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We've all seen this quote by now:

"One of the things I was concerned about was that Kobe hadn't scored a field goal in the first half," said Phil Jackson. "They knew, 'Hey, he's going to come out and try to get some scores.'"

As Garnett said of the Lakers, "If you watch them, if you've paid attention to them all year, usually the first half is team ball. Second half is usually Kobe taking over the games. It looked like they wanted to get the ball to Kobe and sort of finish it off."

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/8240 ... inals-away

But let's think about that for a moment. It was a foregone conclusion that the Lakers would abandon the strategy that had put them ahead by 18 points at the half.

Wtf???

No. The idea is that by establishing the team it will open up Kobe's offense. It's like establishing the run in football (a myth BTW) but it's the same idea..

Pete

GuyClinch wrote:No. The idea is that by establishing the team it will open up Kobe's offense. It's like establishing the run in football (a myth BTW) but it's the same idea..

Pete

What the football version really is about (either run to establish pass or the more modern pass to establish run) is mixing it up, forcing the defense to defend suboptimally against either because they have to be prepared for both.

But that doesn't work when you take one tactic or the other to extremes, and the Jackson quote suggests it was known an extreme was coming. Balance is central to it.

In basketball there's an additional factor of establishing a "rhythm" or "flow" -- but then once you're in it, why get too far away from it?

Well part of the problem here is the Bill Simmons/Michael Jordan myth which states essentially to win close basketball games you need a "go-to" scorer - and the team with the best go-to scorer wins.

This myth is why the pundits felt the Lakers couldn't lose and why they like to play team ball and the start and then use Kobe as 'closer." The Jordan myth evolved because Jordan was just a vastly superior player.

It's not really the way you should try to run your team. One of the fascinating things Doc did is kind of derail this myth. He talks about no "hero" shots meaning that even in crutch time he just wants his team to execute its offense. The only major difference being that PP or RA will usually start the set. The other teams offenses are all about heros. Kobe Bryant is being set up to be a "hero"

Of course some of us are not terribly surprised to see this in effect. Bill Simmons and the other media folks seem to be big time purveyors of such basketball myths IMHO without doing any kind of analysis (even cursory) to decide if its warranted.

But I was waiting till after we won a championship to harp on Simmons for this. Unfortunately the media will likely decide that PP or RA are just great "go-to" guys and miss the forest for the trees. Or perhaps that Kobe is a bad one...

To me it really is much like the 'establish the run" bit. People ENDLESSLY harp on that when in fact most teams use their running game AFTER then have racked up the score with their passing game. CHFF makes a great case for this..

Pete

Well, I haven't believed "establish the run" for a while, and I was well clued-in to the CHFF argument. But then, I'm a HUGE believer in multi-threat versatility.

Indeed, quite literally, my PhD thesis was the proof of an extension to game theory' min-max theorem.