Additional (Interesting) Observations from Yesterday

I think you may have misunderstood my comments. I have no quarrel with Bria being moved off the ball. I would do the same as a coach. As I said, removing the management responsibilities to allow her to be more mentally focused on scoring is a positive. I was merely observing that while scoring is a natural strength, playing off the ball isn't and that I would be watching to see how Bria improves her instincts for playing off the ball. Geno compared her to Renee in mentality and I think that is fairly apt. Playing off the ball helped Renee score more even though she was never a natural shooting guard in terms of off the ball instincts.

I believe Geno also said that her natural position is not point guard.

Geno has also compared her to Sue Bird as a point guard in the past so he's not exactly consistent. He's right that she's not a natural point guard. Her natural position if we have to define it would be combo guard. She's neither the extremes of a point guard or shooting guard naturally. And she has plenty of company, particularly in contemporary times where the prevailing philosophy has become letting your best player completely dominate the ball in order to win games starting already at the youngest ages. So there is a legion of guards that are neither point guards because they are scorers nor shooting guards because they lack off the ball instincts in both men's and women's basketball from the youth levels all the way up to the NBA and the WNBA. The NBA particularly has an entire generation of elite young players like this playing point guard including the most recent MVP from my hometown NBA team. That is simply the reality of today's basketball.

But Derrick Rose is so much fun to watch!

The thing about Bria is that she was so far superior to any of her teammates in high school that she had to handle the ball and do most of the scoring. The odds of the ball going in the basket were so much greater when Bria shot the ball that there was little reason for her to do a lot of passing to her teammates. I don't know much about Bria's AAU teams but I heard that she mostly played off the ball and of course didn't receive any coaching on how to that effectively.

I certainly didn't say he wasn't fun to watch . Trust me I wasn't sitting there complaining about the point guard scoring too much during the 100 or so Bulls games I watched last season.

It is a legitimate conundrum coaches face. The best way to win is absolutely to give the ball to your best player, and at the lower levels it is the best way to win by miles. On the other hand skills that players fail to learn at an early age can't necessarily be learned later in life in college or the pros with the same success. Athletics to some degree isn't that different from language acquisition. As a Bulls fan I'm grateful that Dean Smith forced Michael Jordan to essentially play in a box, but I also think UNC would have been more successful in 1983 and 1984 if Smith had actually taken full advantage of his best player. It is a difficult position coaches are in, and a situation that doesn't necessarily have a correct answer.

And your assessment of Bria's HS versus AAU experiences matches the limited knowledge I have.

Mine, too.

Using my Mac I just spread the screen and drive that stuff off of it out of sight or site.