They say, "youth is wasted on the young."
Players want to know how to succeed. Coaches realize that there are a thousand ways to fail.
The Second Law reminds us that nature favors randomness and failure. Chaos rules. The success of Golden State has us convinced that Pace and Space, "3 and D", or "Chuck it from the Street" is the future. As long as you have Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green et al. that may be true. But economics teaches us about the allocation of limited resources. Finding lightning in our bottle won't come as easily.
We're playing a non-league game against a talented and very tall team. I'm presuming they play a lot of zone. Imagine that somehow we're ahead by four with five minutes to play and they're sitting in a passive 2-3 zone and we're not in the bonus. Should we go 'retro' (absent shot clock) and hold the ball out? Is it more important to shorten the game and potentially enhance our chance of winning or play it out as though (high school rules) we have a shot clock? The latter strategy brings "Second Law" (entropy) randomness into greater relief but what lesson does it teach?
Should the fact that my best post player is unavailable today make a difference?
That brings me back to the "Main Thing." What does the team need now? Is it better to foul leading by three on the final possession or will major rebounding disadvantage that approach on free throws?
Sometimes it's vanilla versus chocolate ice cream. You can't really go wrong either way. 99 percent of the species ever present on earth have become extinct. Randomness hasn't proven itself a survival story. And situations matter. If this were the State Championship with no shot clock and I can shorten the game and get it down to our best free throw shooters in the last minutes while overmatched, then I'd stall. But today, I think my players want to play ball.
