Bear8995 said:
SFCityBear said:
GMP said:
SFCityBear said:
Bear8995 said:
Early in the season there was a fast break where DC had the ball and another player was running ahead of him on the opposite side of the floor. A 2 on 1. DC took the ball in himself instead of passing the ball.
Later in the season, the roles were reversed. McNeill had the ball on a 2 on 1 and DC was the other player. McNeill kept the ball and took it himself.
In both cases, it made more sense to pass it to the player up ahead for an easy layup.
Both plays were selfish. I believe that those kinds of plays define the team. Are they going to share the ball? Or play hero ball?
I wish DC the best but he played hero ball and wasn't good enough to pull it off. Yes, he made some nice assists and passes every once in a while. But he was supposed to be one of the leaders of the team and that attitude reflected in how the team played. And it showed in our assist numbers.
The plays you describe are common, and often players don't make the decision the fan in the stands or watching on TV would have preferred. Such plays are not all black and white , simple go or don't go decisions. First of all, consider the angle of the pass and the great speed at which the players are all moving. Your view of the angle from the stands or on TV is not the same angle that the passer sees as he is flying down the floor trying to beat the defense while controlling the ball on the dribble. It could be that the passer's teammate was not as open as you thought. It could also be that the passer did not have the ball in his best hand for making the pass. It could be that the passer had more confidence in making the shot himself, than he had in his ability to make a good pass, or in his teammate's ability to make his shot. Maybe the passer did not trust his teammate to make the shot. Not to be critical, but this season Hamilton has missed a few layups, so if Coleman is leading the break with Hamilton, I can understand why he might decide to take the shot himself. Both Coleman and McNeill made a number of passes this season to teammates who missed an open shot or lost the ball. Finally, there is usually a defender in the way, and it depends on who the defender is and how he plays the passer. The opposing coach and his team will have seen lots of film or tape, and they will scheme on how to stop Coleman in a fast break, either get in front of him or protect the basket, for example, and that will maybe figure into Jones decision ow whether Coleman should make the pass or shoot the shot. There are so many variables that go into that decision that to ascribe it only to selfish play, is unfair unless you know the facts. The question is best answered in an interview with the passer or his coach. Finally, Cal had so few 2 on 1 fast breaks this season, that I think it is unfair to generalize and call players or a team selfish, based on so few plays compared to all the other plays Cal tried to execute.
Accusing Don Coleman of "Hero ball" is at best an exaggeration, and at worst, also unfair. Coleman came out of high school as a shooting guard, a scorer. He recognized that his best chance to play college and beyond would be as a point guard, or at least to have a lot more of point guard skills. He went to JC for a year to learn and practice passing and point guard play. At Cal, Coleman was asked by both his coaches, Martin and Jones to be a scorer, not to primarily pass the ball. He was told to shoot and score. He was to lead primarily by scoring. He wasn't very good at it. In the passing department, McNeill was supposed to be the leader, and he wasn't so good at passing. He was better at scoring. Cal just didn't have enough of the pieces to be very successful last season.
To piggyback: His complaint also ignores an important part of those split-second decisions: reading the defender. It may be that the defender is leaning toward the off-ball teammate, and the ballhandler reads that, and explodes to the rim. This happens all the time. It's akin to a ballhandler going the opposite direction of a ball screen - sometimes you see your defender cheating on the screen, and so you blow by away from the screen. To make some grand pronouncement based on a couple of (successful) fast breaks suggests to me someone who never played basketball. Sometimes making the pass is the right decision, but not always.
Thank you.
Though it seems silly to respond to your ignorant post about my qualifications, I have played basketball since I was 6. I also coached high school ball for 7 years. I'm 50 and still play. I go to games with a long time and successful high school coach (his teams have won several titles). We both agreed that in both cases, passes should have been made and we worried about what that meant for the team's chemistry going forward.
It wasn't a complaint and it wasn't a grand pronouncement. It was an observation which in my opinion said a lot about the team's chemistry. There were certainly more examples but I selected two. I guess I could have selected more but I don't have time to write the novels you put out. If you read the body language of the other player (who I believe was Sueing-it definitely wasn't Hamilton) running the floor with Coleman, you would understand. But that would require you to have been at the game.
If you played basketball, you would understand what happens when passes like that don't get made.
Where I agree with you is if it was Hamilton running the floor, I wouldn't have passed to him either. If I were coaching, Hamilton wouldn't have played at all. Great kid. Just not a Pac 12 level player.
I get you like Coleman. I didn't care for his game but understood his role on the team. He shot WAY too much for how poorly he shot. He played out of control WAY too much. I liked his aggressiveness but it was often poorly executed. I said he shot too much after the first game when he went for 30. Eric said we really didn't have a choice but to let Coleman shoot 30 times a game because in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king and Coleman was it. I disagreed but I understand Eric's thinking.
Since you appear to have insider knowledge of what Martin/Jones were asking of Coleman, I'd like to ask you: why did Coleman stop shooting so much in the latter part of the season? Why would he disobey Coach Jones so openly? Is it possible that in some moment when you weren't with both of them that Jones asked Coleman to be more of a facilitator and to shoot less?
I never said a word about your qualifications, nor would I. It is obvious from the comment you made about Coleman or McNeill not making a pass when he should have, that you have much more basketball knowledge than the average basketball fan, who cares about little beyond the athleticism of a player and whether he can make dunks and threes. If you had made that comment 25 years ago, I would have agreed with you, or maybe written the same thing myself. Today's game is different. The players are different, and the coaches are different. The game as a whole is played more individually on offense than at any time in my life. When I grew up, and maybe when you did, most teams had one or two players who took most of the shots and did the scoring, while the rest of us developed as teammates setting up those players with passes or screens. Today, many coaches still strive for something like that, but rarely get that kind of cooperation. The players are all focused on making their own shots, and that is the first thing they look to do most of the time, not looking for an open teammate. And the other players seldom try and get open, IMO. These are not the days of Pete Newell or John Wooden, and even they had their problems reigning in the egos of some of their players.
Most Cal fans here focus entirely on offense, on select offensive skills like shooting, ball handling, driving to the basket, dunking, free throw shooting. Only a very few will mention passing, or setting screens, or defense. So you had a point, but to my mind, if you want to find one thing that characterizes this team and is most responsible for the poor record, it is defense. Our defense was atrocious. We gave up about 80 points per game. You have to have an outstanding offense if you want to win games while giving up 80 points. Not only that, in a few short months, Cal went from one of the better defenses in the nation to almost the worst in the nation. And defense is one thing that can be taught, one thing that doesn't require a high degree of athleticism, or skill. It requires fundamentals and coaching players to play together. For some reason, modern players are more adaptable to working together on defense than they are to working together on offense. I saw very little improvement in team defense from the beginning of the season to the end.
My comments on your post had to do with first selecting a two-on-one play to base your opinion of a player and his leadership qualities. I didn't watch every minute of every Cal game, but Cal had very few 2 on 1 fast break plays, and I'd guess less than one opportunity per game.
Your post also contained some exaggeration overly critical of a player who is just a kid trying to grow up. It was an exaggeration for Eric to say that Coleman was putting up 30 shots a game, which he did not ever do. He put up 28 in the first game, but put up 20 or more in regulation only one other time, 25 against Wichita State, and he was a big reason Cal almost pulled off that upset. I agree that Jones asked Coleman to not shoot so much, but that was like pulling his fangs, and made him much less of a factor and less of a goat. Defenses became less concerned with him, and that hurt the team a little, IMO.
The other point is the person who decides how much a player shoots is supposed to be his coach. If he is shooting too much, and the coach lets him do it, then that is the coach's responsibility. The wild off-balance shots make me cringe, but that too is something the coach must be permitting. Cuonzo Martin used to encourage his players to do it, because he would felt such plays would at least generate free throw opportunities. And Coleman was Cal's best free throw shooter.
You don't care for Coleman's game, and neither do I. But I will defend him against exaggerations or other forms of bashing, because he is a Cal player, who gave his all for this team. If he was being selfish, his teammates would not have passed the ball to him.
As for my writing novels, when someone posts a simple generalization, that can lead to offending in several areas, and it can take a lot of words to counter such a generalization point by point, rather than firing back with an equally simple generalization of my own, and that can lead to real argument, and personal insults, which I don't like to participate in. So I take the long way out. I'm glad to have you here, with your knowledge, so we can all benefit from another former player or coach.
