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Shark Bites with Retsek; archive
Topic Started: Dec 13 2007, 09:32 AM (290 Views)
Bada Bing
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El Crack
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06 NOV THE PERFECT OFFENCE



I haven’t been to a game for a week or two which sucks, so I’ve decided to review a little of what I’ve seen and know on more general terms.

The way I see it, the ideal way to play the game on the offensive end runs through your post players. You can see it throughout bastketball history from the NBA, to the BBL. It worked for the Lakers with Kareem and Shaq, Houston with Olajawan, Boston with McHale and Parish, and more locally with Youngblood with the Leopards, Aaron with Plymouth and Guilford, Stewart and Pheonix with the Sharks and the list goes on.

To go into a little more detail, what I’m talking about here is running your offense through the post.

For me, this means that every time you bring the ball up the court (unless it’s a fast break of course), the guard should either pass off to 1 of the forwards for them to make an entry pass into the post, or the perimeter player on 1 side cut to the basket and come out the other side to give you space to dribble to the side they came from to make the pass yourself.

By entering the ball into the post every time down court you give yourself several key tactical advantages. First, you imediately put pressure on the defensive team. More fouls are called in and around the key then anywhere else on the floor, so it’s important to get the ball early in the offense to this position.

Secondly, you very quickly create a scoring opportunity if you have a skillfull big man. For example, if any team was stupid enough to try single coverage on Youngblood back in his hey day, it was 2 points or a foul 7 times out of 10, the same going for just about every other big man I’ve listed above.

 I’ve watched NBA games where Shaq will litterally carve his way through 2 and sometimes even 3 opposing defenders, fouling them all out. It gets your opposition into the pentuly early in each quarter, and limits the oppositions offensive options as half their team are sat on the bench!

However, as such, the majority of the time you wont have single coverage on a skillfull big man, which means that you are dragging often 1 or even 2 others players to a small space of the court on help D, or commanding a direct double team from the guard or forward dropping down after the entry pass is made, or, more rarely, the other 4 or 5 man coming across the key to help out.

Whether it’s help D or a double team, either way this then frees up the rest of the floor for your other 4 players, creating opportunities for spot up jump shooters, or possible cuts to the bastket by players whose man is watching the ball rather then the good old “see the man, see the ball” routeen.

Thirdly and finally you are rewarding the man who runs the furtherst on the court! Now you may argue that the point guard, or perimeter players run more then the big man, but you would be wrong.

Yes, they run faster and have more nimble defensive assignmenets, but the big man runs baseline to baseline every time the balls goes up and down the floor, and after playing positions 2 through 5 myself I can tell you there is simply nothing more frustrating then lugging your large frame from 1 end of the court to the other, and for the only contact you get of the ball to be when you get a rebound.

I’ve used a lot of quite old examples there with Shaq and Youngblood, so let’s use something more contemporary to illustrate my point. Take the Scottish Rocks for example. What on earth is going off north of the border? It’s the same team as last year, many predicited a good finishing from them in the league and a good showing in the trophy competitions, but they’ve lost 4? 5? games so far, and certainly more then they’ve won!



Look at their team based on what I’ve said about, then watch them the next time they play. Whollers in not an inside threat. He has good hands and can finish a play if his man goes to sleep, but you wont see him with his back to the basket putting on a spin move, or facing up just outside the key and going to the basket hard. He settles for the jumper more often then not, and that leaves you with Stirl.

As good a player as he is, he doesn’t have the legs to do what he did for the Sharks and Brigton night in, night out, for 35 minutes a game, which means that you have a team that relys a great deal on perimiter scores with nothing on the inside to make teams commit to them, so Joseph and Yanders don’t get the space they need to get off high percentage shots.

Finally I’ll come to my own team, the Sharks. Well, we have a problem on 2 fronts really. Firstly, we don’t seem to commit to any particular playing style at all. Some quarters against some teams we will run the break every time we catch a rebound, some times we give the ball to Parillon on the blocks to the extent where it’s actually being forced and it creates turnovers, and then there are times where it’s a 1 pass 1 shot offense, but to be honest I digress, that’s a whole separate issue I’ll cover another time

 Our main problem is that we have 2 very legitimate inside scoring threats in Parillon and Chaney, but we do NOT use even close to their full potential. Parillon is very agrresive in fronting his man in the post, has superb hands, but lacks the hight sometimes to get off a good shot. And Chaney, well, for some reason, God knows why that is, not only do we not look for him on the offensive end, but he only averages 20-25 minutes a game!!!!!!!!????????

Although I wasn’t at the Birmingham game, from the write up’s a simliar story unfolded whereby we were sucessful when we went inside to Chaney (no surpise there then), but then he was benched for long periods of the game and we just can’t seem to get any rythem together after.

Because the “star players” we rely on for points are not basketball smart, and as such, when the interior pass isn’t imediately available, they try and force their own offense with wild drives to the basket, or crazy off balance shots, especially as we saw in the Newcastle game, and it breaks down offensive cohesion, players get frustrated due to the lack of ball movement, and the oppositions get their tails up and go on a run.



EuroLeague Women because women's basketball is the most important thing in life after family and good health!
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