HearstMining said:
SFCityBear said:
89Bear said:
I missed the game. Anyone want to comment on how Hyder looked?
Thoughts on his potential for this year?
Thanks!!!
Mike Montgomery said it best when he said that Hyder really understands the game. He made that comment on one play after Hyder drove into the lane, let the defense come to him and then slipped by to find an open spot to shoot a high percentage open shot on the run, which missed, unfortunately.
Joel Brown is a talented and athletic player, but he does not see the whole floor and this often leads him to making the wrong decision as to when to drive into the lane, and as a result, sometimes he gets caught in the lane or up in the air with no where to go and no way to dump the pass off to a teammate. The paint does get crowded, and you have to instinctively feel when you might get bottled up and when you might have a clear lane for a shot or an assist, and make an instantaneous decision as to when to take it into the lane, and when to take a a smarter option.
Makale Foreman has the same problem, but less often, and he too, at times gets caught up in the air with no possibility of making a shot or a pass to a teammate and getting stuffed or losing the ball. Montgomery did comment on one drive by Foreman than he had gotten caught up in the air with nowhere to go. You seldom see the great ones, like Jason Kidd, get caught up in the air, and lose the ball or eat it.
However, both Brown and Foreman have been contributing so much lately, Brown with plenty of steals and assists, and Foreman with his outside scoring, along with some good drives, that Hyder will have his work cut out for him to try and become the starter or the point guard getting the most minutes. He is clearly a little rusty from being injured and not having practiced or played in a while. His shooting is a bit off, and he needs to find a rhythm. He has good size, is fast, and his defense looks solid. I hope he comes along quickly and gives Cal another good weapon, and maybe another way to play as a team.
Is it instinct? Or is it analyzing the situation and very quickly having a "Plan A" and a "Plan B" in mind when you start that drive. I think the Kidds, Jordans, Birds, Magics, etc developed that thought process to such a point that it's instinctive to them, but only because they repeated it. I wonder if coaches make any effort to teach kids how to analyze and make a decision on the court. I think Monty certainly did, but he probably got impatient pretty quickly if a player didn't get it. I don't think Cuonzo did because his answer was always "take it to the rim". So my point is, did anybody ever ask Joel Brown, "What do you look at and what are you thinking before you drive to the hoop?".
Now, it's a fair argument to say that a player should know that by the time they're playing in college, but how many actually do?
I think you are right that players get better with repetition. I suppose players have a plan B, but with many of them, plan B may not be very good. I don't know that players can be taught how to analyze a situation, or how to make quick decisions. It would be a good question to ask Mike Montgomery. I happen to feel good point guards are born, not made, so I think it is more instinct.
Two of the best point guards I ever saw were two I played with in my high school days. One was Denny Lewis, who played for Cal and Rene Herrerias, and the other was Johnny Garber, who went on to a career on the pro tennis circuit. Both were natural athletes, and both were All-City, Denny in basketball, football, and track, and Johnny in basketball and tennis. Denny was an all-city tailback in football and the City 180 yard low hurdles champion. Johnny was all-city in basketball, and had never picked up a tennis racquet before, but decided to try out for Lowell's perennial city champion team, and became our best player. Denny played a couple years at Cal, but he was too fast for the rest of his teammates. He was best in the open court, running a fastbreak, but none of his Cal teammates could keep up with him. Kinglsey Okoroh would likely have beaten most of them in a footrace. Denny was like a player-coach when I played with him. He showed all of us just how to get open and where he needed us to be to receive the ball for an easy layup. We never had any practices, nor did we have a coach. Denny just seemed to know where we were all the time, and when we were open, he fed us the ball for easy buckets. My guess is he averaged near 10 assists a game and 28 points. He was 14 years old the year I played with him. Both Denny and Johnny were very unselfish players, always trying to make a teammate look good, rather than trying to score much of the time.
Johnny Garber was a transfer from Covina, and the LA area was known more for fast break offense in those days, whereas the Bay Area was known for pattern play in the halfcourt, and defense. The first time I played in a scrimmage with Johnny, he hit me in the head with a pass. A bullet. He came up and told me, "You need to stay awake. Listen carefully. If I am not looking at you, you are probably going to get a pass. So get yourself open, and pay attention to my eyes." Or something like that. Johnny was 15 at the time.
The second time I heard something like that was on a videotape years later, when some of Pete Maravich's teammates said that if they were open, and if Pete was not looking at them, they had to be alert, because he would probably pass the ball to them. I'd bet that Maravich trained himself to play that way, and he was better than his peers in doing it, and he was likely better at it by age 14 or probably even earlier. Trying to teach these skills to a player who is a highly rated recruit of 18 or more would be a real challenge, I should think.
SFCityBear
