4 corners v. The shot clock

[real chili 83]

Tommyc6 had a great post with video from the 77 national championship.

The second half was, in part, a great chess game, with Dean Smith going into the 4 corners offense.  MU, under Al's direction, waited UNC out with great patience.  Finally, a now cold UNC took a shot, and missed.  The Warriors were off to the races. 

Al had a great quote about that sequence...UNC, "they let their sweat dry".  The rest is history.

So, my question is this.  the shot clock brings a certain tempo to the game...does it take away too much from the game in terms of strategy? 

Before you answer, consider the intentional foul.

Crawlers or fatheads for the opener.   Discuss.

[Dawson Rental]

Tommyc6 had a great post with video from the 77 national championship.

The second half was, in part, a great chess game, with Dean Smith going into the 4 corners offense.  MU, under Al's direction, waited UNC out with great patience.  Finally, a now cold UNC took a shot, and missed.  The Warriors were off to the races. 

Al had a great quote about that sequence...UNC, "they let their sweat dry".  The rest is history.

So, my question is this.  the shot clock brings a certain tempo to the game...does it take away too much from the game in terms of strategy? 

Before you answer, consider the intentional foul.

Crawlers or fatheads for the opener.   Discuss.

Unfortunately, as several very low scoring upsets prior to the implementation of the shot clock proved, the shot clock is necessary to force some basketball teams to actually play basketball, rather than hold the ball until they can frustrate the other, superior team into not playing basketball either.

As regards the intentional foul, I think that the last two minutes of most basketball games will continue to take at least 20 minutes to play until the referees begin to call intentional fouls when the losing team intentionally fouls.

[CTWarrior]

I like the shot clock and it protects these "genius" coaches from themselves.  I remember a Duke-UNC game when Gminski was Duke's center where Dean Smith refused to play offense and was behind 7-0 at halftime.  Actually, if there was a shot clock Dean might have had an extra championship or two, including 1977.

Guy Lewis blew the game to Valvano and NC State after Houston went on an extended run to take control of the game and he decided to go in to a stall to exploit his team's only weakness, foul shooting.  

Conversely, Rollie Massimino's judicious use of time not to stall but patiently explore the defense until they got a great shot won them the title over Georgetown in 84.

I like college basketball's tinkering with the rules.  To paraphrase Bill James, over the years college basketball's rule changes always seem to try to accomplish one of two things.  
1.  Stop sheer size from dominating talent (goaltending, Widening the lane, 3 point shot)
2.  Stop screwing around and play basketball (shot clock, 5 second closely guarded rule, 2 shots instead of one and one after 10 fouls)

Those are good things to try to accomplish, if you ask me.

[6Under20]

As regards the intentional foul, I think that the last two minutes of most basketball games will continue to take at least 20 minutes to play until the referees begin to call intentional fouls when the losing team intentionally fouls.
[/quote]

I would explore giving the team the choice of 2 shots or the ball after ten fouls.  (Unless MU is down to a bad free throw shooting team)

Also, less time outs.  There were a few games this year where the other teams ran out of TOs early, it was great to see the players play without stopping every 20 seconds for a commercial.

[dgies9156]

I lived through both the shot-clock and non-shot clock era. Coaches adapt to the circumstances they are handed. Al's teams, for example, were deliberate and defensive. If we had a shot clock, Al would have adjusted well and the team probably would have been even better. We had an exceptionally talented group of student-athletes.

For example, if we had a three-point shot in the 1970s, Gary Rosenberger might have been a starter and maybe even MVP of our 1976-1977 team! He had one of the sweetest shots ever at Marquette. He was brought into the game to loosen defenses so we could hammer the ball into Jerome and Bo. If every Rosenberger shot was worth three points, Bo would have broken every conceivable Marquette record and only God knows how good Butch would have been.

The reality is that ESPN was born in 1979 and television demanded a faster game. Who is going to sit around and watch a group of guys toss a basketball around for 32 minutes and score three baskets? Not many folks, I'm sure. If that's the game the colleges were going to play, then we'd probably have Big Monday Bowling instead of the Big East doubleheader.

Speeding the game up and allowing for more exhibitions of talent by long shooting and pulling defenses out makes the game far more attractive to a television audience. Look at the difference between the NHL, where scores are few and far between, and the NBA, where action leads to scoring. The NHL is a difficult game to watch. The NBA is not!

[muwarrior69]

The reality is that ESPN was born in 1979 and television demanded a faster game. Who is going to sit around and watch a group of guys toss a basketball around for 32 minutes and score three baskets? Not many folks, I'm sure. If that's the game the colleges were going to play, then we'd probably have Big Monday Bowling instead of the Big East doubleheader.

Speeding the game up and allowing for more exhibitions of talent by long shooting and pulling defenses out makes the game far more attractive to a television audience. Look at the difference between the NHL, where scores are few and far between, and the NBA, where action leads to scoring. The NHL is a difficult game to watch. The NBA is not!

Actually it was the ABA, long before ESPN, that made both college and pro ball what it is today.

[lab_warrior]

Not only pro shot clock, but the time should be LESS.  Lower it to 30 seconds.  Also would be in favor of widening the lane (trapezoid style) and having the option to take the ball out of bounds vs. FTs when fouled under 2 min. 

[slingkong]

dgies9156, I don't get the assertion that NHL and soccer, by extension, are difficult to watch.  There's plenty of action going on even if there are less frequent scores.  Both offer plenty of shots taken, long runs made between defenders, etc.  If people are so simple minded that the only thing they understand is scoring, that's a problem of the audience and not the sport itself.

[dgies9156]

dgies9156, I don't get the assertion that NHL and soccer, by extension, are difficult to watch.  There's plenty of action going on even if there are less frequent scores.  Both offer plenty of shots taken, long runs made between defenders, etc.  If people are so simple minded that the only thing they understand is scoring, that's a problem of the audience and not the sport itself.

You must not be a television executive! The fact is that virtually every major network has given the NHL -- and soccer by extension -- a try. It has yet to take off to anywhere near the level of basketball. The audience drives the sport, since the goal of any sport is to build audiences and make money for the owners.

If you don't buy that sports is a profit-oriented business, explain to me why anyone would be interested in the Chicago Cubs!

You can argue culture. You can argue that every American sports fan has ADHD. You're probably right, but the fact remains that compared to the combined number of hours invested in college and professional basketball and football, not to mention baseball, the NHL has a paltry amount of national broadcast hours.

Finally, look at baseball. Ostensibly, baseball is like Hockey. It should be a relatively low-scoring affair with hitters being non-productive between 7 and 8 of every 10 at bats. But baseball's popularity hit a zenith in the late 1990s, during the steroid era when we all went out to watch Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Raphel Palimerio et al, jack balls out of the park. Back in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, when Bob Gibson had a 1.12 earned run average, baseball executives knew they had problems. They changed the dimensions of the pitching mound to foster more hitting.

The NFL also has changed the rules to foster more scoring because that's what we want to see -- some doofus dancing in the end zone.

[augoman]

the beauty of Al's control offense was that any team MU played knew that to fall behind was lethal.  Al said he'd 'take the air out of the ball' but he actually worked the other team into a frustration defense allowing us to score inside.  Then he'd smother them with our d and get the ball back.  Coaches would put two guys on the ballto try to force turnovers, and get more frustrated as their fouls mounted and Dean the dream would go to the line.

The years of defending our "slow-down" style of play to UW-madison fans (who were chanting 'boring,boring') during the games (how ironic is that?) were great, because it was actually a 'pick-apart' of the opponents defense resulting in baskets, as opposed to a stall like the 4 corners.  The cornerstone of the Warriors game was defense.

[Dawson Rental]

the beauty of Al's control offense was that any team MU played knew that to fall behind was lethal.  Al said he'd 'take the air out of the ball' but he actually worked the other team into a frustration defense allowing us to score inside.  Then he'd smother them with our d and get the ball back.  Coaches would put two guys on the ballto try to force turnovers, and get more frustrated as their fouls mounted and Dean the dream would go to the line.

The years of defending our "slow-down" style of play to UW-madison fans (who were chanting 'boring,boring') during the games (how ironic is that?) were great, because it was actually a 'pick-apart' of the opponents defense resulting in baskets, as opposed to a stall like the 4 corners.  The cornerstone of the Warriors game was defense.

The control offense was a perfect example of coaching to the rules then in force.  Unfortunately, it was a doomed offense because the rules that allowed it to flourish were abused by other teams who used not just the four corners, but stalls to make games ridiculously low scoring affairs with final scores in the teens.  Al could see the writing on the wall for his offense and for his style of handling players and had the foresight to leave the game on top.

However, after an Al coached game no one ever said, "How come you only played one half?"

[Goose]

I'm with LabWarrior. Like the shot clock and wish it were at 30 seconds.

[RushmoreAcademy]

No doubt that the shot-clock was necessary, and in my opinion drastically improved the game.  All opinions are going to be effected by the era you became accustomed to watching the game in.  That's going to apply with any change in a sport.  There are still people arguing that the wild cards were a bad move for baseball (the original, two wildcards). Some people didn't want lights at Wrigley and fought it even up until '88. 
I'm not sure you can blame the unpopularity of soccer or hockey on the simple-mindedness of American fans as much as the fact that those simply aren't really America's sports.   Baseball really isn't that far off from soccer (Europe) or hockey (Canada) in scoring, but it's still beloved in comparison because of the history of the game here.

[Dawson Rental]

dgies9156, I don't get the assertion that NHL and soccer, by extension, are difficult to watch.  There's plenty of action going on even if there are less frequent scores.  Both offer plenty of shots taken, long runs made between defenders, etc.  If people are so simple minded that the only thing they understand is scoring, that's a problem of the audience and not the sport itself.

It's says a lot that you took a comment from dgies9156 about hockey and brought up soccer on your own.  I played soccer in college (as a scrub) and as recently as last year I played in a recreational league, so I love the sport, but I think that someone has to be a diehard FIFA traditionalist to not see that rules have to be changed to allow for more scoring.  The most succinct way I can put it is this.  When I hear that Costa Rica has tied Germany in the World Cup, I'd like to think; "Wow, Costa Rica must have played a hell of a game."  Instead, I find myself thinking; "I guess that that was expected."