Quote:
Originally posted by jbduke
An interesting question that ties together your post and that of "bebanovic" or whatever, is that you both create false dichotomies between coaches of teams with mediocre talent who play a certain way (the Pete Carrils and Dick Bennetts of the world), and those who play a system utilizing more talented players.
All coaches coach what they know, or based on the knowledge they are developing. If Dick Bennett came to Duke and coached his system with K's players, what do you think would happen? I'll tell you what would happen: they'd win a lot fewer games than they currently do. Why? Because his system would create far fewer possessions per game, which mitigates against the superior talent that he'd have. Coaches like Bennett and Carril are wonderful coaches, but the fact that they do more with less doesn't make them superior, it makes them realists.
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You could have let me slide gracefully out of this conversation but, alas, it won't happen.
Dick Bennett does not have a "system," in the conventional sense. Because he has never been at one of the bigger name schools he has never gone in search of players to fit what he does. I think you essentially conceded that much in your previous post. To say that Bennett would bring a system to a big-name school that would fail "(b)ecause his system would create far fewer possessions per game" shows that you have not followed Bennett for any length of time. Bennett has been an innovator everywhere he has gone and, although I have never seen him with a fastbreaking style, to brush him aside as a coach who creates fewer possesions is not a very solid or accurate argument. He used to advocate forcing baseline on defense because statistics helped show he could force teams into low percentage shots. A lot of high schools adapted this successfully but he had to abandon this strategy when he started playing higher end Division I opponents and he didn't miss a beat in moving on to his next innovations.
You would be on more solid ground sticking to that argument for Carril, but I would challenge that too. While high school coaches were dying to run his offense (stupidly, I thought because you ain't running that with 2 1/2 hours of gym time per day) I thought his simple matchup zone was genius. I don't care what talent you put in there, that's a biyatch to score against.
You conveniently dropped the other two coaches I mentioned as mentors; Bud Pressley and David Arsenault. Pressley is considered by many to be the father of modern pressure man-to-man team defense. Coach K can't go a day without referring to something Pressley taught even though his is not a household name. Arsenault's team's scoring is down a little this year at 117.3 per game but not bad considering he is in a group of coaches you dismissed by saying they create fewer possesions.
You said that I helped "create false dichotomies between coaches of teams with mediocre talent who play a certain way." My response is that lumping the coaches I mentioned into a category of coaches who play a certain way to compare them to Coach K and Dean Smith would indeed create a false dichotomy. I think one of us did create a false dichotomy but, yes, I do know what that means and, no, it wasn't me who did it. There is more than one way to win with mediocre players. I have chosen my mentors because they have shown genius in thinking about the game or have a deep understanding about a particular aspect. Remind me again what I'm supposed to learn from Coach K?
By the way, this is real classy: '"bebanovic" or whatever.' It's not that hard to check the spelling or just misspell it but to announce that you don't care is just terrific. I'm trying to continue to show respect for you, see if you can reciprocate.
[Edited by bebanovich on Mar 12th, 2006 at 10:58 PM]