Headless chicken finale

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

I want to make a final coherent post on the headless chicken theory before
we get to see it in practice with the new personnel. Basically, my feeling
is that we had poor defensive personnel so that I don't blame the defensive
system for our failings. But I acknowledge that the system and the players
didn't fit so it was possibly a bad choice. I think everyone agrees with
that. 

Where I may differ is the following.
1. I personally think we would have been bad using other defensive systems
too. Maybe not as bad, but not good enough to make a difference in making
the playoffs.
2. I'm not convinced that it can't work with more athletic players. That
is, I'm not convinced that it's not a viable system in the NBA. This is
mainly from watching other teams with similar systems, and seeing it work
occasionally with the Celtics.

In fact, I believe that it should be more successful in conjunction with
the press (as opposed to last year when we didn't full court press much).
The reason is because the press eats up time off the shot clock, and so
does "headless chicken" because they need to rotate the ball to get the
good shot, so there's some synergy there. Another reason is that the press
leads to defensive mismatches as it is, so getting even more mismatched
isn't as much of a marginal drawback.

But I definitely understand that there are very valid opposing viewpoints
by Kestas and Joe on the two points I made above. Basically if we
completely stink defensively this year even with the additions of Brown,
Blount, Moiso, the return of the press, and additional experience by our
core players, I'm acknowledging that they were right, I was wrong, and the
system was a mistake. More importantly, Pitino will be gone and hopefully
the next GM doesn't jettison all the young talent for good defensive role
players. On the other hand, if we're actually decent and we make the
playoffs, I think we'll all be happy.

Alex