...he stands on the sideline exuding a calmness...as if there's nothing that might happen in a basketball game that would either surprise or confuse him.
I'm a little gun shy about ESPO's deep analyses after Zach Lowe's "symphony" and Tim Bontemp's Grant Williams Effect. The key to me accepting that is "as if." Udoka does look like nothing rattles him but the head coaches are the only ones allowed to think in games and Udoka is not standing there daydreaming.
His most difficult moments of his first season as a head coach came when his team was foundering...and everyone around him wondered why he wasn't screaming at his players and throwing things around the room. It turns out he didn't destroy the room because he was too busy reading it.
Yeah. I have read that before. The coach reads, not the players; the players just play. "His first season as a head coach" and he's going to come in and lay down the law to a bunch of NBA'ers, "It's my way or the highway"? No.
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"In general, we have guys who stay even-keeled and don't get rattled easily," Udoka said...Saturday...
Hmm hmm hmm...Is that really true? Um, I think it IS. They have no memory, they forget the last game, they forget the last quarter, the last play. They don't think, they just play. But then why was it so important in the "Heat" series for each team to jump out quickly?
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During Boston's fourth-quarter run, Udoka made two unconventional moves: He called timeout, and he did it twice in 30 seconds [at 3:47 and 3:17] while his team was rolling.
The Celtics had four timeouts before he called the first, so Udoka was going to lose both in the final two minutes. Still, it's counterintuitive to stop the flow of a massive run -- twice! -- by pulling your team aside to reassess the moment.
Oh! NBA rules are you only get two T.O.'s in the final two mins? I didn't know that. Well, use 'em or lose 'em! That makes it a little less unconventional.
But it was Udoka's way of making sure his team knew the job wasn't finished as well as an obvious sign of respect for the opponent.
Okay! I can see that, too. That is strategic.
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It's one thing to make a ton of 3s -- the Celtics hit seven in a row to start the fourth -- and another to start expecting it. ...
Umm, don't understand that; seems a deep point but it's out of my depth.
By disrupting the cadence of the game, [Udoka] did his part to keep the floor from becoming scattered and allowing the Warriors back into it.
I don't understand. DAMN IT. It would seem to me when you disrupt anything you increase the chaos in the thing. Tim Keown seems to be saying the opposite.
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"It's all about energy. If the energy's right, you're going to rock with it. If it's not, then you're not. It's plain and simple..."-Marcus Smart.
I think Smarty is on to something there. It is often remarked that NBA basketball is like jazz. It's true imo; within a general structure, with rules of play, with the instruments available, both are improvisational, you react to the flow, you don't THINK, you just play. When I was at my best as a trial lawyer I had everything thought through before I stepped into the courtroom. "This is what I will do; if (s)he does that, I will do this; if (s)he does this, I will do that." Having the strategy and counter-strategy thought through in advance gave me the luxury to sit back and react to the inevitable twists of trial, to read the jury.
Not understanding "expect" and "disrupting" I can't form a judgment on this article. Keown writes about the strategy-cum-necessity of Udoka's T.O.'s. What about the Minutemen? Somebody explain to me the rationale in having FIVE GUYS plays only one minute!
