Basketball: The Unorthodox. What Is That?

I write every day for one reason...the Platonic wisdom. 

The world celebrates conventional wisdom. If an investment fund loses money on Amazon or Facebook stock (once IBM), "you buy the blue bloods, because everyone else is buying them." The manager assumes little 'career risk' by mainstream risk-taking.

What would that mean for basketball? For discussion sake, I eliminate 'stall ball' as we have a shot clock. "Switching everything" isn't unconventional in 2021. Unorthodox might mean unexpected or different, even minor wrinkles. If we had excellent individual defenders and cohesive team play, nothing is better than tight man defense. 

Here are a few possibilities. 

Defense: 

1. "Junk defenses." Enough teams use box-and-1 or triangle-and-two that we might call hybrid defenses simple variants. I believe in tailoring strategy to personnel versus 'system coaching' with recruiting or vertically-integrated programs (from youth to high school). 

Or consider aligning in a zone each time down and shifting into man-to-man.

2. "Unique defenses" - e.g. The Freak Shift between man and zone defenses or zone and zone defenses depending on your preference and experience. Young players can become easily confused even with clarity and simplicity.

Here's a link to a UNLV tome on the Amoeba defense. Years ago we played a middle school team averaging 63 points/game with the best player in the league who could penetrate and make threes. Using a hybrid defense to try to deny her the ball and double any drive with the other guard, we held the team to 45 and lost by 20 because we were offensively challenged. 

When "star players" don't "get theirs" they sometimes become frustrated, selfish, or play out of control. 

3a. Unexpected defense (e.g. trapping, trap and go (run and jump)). We've never had the luxury of much practice time to introduce alternatives. And do not major in the minors (devote the most time to what we do a lot). 

3b. Hack-a-Shaq. Do they do that in high school? 

Offense:

1. Back door cuts (cutting and screening combat tight defense). 

2. Slipped/ghost screens

3. Unusual screening or handoffs. This depends on the eye of the beholder. Staggered screens including Iverson actions, screen-the-screener, and even screen-the-roller (Spain action) aren't so unusual. 

Duke transforms horns into handoffs or isolation, a clever wrinkle. 

Sequential screens by 2 set up a big for an open layup or a mismatch on a switch. 

Elbow get action often out of horns is another action most teams don't see. Years ago our high school had a phenomenal pick-and-roll player who excelled at rejecting screens. 

Obviously, without talent to execute, "we can't run what we can't run." 

Lagniappe (something extra). Daily development idea. 

Note the magic of Durant and the "lateral float crossover." 

Lagniappe 2. Consider complex problems at your leisure. Four key Platonic ideas:

• Think more.
• "True love is admiration." (be more like those we admire)
• Decode the message of beauty (educate our souls).
• Reform society (what unifying themes belong - fulfillment, excellence?) "bad heroes give glamor to flaws of character" and he wanted a new breed of heroes who modeled goodness and kindness