the possessions. You are exactly on point. The issue is and always has been points per possession. That is the only way you win. Scoring more per possession than the other team.
Self’s comment after the Chaminade game made me wonder – when he said he’d rather have a 60-50 game, than give up that many points. And we gave up something like .8 per possession or whatever. Great defensive performance.
As the team with superior talent, we would thus want more possessions. More possessions mean, theoretically, that the best team has a progressively better opportunity to win, right?
If we’re playing UK in 2012 as we did, though, we’d want lower possessions. We were not the better team.
On the playing time debate, I’m very interested in the next five games to close out 2015. I sense that our discussion will be much different by that time.
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@justanotherfan Yes. Great, great post.
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@HighEliteMajor I hope the depth, talent, and experience at the 4/5 will work itself out too.
I’m starting to worry that this team has started to rely on Selden and wonder if he is up for the leadership challenge. Frank is going to be Frank, but he does so much I’m not sure he has the time or energy to fire anyone else up. Self is continuing to try to push Perry in this area but I think that is a waste of time. C5 is C5 for right now. So is this team just going to go as far as Wayne can take them?
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@jaybate-1.0 I read your extensive post and have a question for you. If Self is focused on developing players why is he wasting his time on Lucas?
Lucas has a low ceiling. Look the guy is big, but he is not highly skilled or athletic and i doubt he ever will be this late in his collegiate career. He moves slow, does not jump high, and doesn’t score well.
This team has a lot of bigs Self could work on, but he chooses the most unproductive ones to put on the court. Look i get that Hunter is not the answer to all of our problems, but he does block shots and shot blockers disrupt offenses. Landon plants his feet puts his arms in the air and hopes the guy hes guarding misses. That is not an active defender and is not good enough to win NCAA championships.
WE WILL NOT WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP WITH LUCAS OR JAMARI GETTING 25+ MINUTES A GAME!
Look i get the importance of developing players if it wasn’t for guys like Darnell Jackson and Sasha Kaun we don’t win in 2008. Lucas and Jamari are not those guys.
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I disagree with the whole “push the tempo” narrative for this particular game. We were clearly playing tired. We underestimated the athleticism of their 1 and 4 player. When Mason started guarding in earnest late in the 2nd half, we got some misses on him. But we weren’t prepared to outrun these guys, which is perhaps a strategy in itself. Sometimes, you have to play tired in conference play and in tournament settings. You have to be able to win more than one way. Harvard always had two guys back immediately, so I’m not sure we would have been effective in outrunning them regardless.
Another point: we should be able to beat them without our March lineup. And what good does it do to waste them on a physical Harvard team when the game is basically meaningless. Don’t risk injury or more scouting material when you can save your best ammunition for conference and tournament time (assuming that Self actually uses Bragg and Diallo much more as time goes, which may not be the case…)
Biggest issue I had with the lineup was no Vick or Mickelson. We need to give a defensive specialist like Vick some more game experience if this is truly a meaningless game, as Self seemed to play it. Then again, why are we running out guards into the ground? To practice playing tired?
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@betterfireE Interesting take. To me Self has never pushed to control tempo. It seems he prides himself on being able to win either way. Jaybate as written extensively and eloquently on that topic.
Expect a lot of grumbling after Holy Cross as they currently have one of the slowest tempos in college basketball so far. Yes, KU could dictate pace and win easily but I would not be shocked if it turns into another grinder in the 60s.
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I agree that Coach Self want to develop players but he also has to win games…right? In that particular game and in Coach Self’s opinion, Lucas was the better option to win that particular game. Lucas is done being developed, he is at the stage where he is expected to contribute and Coach Self believes that this is just what he did.
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@JayHawkFanToo I get what your saying about winning, but uhhh we about lost.
After the Michigan St. loss Self also said Lucas was better suited for the Spartans. I don’t buy it, they are hollow comments.
Self has post game comments that make my eyes roll harder than a dog watching a steak tied to a windmill.
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If you think that Self does not know what he is doing…how do you think he continues to win at the rate he does? Since he is generally consider by most analyst a top 5 coach,how poor do you think the coached ranked below him are? Have you consider that he likely has a lot more information and he sees a lot more than all of us combined in this forum have?
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@jaybate-1.0 Bravo! I wish someday I have the opportunity to meet you and talk for hours about any and all topics under the sun. Basketball would probably be lot lower on my list of topics. When it comes to history, politics, literature, philosophy religion, etc etc, you, sir, are a sage!
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You both pose basically two sides of the coin in terms of rational for the game. I can understand both. They make sense to me.
What I dont understand is why Coach Self said, ( maybe Im imagining this ) but he said he would have chances to let Bragg and Diallo play through their mistakes. Thats not possible to do in 7 minutes!!
We are 6-1 on the season so far, which is better than last season if I recall correctly. Why not let Carlton and Cheick play more minutes in the conference games that dont matter? Let them get their feet wet, let them get burned on defense, let them get acclimated to the speed and new rules so we can win the conference and make a solid run in the post season? Practice makes perfect and all that.
Im not saying we should drop a bunch of games that we dont have to just to get those two up to speed. But they need more time than 7 minutes.
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@RockChalkRedlock said:
If Self is focused on developing players why is he wasting his time on Lucas?
Answer: Because that is what the recruiting cat dragged in during the apparent recruiting embargo of top players at the 1 and 5 the seasons Traylor and Lucas were signed.
“WE WILL NOT WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP WITH LUCAS OR JAMARI GETTING 25+ MINUTES A GAME!” –@RockChalkRedlock
First, not every game, but some games it now appears. As of early this season, it appears KU COULD win a championship with our Composite 5; that is pretty clear after kicking the asses of UCLA, which then beat Kentucky; and Vandy, which appears a credible Top 15 team; and after barely losing to MSU on a 20% trey night. Damn, our Composite 5 coupled with our other four starters playing their A, or B, games is apparently damned good. They have to dip down into really rotten shooting nights to get beaten by a ranked team it seems.
Second, it is almost certain that Diallo and Bragg will get just enough better over the season that Lucas will only have to play 25 mpg against most teams. But isn’t it great to know that Lucas can play 25 minutes and we CAN beat whomever we need to beat?
Third, what one really cannot reasonably expect to do is compete even for a conference title, much less an NCAA championship, if Diallo and Bragg are forced to compete as starters at their present levels of development. My god, if Self had been starting them and playing them 25-30 mpg we would probably be .500 at this point. and both of their confidences would now be completely shot, and Self would be removing them from the starting lineups and we would now be looking at starting Lucas and Traylor. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of bringing in a guy like Marcus Lee to prop up Diallo and Bragg the way Cal can flush Skal with only 16 minutes of PT and win the game with Lee (only not against UCLA, of course).
Self is working this very tough situation and milking it for the most it has to offer right now, as he has done ever season since the apparent recruiting embargo of 1s and 5s began to seem to be felt.
I hypothesize the real problem is the apparent recruiting embargo that left Self with Traylor and Lucas as his best bigs in their class. My god, what kind of a position would we be in, if he not been as good at coaching’em up as he is? Holy cow! Can you imagine where we would be this season, if Self had to choose between a completely undeveloped Traylor and Lucas, and a completely sushi Diallo and Bragg? We would be just like last season: a donut team–one with a complete hole in the middle.
Its my belief that if a recruiting embargo were to exist, KU should dare not sit back and let petroshoecos and Hollywood talent agencies dictate to it who can and cannot attend KU based on Big Shoe-Big Agency complex dynamics.
If the apparent Big Shoe-Agency complex were to exist, then KU absolutely should advocate for what independent powers that be that might remain to look into the apparent recruiting embargo and end it.
It is complete inappropriate for Self to have to coach and try to win at a blue chip program with guys of the caliber he probably used to coach with at Tulsa.
I mean, do you really want KU and Self to have to coach this quality of player to a national championship, even if he can do it?
Don’t KU and Self deserve the best players available willing to come to KU independent of apparent Big Shoe-Big Agency complex dynamics?
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Great post HEM! Self, please reinvent yourself! The best players should play! It’s a tough call with Perry sometimes, as he can be great, but other times he can be very average (vs tall and strong), hoping Self can figure out a way to use him and the team more effectively in these situations. RCJH
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@benshawks08 said:
So yes, Diallo and Bragg should play more.
Based on what evidence should they play more?
If you are going to play them based on ppm and rpm, well, okay, but they are building those numbers against the second stringers Self is pitting them up against to give them time to develop without unnecessary trauma. Those numbers WILL fall once they come up against the best and once they are schemed against based on game video. Look at what Amaker was able to do with a little game footage to study.
If you are going to play them based on natural ability, okay, they appear more physically talented than Traylor and Lucas, but what I am talking about is the mental capacity to learn to do all of the things that a college basketball player needs to do at a D1 level of speed and violence. This has to do with psychological development, not just motor skill coordination. Self seems to understand this. Other fans seem to say they just don’t care if these guys are mentally wrecked early from playing to soon, as the stats on the number of players Self has playing in the pros compared with the other top coaches that tend to get more draft choice grade recruits than Self seem to suggest. I can’t side with throwing these guys to the dogs. I really believe Perry Ellis was harmed by playing too much too soon, but Self really didn’t have anyone else around, even nearly as good as Perry.
Without giving me a body of data that makes your case as to why Diallo and Bragg should be thrown to the blue meanies as punching bags to be knocked off their spots, I have to default to Self. I don’t like arguing from authority, because it is something of a fallacy. But I just don’t see any evidence that I can use to support your POV, and it is counter intuitive to my experience, and so I am left to look at Self and try to decide if he knows what he is doing as a coach to know when his guys are ready to play and when they are not.
Well, most of the guys that fans have screamed for Self to play more quickly proved why they weren’t playing sooner once he did play them. I really can’t think of a single player where one can look at him and say, oh, well, Self played a player ahead of him that keep him from developing faster. Everyone cried about Brady Mornginstar playing ahead of Elijah Johnson. OMG!!! Let’s not even talk about how good Brady was in so many aspects of his game and how good his three point percentage was, and so on. Let’s just talk about the guys people cry about him stifling the growth of.
EJ? Oh this is too easy. EJ would have completely imploded starting his freshman season. Or his sophomore season. Even starting his junior season taxed him, but he guarded well and shot it well till his shoulder got screwed up. But then he was asked just to glue. After what you saw as a senior, would you have wanted him running the point as a junior? NOT. But then as a senior? He revealed exactly why Self had not turned the team over to him to run for so long. It took EJ an entire season of struggles as a senior to get untracked and he never really did. He had one phenomenal game. But then most persons say he should not have been playing point guard at all, and so had he not been, he sure as heck would not have had THAT game.
Travis Releford? The guy was wild as a march hair. He desperately needed every second of his red shirt season AND his bench time his freshman and sophomore seasons to get ready to play–to get it. No amount of trial by fire would have helped Travis lose his wild hair. If anything, trial by fire habituates what ever your are at that moment. Outward signs were that Travis would probably have been crushed psychologically had he started sooner than his junior season. We would never have gotten those two great seasons out of him. We would have had a marvelously seasoned wild hair; that’s about it.
So: I can’t look at Self’s players that have waited to play and say, “See, if this guy had played when he clearly wasn’t ready, he could have been much better.” Watch UK. When the dump truck leaves the pile of draft choice grade recruits, some of them don’t pan out that season. Even Cal knows that some of these guys are too green. That argument of play’em now is always better just doesn’t wash. Hell, I saw guys on my high school team that were wrecked by playing too early.
The start’em and play’em early no matter what; i.e., the trial by fire argument, has always defied long tested common sense in coaching, AND now defies recent neuroscience. Guys that aren’t mentally ready, aren’t going to learn diddledy squat from trial by fire. You only learn a lot on the job, if you are mentally ready to learn a lot on the job. Those not ready are just going to get burned.
So that leaves me to go look at Self’s coaching experience.
Self has been a head coach since 1993; that is 22 years. He has head coached a Division 1 independent (ORU), a mid major in the Western Athletic Conference (Tulsa), a major in the Big Ten Conference (Illinois), an elite major in the Big 12 (KU). He has coached every level of player in D1, from the marginal role players at marginal schools to the greatest prospect since Lebron, and every type in between. The guy has seen who can learn from being thrown to the dogs and who can’t be helped by it, if anyone has seen it. He has actually thrown guys to the dogs, and he has actually withheld guys from the dogs. its not like the last 20 some years he has been withholding EVERYONE from the dogs, is it? He has thrown some to the dogs. He threw Andrew, Joel, Brandon, Mario, Sherron, Xavier and Perry to the dogs. He does throw some guys to the dogs and has even watched some of them like Perry get badly mauled by them. Man is it ugly to watch when they get eaten alive, as Perry was. And who could say that it helped Perry, eh?
Okay, pure experience may not be enough to consider. How about Self’s mentors? Were they good enough to give him some judgement about this stuff?
Self’s mentors include Paul Hansen, Henry Iba, Larry Brown, Leonard Hamilton and Eddie Sutton that we know of. Iba and Brown are considered among the greatest coaches of all time. Sutton was arguably the second or third greatest coach of his generation. These guys seemed likely to have mentioned at least in passing that some guys aren’t ready for trial by fire, don’t you reckon?
What about Self’s insight into the racial variable, if there even were on, in this issue? What if players from different races gave off different visual clues, or different developmental clues, due to myriad cultural differences and different cultural conditioning? Does the white boy from the Oklahoma middle class have anything in his back ground to maybe clue him into when African American athletes are ready for being thrown to the dogs that compares to Self’s own white experience, and his own white mentors? Hmmmm. Gee, Bill Self was an assistant to an African American head basketball coach. Hmmmm. Bill Self counts Leonard Hamilton among the men who shaped his coaching ways. How many of the so called elite college coaches EVER in their lives assisted an African American head coach other than Bill Self, the Edmond Kid? Not one I can think of, but I haven’t researched it. Coach K? Um, I don’t think so. Rick Pitino. I don’t recall him assisting an African American head coach. Roy Williams. Nope. not unless Dean and Bill were passing. Surely some other current elite coach assisted an African American head coach, and so had a mentor to help him understand the cultural influences unique to shaping African American player, if any in fact exist, but I can’t recall them right now. Can you?
Why does it matter? Well, maybe Coach Self actually understands African American Athletes as well as he understands Caucasian American Athletes, and Russian Athletes, and Ukrainian Athletes, and so on. Maybe he has more than a thimble of insight into what Cheick Diallo and Svi Mykailiuk and Carlton Bragg are going through as human beings from different cultural back grounds and has more than a thimble of sense about who is ready emotionally to play and who is not,when they show up with their 5-star rankings and their projected OAD rankings.
Awww, but considering racial cultural influences is so 20th Century, right. Let’s move on.
What about Self’s own cultural back ground? Well, he comes from a family of middle class high school educators. That ought to have exposed him to a least a little inherited knowledge of how to deal with teenagers, right? Mom and Dad dealt with teenagers and youth for a living.
Oh, but family values only count today when it involves religion, and religion is rather too sensy of a subject to discuss on a basketball web site.
What about Self’s school back ground? Anything happen in his schooling that might have helped him have some insight into when kids were ready to play D1, and when they weren’t? Well, um, Bill played in Division I. He played for Okie State when they weren’t too good, but he did play college basketball. Maybe that counts for a little something.
But you know, jocks are dumb, right? They don’t learn anything about people just bouncing a basketball for four years at a D1 program.
Is there anything else in his school years that might give him a clue? Was he a sharp student as a kid?
Well, Bill reputedly holds a bachelor’s degree in business (1985) and a master’s degree in athletic administration (1989), both from OSU. Not exactly Harvard, but neither is KU. I wish he had a degree in developmental psychology, but he doesn’t. What do you want to bet that he has over the years read up on psychology and read most of the books by the great coaches on coaching during those long plane flights recruiting?
What about results? Might results count for anything in America still? Are the results he has achieved at all indicative of a coach that knows a leeeeeeeetle bit more than the average head coach about who is ready to play and who isn’t?
Well, Bill wins .821 of his games at KU and he is .753 overall and he HAS coached at at least one program in the pits. The guy has seen OADs come and go, TOO. And Bill’s web site list 32 players as having at least bounced a ball a little professionally. Most of those aren’t NBA stars. Some never even made it to the actual NBA, just to the D league, or something. But quite a few have made a mark in the NBA itself. Surely the guy has to know something about who is ready to play and who isn’t, if he has that many guys in the pros, right?
In sum, Self seems to be the kind of guy that makes me think he should be able to know when Diallo and Bragg are going to be ready for the rigors of D1.
All this talk of Self being in love with Traylor and Lucas is as illogical as Self being in love with Brady Morningstar.
By all accounts Self is a stinging, demanding, relentless task master in practice, and he seems hardly an old softy from what we see in games.
There just isn’t any evidence in his public behavior as a coach, or in the harsh decisions he has made over the years regarding who plays and who sits, to suggest that this guy won’t cut any player off at the knees that he decides cannot cut it in the role he has assigned.
I keep telling board rats Self is a HARD man.
I just don’t believe any body gets as far in coaching as Bill Self has by playing guys that don’t deserve to play, and by sitting guys that would be way better than the ones he starts. It is just too far fetched for me to find credible. From my POV, Self has to be striving to the very edge of the envelope of playing the guys most suited to winning games, titles and championships, to have achieved what he has achieved. I just don’t believe that it would be possible, much less probable, that Self is so driven by love that he picks inferior players to play because he loves them more than other players, and so wins .821 of his games, 11 conference titles, and 1 national championship. Do you see why I just can’t believe you on this? I mean you are asking fans to ignore such vast chunks of reality to believe your point of view that they would have to kind of be engaged in what would feel kind of like a pretend world.
Let me add some perspective on how tough it is to find your position credible on Diallo and Bragg.
Self has to want to win several more titles so he can be considered in the top tier of all time great coaches. Right now, winning three more rings is all that stands between him and being ranked up just shy of Wooden and Coach K. I mean four rings and he is one of the all timers. And he only has another decade or so to do it in. Why in god’s green earth would he NOT play Diallo and Bragg right now, because if he loves Traylor and Lucas, if playing Diallo and Bragg more from the beginning of the season would win him a ring this season? It doesn’t make any sense! If Diallo and Bragg had a snow ball’s chance in hell of winning Self a ring by being played more now, of course Self would do it. Hell, a moron would do it, wouldn’t he? And you have to admit Self is smarter than a moron, don’t you? I mean surely we can agree that Self is smarter than a moron. And we both agree that even a moron would play Diallo and Bragg a whole bunch up front if he knew it would give him the best probability of winning a national title, right?
All of the above taken together pretty much covers the problem I have with this whole argument that playing guys that don’t appear ready is the sensible way to handle young players in order to win a national title. It just doesn’t make any sense when looked at up close. It defies what we know about traditional coaching. It defies what we know about neuroscience. It defies what we can infer from Self’s record of producing lots of NBA players on relatively less Draft choice grade recruits that coaches like Cal and K. It defies the logic of common sense. And it even defies the logic of a moron being able to decide to play Diallo and Bragg if they were probably the better choice in delivering KU to a national title.
And there is something about defying logic that would even be apparent to a moron that really makes me uneasy with this whole line of reasoning.
So: I’m going to have to side with Self on this right now. All indications IMHO point to working Diallo and Bragg slowly into more minutes as they show they are able to handle them, and as the situations seem fitting for their relative stages of development.
Rock Chalk!
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in @DinarHawk said:
he has yet to figure out consistency in the post season.
I’ve been through this exhaustively recently. My god! His post season record evidences strikingly LESS unevenness than the other top coaches. Other coaches with regular dump truck visitations have won more rings, but have been MORE uneven in their post season finishes. The guy is a consistency MACHINE in pre conference, conference, and post season, compared to other top coaches.
Self just needs regular dump truck visitations to win more rings.
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I can’t help the evidence.
Self gets fewer draft choice recruits yet sends more to the pros over a ten year period, if I have read the posts here correctly.
To borrow from Bruce Hornsby…
That’s just the way it is…
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We really can’t be playing Perry in those situations then, can we? But we have been for years and years, all hoping that Perry could become a little bit mean, a little bit angry. I use Perry as an example as just one member of the team.
We can be critical of each and every member of the team. And among those on the team, who deserves the least amount of criticism?
It is always disappointing as a fan to watch guys not pan out, but we shouldn’t place a whole lot of blame on the coaches. This isn’t the NBA; their time with the players is limited. Players have to lead themselves, too.
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The question that Self has to answer is this - will not playing Diallo and Bragg in close games now cost him a game in March?
In March, talent is more important than experience. Guys have to make plays, and when that time comes, you either can make the play or you can’t. When that time comes, I would rather ride with Diallo and Bragg than Lucas and Traylor.
But is Self’s competitive spirit getting the best of him here? Is his desire to win a game in December against Harvard working against the goal of winning the national title? Maybe Lucas was the better choice for the short term goal of beating Harvard on Saturday. But even if that was the case, Lucas is not the best choice for the long term.
But is that a trade Self is willing to make?
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@justanotherfan I think you are getting to the crux of the matter. I don’t think Self believes that not playing the young guys a lot early in the season if they aren’t the best ones to put out there will cost him a game in March. His actions over the years seem to indicate that. Wiggins might have been the exception. Ourbre hardly played at first and ended up being a 30 min. guy. He brought Cliff along slow, but I contend that if he hadn’t been inelgible {or held out, whichever} he would have been a major factor in the tourney. I think that Self believes the 2 young guys will be a major factor as the season progresses and I don’t think that he believes only playing them 7 mins. in the Harvard game will impede that progress. And he might be right. As others have said…his job is to win and in a close game…he puts the guys out there that he thinks give us the best chance to do that. He gets paid a lot of money to make these decisions…and others have pointed out he’s done a pretty good job of that. Now, you could argue that everything I have said is contradicted by the recent tourney failures.
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I see the body of evidence quite differently. MPG played by these players says nothing about readiness to perform, nor anything about level of performance. Many, if not most, are like Skal Labissiere. Out of their depth from the start. Playing big minutes against week teams, then being subbed out ASAP when the tough teams expose them. On the teams that have no one credible to replace them against the blue meanies they get punked again and again. They spend their entire single season learning nothing but how to run and hide from blue meanies, and hoping to get drafted on potential. Some do and barely make ripples in the L. Most come back broken like Selden, never quite able to get back on their competitive edge consistently. It’s so sad to watch the waste, because it so utterly unnecessary. In that regard alone, it’s like the waste of war, but for a sport instead. Large numbers of Boys with talent but too young to think stuff through fed through a meat grinder for the cause of those feeding them through the meat grinder. Tragic, really.
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Perry is insignificant compared to the vast waste of young players at other programs, where Perry’s plight seems to be the norm. Fans and the media are in massive denial about what is being done to the players. What happened to Perry should never have happened IMHO, and it happened largely because of a system unleashed by a few in college basketball that has spread through D1 like a cancer. Increasingly young and psychologically unready guys have be thrown to the dogs, because of the high turnover of early departures. .Perry is everything a parent could want a son to be, and a Kansan could want a Kansan to be. I love and respect Perry Ellis more than you, or he will ever know. He is my kind of basketball player. Smart on the floor and smart off it. He has gotten better each year. But he has paid a terrible price that he should not have had to pay, because of this system. And today’s fans are so confused by sudden gratification that they don’t realize what a terrific player he is almost completely inspite of the system. People that think my harsh words for Perry’s play against Harvard are anything but situational don’t get me and don’t understand what a good basketball player he has made himself into despite having been forced to play to much too young.
People should be grateful to Self for holding Diallo and Bragg and Svi out of the meat grinder for as long as he has. People that want Self to play these young guys before they are mentally or physically strong enough just don’t understand how vulnerable young men are to being hopelessly, needlessly scarred up by this experience. They don’t understand and appear not to care.
This is wrong.
And it needs to stop now.
Basketball is NOT war.
War is just one possible metaphor for some of the battles and campaigns of college basketball. Basketball players should not be encouraged and enabled to subject themselves to this stuff in college until they are ready. Coaches should not be ensnared by a system into playing them before they are ready. . If they want to go pro whenever they want let them. But if they come to college string the bow so the coaches have to let them mature enough to play the game without this kind of psychological damage that is apparently going on.
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Skal will be drafted no matter how much he struggles or performs like the Usual OAD, same goes for Diallo
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Yup.
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But saying no to what’s wrong has to start some where.
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The same thing was said about the Harrison twins and see how it worked out for them. If Skal continues playing like he did against UCLA, he will not be a lotto pick, and pretty soon we will see how well he does against tougher competition,
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@JayHawkFanToo to add to the play of the Harrison twins was a knock on their basketball IQ more than their ability.
I read this after their freshman year before they decided to stay another year. It came from that un-named NBA gm.
But as I watched them play last year I saw that a lot. They missed key passes on set plays and so on. A lot of the time late in games they dribbled around playing one on one and missing open players in the corner for an open shot just so they could take their own. They hit a lot of them and that just built their egos.
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@jaybate-1.0 Regarding second point, That makes sense! I am glad we can win with our composite 5. Im thinking that Diallo needs more than 7 minutes a game though, to get game ready by conference. Bragg too.
What I still am having a hard time wrapping my head around is that Bragg and Mickelson were our best bigs this summer in July. How come Coach Self wont play them and give them an equal chance to prove it non conference? Cuz imo they could.
I feel absolutely horrible for Diallo and Bragg right now, being freshmen and having higher ceilings than any KU post player we have now, and not being able to get the reps to solidify that! Self needs to give those guys an opportunity to play 10-15 min a game, get reps and work through mistakes, get better!
I feel even worse for poor Hunter. I mean, that guy has done his time at the end of the bench, worked on his game to get better, this summer he absolutely kills it in the WUGs and this is how Coach Self repays him? Its shameful. Its cruel and unusual punishment!
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@jaybate-1.0 I have a dream! I have a dream in the legendary court we call Phog Allen Field House on the 30th of January, where our future hall of fame coach starts our senior post guys, Mickelson and Lucas over a nearly by then, game ready Bragg and Diallo against the slimiest coach in Div 1 and his cadre of future NBA talent freshmen. This dream envisions AFH being so rowdy and so loud as to break ear drums with its decibel levels reaching greater than fighter jet intensity. Once KU’s senior laden hurt locker knocks down the blue kitties, Self plays a little trick on slimy Cal and platoons HIS team. “So, you beat us by 35 last year?” We’ll match that and add the 10+ points our best in div 1 home court advantage gives us!" We arent going to send you home with your tails between your legs. We are going to cut those things the EFF freeking off!! Lucas and Mickelson each pull down near double figure reebs. Mickelson and Diallo each block 5 shots. Diallo and Bragg combine for a 20/20 game. Selden and Co make UK’s guards look silly out on the perimeter.
There will be no prisoners taken in this dream. This is pay back and it is hell.
I have a dream that Coach Self is leading this team to this moment, to this game and everyone who can contribute will contribute.
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Maybe give this to George Raveling of Nike and he can keep it with MLK’s speech he got as a boy from MLK!!!
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@Lulufulu you feel horrible for diallo and Bragg? I have heard both of them speak about the vets on the team mentoring them. I feel like they respect them and understand what they need to do to get more minutes. I also think Mari knows (see his interview for those who care to listen to him) that it’s a matter of time before those 2 grow into starters and get a lot more minutes.
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I think you are on to something.
The young guys look up to the veterans and are being mentored by them.
If our freshmen immediately take over all the PT minutes, it must get harder to keep these roles. If they take minutes gradually, and earn them, then everyone saves face and the old guys continue to mentor the young.
Just an idea…
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@jaybate-1.0 Think I could convince Mr Raveling to let a few more Nike recruits come to KU if I did that?
