FUNDAMENTALS VS ATHLETICISM
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I read several players really praising Grimes. I think he is well liked by all. He seems to be a good kid.
I just thought he looked lost out there, really all year. He didn’t show much instinct for the game. Never in the right spot for a rebound. Bad hedging to stop the drive. A foot slow on loose balls. Turnovers… turnovers… turnovers!
It’s really hard to get that many minutes and show goose eggs on a stat sheet. Eventually, the ball falls in your lap and falls into the goal, even if you were blindfolded. I know that sounds like a weird statement, but how he managed to stay out of the way of the ball became completely frustrating to watch. I can’t ever recall a Jayhawk receive that many minutes and contribute so little.
It felt like we were playing 4 on 5 all year. And I like Grimes… the poor fella never found his way!
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@Crimsonorblue22 @drgnslayr it does seem like he was cordial but if he was only close friends with Lightfoot and the walk-ons as I think ? Crimson was saying, that indicates only close ties to people who probably initiated the friendship. Someone said he seemed to cut up with the Lawsons. I wonder if that extended off the floor.Team chemistry is important as anything. In that way, Vick and Josh were tighter than Q was with anyone, breaking the law together
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It’s hard to assess this from the outside. Take Vick as an example. I think most or all of the players liked Vick and knew him well. The reasons why might not have been positives for the team. I’ll leave it at that.
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I’m not denying that Grimes’ production didn’t match his talents. I thought Grimes would come in and average 15 ppg, with 6 rebounds, a couple steals and 3 or 4 assists. That’s the type of talent his video suggests he has. Instead, he played to about half that, so yes, I agree with @Marco that Grimes was, by any reasonable measure, a disappointment compared to the expectations.
I am worried about what that does to KU’s recruiting. I think that may have hurt us in pursuing Rayjon Tucker. Remember, we have had consecutive years where a highly talented player looked lost in the system for much of the season (first Newman, then Grimes). Perhaps that played into Tucker’s decision. I don’t really know.
I do know this. Grimes will be evaluated as a PG at the NBA level. He will have an opportunity at the combine to show his skills. We will see what he has from here. As I said before, there’s a chance that he’s a complete bust at the next level, but I think the chance that he’s a superstar is higher than the chance he’s a bust, with the chance that he’s a solid role player the most likely outcome.
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drgnslayr said:
It’s hard to assess this from the outside. Take Vick as an example. I think most or all of the players liked Vick and knew him well. The reasons why might not have been positives for the team. I’ll leave it at that.
I guess I was looking at Josh in comparison to Q. Both being OADs, Josh making a memorable impact and Q making a forgettable one. I think in the case of a 1 year player, getting to know teammates fast and well is critical to your integration with the team.
It might explain the goose eggs a little bit. If Self tried to integrate him on the court but his whole world was disassociated from the team.
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Since every relevant direction is fair in this thread…
WILT VS KAREEM
Which player was more valuable?
Comparing stats:
Games played: WILT - 1045 KAREEM - 1560
MPG: WILT - 45.8 KAREEM - 36.8
PPG: WILT - 30.1 KAREEM - 24.6
FG%: WILT - .540 KAREEM - . 559
FT%: WILT - .511 KAREEM - .721
RPG: WILT - 22.9 KAREEM - 11.2
APG: WILT - 4.4 KAREEM - 3.6
I realize both players are very athletic and skilled in fundamentals (though differently).
For arguments sake… I’ve got Wilt as the “more athletic” and Kareem as the “more fundamental.”
I know I have a KU bias. But I think I would still tilt Wilt. His boards and defensive prowess reminds me that all players on the court always knew when he was in the game or not. I can’t say that at the same level with Kareem.
The biggest factor working against Wilt was his FT%. He might have done better blindfolded!
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Kareem is one of the 25 best players of all time.
Wilt is one of the 10 best players of all time.
It’s that simple, really.
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How would that .511 ft% fare now? Jilt-a-Wilt D!
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Where do you guys project Durant will be on the all-time list when his career is over assuming no early injuries?
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@justanotherfan Respectfully, Wilt is one of the one best players of all time.
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What is KD? Is he a guard, forward? Is he 6’9" or 7’?
Wiki has him at 6’9"… I’ve stood near him and he’s taller than that. I believe 6’11"
I think of him as a 6’11" guard. Hard for me to see him as a forward because of his handles.
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“Tilt-a-Wilt!”
Either an amusement ride or a “Hack-a-Shaq” reference.
The 3-pt line has changed the game. It really has put pressure on players to do better at the FT line.
If Wilt played today, he would live at the line and I’m not sure that would be a plus… no… actually, I know the answer there. Wilt would be removed from end-of-game scenarios.
I’m pretty sure a new variant would come along… one we have yet to really see in practice…
“Jilt-a-Wilt!”
Players would go after Wilt aggressively without regards to possibly fouling. So sometimes they would get the steal or tie-up, other times a foul, both situations would bode well for them.
I’m surprised no Big 12 teams have figured that out about Doke. Why not go after him on every play in the game? It makes sense. Rush in for the tie-up and who cares if you foul?
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@drgnslayr KD likes to be called 6’9” to avoid the stigmas associated with being 7ft. ie he should play in the post or be a banger.
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Most teams don’t have the depth to foul someone all the time. Even if you used walk ons, what you would sacrifice offensively to have a guy in there that can’t contribute offsets the gain of the missed FTs. That’s why teams usually only do the fouling in the second half, or for limited spurts.
If you wanted, you might be able to scheme Doke out of a game by strategically fouling in stretches. Foul him every time for two or three minutes at a time to break up KU’s offensive flow, then go back to your regular sets.
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drgnslayr said:
Thanks for your post. Very informative.
Do you think our program sometimes inhibits players from showing their true game?
Or maybe he has just been blown away by the crowds and publicity. Maybe he has stage fright?
Maybe he played the entire year “trying not to screw up?”
I’m at a loss on this one myself. I think he has tanked his future from this year and needs to bounce out of it for a resurrection! I hope he does that. If he turns pro, he’s going to have a rough time getting anywhere, but it will be a testament
Except for that in reality KD is only 6’7, the league rounding all heights up by about six inches. So yes, if they list Curry at 6’3 he is in reality only 5’10, and so on and so forth. It has been that way for from the get go. Do you realize how small Mugsy Bogues really was?
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Haha… I always thought KU was the best at adding inches.
But seriously, I stood just a few feet away from Kevin and he is every bit of 6’10" or taller.
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D1 game coaching is pathetic. It is so rare to even see a team play a “2 for 1” at the end of the half or game. I can only think of a few college coaches that could effectively use a fouling scheme.
Pros are a completely different story. I do believe Wilt would have a tough time in the league these days because of the intentional foul.
Wilt wouldn’t be the force today for other reasons, too… primarily, the fact that the 3-point shot has completely changed the game. An x-axis team like GS would murder a Wilt-dominant team today.
The Big Dipper was fortunate he came along when he did. Same can be said about most of the talented trees.
Within a few more years, I doubt we see any trees left unless they can bomb the 3. JoJo is fortunate to have a trey shot.
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@drgnslayr The three ball is ruining basketball. It’s becoming boring af like baseball - strikeout, strikeout, homerun, strikeout. I miss watching a dominant pick and roll team. I miss 7ftrs dominating the paint and daring guards to attacking the rim with footers patrolling down low. Now they just step back, and again then shoot a three. Boring. It’s removed too much strategy and made it mostly about who can shoot better from three on a given night. Yes ball movement helps, but it usually just results in a corner three not the lob dunk I want to see!!!
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@dylans @drgnslayr You know, the three ball has killed the conventional fast break. You see it so much in HS too, where the conventional 3 on 2 fast break is morphed into an odd creature where one wing offensive player strays to the corner for the three. Heck, we saw it in 2 on 1 situations last season where Svi would angle out to three. The open three was a better gamble.
I think rule makers really missed the point on what the three point shot was intended to be – straying to ABA days where it was born. It was never intended to be shot that you built your offense around.
Man, remember the ACC back in '83 when NC State won the title, they had the line arcing inside the top of the key?
And I don’t think it was intended to make some core basics of the game quasi-obsolete. We’ve talked many times about how shots at a certain distance (roughly from just inside the three point line to the 15 or so feet) are the worst gamble. Heck, in high school, that was a the shot that the shooters took.
But I do like how the three point shot has unclogged the game quite a bit. The ABA was quite a league. Wish the NBA would have kept their red/white/blue basketball.
There is a perfect distance. It’s figuring out what that is. I do tend to really like the international distance for college. A shot that is reasonable, but not a shot that your entire offense can be reasonably built around (at least that’s my suspicion).
But I’m never a big supporter of rule changes, and these constant adjustments. This one seems to be one that is correcting a wrong … the distance never should have been this short to begin with.
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I concur; all these rule changes create odd results and make the game feel “gimmicky.”
And the game is still morphing around the 3-pt line. Up until recent, it seemed like it would doom all big guys. Now big guys grow up shooting treys instead of back to the basket post up moves.
Who knows? Eventually, maybe the game will be dominated by the trees again, all like Durant.
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WHAT IF the three was a 2.5? 2.4? What if the three had a rolling valuation based upon scarcity of attempts across the league? So lets say on a TNT Tuesday when only 4 teams are playing, and two of them are Golden State and Houston Rockets, the three is barely worth more than a 2, which is good news for the Knicks who are playing the Raptors in the other game.
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The rise of the three has everything to do with the dominance of the big man from yesteryear, but the rise of the three did not come from the NBA down.
It worked its way up.
A few months ago I was watching some old videos of high school state title games. I ran across a game from the mid 90’s. I think it was the state title game, not sure which class, but probably 5A because I think one of the teams was McPherson. Anyway, McPherson (I think) started the game in a zone defense with literally all five defenders inside the three point arc. They had some good players on that team, so getting a good, clean shot inside the arc was basically impossible. If you remember back to the 90’s, that was how a lot of teams played.
If you had a good big man, you could overcome that because you could warp the zone, but if not, you were probably stuck hoping for a mistake from the defense, or forcing up challenged shots in the paint. Those were your basic options offensively because not many teams used the three point shot.
But not every HS team has a good big man. Most don’t. A lot of HS teams don’t even have a true big man, as their biggest guy is maybe 6-3 or 6-4. But every team has a couple of decent guards. Some have more than that. And so a lot of teams in HS started spreading the floor playing four and five out. I remember Ty Lue’s HS team playing basically 5 out in the mid 90’s, with nothing but guards. Everybody could shoot and handle. I’m not sure they had anybody on that team over 6-2 or so. But they were a handful to guard because they could space the floor. If they tried to pound it inside with a traditional lineup, that team probably would have been okay (they had some really good guards, obviously), but not a state contender in Missouri. But spacing the floor like that, they went deep into the state playoffs in Missouri.
A few years later Wyandotte had a similar team that went deep into the state playoffs, and I don’t think they had anyone over 6-3 on that squad.
Then you had the rise of the dribble drive motion, which is based on the old motion concept from Indiana, molded around the three point line with shooters that can handle or shoot on every kick out. That was actually developed by a HS coach in California who didn’t have any size on his roster.
Well, what happens when guards are getting better and better at the lower levels of basketball, and learning to shoot the three as a weapon? They don’t stop playing like that as they move up. They just continue to improve. And then Steph Curry happens at Davidson. All of a sudden David(son) can match up with Goliath (or at least get to the Elite Eight) because of a transcendent three point shooter.
NBA teams had started to scheme ways to get corner threes by now, having identified those as an extremely valuable shot. The corner three was so valuable that corner three specialists started popping up as a way to prevent teams from doubling the post from the corners. It also led to more spacing, creating driving lanes for talented slashers. Concepts like “gravity” (the ability to keep your man close to you even when you didn’t have the ball) started to emerge. Good shooters had gravity even without the ball simply because you could not leave them to help on a drive, and the value of the three point shot made it preferable to give up a layup rather than an open corner three.
Then Morey-ball hit the NBA and it was time for the next evolution. There are basically three high value shots in basketball if you break down the percentages. Dunks/layups, threes and free throws. Everything else is low value because its still worth two points, but converted at a much lower rate.
The next transition is coming, but this time it will come from the top down. The NBA was the last to embrace the rise of the three because every NBA team had skilled interior players. Every NBA team had guys that could hit two point jumpers at a decent rate. There wasn’t a necessity like there was at the HS level, where most players cannot consistently make shots when they are closely guarded.
NBA coaches are now developing defensive rotations and schemes to run guys off good three point shots. Once that type of defensive rotation trickles down to the college and eventually HS levels, we will see the mid range game open back up. It’s all about counters and adjustments.
Threes were undervalued for a long time, and now they are on the verge of being overvalued. Once that happens, guys that can pump fake, take one dribble and pull up consistently will become incredibly valuable. That is the next evolution. We have already seen with the Rockets losing the last two years to Golden State that Houston’s strategy works well during the regular season, but stalls in the playoffs when teams can strategize ways to take away their quality catch and shoot looks. The next adjustment is to evolve from a straight catch and shoot to a pump and pull up game.
We aren’t headed for a game full of Durant’s because we don’t have enough Durant’s in the world. The average height of an NBA player has stayed relatively flat for almost 30 years. The only difference has been that the margins have trimmed - fewer players over seven feet or under six feet, and almost everyone in the league between 6-2 and 6-10 (about 97% of the league).
If anything, we are heading for a day when everyone is interchangeable, with most players between 6-4 and 6-9 as the game further condenses. More and more players that are similar in size and skill. Fewer smaller guards, fewer big big men, tons of in between sized players with similar skillsets.
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I think JoJo is a fine example of where the game is going. If he had come around 20 years ago, he would have been pushed into the limits of a low post player. All his developmental efforts would be focused on developing back-to-the-basket low post moves… aka Kareem Abdul Jabbar all over again. Now JoJo is a real threat from the trey line and he can pull big men out on the perimeter so other teammates can more easily attack the rim. JoJo works hard on his handles and shows the world how he can drive to the rim from midrange all the way to the top of the key. Granted the JoJos and Durants are not the current norm of the average player… but I feel like they represent the direction of the game. At least, for the tall players. It’s x-axis basketball pushing the bigs to adjust to the new game. The game where scoring space is mostly a horizontal angulation formula instead of a vertical competition for scoring over the top. So much of this is driven by the 3-shot. The obvious is exposed when we see plays where a player has an easy basket in the paint but still feeds it out for a 3-shot attempt, sometimes even contested.
Here is an idea. What if we pull back on the 3? How about we give those shots 2 1/2 points? That means, 2 points and a half point that will be cashed in on the next made 3. Sounds nuts… but many of us are tired of the 3 actually being the star of the game more than what the players potential brings.
I’d like to see the midrange return. I’d like to see the low post game return. Will we ever see another Kareem in this game? I don’t think so. Not in the direction we are going. And I’m a proponent for x-axis basketball… something the trey shot has totally pushed onto the game.
I miss true rebounding battles. But that means pulling players off the trey line and turning it back into a post game again.
I miss a baseline game… Kelly Tripucka… Jamaal Wilkes…
I miss those fast break teams that always finished at the rim, where the line in the sand used to be drawn.
Maybe 1/2 a point would reengineer the game again… ha…
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FUNDAMENTALS VS ATHLETICISM
Back to this…
Question for all…
Would you rather have a good athlete who knows the game, knows “Self ball”, or would you rather have an extreme athlete who is weak on fundamentals and Self ball?
Example: Weakside help. Do you want a good athlete who knows how to space on the floor, is alert in the game, and moves in for help when needed? Or is it okay to have an extreme athlete who is out of position and maybe slow to reacting to the offense but quickly adjusts to be there and help when it counts?
This makes me think of Zion. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone better at making up the distance on a close out. But is that adequate?
Is extreme athleticism necessary if players know how to play? Look how poorly Dedric has performed in the athleticism area with the NBA tryouts. It’s hard to get by without top notch athleticism at that level. But it looks like he can still put up his numbers. What if we had a team full of Dedrics… could we win? Could we win it all?
It seems like athleticism will only take us so far. At what point do we draw the line and look at other players a bit slower but can really play? Do we ever have the uber athlete long enough to teach him how to play with good fundamentals?
Kind of seems like Frank Mason fits in the category of fundamentals more than extreme athlete. Yes… Frank had solid athleticism, especially when considering his beefed up frame. But Frank was not a track star… he couldn’t jump out of the gym. He created his scoring space by using fundamentals more than leaping over anyone. His “blow by” speed was respectable… but it was mostly about positioning his body in between the ball and defender, and using the glass intelligently.
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drgnslayr said:
FUNDAMENTALS VS ATHLETICISM
Back to this…
Question for all…
Would you rather have a good athlete who knows the game, knows “Self ball”, or would you rather have an extreme athlete who is weak on fundamentals and Self ball?
At the college level, because everyone is not an elite athlete, you can get by with average to above average athletes that know the game well. So for KU, I would take the good athlete that knows the game, provided he is a good enough athlete. But at that point, you’re asking that guy to be certain he is never out of position or beaten on a play, because he won’t have the speed/athleticism to recover.
However, you can’t have a team full of just average to above average guys. You need one or two elite level guys. You don’t have to have five or six of those (though it won’t hurt), but you need at least one NBA caliber player on the roster, probably two just to be safe.
At the NBA level, the athletes win out because everyone is just too athletic to hide any lack of athleticism, no matter how well you know the game. You can’t hide anywhere out there, so you better be top notch because the NBA is about forcing guys to do things they aren’t necessarily good at.
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I like your reasoning. Did Virginia have 1 or 2 elite athletes? I can’t recall.
I’m not putting this out there to question Self. I understand that a coach will put a high value on elite athleticism. I just don’t believe we’ve always come out well on that direction. I do praise Self for going after Dedric. Self had to know he wasn’t an elite athlete but had such great fundamentals. Perhaps the same can be said about Frank Mason.
Maybe we need to characterize “fundamentals” better… call it “toolbox.”
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drgnslayr said:
I like your reasoning. Did Virginia have 1 or 2 elite athletes? I can’t recall.
Virginia had Deandre Hunter, who is pretty widely accepted to be a lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft.
I don’t think they really had a second guy quite on that level.
