Hoopraker

“How many teams have the ball in a guard’s hands and he just dribbles, dribbles, dribbles until he draws the defense? He pitches the ball and someone throws up a 3. That’s not the kind of basketball I like. I don’t like to see value placed on something that doesn’t have value.”

“I just call it pitch-and-shoot. To a great extent, that’s what basketball has developed into and to me it takes away one of the great things about the game and that’s the movement of offense and the necessity of the defense to stay with that movement. There is nothing that has improved so much in any sport than the ability of a kid to dribble the basketball.”

“I don’t think any coach who really works at coaching is as effective as he was before the shot clock and the three-point shot came in. Those two rules enabled guys who just aren’t good coaches to get a couple of players who could shoot threes and one who can penetrate and right away make their teams competitive.”

“The three-point shot exclusively favors raw talent-the ability to shoot the basketball, period. I don’t think rules should ever be made that favor the team with the most talent. And both the shot clock and the three-point shot are talent-oriented rules.”

“Playing smart, in discussing how to play basketball, is a function of percentages. Playing smart is a function of positioning, of placement, of recognition.”

“I say these new rules reduce my control of the game as a coach. It’s not truly a matter of control; it’s a matter of teaching a game in which intelligent play is rewarded by giving it an edge.”

“Another extremely poor excuse for losing a game is that “we just couldn’t hit anything tonight,” when in actuality the team that lost didn’t work hard enough to get good shots and took a lot of bad ones.”

Rise Of The New Jack

Watching Ron Lewis launch and make a couple thirty-foot jumpshots the other night, shots that brought the Buckeyes back into a game in which they’d been thoroughly outplayed and outcoached, I was reminded of the debate that took place with the introduction of the three pointer to the NCAA in 1986-87. It was and continues to be a debate largely conducted in the obsessed mind quoted above. It is also, needless to say, a debate that is going nowhere. But, there are games and teams that seem to perfectly illustrate why the winningest coach in NCAA history and Hoopraker sometimes fantasize about the pre-trifecta era.

Born into the brothel that was the ABA (1967-76), the three pointer migrated like syphilis to the NBA in 1979 and then to the NCAA’s Southern Conference in 1980. During its first year in the Southern it was used primarily as a comeback tool by teams that were getting run off the floor. It was effective. Seven conference games went into overtime as a direct result of three point field goals.

It was put to similar use in the final minute in Madison. Getting outclassed by a smart, disciplined Badger team, the Buckeyes needed some points in a hurry. Down ten with 54 seconds to play, the Buckeyes’ chuck, pray, and foul routine was the only alternative. Along with a few splits by the Badgers on the free throw line it turned a game that was a foregone conclusion into a white knuckler. Great for the game say some. Creates excitement says another. It could also be said it buoys an inferior performance, or worse, distorts, sometimes steals games.

Certainly the Badgers, with their untimely misses on the line, were complicit. Before the advent of the three point shot, however, their superior, more consistent team performance is under no threat of being pilfered by a few last minute anomalies. To wit, Lewis’ two threes in the final minute were well outside normal shooting range even for the NBA. Furthermore, they were not executed within the context of any semblance of an offensive set or play. Both field goals were the product of a player dribbling to deep, low percentage spots on the floor and heaving while his teammates watched. Acknowledging Lewis as a unspectacular shooter (36% 3-pt FG), the fact that both shots fell was the basketball equivalent of dumb luck. Fortunately, dumb luck didn’t carry the evening.

To a certain extent, no one can fault Ron Lewis or Thad Matta for the final minute in Madison. They were simply using the three point shot, along with giving fouls, as the last available tools in an attempt to engineer a comeback. The Badgers, though they might’ve run their attempts off quick screens from shallower spots on the floor, would also have been shooting threes had the score been reversed. Like the three ball or not, it’s application in scenarios such as this is largely unimpeachable.

By the 1986-87 season the three had infected the entirety of NCAA Division I basketball. What had begun as a gimmick to increase audience appeal in an ABA that was already more circus than serious, the three was invited into the mainstream. Initially, the preponderance of coaches simply integrated the shot into their existing offensive philosophies, treating it not altogether differently than they had the two point jumpshot. The placement of the line, 19′9″ in the college game, was within the parameters of standard offensive sets and the natural range of good jumpshooters. The three doubtlessly continued to distort or steal games for lesser teams from time to time, but its effect on the behavior of well coached teams was minimal.

Well coached teams with good shooters, Bob Knight’s 1987 championship club for example, enjoyed the benefits of the rule change without catering to it. In the 1987 title game, Knight’s Hoosiers took eleven three-pointers, ten of them by Steve Alford. Ten of Alford’s fifteen field goal attempts were threes. For the game he made seven threes and one two-point field goal. For the season, Alford shot 53% percent from behind the arc.

What this says, besides the fact that Alford was a gifted shooter, is that Alford and Knight were extremely disciplined in their application of the three-point shot. First, Knight limited his use of the shot to his few deserving players (Keith Smart was the only other player on the ‘87 team to take more than ten threes). Second, he made sure Alford’s attempts were organic to his screen heavy, motion offense. The result was that Alford’s three attempts were invariably high quality, well screened, squared up looks that put him in a great position to succeed. They were not the result of a freelancing player dribbling to a spot and chucking. Here’s a statistical representation of the argument:

1987 Indiana: 3-pt. FG Alford 53%, Team 51%

2006-07 Ohio State: Daequan Cook (team best) 46%, Team 38%

Tres Loco

These statistics point to the next level of objection to the three. It has been responsible for a rise of coaches and teams that apply the three not as part of an intelligent basketball philosophy, but as the philosophy itself. Or, at least, the bulk of the philosophy. The run and gun, pitch and shoot, dribble happy, no three is a bad three scourge has dumbed down the game and made for increasingly ugly viewing for the discerning fan. Furthermore, it has made for poor quality, inefficient (as stats above indicate) basketball. Has it won games for coaches who’ve installed the three as lord and saviour? Let’s look at some examples, some extreme some not, of coaches and teams that have given the three primacy and breakdown the results.

Paul Westhead, Loyola-Marymount 1985-90
Ignominiously dumped by the Los Angeles Lakers, Westhead headed for this basketball heart of darkness and went Colonel Kurtz for the three-ball. His teams played a relentlessly uptempo game predicated on quick shots (especially threes), full court pressing, and outscoring the opponent. Constant player rotations and the madcap pace were designed to exhaust the opponent. Westhead’s 1990 team with Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble won the WCC regular season title. Gathers’ death occurred during the conference tournament semifinal and as a result, the team was given the WCC’s one automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The team went on a miracle run all the way to the Elite Eight only to lose by 30 to UNLV in the West Regional Final.

Westhead parlayed his 1990 coaching currency into a gig with the Denver Nuggets. Employing the same philosophy, Westhead’s Nuggets gave up 130 points per game and notched a 40-120 record. Pink slipped again, he landed at George Mason where he unapologetically stuck to his guns and went 38-70 and back to the coaching breadline. He followed this with short stays in the ABA and the Japanese pro league. At last check, he is the newly announced coach of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

Run And Done
It is easy to dismiss Westhead and his system as too polar to be taken seriously. But, it is instructive to consider how his hyper pace and three-centric system, despite its splash in 1990, had no staying power and turned Westhead into a sad basketball nomad. Westhead’s thesis was that by pressing, running, scoring, and substituting without pause, the opposing team would eventually lung-lock into apoplexy. This was only occasionally the case. And against well coached, efficient teams it was even less effective.

Sound, well drilled teams had no trouble either slowing or exceeding Marymount’s pace, offering ample evidence that even Hanna Barbera paced run and gun basketball had little fatiguing power. Disciplined foes who relied less on the fickle three and had capable guards to break the Westhead pressing scheme shot much higher field goal percentages, often appearing to run layup lines against his system’s extended, concessionary defense. The long rebounds that are epidemic in a three-laden offense were another boon to foes.

It seems obvious to Hoopraker that acceleration of the pace of play, even to the extremes perpetrated by Westhead and David Arseneault at Division III’s Grinnell College, is a contraindicated, mostly doomed strategy against upscale competition. Anyone who has played the game knows that loose, shot happy, defense poor basketball at breakneck pace is luxurious fun. It’s called scrimmaging and it’s the most popular word in practice.

Much more demanding is playing against a team that is controlling tempo with deliberate, constantly moving, screening offense and grill-to-grill defensive commitment for forty minutes. Anyone who has been in a three-point defensive stance trying to stay with an active opponent deep into the shot clock is well aware. Anyone who has tried to find daylight against a defender who is glued to your jersey knows better. The physical demands are incomparable. The mental, psychological demands are equal. A scrimmage or playground run in which shots come free and easy and defense is more or less abstained would be a vacation.

So, while Westhead and Arseneault hold svengali-like sway in some quarters, continue to make money as guest lecturers, and provide spectacles for their teams’ fans, their brands of basketball are only intermittently successful and have proven woefully impotent against good competition. Westhead’s career record and Arseneault’s inability to advance a single one of his teams deep into postseason play speak to the flaws of their approach.

Rick Pitino at Kentucky 1989-97, Louisville 2001-present
A more mainstream strain of the three-ball circus was and continues to be practiced by this putative genius. His track meet, quick shot offense is paired with a defense that makes liberal use of full court pressure, but is more conventially minded than the novelty acts aforementioned. As his book Success Is A Choice (with Bill Reynolds) suggests, Pitino is also a master motivator.

Pitino’s methodology has put up gaudy win-loss records, taken him to the Final Four at Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville, and won him the NCAA title in 1996. It also allowed him to repeatedly romance the NBA, eventually landing him a colossal contract as president and head coach of the Boston Celtics. He was one of the most costly mistakes in NBA history, going 102-146 in three and a half years. He resigned as the least popular man in Boston, having spent the latter half of his tenure deflecting blame and/or insulting the team’s fan base.

On the heels of his Boston debacle, Pitino issued another book, Lead To Succeed (with Bill Reynolds), then landed on his loafers as Denny Crum’s successor at Louisville. He has resumed his eye candy win totals and took the Cardinals to the Final Four in 2005 where they were held to 57 points in a loss to eventual runner-up Illinois. Last season, the school’s first in the Big East, Louisville finished eleventh in the conference and notched an NIT bid.

Hold The Hype
Pitino has put up consistently impressive collegiate win totals and has made several strong showings in the NCAA tournament. It is a style of play that is extremely attractive to blue chip recruits and has plenty of adherents and imitators. With slight modifications, it is Pitino themed basketball that is currently en vogue in places like Columbus, Ohio, Eugene, Oregon, and several stops along Tobacco Road.

It’s hard to argue with Pitino’s overall collegiate record. Chuck and run has been very good to him and his teams. But, for the reasons cited in the lead quotes of the piece, it is hard to join the mouthpieces and dilettantes who breathlessly esteem Pitino as a coaching genius. To the contrary, he and his converts seem to perfectly illustrate the rise of coaches who, concurrent to the advent of the three, are responsible for a devalued, less intelligent, less dimensional brand of basketball. That it can be successful under certain circumstances is inarguable. But, it is basketball as fickle, superficial, and inefficient as the shot that gives it life. Pitino and his acolytes produce teams, though capable of big numbers, that have consistent, inherent flaws:

Inefficiency
In his eight years at Kentucky, Pitino’s teams averaged a 3-point FG percentage of 37%. Pitino attempts to allay the bricklaying by increasing number of total possessions and shot volume via pressing and fast breaking. The result is a frenzy of dribbling, shooting, lots of misses, long rebounds, ball scrambles. It is a crude, aesthetically displeasing, intelligence poor approach to the game.

Compare Pitino’s percentages to the current NCAA leaders in this category, teams that are clearly being more discriminating about shot selection, here.

The Shots Weren’t Falling
On the nights when the shots are falling at a higher rate, a Pitino team can seem unbeatable. His 1996 National Championship was such a night. Led by Tony Delk’s unconscious shooting (7 of 12 threes) the Wildcats shot 44% (12 of 27) as a team from behind the line and won by nine. In the 1997 title game they shot 33% (10 of 30) and lost to an Arizona team that feasted on the low block (Miles Simon scored 30 and nearly fouled out the entire Wildcat frontcourt) and took only 13 treys.

Vulnerability To Teams That Control Tempo
Ohio State’s 18-point loss to Georgetown in last year’s NCAA tournament is a persuasive illustration of how smart, disciplined, ball controlling, defensive minded teams are the worst nightmare of the three ball Montes. Denying shot happy teams easy looks and forcing them to run extended halfcourt offense is a highly recommended and effective strategy. Shot happy teams rarely have the patience and poise or the half court sets to solve good, tempo slowing defenses. Add a deliberate, ball controlling offense to the strategy and the pitch and shoot teams are even more vulnerable. In a game that has been slowed, each possession becomes even more valuable, more fraught. Long jumpshots have a tendency to tighten up in these scenarios. See analysis here.

Ohio State’s recent visit to Evanston provides another cautionary tale. Northwestern is a woefully talent poor, low grade version of a tempo controlling team. The Wildcats make a few more layups and this game is even tighter and/or an upset. Replace the Wildcats with a NCAA tournament caliber team that controls tempo, the Buckeyes are heading home.

Overriding Reliance On Talent (As Opposed To Basketball IQ)
Fortunately, pitch and shoot basketball has considerable pull with the blue chip schoolboy demographic. Add Pitino, Matta, Self, Calipari level hucksterism and a permissive institutional climate to the mix and you’ve got a potent recruiting vortex. Needless to say, these coaches are always represented by the nation’s best talent. Recruiting is a big part of the Division I game, so all the power to coaches who can make the sale to the best of the best. It follows that these coaches should reap the benefits of their elite rosters.

It’s also striking how many of these teams fail to develop cohesive five man basketball and instead play an atomized game where individual talent freelances, trumping a more balanced, more potent, indeed more intricate, intelligent team approach. Take a moment to watch the 2007 versions of Ohio State and Louisville and note how often you see one (or two) players active on offense while the rest of the team idles. Movement without the ball, a hallmark of high percentage, well taught basketball is minimal. Fortunately, for several of the teams cited above, talent levels are often high enough to carry many an evening. But, against tougher opponents it’s hard for atomized teams to turn on the team spigot and play smart, cooperative basketball.

It is also worth noting how many of these teams underachieve in spite of their superior talent, especially in the postseason when tight games make their beloved three ball more elusive. Pitino’s NCAA appearances in 2003 and 2004, a loss to 12th seeded Butler and 10th seeded Xavier respectively, were notable in their squandering of better rosters.

Inability To Protect Leads
The feast or famine nature of the three ball strategy and the inability or unwillingness of its practitioners to transition into more conservative, lead protecting offense is another soft spot.

A good lesson in this was provided last night in Columbus. Sitting on a twenty-point bulge fed by 62.5% first half field goal percentage (60% 3-pt. FG), the Buckeyes stuck to the long ball, too often early in the shot clock. The jumpers stopped falling with the same regularity and the Spartans roared back. Granted, Drew Neitzel played a monster second half. But, what if the Buckeyes slowed offensive tempo, worked the ball for better shots? Maybe the lead holds and the game doesn’t come down to a last shot.

Etcetera
Pitino also benefited greatly from coaching his loaded rosters in a top heavy SEC and the mid-major Conference USA. It puffed up his win totals and granted him routinely high seedings in the field of 64. His arrival to a legitimate conference last year was sobering. It will be interesting to watch how the modern Big East with its depth and elevated coaching quality treats his legacy.

In A Word, Dumb

Alas, a rule that was a pure gimmick for a backwater league where entertainment was the governing philosophy was allowed to pervade a game that needed no such reinvention. It wasn’t long before charlatans, self-proclaimed geniuses, and basketball “visionaries” applied the three not as an part of an existing, bedrock coaching philosophy, but as a substitute for the same. Some of these coaches win voluminously thanks to good recruiting. Frankly, though, they more often than not embody the emperor wears no clothes metaphor. Suffice to say, let’s put a little water on the idea that these are brilliant coaching minds. And let’s take a tinkle on the notion that the basketball they are promoting is high level. They aren’t and it isn’t.

There are several words in the English language that, though unvarnished and therefore oft neglected, get straight to the shank of the matter. Fortunately, I was raised in a midwestern household that had great respect for the cogency of several of these words and knew when to deploy them for maximum effect. One of these words is “Dumb.” The three ball as king scenario we see being enacted in certain places is, in a word, dumb.

Finally, let’s be clear, basketball before the three ball was plenty entertaining to the fans that matter. It was a game where coaching and intelligent team play were not a threat, but the reason for its appeal. The three ball hasn’t eradicated good, high IQ basketball, but it is responsible for a lot more dumb basketball. And there are times when watching dumb basketball makes me pine for the pre-new jack era.

Bobby’s got a point.

Posted by DJ Elsass on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 1:45 pm.