My favorite spectator sport is college basketball. I recently read two articles which I thought made good observations about the sport I closely follow.
The first was about Bob Knight's retiring. Ken Pomeroy has made a name for himself in the last few years through astute and insightful analysis of college basketball statistics. His ratings site has all the numbers you can imagine presented in a "pace-free" way. (Basically, most stats you see on ESPN and CBS are "pace" influenced". For example, Team A plays very fast, generally shooting early in the shot clock. As a result, they and their opponent have more possessions per game and generally score lots of points. ESPN/CBS show how "good" offensively they are by using points per game. But because they are taking many more shots, Team A may not necessarily be a good offensive team. It is a better means to evaluate a team's offensive and defensive skill by factoring all stats by possessions used to achieve them, as Pomeroy does, rather than per game, as ESPN/CBS/MSM does.)
Pomeroy made a good point about Knight that I have not heard before. He spoke of how Knight's teams in 70s and first part of the 80s, the ones that gained him influence and praise for his basketball acumen as well as his 3 national championships, were about getting the ball to the basket for close shots or getting fouled and shooting at the line. This was sound strategy but the game changed with the introduction of the 3-pointer. Now, you could step out just a few feet from a typical mid-range jumper and make a shot which gave you 50% more points (3 vs 2).
As quickly became apparent, teams had to incorporate 3-point shooting into their offense. The average team 3-point shooting percentages, typically 35%-38%, were too good to only settle for 2-point shots which teams rarely exceeded 50% per team. You do the math and see how effective 3-point shooting is for modern teams.
However, Knight never adjusted. He stayed with the same system and ignored the 3-pointer. Pomeroy uses one game as an illustration. In 2005, Knight's Texas Tech team advanced to the Sweet 16. It would be his last real shot at making the Final Four, but they ran into a team, West Virginia, who heavily used the 3-pointer. Look at this chart from 2005. It shows the percentage of 3-pointers a team takes compared to their overall shots. West Virginia was 9th in the nation with nearly half their shots 3-pointers, and Texas Tech next to last in the nation. Texas Tech lost.
More than any article I have seen, this shows from strictly a basketball coaching point of view that Knight was a little overvalued as a coach. He was obviously great in one era, but it diminishes his coaching legacy that he never adjusted to the new rules. The temptation is to tie this stubbornness in basketball strategy in with his off the court actions , but ultimately we can't say that with 100% certainly what goes on inside him or any of us. However, he deserves some criticism of his basketball coaching for not adjusting to a new world (3-pointer was introduced in 1987) that he spent almost half of his coaching career in.
My comments on Knight when far longer than I thought so I will talk about the other article I found interesting in a second part later this week. Tomorrow, I am off to Washington DC to talk about SAML with GSA. Maybe we can find some more acronyms to use as well.
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