I agree, but I'd take it a step further. If you have a big who can shoot, not only does taking advantage of that skill give the player a better future but it makes your team harder to defend. A good coach uses that big in ways that pull the defending big out of the key, opening drives. He pairs him with a shooter/ballhandler to create pick and roll and pick and pop opportunities and to take advantage of defending bigs who don't like playing perimeter defense. Instead, Fox sticks with the same middle school plays and his offense gets stuffed.HoopDreams said:
4thGen
thanks for insider view of the player transfers
agree that sueing and vanover were already gone
but Matt leaving was an absolute disaster. i wrote before that a coach's number one priority is to keep their franchise player. its up to coach to smooth out what ever issues with the players, teammates, school, etc
Matt showed me he was a great representative of the team. coaches should want fiercely competitive players with lots of passion
its better to have a teams best player to lead and even send a harsh message to other players. its why i didn't have an issue with askew having some words with another player even when he didn't make the best decision on his pass
matt and kelly also had a good relationship and as the teams two best player that is an ideal situation
had matt returned we would have finally had a veteran team with talent which i felt was the formula for Cal's breakout success
and who knows, matt stayed at SDSU… maybe he would have stayed at cal too, and after a successful previous season (because he would have been here) kelly would have stayed akso plus we would have signed better recruits
one thing a coach should do to keep their franchise players (matt and kelly) is to let them play the way they want to play (within reason)
for example, at Matts size, maybe his future is at PG. let him spend time at the 1. kelly wanted to shoot from the 3 more. at his size this is very important for his future. give him the green light to do it.
fox views these things wrongly. he thinks to maximize wins you need to require players to play within a tightly control role and parameters. that's probably true for a inexperienced player or less capable player
but for a star player, the most important thing is to have them on your team
i was a big fan of Martin, but one of the worst mistakes was not making it work with matthews. if he stayed his talented brother would have also probably came to cal and that team would have made the ncaa
current situation has nothing to do with covid. injuries has impacted the team (especially celestine) but a big part of his recruiting strategy is to recruit talent that is under the radar due to ha injuries. that strategy carries risks which we are seeing now
fox is not the victim. these things were in his control
It's not like Fox doesn't have one of the best examples of team offense right here in the Bay Area to model things after. He doesn't need to run the Warriors' offense, no one can, but using the basic principles of ball and movement they use would at least make the team less predictable. Of course, that sort of model takes some control out of the hands of the coach and requires him to teach and then trust. Fox will never, ever do that.
