It occurs to me that the "Wheel" offense is the exact counterpart to the zone defense:
*Updated 9:23 pm
9:58
a premium on space and movement, not bodies; moving in sync in the same direction as five interconnected pieces, similar to the lever-operated soccer games in bars. Or like tiki-taka in real soccer; developed and installed to mask individual talent deficiencies, consequently minimizing individual excellence.
Because of all of the above, and in particular that last, instantiated in star Ja Morant, the "wheel" as played at St. Josephs, Maine and played in Memphis with the instruction of a former St. Joe's player and acolyte, apparently is out down South. As is the acolyte, Noah LaRoche, and the head coach, Taylor Jenkins, who it appears was a forced convert to the wheel.
This is the result of another couple of hours spent reading and thinking about the wheel.
A few other notes from reading and cogitating:
I confess that I didn't know anything about Memphis' offense until Jenkins' firing. There is plenty of ink on Memphis' early season success with the shiny new wheel, but the ink had not penetrated to my subterranean level. And that early season success did not transfer to the second half. Which wont of success, and Morant's complaints about the wheel, directly led to the axing of Jenkins, LaRoche, and another assistant, Patrick St. Andrews. The "Grizzlies" are 3L (0-2 under new head man Tuomas Iisalo, and 3-7. They were 26-15 at the half-way mark. They are 18-16 since.
The reasons for Memphis' second half dip in results are pretty straightforward: They played one of the easiest schedules in the first half, a substantially more difficult one in the second half; defenses got book on the new offense and adjusted; and one other, mentioned by at least one Memphis player, physical defenses. Again, the tiki-taka analogy. I have always believed that you should mass pressure on tiki-taka, play man-to-man, rush the man with the ball into passing before he's ready and before the octagon gets set, disrupt the passing lanes. Tiki-taka, like the wheel, is a movement and spacing offense. So, for example, what the "Knicks" did was put a body on every "Grizzlie", bump them, keep them from getting where they want to go, in this way prevent the elegant player and ball movement of the wheel.
One thing is still fuzzy for me. Is Tuomas Iisalo a wheel coach or a pick-and-roll coach? On the one hand Iisalo was hired with LaRoche and other wheelies; he "played a pivotal role in implementing" the wheel in Memphis, was one of two (with LaRoche) "architects"; he coached in Europe where the wheel spins more freely (and where the game is less physical); Ja Morant "hates" Iisalo's offense. However, other reports style Iisalo as "partial to the pick-and-roll who drills his teams in those concepts like a sergeant." Unless Iisalo is a PnR guy, why would Memphis' GM fire LaRoche, fire Jenkins, and promote Iisalo if he was a wheelie?
Understanding it more now, I am not surprised, nor chagrined, that the wheel evidently has gone flat in Memphis. I don't like the zone defense in the NBA, one reason for which is the "democratization" of the game, i.e. the leveling of individual talent. The wheel is a zone offense that tethers more stars to earth. I am not surprised that as simple an NBA tactic as playing bully ball would cause the wheels to fall off. The surprise is that so fragile a system was attempted at all at this level where the adage is "no autopsy, no foul."
As the Wheel Turns (or doesn't) in Memphis.
