Was the NBA Revolution Just Televised?

Saturday night in Orlando, my assumptive basketball world was seriously shaken.

Not because Nike’s million dollar puppet show had convinced me that Kobe and LeBron were supposed to face off in this year’s NBA finals – those puppets were merely a humorous way to reinforce the seeming inevitability of a Kobe-LeBron showdown.

I had already partaken of the LeBron James Kool-Aid long before those commercials were first aired.

Orlando’s presence in the NBA Finals challenges conventional wisdom about how to build a successful basketball team. We are conditioned (perhaps by NBA marketing, perhaps by paying attention to recent history) that star power is the key to success in the NBA. In fact, it is one of the things that bothers many non-NBA fans most – that individuals so often seem to overshadow the team.

And so that’s really what makes the Magic particularly significant at this point in NBA history – this is not a star-powered team in the way we’ve come to think of it. The Magic have put together a very unlikely cast of characters to lead them to the Finals.

FreeDarko’s Bethlehem Shoals presents a particularly interesting characterization of the Magic:

The Magic offer a far more interesting case. They have this big man who is both more and less than the past. There's a chance they stumbled into it, and that the tandem of Lewis and Turkoglu are both essential and came as a surprise. And when healthy, they have an All-Star point guard. This is old worship of height, plus the age of the point guard, plus a kind of post-Euro Sudoku puzzle that only master coach SVG could make sense of in such a non-obvious fashion (and, as Kevin Pelton has pointed out, this team would suck if deployed in obvious fashion). I also pick up a distinctly Pistons-meets-Suns vine int he way Lee, Pietrus, and even Reddick are used, though maybe now I'm just laying it on thick. In short, this team has everything but a Kobe or LeBron, which is a really fortuitous spot to be in. And chances are, any other squad with this roster would screw it up. So we might be looking at an utter singularity here that both bridges and invalidates the entire ferment of conventional basketball wisdom, past and present. In the end, it comes down to the twist you put on it. Traditions and trends, new and old, can tell you some basics, but past that, you're on your own. The question is, what does it take for a team like the Magic to be absorbed, as the Suns were? The Warriors certainly weren't . .

The logic behind the Magic, as pointed out by Charles Barkley prior to the series, is that they are a match-up nightmare. But even that doesn’t seem to justify them managing to make it past LeBron.

However, what the Magic do is reinforce my belief that there are some fundamental elements of basketball – Four Factors, perhaps? – that can be used to analyze and understand almost any basketball team. And with the WNBA season starting and rosters taking their final shape, it got me thinking again about what makes great basketball teams tick.

Cramming the Magic into the NBA narrative

I vividly remember Kenny Smith responding to Charles Barkley’s suggestion that the Magic would win by saying something to the effect of, when LeBron James is on the court you can just tear up the matchups on paper.

And I not only agreed but thought Barkley was clearly off his rocker.

Sure the Magic were easily one of the top five teams in the league this year, even after all-star point guard Jameer Nelson went down with an injury mid-season. But they got a lucky break drawing the Celtics in the second round with both Kevin Garnett and Leon Powe injured. They were down in their first two playoff series.

At first I wanted to say that this is just a matter of James overcoming an arch-nemesis, just as the Isaiah Thomas-led Pistons had to overcome the Celtics or the Michael Jordan-led Bulls had to overcome the Pistons. This is nothing like that.

In those past cases significant shifts in power occurred. But the Magic were never an established power to begin with which is what makes them being a roadblock to James’ “inevitable” ascent to immortality so weird.

However, they simultaneously demonstrate the value of adhering to some fundamental elements of basketball and that’s what I find interesting.

Dean Oliver’s Four Factors

Last season, I spent quite a bit of time analyzing teams through the lens of what I called “team synergy” but what is essentially Dean Oliver’s Four Factors. And I think the Magic demonstrate the efficacy to such an approach to understanding basketball. I haven’t gone through and crunched the numbers on this just yet, but just from observation of the Magic’s wins against the Cavs, the Four Factors are what led them to victory.

Everybody seems to focus on Dwight Howard as the force that drives the Magic, and while I do think he’s a force down low, I don’t think he’s the primary reason the Magic win.

To me, the key element of basketball is ball movement and nobody has done that better this year than the Magic. And while it’s hard to truly measure ball movement, I’ve found that adding the a/fg statistic to Oliver’s Four Factors is an extremely effective way to estimate a team’s ability to move the ball.

Bruchu from the X’s and O’s of Basketball blog posted recently about how similar Cleveland and Orlando’s spread offenses are. And when you look at the film, they definitely do run similar offenses.


The big difference though is that the Magic move the ball extremely well, have a number of three point shooters around the perimeter, and do a very good job of getting penetration into the lane which draws defenders.

The “collapse” effect on Howard is important, but even when teams choose not to collapse, it’s the ability to move the ball and get penetration that makes this team work.

The Magic are by no means driven by one player. It’s the way that the individual parts come together as a whole that I find interesting both in the way that it helped them defeat LeBron and as a way to think about building a team.

What I find interesting about this is that the Magic did it without having the pieces you’d traditionally think of putting together – neither of their forwards plays very “big”. Rafer Alston is a solid point guard in spurts, but never mistaken for an all-star. Dwight Howard, despite his greatness, does not have a single consistent post move (watch his game carefully…he doesn’t). Courtney Lee, though vastly underrated, is a solid rookie who just does everything well, but nothing spectacular.

A Sudoku puzzle indeed.

The Magic do some fundamental things so well that they are able to maximize their talent, even when up against a superstar like LeBron. Taking down a deep squad like the Lakers is another matter entirely... but it's becoming harder and harder to count the Magic out.

Even when a team builds around a player or two, having a supporting cast that both complements the stars and can keep the opponents off balance is absolutely essential. I think we can support these observations statistically and look forward to seeing how different WNBA teams attempt to balance those fundamentals of basketball as they put together rosters in preparation for the season.

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Rethinking Gladwell: Maximizing talent vs “insurgent strategies”?

There are probably a few hundred commentaries floating around the web about Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece entitled, “How David Beats Goliath”.

While the early commentaries were positive saying the article was “worth a read” or provocative, the latest commentaries have torn Gladwell to shreds for the most part.

Most of the critiques are focused specifically on his framing of basketball strategy (I find that the basketball arguments are best articulated by Brian McCormick’s article at the Cross Over Movement blog). The two major themes of McCormick’s argument are that teaching girls to press abdicates the coach of responsibility for skill development in youth basketball and that the press as a strategy has diminishing returns at the higher levels of basketball.

I agree with McCormick on his assessment of basketball strategy in Gladwell’s article (with a caveat described below).

However, I am also sympathetic to the fact that Gladwell was not actually talking about basketball in that article at all. He was talking about the underdog broadly. And a few people who defend Gladwell’s article have picked up on that point.

In an article written yesterday (thus giving me another chance to finally jump in with my opinion) entitled, “Leave Malcolm Gladwell Alone” by John Gassaway at Basketball Prospectus, Gassaway writes the following.

What I took from Malcolm Gladwell’s piece was that far too often coaches–much like everyone else–rely on custom and the settled inertia of habit when instead they should, particularly if they’re facing a team that’s better than theirs, ask themselves a simple question: How can I surprise and discomfit my opponent? Gladwell found two coaches who have asked themselves precisely that question, as did T.E. Lawrence some 90 years ago. Coaches, writers, or anyone else can surely benefit from trying to attain their own prosaic “Aqaba, from the land!” In this Gladwell is better than correct. He is correct on something foundational.

While multiple people have taken this “element of surprise” argument from Gladwell’s article, it seemed like Gladwell clearly had a more specific claim. And perhaps that more specific claim was lost in the fact that his article tried to connect rather divergent examples and extract common principles, occasionally at the exclusion of critical attributes…which led to the complaints about his representation of basketball strategy.

Thankfully, Gladwell actually restated his argument more concisely…in two separate places. Which opened up a whole other can of worms for me: should we even accept his fundamental premise? And if we were to develop a theory of the underdog that “worked” for basketball, how would we do it?

Gladwell’s Argument

After I read Gladwell’s article and made a few notes, I came across two separate explanations of the article from Gladwell himself:

One from his own blog on May 13th (emphasis added):

The press is not for everyone. But then the piece never claimed that it was. I simply pointed out that insurgent strategies (substituting effort for ability and challenging conventions) represent one of David's only chances of competing successfully against Goliath, so it's surprising that more underdogs don't use them. The data on underdogs in war is quite compelling in this regard. But it's also true on the basketball court. The press isn't perfect. But given its track record, surely it is under-utilized. Isn't that strange?

And another from a ESPN Page 2 e-conversation with Bill Simmons (always a fan of the WNBA) also on May 13th (emphasis added):

Then, of course, Pitino takes one of his first Louisville teams to the Final Four in 2006 and this season's team to the Elite Eight, and no one's going to argue that either of those teams were filled with future Hall of Famers. Given that, then, why do so few underdog teams use the press? Pitino's explanation is that it's because most coaches simply can't convince their players to work that hard. What do you think of that argument?

…

After my piece ran in The New Yorker, one of the most common responses I got was people saying, well, the reason more people don't use the press is that it can be beaten with a well-coached team and a good point guard. That is (A) absolutely true and (B) beside the point. The press doesn't guarantee victory. It simply represents the underdog's best chance of victory. It raises their odds from zero to maybe 50-50. I think, in fact, that you can argue that a pressing team is always going to have real difficulty against a truly elite team. But so what? Everyone, regardless of how they play, is going to have real difficulty against truly elite teams. It's not a strategy for being the best. It's a strategy for being better.

So the point Gladwell is trying to make is not really about basketball at all – he’s using a basketball example to represent a broader principle that had apparently captured his interest: substituting effort for ability and challenging convention.

At one point I was really sure that I hated this underlying argument. Now I’m not sure what I think because it still just seems like a narrow and shortsighted argument…for two reasons.

My counter-argument: Re-articulating insurgent strategies…?

What I came to realize is that what I take issue with in Gladwell’s article is a matter of articulation more than a true disdain for his argument. So let’s just take his premise and examine it a little more closely:

...insurgent strategies (substituting effort for ability and challenging conventions) represent one of David's only chances of competing successfully against Goliath.

1) Is there really a true substitution of effort vs. ability in the case of successful underdogs or is it a matter underdogs developing the ability to do something very well?

For example, it is unclear whether Ranadive did in fact have to teach fundamental principles of defense – exploiting angles, good defensive stance, steering ballhandlers, or properly trapping (as explained by Glenn Nelson of HoopGurlz) -- in the process of teaching the press. The way he framed the Redwood City case did in fact represent the point he wanted to make about effort over ability. However, one could argue from the same argument that with the help of Rometra Craig – a defensive stopper who played for Duke and USC, according to Gladwell – is that this team actually just developed the ability to play defense really well.

Which brings me to one of my initial gripes with the article – a good press is not imposing “chaos” on an otherwise orderly game of basketball. As Kevin Pelton describes on Basketball Prospectus in his article entitled, Gladwell On Underdogs,

...if you talk to head coaches, you find that there is so much that is out of their control that they become borderline obsessed with consistency. From a mathematical perspective, consistency is good for good teams and bad for bad ones, but it’s easy to see its allure to the coach.

Basketball is not really an “orderly” game to begin with, so it’s not as though the press is imposing chaos. The press is a systematic means of speeding up the game by forcing the offense to make quick decisions.

As Glenn Nelson pointed out, you have to have a pretty good command of some basic defensive principles to even make a press work. Moreover, you really need to have quick guards that can even rotate to apply the pressure. A slow “David” would be foolish to apply the press.

Which leads to my second point…

2) Is defying convention really the best underdog strategy? If we think of the NBA circa 2007, we can see that defying convention was actually an underdog and dominant strategy – both the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns played an up-tempo small ball strategy. Now if you really want to argue that a team with Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion is an underdog, that’s your own business (which is an entirely separate point).

Being innovative at some point is probably the most effective strategy for anyone to win anything. Does the underdog bear an increased burden to be innovative? Possibly. But what happens when an underdog (Golden State) faces a dominant team (Phoenix) that employs the same unconventional strategy?

Prior to adding Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington, Golden State lost 3 times to Phoenix. After adding them, they went 3-2 over two seasons. One could argue that what happened there was a change in talent, not the deployment of an unconventional strategy (that Nelson has used forever with differential effects).

So just being unconventional is neither sustainable nor inherently effective for the underdog. They have to have the ability to apply their effort to a strategy that wins games.

So I would argue a slightly different point that we might find more applicable to a wider range of underdogs – what the underdog does is know the conventions exceedingly well such that they are able to challenge the assumptions that the dominant team’s dominance is built upon. Therefore, it’s not just being unconventional for the sake of doing so, but making a reasoned decision to attack the dominant team at a blind spot that may have been disguised by their own assumptions of dominance.

Maybe what the underdog needs is a really good understanding of their own abilities and the abilities of their opponents and a strategy that attempts to exploit weaknesses. When you frame underdog strategy in that way, suddenly you come to the conclusion that the underdog might not ever be defying convention but challenging assumptions of what that convention means in practice.

And this still leaves a third question that I don’t have an answer for within Gladwell’s framework…

3) What is an underdog?

Kentucky’s 1996 team was not an underdog. Pitino’s team was loaded – “eight [NBA] journeymen and one marginal star” as Gladwell asserts is what I call loaded (and people often forget that Derek Anderson may very well have been the best player on that squad before his injury).

Given that Pitino’s 1996 squad could make a legitimate claim as one of the best teams in NCAA history, it’s puzzling to use them to support an argument about “underdogs”.

(This leads to another point that one could glean from watching the 1996 Wildcats: full court presses in my experience work best when the other team is taking the ball out after a made basket, which means the effectiveness of the press is partially dependent on a team’s ability to score baskets, which means that contrary to Gladwell’s argument, pressing is probably a better strategy for teams that can score more frequently.)

But it seems like Gladwell here is not talking about an underdog in the game to game matchup sense (as in who’s favored) but more about maximizing talent.

And that’s where I want to go here – the better discussion for youth basketball in particular is how do you maximize talent while simultaneously encouraging positive youth development (not only skill development, but learning that learning is hard and failure is a part of life)?

For that, I look at a different model from men’s NCAA basketball in 1996.

The 1996 Princeton Tigers

If you haven’t seen Princeton’s 1996 upset of the defending champion UCLA Bruins, check out the clip…and think about Coach Pete Carrill’s description of the game and his relationship to conventions:

Back cuts are quite conventional.
I’m not saying this clearly disproves Gladwell – it could be the exception to the rule. But in watching NCAA tournaments year after year in which there are a number of true underdogs (by any definition of the term), this certainly calls into question whether being unconventional is the way to go for an underdog.

What can we gather from this story?

Perhaps we could extend Gladwell’s inquiry by saying that what the underdog did here was control the tempo of the game to maximize their abilities.

Would we say that Princeton substituted effort for ability?

I wouldn’t…and in fact, I’m not even sure what that really means – unfocused effort does not win basketball games. It’s usually some combination of effort, ability, discipline, and reflection. Sometimes that might mean challenging conventions, sometimes not.

You figure out how to control the game, you execute your strategy, and find a strategy that puts your players in position to succeed.

Implications for Youth Development

The idea that underdogs substitute effort for ability is problematic for me because I’m not sure it reflects reality…or what reality it reflects.

I’m not going to apply this to other social phenomena at this time because there are some significant differences between underdogs in basketball, war, politics, or the workforce that I think are really difficult to ignore.

But in terms of youth development, if I were to coach an underdog squad, I think I would focus on their strengths and bolster those in addition to strengthening their weaknesses so if they wanted to go on in basketball they would have the skills to do so. In other words, I would maximize their talent and empower them to play to their best ability, rather than trying to challenge conventions.

And to reiterate, it’s not clear from Gladwell’s account that Vivek Ranadive failed to teach some skills. I would in fact assume that the girls did learn quite a bit about basketball strategy…since there was a D1 player present in Rometra Craig. A press does not work if you cannot score…or defend…or cut off certain angles.

To be clear, it’s not that Gladwell is completely wrong as much as that he’s just partially right – certainly effort is one part of the equation, but I would venture to guess that there is much more than that to basketball, war, or politics.

I’m not as revolted or disgusted by Gladwell’s article as others, I think the article just reflects a shallow understanding of successful basketball and what underdogs do in order to succeed.

Transition Points:

The PostBourgie blog makes an important point about a problematic racial undercurrent of Gladwell’s article that I think the Princeton-UCLA example is susceptible to as well. An excerpt:

But the other part speaks to a very old, very insidious meme in the sports world, and basketball in particular: Black players are natively talented, and white players work hard and play smart. This is in no way a compliment to black folks, of course, what with its insinuation that black athletes are lazy, dumb, and possessed of some kind of peculiar physicality. But the idea is so much a part of the way sports are discussed in America that people will try to shoehorn reality into it.**

Remember the whole Geno Auriemma controversy around his comments about race and how some people dismissed his claims about racial stereotypes mattering in sports? This is exactly what I believe he was talking about and demonstrates how pervasive these stereotypes are in society. And the problem is not that they affect how we see sports, but that those perceptions have concrete consequences for how we understand race (and gender…and class) in the world beyond sports.

What intially caught my eye about Gladwell’s argument is the age-old belief (myth?) of hard work leading to success. The same myth that everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Booker T. Washington to George Bush or Barack Obama might advance. We in the U.S. love the idea of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps”. We U.S. citizens love the Horatio Alger myth. Hard work is fundamental to our adherence to the “American Dream”.

And it’s a farce.

But there is no need to challenge the Horatio Alger myth here – even the Wikipedia page contains a summary of those critiques. The point here is that there is something else at work underlying the success of an underdog. And really, I don’t think Gladwell believes that… so consider this point moot.

It would be really interesting to look across a broader range of NCAA “Cinderellas” and see how they worked within/outside of conventions…but that would take way more time than I have.

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Candice Wiggins: On the Positive Side of "Combo Guard"

Candice Wiggins is already one of the best “combo guards” in the league.

And that’s not a bad thing.

After 12 games off the bench this season and putting up some amazing rookie stats, it’s hard not to get excited about Wiggins’ star potential. She’s exciting to watch because she plays with so much passion that you can almost feel how much she loves the game.

However, at the beginning of the WNBA season there were some doubts as to whether Candice Wiggins could play point guard. She was labeled a “versatile” guard who could play the point, but it was assumed that she was clearly better on the wing.

"I've played the point all through college,” Wiggins said during the pre-season. “I love to bring up the ball and alleviate pressure from my teammates. I know my true position is the '2', but I can also play the '1'."

Since the season started, she’s demonstrated the ability to move fluidly between off guard and point guard and she has arguably earned herself a starting position on the Lynx.

This past weekend, Wiggins proved that she is definitely a “combo guard” in its most positive sense – possessing the ability to influence the game off the bench by scoring, defending and creating opportunities for her teammates. Although the outstanding play of veterans Deanna Nolan and Shannon Johnson grabbed the headlines in back to back losses against the Shock and Comets, Wiggins more than held her own.

Not only has she responded to doubts about her ability to play the point, but she is also the perfect example of how valuable a talented combo guard can be to a team.

The shift from the "traditional" point guard

A few years back there was a story about the WNBA’s transition from traditional point guards to point guards who could score, led by Diana Taurasi.

The WNBA's transition away from the traditional point guard has been equally simple, and, in more ways than Taurasi, 2004 has been a tipping point… The WNBA's point guards, led by Taurasi, are becoming bigger and more physical all the time. And the ability to score makes the league's modern point guards much more dangerous on offense - even as passers, suggests [Sue] Bird.

Wiggins seems to be a continuation of this trend – she’s definitely not a traditional point guard -- although she doesn’t have quite the size of Taurasi. Whereas this trend seems to be popular in the WNBA, it has become taboo in the NBA.

In the NBA, “combo guard” has the stigma of being a “tweener” – a player who is too short to play shooting guard but not quite possessing the ball skills to be a point guard. Part of that is because we continue to hang onto antiquated notions of what it means to be a “point guard”:

Our perspective on what makes a point guard great is seriously warped, and I blame it all on the false heralding of the assist as a game-changer and of purity as the singular path to point guard greatness. Because we believe assists to be of utmost import, and because pure point guards are more valued than scorers, we consider PGs who get lots of assists to be pure and thus, the best. They supposedly raise the game of their teammates. They make everything offense easier. They lead, muzzled or not, because they pass. It's malarkey (and I offer Jason Kidd as proof).

Could the same thing be happening in the WNBA? I think so…and I think it is the primary reason people have doubts about Wiggins.

Combo guards can balance scoring and distributing

Last week I looked at the league’s starting point guards and focused on the exact opposite critique: that people often assume a point must be able to score in order to be effective. And David Berri over at Wages of Wins would seem to have a similar take in his comparison of Lindsay Whalen and Becky Hammon: like the NBA the WNBA overrates scoring.

…Hammon - relative to Whalen - is the much better scorer. This is true from the line and the field. But when we look at the Net Possession factors - rebounds, steals, and turnovers - Whalen has an immense edge. Whalen is better on the boards, gets more steals, and is far less likely to commit a turnover. As Win Score indicates (and this is the same story told with Wins Produced), Whalen’s advantage with respect to Net Possessions completely erases Hammon’s edge as a scorer.

So which is it? Are we overestimating scoring or assists?

For point guards, I think the answer is that it actually requires balance.

What a great “combo guard” can bring to a team is the ability to balance scoring and setting up teammates. In fact, if you watch the Lynx closely, Wiggins actually sets up her teammates by making hershttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifelf such a scoring threat. The way she attacks the basket puts pressure on the defense to focus on her, which in turn opens up opportunities for others. And similar to Whalen (or Deanna Nolan) she does it in more ways than one.

Wiggins can rebound, knows how to blow by defenders, can find open teammates on the move, and wreak havoc on defense (though Shannon Johnson had a great game, at one point during the second half Wiggins actually forced Johnson to dribble out the entire shot clock by pressuring her at half court ). She influences the game by keeping the defense on its heels every moment she’s in the game.

Sure she has a low assist ratio relative to the field of starting point guards, but that’s because she’s doing so much scoring. What’s more important is that she’s also not wasting possessions for her team with all the scoring she does and that’s pretty amazing for a rookie guard. However, she occasionally has lapses where she gets too focused on scoring.

The downside –and perhaps the reason why some people may still doubt her ability to play the point – is that she often seems out of control. You know how coaches advise players to “be quick, but not in a hurry”? Wiggins often looks like she’s in a hurry.

She has a quick release on her shot, but sometimes it seems like she’s just flinging the ball at the basket, especially when she doesn’t get her feet set. Once she really gets into the flow of the game, she can also make ill-advised drives into bigger players, double clutching on shots and failing to score. But when you consider that the Lynx seem to just come alive when she’ on the court, all of those flaws can be dismissed as rookie mistakes.

It might be tempting to look at their recent losing streak and say Wiggins is not effective at point guard, but I think that’s hardly the problem. The thing to remember about Candice Wiggins is that the energy and heart she brings to the floor every game results in a huge net positive effect for her team.

Get her off the bench!!

I absolutely think that as a combo guard, Wiggins has the ability to start for the Lynx. Of course there might be all kinds of behind the scenes reasons she doesn’t start – adjusting to the WNBA, learning the plays, how she’s performed in practiced, etc, etc. But just based on her court performance, when she’s on the floor, good things happen.

In the game against the Comets on Saturday, the most effective lineup saw for the Lynx was:

Wiggins, Seimone Augustus, Noelle Quinn, Kristen Rasmussen, and Nicole Ohlde.

What was great about that lineup is that they were able to run and capitalize on Wiggins speed, but also use Wiggins as a scorer with Quinn distributing to Augustus and Wiggins.

As a combo guard, Wiggins was able to switch between scorer and distributor depending on the situation. For a brief time, Houston was off balance and a large part of that was on the strength of Wiggins’ play.

Nicky Anosike was also great when she was in because she can run the floor and rebound (she ran into some early foul trouble). But this type of lineup worked well for the Lynx because it allowed them to run. And with other quality guards in Lindsey Harding and Anna DeForge, the Lynx could run all game.

So if the Lynx started with this lineup…

Wiggins, Augustus, Quinn, Anosike, and Ohlde

…they would have a combination of their best scorers and best passers on the court with their best rebounders. That’s exactly the type of lineup needed for a running game: someone to rebound, someone to get the outlet pass, and the rest streaking down to floor looking for early offense. The Lynx just don’t seem to be structured as a team that can bang, so the might as well play to their strengths.

This is not a slight to Anna DeForge or Lindsey Harding who are also talented players, but the Lynx have been getting off to such slow starts that it seems best to get Wiggins on the court, establish an uptempo game, and then keep the guards rotating in to just wear the other team down. There’s no better way to utilize a deep, fast lineup.

If the combo guard fits, play her…

The critique that Candice Wiggins can’t start because her ball-handling and passing skills aren’t yet refined is misguided. She has great instincts and is one of the most efficient guards in the league right now. She just doesn’t get the job done the “traditional” way.

Ultimately, what this issue of the combo guard comes down to is that a combo guard is only as good as the team around her. She can make players better, but she also has to be in a system that fully utilizes all of her abilities. Anne Donovan summed up the point nicely:

"There's no doubt that it's changed, times have changed," she says. "Really, it's a matter of style. You talk about a point guard scoring 20 points per game, obviously Carrie Graf's liking that. In Connecticut, it didn't work for Shannon Johnson to take that many shots, but it's sure working in San Antonio. It's a match of coach's style and player's style."

But when you have a talent like Candice Wiggins, you find a way to make it work.

Relevant Links:

Turnaround time
http://www.downtownjournal.com/index.php?publication=downtown&story=11781&page=65&category=54

Burden of playing catchup sinks Lynx
http://www.startribune.com/sports/lynx/20633259.html?location_refer=Editorials

After a fast WNBA start, Wiggins seeing a few losses
http://origin.contracostatimes.com/warriors/ci_9654386

June 14th, 2008: Minnesota at New York http://gamenotesofdoom.blogspot.com/2008/06/june-14th-2008-minnesota-at-new-york.html

Ballad for the Combo Guard
http://ballhype.com/story/ballad_for_the_combo_guard/

The Best Player in the Game
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/the-best-player-in-the-game/

The Evolution of the WNBA Point Guard
http://www.wnba.com/storm/news/The_Evolution_of_the_WNBA_Poin-111168-221

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Candace Parker Dunks, Mercury Defense Flunks

An exciting day on Sunday in the WNBA: the Liberty destroyed whatever defense the Mercury attempted to play and Candace Parker dunked.

Parker's Dunk

(Here's another clip of the dunk and coach Michael Cooper comparing Parker's dunk to Jordan...we need to put a moratorium on NBA comparisons for Candace Parker)

I find the excitement over the dunk interesting because just the other day a friend told me about a conversation she had with a guy who thought the WNBA wasn't worth watching (he likes men's college basketball)...and he brought up an interesting question about people's excitement over dunking...

She asked why he didn't like it and he responded it was because he liked the dunks. She says that dunks are not a fundamental part of basketball. To which he responds, "Why are people so excited when they do dunk then?"

Interesting point.

For people who claim that the WNBA is a "purer" game of basketball because it lacks dunking, it probably is somewhat contradictory to get excited about the prospect of more dunking.

However, the way I see it is that I love basketball and these are some of the best female athletes on the planet. And it's not dunking in the NBA that bothers me...it's players that can do nothing but dunk that bother me (I won't bother to list many a whole lot, but go YouTube "Gerald Green").

Yes, Parker dunked; but I actually don't find a fast break dunk that exciting -- NBA or WNBA. Nevertheless, I have to recognize it as a significant feat for women's basketball (that should be duplicated sometime this year by Sylvia Fowles and become a much more regular occurrence).

But hopefully it never gets to the point where it overshadows that Parker is also one of the most complete players in the game...as a rookie. The dunk makes her that much more marketable as a basketball player, but not really any better. Despite six turnovers in a seemingly rough game, Parker found other ways to contribute: 1 dunk, 10 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 blocks.

If that's an off night, she's got a bright career ahead of her.

Phoenix's Defense...

Last week I wrote a post about Phoenix's zone defense and said I would come back to it after watching them again...

I watched them again yesterday against the Liberty.

Franchise records were broken (the Liberty scored 100+ points for the first time ever and grabbed the most boards ever), 6 players scored in double figures, and bench players approached career highs.

And Rover, 1-2-2 zone, 1-3-1 zone, or man, Phoenix's defense was just completely ineffective.

The problem with their defense has a lot more to do with effort than X's and O's.

Just to put things in perspective, Phoenix was not a great defensive team last year either. It would appear as though the difference is that they're hardly even trying this year...

It shows up in the stats in points differential...

Last year: +3.6
this year: -3.19

...as well as opponents field goal %, rebounds, and assist differential.

But forget stats...there were just players open everywhere. The Liberty are the third best 3 point shooting team in the league and made them pay.

So there's not really any further analysis to be done -- if they want to make the playoffs, they're going to have to try playing at least as much defense as last year's team.

Relevant Links:

Phoenix @ Liberty (recap from Game Notes of Doooooooom)
http://gamenotesofdoom.blogspot.com/2008/06/june-22nd-2008-phoenix-at-new-york.html

Candace Parker Dunks… Is That a Good Thing?
http://www.sportshubla.com/2008/06/23/candace-parker-dunks-is-that-a-good-thing/

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What's Up With Phoenix's Rover Defense?

I enjoy watching Diana Taurasi play, so I was glad that she was on the national TV lineup on Saturday against the Detroit Shock.

Unfortunately, Taurasi had an off night – going 1 for 13 after her 37 point explosion against the Seattle Storm. But what jumped out at me was the Mercury’s rover defense…or rather, how ineffective it was in this loss to the Shock.

The Shock just carved up whatever the Mercury showed them en route to a 89 to 79 victory. Shock rookie forward Tasha Humphrey torched them for 28 points while guard Alexis Hornbuckle pulled down 15 boards. It was that kind of game.

The "rover" is a really interesting defensive scheme because it’s got to be hard for opposing teams to figure out. So I wanted to know more about it…and why more basketball teams don’t use it (although it’s been spreading for years apparently).

So I was left with a bunch of questions that can only be answered by watching more often. But here are a few initial impressions about what went wrong.

What is a Rover Defense?

From what I could tell, the rover is a lot like a match-up zone, though it looks very much like a lax 1-3-1 or 1-2-2 defense. The key is that Taurasi plays the role of “rover” or shadowing a key player that the Mercury wants to shut down. Apparently, Penny Taylor – who chose to stay in Australia to prepare for the Olympics this year – also played the Rover role last year.

There are some good animations of these defenses at The Coach's Clipboard.

Teams play this type of defense in different ways depending on the coach and personnel, but this rover style is typically credited to retired Temple University coaching legend John Chaney.

Where’s the Pressure?

But the key to these defenses – and the first thing I noticed – is putting pressure on the ball. For some reason, Taurasi rarely put any pressure on the lead ball handler. In fact, there was no pressure applied to the offense until they broke the three-point line. That’s a major problem for a zone predicated on movement and quick shifts to keep the offense off balance.

Conventional wisdom holds that the benefit of these types of match-up defenses is putting pressure on the ball and confusing the offense. It’s hard to understand how it would work without that. Without that pressure there are huge holes either along the baseline or in the middle of the key for the offense to exploit for easy baskets (which Detroit did). So although it may have been difficult to identify the type of defense the Mercury were in, Detroit’s perimeter players had no problem finding holes.

Ball movement is the best zone buster

Normally the key to bringing a team out of a zone is to drive the gaps or shoot three pointers to force the defense guard each player straight up. Both of those strategies require good ball movement to over extend the zone and leave someone open.

But without pressure on the ball handlers in a 1-3-1 or 1-2-2 formation, it’s easy to break the zone with quick cuts and good passes between the gaps. That’s exactly what the Shock did.

You have to figure that Bill Laimbeer had this game circled on his calendar after losing the finals to the Mercury and spent extra time with his staff figuring out how to break the Rover defense. Regardless, I thought Detroit perfectly exploited the weak pressure in the zone

Boxing out

Anytime a guard grabs 15 rebounds, it means someone failed to box out. What I saw yesterday with against the Mercury was people running in from outside the paint to grab rebounds over and over again.

Zone rebounding is difficult because there’s no specific defensive assignments to box out as there would be with a “man-to-man” defense. Somehow they’ll have to fix this.

We must be patient with Rover…

There’s more to this story than poor execution and a lot of that is explained by things outside Coach Corey Gaines’ control.

First, Penny Taylor was a major part of this team on both sides of the ball and the Mercury are definitely missing her in the zone defense to help Taurasi out.

Second, Taurasi wasn’t with the team in pre-season, so they weren’t able to integrate the key component of the defense. John Chaney’s Temple teams were notoriously slow starters because it took about half a season to get the defense working properly, even with returning players. Ditto for the Mercury:

“Our rover defense was something we focused on having had Diana and Cappie both here,” said . “It was kind of hardhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif to work on it without Diana, who is the rover, and we can’t just throw anybody in that spot. It’s something that took us half a season to get down last year so this week has really helped.”

Third, center Tangela Smith is injured right now, so all of the deficiencies a zone presents on the inside are magnified. They haven’t really found an adequate replacement for her.

It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes the Mercury to work this out and turn their season around. It looks like it will require someone to step up and fill the void Penny Taylor has left. I’ll probably come back to this once I watch a few more Mercury games more closely.

Transition Points:

From the Wages of Wins blog: “This year the Shock are again among the top teams in the league while the Mercury - with a record of 2-6 - are struggling. And of course we wonder why the Shock are still on top while the Mercury have declined. The answer - and this will not surprise - is in the stats. But the story will have to wait for another day.”

A potential explanation: last year, Penny Taylor was tied with Lauren Jackson for first in the league in “win shares”, or the contribution an individual player makes to their teams' overall performance. I’m sure he’ll look more deeply into that. Taylor also led the team in PER.

Relevant Links:

Hustling Shock roll in '07 Finals rematch
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/0615mercury0615.html

The Coach's Clipboard
http://www.coachesclipboard.net/MatchUpZone.html

One-On-One With Corey Gaines
http://www.wnba.com/mercury/news/gaines_qa_08050529.html

Chaney Has His Owls In a Zone of Their Own
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7D61331F932A15750C0A96F958260

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