Which doesn’t change the accuracy of your assumptions.
And might in fact make it slightly more critical to answer my questions re: basketball without making such assumptions. That is, if you’d like me to have a chance of understanding where you’re coming from.
Funny, that was going to be my response to this quote:
If he’s got his hands on the ball and he’s laying in the ruck, damn right I’m not going to take my boot of his neck! I’d expect him to do the same. I’m trying to recall if I’ve ever come out of a game without at least half a dozen rake marks all over my body.
Crap, you’re right. What the hell kind of basketball player has their boots on their opponents necks?!
It’s not goofing off. Ball control offense, and lack of pressure defense is how teams regularly play after building up a huge lead. Noone (At least, I am not) l is saying that they shouldn’t try and just let the other team score points while they close their eyes and throw the ball in the air. They are just saying they shouldn’t run and gun and press in order to run the score up to 100 points. The victory would be just as much of a trouncing without the attempt to break 100. And, the coach wouldn’t have been risking injury, picking up of bad habits, looking like a prick (to some people. Admittedly, a minority in this thread.), and creating bad blood among the teams.
I would expect this team to get trash talked by their next opponent with a similar talent level. Atleast, that is how we would have reacted as kids.
I agree completely, but were I the winning coach, I’d probably put in my scrub players at the half just so they get some court time during an actual game. This may come in handy down the road if one of the A-squad gets hurt and needs to be replaced.
The scrubs, nevertheless, should continue the ass-kicking to the best of their ability.
Err, it’s already been mentioned several times…there are only 8 girls on each squad. It’s literally impossible to pull ALL the starters.
It is not necessarily true that one of the 5 starters had to be in the game. For example, NCAA rules allow as few as one player on the court for a team that has a chance to win. (Tried to look up TAPPS basketball rules, but their rulebook costs money.)
In this particular game, with these particular kids, in this particular league, the decisions made by the winning coach required to get to the number of 100 before they shut it down were innapropriate.
They could have slowed it down in any number of ways once they had the game in hand. Slowing down and playing a more time consuming, ball control oriented offense when the game clearly in hand is fairly common in childrens sports (and adult pro sports too- especially football and basketball). No one is insulted when the opposing team “runs out the clock” in a game that is clearly over, it is part of sports.
However, I don’t think that this display of douchbagery in and of itself is enough for a guy to lose his job. A reprimand would be sufficient for me if I was the guy’s boss.
It’s a really good thing then that nobody suggested the team goof off. As I mentioned, basketball is a complex game where there are a variety of 100% legitimate 100% valid offensive and defensive strategies used at all levels of the game. All that anyone asks is that the better team put in their reserve players and select a game appropriate strategy.
Can I say that again?
All that anyone asks is that the better team put in their reserve players and select a game appropriate strategy.
In interactive sports like basketball and football, the strategies are clear and well known to fans. In these sports, with strong ball possession rules and alternating possession, it’s also not a stupid strategy to slow down the game, run the clock and reduce the overall number of possessions. Changing strategy does not change the ultimate goal of scoring during every possession, it does not tell players to stop trying, it just slows down the game. A side benefit is that the outclassed team gets to experience real game play instead of just watching the backsides of the better team while they score. The better team also gets to use normal game tactics, instead of the small set of tactics that work great on an outclassed team, but are useless on a competitive team.
It’s a lot harder to “turn it down” in a sport like baseball. You can’t sub in all your scrubs because of substitution rules, and the key interaction is batter vs pitcher, and each player should still try their best, if the pitcher can’t get batters out, it’s going to be ugly. At best, you tell your guys to stop stealing bases. In swimming, there isn’t much one can do with respect to strategy, once you’re in the water you swim, and try to get the best time you can. It’s also harder in free flowing possession sports like soccer and hockey, you wind up playing keep away instead of trying to score.
OK, Klaatu and everyone who has posted some variation on the above, we get it, OK? You have great big metaphorical penises and gigantic rock hard testicles. You’re hard and tough and fucking real. You have demonstrated this to everyone’s satisfaction, we are all unbelievably impressed with how tough you are, and attractive people of your preferred gender the world over are currently developing plans to get you in bed. We get it. Please drop the posturing, because I for one have a weak stomach and it’s making me a little nauseous.
Now, let’s talk about whiny little self-entitled pussies for a bit.
This situation is relevant, and the coach deserved censure (not firing, I don’t think, although his refusal to toe his employer’s line would have warranted firing in any company with which I have ever been associated), for reasons that have nothing to do with “traumatizing” the kids who lost the game. Please take that silly stupid strawman and go frighten it with your enormous genitals.
Here’s the thing: a scholastic athletic coach, however much he or she wants to position him/herself as a military leader, is not, in fact, a military leader. A high school basketball coach is a teacher. This coach’s responsibility is to teach his students about: (1) the game of basketball, and how to play it well; and (2) how to be what I’ll call a “good basketball citizen.”
See, here’s the thing. “Playing to win” is of course the point of a game with a winner or loser, as Klaatu points out in his astute and nuanced analysis quote above. I’m pretty sure no one, in this thread or really anywhere, is arguing against that. What Jimmy Chitwood has been trying, with admirable restraint, to argue is that playing to win and playing to maximize the margin of defeat are not the same things.
In many cases, in fact, playing to win and playing to maximize the margin of defeat are actually actions in direct opposition. In professional basketball, a team that develops a lead that will be difficult to surmount will adopt a strategy similar to the one described by Jimmy Chitwood: ball control offense, low pressure defense, etc. The reasons for this are many, but the fundamental one is this: that kind of strategy makes it harder for the losing team to come back. Focus on that, everyone who wants to keep hammering in the “you play to win” thing: with a big lead, your best chance of winning in basketball is to back off and slow things down. Aggressive, high-pressure tactics are much more prone to error, to allowing the other team a chance to slip in and make a comeback. For the same reason, football teams with very large leads usually stop blitzing and throwing long, to avoid making a mistake that might key a comeback. So from a purely “basketball” standpoint, the coach taught his players the wrong thing: with a big lead, “playing to win” means “playing conservatively,” so the way the winning team in this story played was not “playing to win.”
Of course, in this case, the losing team never had a chance to make a comeback no matter what the winning team did. So the coach’s strategic “mistake” wasn’t really a mistake, the way it would have been against a good opponent having a bad day. But since the way the winners played can’t be honestly described as “playing to win,” why did they play that way?
In sports, playing to maximize the margin of victory (again, as distinct from “playing to win”) is usually frowned upon. Why? Because playing to maximize the margin of victory is a self-aggrandizing thing. You keep scoring and scoring and scoring because you can, and if you can do a thing, you should. In the long run, self-absorption, emphasis on “do whatever you can to draw attention to yourself, as long as it’s technically within the rules,” these things make young atheletes (and, let’s face it, young people of all stripes) into pricks. Anquan Boldin is going to the Super Bowl. But he’s pissed off that his team isn’t throwing him the ball often enough. That attitude starts with things like this story, with the premise that “winning doesn’t matter, playing the right way doesn’t matter, what matters is me, how many points can I score, how many home runs can I hit, how definitively can I humiliate this week’s opponent.” You become a lesser player.
And then, when the real world sneaks up on you, and you see that it’s not all about you, that sometimes in the real world you don’t get to do a thing without consequences just because you can, you turn into, I don’t know, Terrell Owens. You turn into someone who can’t handle criticism of your own actions. Please note: who’s whining, in this news story? The kids who lost? Or the coach who realized he couldn’t do whatever he wanted with impunity?
So, in conclusion, Klaatu and those who think like you: I heartily agree with your assertion that “We are raising a generation of whiny little self-entitled pussies.”
Congratulations on contributing!
I agree, storyteller. Winning with class means you don’t rub someone’s face in it. If football, I’ve seen teams take a knee inside the 5 yard line in the last minute when they were comfortably ahead and could easily score more points. Nobody accuses them of being condescending, it’s just what you do when you have a game in hand. In baseball, you don’t bunt or steal bases when you’re up by 8 runs in the late innings. I’ve seen managers signal to each other, asking if they mind if a batter swings at a 3-0 pitch in such situations. The idea of the game is to score more points than the other team. Once the other team cannot come back and win, then scoring as much as you can is pointless.
How many points do you think you could score if you were playing without an opponent. 500? More? It doesn’t take long to score. This is essentially what the team was doing. For people arguing you can’t score 100 without playing a fast game, you are acting as if there was a defense. Going straight to the basket, even slowly, doesn’t take terribly long. Since, it basically became a practice for them, working on skills becomes the goal. I don’t see how taking lay-up drills or working on 3-pointers is out of line.
Perhaps, they tried to score as quickly as possible so there opponent could work on there offensive game? His team could play basketball and their opponents couldn’t. I’m sure his “scrubs” could go up the court and lay the ball in as easily as the stars. I don’t think we have enough evidence here to say the coach did anything wrong. I do like the fact that he objected to everyone throwing the blame on to his team even it cost him his job. Do we really think the opposition would be better off losing only 75-0? They would have gotten more out of it?
There opponent shouldn’t have been playing games period. Clearly they weren’t ready for it. The winning team might have gone too far, but we don’t have enough evidence to support that conclusion.
Then the coach should go fuck himself.
How about a full court press? What was that teaching his team? Or the other team?
Nothing, and you know it. The only reason to run a full court press against an outmatched opponent when the score is already lopsided is to increase the margin of victory.
No, but I think the winning team would have “gotten more out of it” if they hadn’t been encouraged to press their advantage. See above.
The coach says they stopped pressing after it was 25-0. Do you evidence that disputes this?
Every account I have read suggests that Covenant was running a press well into the second half of the game. It is possible that this is not the case, of course, because I didn’t see the game. But I can only respond to the facts that are reported.
Are those accounts of people at the game?
I already posted the account of the opposing coach, who said that they did indeed go into an alternate press later in the game.
As to not having enough evidence - there are 32 minutes in the game. The winners here did not score in the last four minutes, so that means that they scored 100 points in 28 minutes. That’s just about four points a minute or one basket every thirty seconds. Res ipsa loquitur.
I’m also amused that not running up the score, which has been well understood, appreciated and practiced by professional and college football players and coaches for decades is described as “pussy” behavior by a bunch of fantasy sports league internet types here.
Yup.
And yet experienced coaches like Dread Pirate Jimbo have no problem doing it. That’s the one thing I might blame the winning coach for - not knowing his sport well enough to know how to maximize the coaching potential of a blowout for his own team.
Jimbo acknowledges that there is only so much you can do in a sport like baseball.
His league has a mercy rule because there’s next to nothing a coach can do to spare the opposing pitcher from a long, long, day of being unable to get batters out. The gentleman’s agreement only says to quit stealing and bunting, they don’t ask hitters to stop trying to get hits.
That’s a key difference. In baseball you really do have to tell players to stop trying, in basketball, you can change the strategy but keep playing hard.