This is part two of a three part series that previews the upcoming UConn basketball season. If you missed part one, click here:
http://the-boneyard.com/threads/201...daniel-hamilton-king-of-the-chessboard.79199/
In the fourteen seasons that Ken Pomeroy has tracked advanced offensive and defensive statistics, the University of Connecticut men’s basketball program has ranked higher in defensive efficiency in eleven of them. This more than likely has at least a little bit to do with the program’s recruiting philosophy, particularly under Hall of Famer Jim Calhoun. Because Calhoun and his staff could not match ammunition with the Duke’s, North Carolina’s, and Kentucky’s of the world on the recruiting trail, they often prioritized athleticism and size over skill, maintaining that the latter could be taught while the former two were more innately engraved in a player’s bloodlines.
We’ve seen this strategy mimicked by contemporaries both past and present, and while the teaching brilliance of Calhoun and his assistants could not be matched by everybody, a dynamic that could be verified by the program’s superior postseason success, programs like Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and now most recently Cincinnati have at the very least adopted variations of these tactics that premeditated success.
Certainly, far more than athleticism is required to navigate the minefields of pick-and-rolls that occupy the duration of even the most tepid division one offensive attacks, the least of which being a detailed understanding of opponent tendencies. To say communication is integral to defense is a sizable understatement; it entails far more than one player sliding his feet in the signaled direction of another. Rather, all five defenders must identify not only their proximity to the ball in relation to their primary assignment’s, but also, process the defensive technique that corresponds to every individual player.
While programs and teams may become renowned over the years for popularizing a particular scheme or method, it is important to acknowledge that even the coaches who subscribe to the most extreme principles of ball screen defense do not assign universal, one-size-fits-all tasks to their personnel.
The Indiana Pacers, under Frank Vogel, may be inclined to guard 1-5 ball screens in an ultra-conservative manner, with Roy Hibbert – one of the NBA’s most dominant defensive players when he’s right – conceding yards of ground, knowing he possesses the length to spring back out to the perimeter and puncture shooting windows. This is a means of inviting dribble penetration; in other words, the Pacers – knowing they hold the proverbial trump card – frequently choose to punt optimal defensive structure in the hopes of coaxing the opponent into attacking an unfavorable match-up or hoisting an inefficient shot.
However, despite Hibbert serving as the frontier that separates the taboo of mid-range jump shots from the prosperous land of paint points, the Pacers would not instruct Paul George to defend a ball screen in the same way they would Hibbert. Rather, George – an elite defensive player in his own right – would likely switch a 1-3 ball screen with the similarly versatile George Hill (and the Pacers ability to do this is why you will hear the word “wingspan” mentioned 700 times on draft night), particularly if it were late in the shot clock. In this sense, “scheme” can be a deceptive word; schemes are only as palatable as their personnel allows them to be.
The Pacers, then, in their defense of ball screens, must not only handicap the strengths and limitations of their opponents, but they must also determine the competence level of their teammates and themselves in executing various ball screen coverages. These are all calculations that must take place in the span of precious seconds (
OK, I’m being screened. Who is screening me? Which one of my teammates is guarding the guy that’s screening me? How does coach want me to defend this particular ball screen against this particular player?), and the application of different ball screen defenses depending on where you are on the floor only serves to exacerbate the complexities of these reflexive movements that are carefully considered by the good players and internalized by the great ones.
To the extent that I am importing examples from the NBA is only to illustrate the conspicuous overlap between the philosophies that permeate the NBA and the ones that Ollie hopes to instill in his team this fall. Although it is easy to conflate reality with media-driven filler, Ollie’s journey as an NBA nomad has empowered him with the tools to professionalize his teams in a manner that is simply unviable for other coaches to replicate. What’s more, is that with the departures of Billy Donovan and Fred Hoiberg to the NBA, Ollie now very likely sits in the king’s chair of NBA-minded college coaches.
A year ago, Ollie’s assortment of inexperienced forward talent – namely, Kentan Facey and Daniel Hamilton – struggled to function seamlessly within schemes predicated on precisely the sort of hyper-active attentiveness and exhaustive focus that the 2014 team’s forwards had mastered to such an exact science that Ollie was able to downsize against low-post grunts like Adreian Payne, Patric Young, and Julius Randle for extensive stretches, stretches that illuminated the malleability of sound positioning defense superseding deficits in strength and size on the interior.
In Shonn Miller, the fifth year senior from Cornell, Ollie has succinctly diagnosed and addressed the chief contributor to dooming the 2015 Huskies’ defense to mediocrity, replacing (or, at the very least, adding a valuable insurance policy) unknown commodities with a bona-fide foundational piece on the defensive end, somebody who led the Ivy League in Defensive Win Shares and ranked seventh in the entire nation in defensive rating. His proficiency on that end can be corroborated by whichever method of analysis you choose; advanced statistics, standard statistics, plus/minus data, film study, doesn’t matter.
Miller’s game tape reveals, first and foremost, exquisite athleticism, the sort of unmistakable gracefulness that can only be associated with the rare realm of versatility that enabled him to guard all five positions at Cornell, lifting a tortured defensive unit that ranked 350th (there are 351 division one teams, if you should know) in defensive efficiency during the 2014 season without him to 78th the following year. Transformative individual efforts of that ilk are rarely traceable to one discrete skill or talent, and they aren’t here, either. Standing at only 6’7, Miller blocked 7.1% of opponent two-point shots, a rate identical to that of Kentucky All-American Willie Cauley-Stein.
https://youtu.be/lh0FpVjukZs?t=216
Here, Miller exhibits positional awareness that denotes basketball acumen worthy of a player ten years his senior. With Rakeem Christmas – suddenly having blossomed into one of the Nation’s top post scorers – facing up a smaller defender along the baseline, Miller sags into his line of vision, eliminating the wrap-around pass and guarding against overplaying his hand on a sudden post double.
However, for all of Miller’s immense physical gifts, the genesis of his anticipatory brilliance on this particular play was fostered in an environment decidedly less romantic, a destination likely tucked away somewhere in the corridors of the Cornell basketball facility. Miller knows that Christmas is going to spin back over his left shoulder, and he knows that the difference between a post bucket and something less favorable than that is likely to be fiercely negotiated by the inertia of the man with the ball and the primary help defender. As such, Miller knows he must await – however at odds it may be with his natural inclinations as an athlete – Christmas’ spin back over the left shoulder. It has been drilled into his head in the film room, at practice, and likely on the bus ride over. This is his test, a test that will grade his ability to innately recognize and react to various subsets of the Syracuse offense.
Miller meets Christmas at precisely the pivot point from which the finality of the move must be realized. And, somehow, Miller waits him out, swatting the ball back where it came from.
The micro details of this individual play are evidentially mitigated by the larger scope of talent differential. Even in a season which saw little to anything go right for the Orange, they were able to distance themselves relatively effortlessly from an offensively-challenged Cornell team.
In the larger scheme, however, the process by which Miller abides on this play is symbolic of a larger culture of diligence that he will fit seamlessly into as the Storrs calendar turns to fall. Anything that occurs on the floor – whether offensively or defensively – at a high division one level is, on one front or another, an appeal to the conceptual and spatial aptitudes of each individual player. While we can condense the essence of the aforementioned play to the swift interaction of Miller and Christmas within definite windows of time and space, extrapolating all of these movements – and, particularly, the information overloads that must dictate them – into something more concrete is an exercise from which much can be gained.
But for as useful as Miller is as a fire blanket, his ability to unite an unremitting motor with an exacting regard for discipline makes him even more valuable as a primary defender, both as a pick-and-roll anchor and as a shutdown one-on-one defender. Balance is very much the bedrock of defensive fundamentals, and for Miller, entering his fifth year of college after having played three years for Bill Courtney at Cornell, the vital process of mastering crucial elements of footwork is already in its graduate stage.
Not to belabor the point, but defenders, after internalizing the cursory tenets of man-to-man defense, are encouraged to broaden their perception of the court. In other words, every component bit of lateral movement that occurs within the fixated parameters of play must, on some level, derive from subconscious impulses. In this regard, the notion that man-to-man defense boasts a significant amount of zone principles – and vice versa – is very much a resounding truth of basketball dialect. The art of defending – at least for those who have mastered it, such as the 2014 championship team – can be construed as an extended interplay of offense and defense, one of which is trying to slash open irreparable crevices in structure and the other of which is desperately attempting to bide enough time to recover back to their default setting.
I apologize if the tenor of the preceding paragraphs are more reminiscent of a lecture hall than an informative preview. To the extent that I am speaking generally about the sport at large is not because I feel I am sharing anything particularly revealing but only because the way I perceive the game – and its unique structure – is likely to infiltrate my thinking process and influence my opinion on particular players.
Muscle memory, in basketball terms, is typically associated with offense rather than defense. It is easy to discern the relationship between practice and precision as it relates to shooting, or dribbling, or even passing, cutting, and screening. However, there are two ends of the court in basketball, with their weight distributed equally, and the refinement of fine motor skills have proven, time and time again, to warrant the same degree of emphasis that there more lionized counterparts do.
Miller perhaps personifies this dynamic better than any player in the country. Even in watching merely half of an early season game, Miller’s four years of extensive agility training, footwork, and balance refinement represent an unmistakable maturity that – save for a few generational talents – only age and experience can meld.
The distinct skill that I will attempt to glorify in this space more so than any other is Miller’s ability to close out on shooters. Perhaps my insistence on shadowing Miller – regardless of where he was on the court – contributed to me noticing a fairly regularized skill more than I would have normally, but in my estimation, it is more likely that his uncanny ability to help on drives or post-ups and then immediately spring back out to shooters, all the while maintaining impeccable balance and form, resulted from years of diligence on and off the court.
Now, make no mistake, Miller’s dominance at this level transcends work ethic and smarts. Having been recruited out of Euclid, Ohio, as a 6’4 guard, Miller promptly grew three inches upon arriving in Ithaca. Suddenly, somebody who Cornell had recruited as a power guard – think of a rich man’s R.J. Evans – had blossomed into a devastating small ball four.
Those who consider him merely a role player risk awakening to a dried up supply of coffee. It goes without saying that Cornell doesn’t typically sign players like him, and when they do, it is frequently because they stumbled across him. Such was the case here, as – although you must credit the Big Red scouting department for identifying his talent before most anybody else – nobody foresaw a growth spurt that would vault him from the humble radars of an Ivy League school to a legitimate NBA prospect.
And no, it is not hyperbole to suggest that Miller is a polished jump shot away from carving out a niche at the world’s highest level of basketball. To the extent that the NBA is shifting from a league predicated on mobility and versatility as much as size and strength has been documented extensively in previous carnations of my ramblings, and needs no regurgitation here. What I will say, is that there is a prototype at the next level that will be easier for Miller to mimic than it will be for somebody like say, Rodney Purvis. And, while I hate to run the risk of comparing every hybrid forward to Draymond Green, who is truly a unique player, Miller’s defensive rebound rate from last season (32.1%) compares favorably with what Green registered in his best season as a Spartan (28.4%).
Certainly, Green offered playmaking from the forward position in his time at Michigan State that Miller is unlikely to come close to matching at any point in his career. However, his impact on the defensive end is impossible to overstate, and as we attempt to contextualize just how transformative he figures to be on that end, I encourage you – and by encourage, I mean beg – to read a brief first half recap that I wrote on the Temple game (the one in Hartford) this summer after I had gone back and studied the tape. (The lesson as always here is that I am not a mentally stable person, but I hope that you will glean from it more than that):
