@champs99and04 What do you think Ollie is suggesting here? What about our personnel suggests an alternative coaching style? Are we truly going to try to exploit our depth with run and gun? That would seem to be anti Ollie.
You know me too well. Asking these type of questions will always spin my mind into a frenetic state that eliminates my ability to read social cues...such as when to stop talking.
It's interesting because, at least to date, Ollie's reluctance to install a consistent transition attack has completely contradicted how Ollie would like to play idealistically.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt, because last season I fell head over heels for the off-season posturing about how they finally had the horses to play fast and how the games would be played at a breakneck pace compared to the 2013 and 2014 teams (or maybe I created this narrative on my own, I don't remember).
But Ollie's prototype as a head coach seems to be someone like Steve Kerr, and - independent of his success in his first year with the Warriors - I think they share many of the same beliefs as it relates to the game...and they're already both pretty ahead of the curve, IMO, in anticipating how the game is going to evolve.
I can only guess how whatever it is he envisions as an alternative coaching style will translate to the court, but I suspect it has a lot to do with those very same Golden State Warriors. Obviously, their personnel is unrivaled in the sense that no college coach will ever be able to completely mimic it, but I don't think what we saw last season - which, at least to me, was more geared towards a spread offense - is going to carry over much to this year. Hell...even our 2013 and 2014 teams were not able to easily generate baskets, the type of baskets that tend to occur organically when everybody on the roster is not only familiar with the schemes, but also recruited for precisely their ability to excel in a particular role.
Part three of my preview explores this in much more detail (if you thought that was possible), but the gist of it is that pick-and-rolls are going to govern the offense in a way that I don't think has a precedent with this program...at least not since I've been watching. The spark notes version, though, is that the personnel complements each other in a way that it hasn't since at least 2009, and maybe ever. So, instead of a 1-5 pick-and-roll being DOA because the surrounding pieces did not posses the skills to advance the apparatus of motion that pick-and-rolls tend to spring, suddenly, defenses that are forced to defend a two man action with three players are compressed to the bare bone, making them far more vulnerable to secondary drives on the reversal. This type of offense only works, though, if at least four guys are comfortable making plays off the bounce.
In regards to the transition game, I think it is too early to tell, but it definitely wouldn't shock me. And, when the guys on the team emphasize their desire to run more, I tend to think they are referring to the secondary break as much as anything, and Golden State was one of the most prolific squads we have ever seen in that regard. Obviously, set defenses are tougher to crack, and even if it is a 3 on 3, suddenly the defenders are forced to react more spontaneously than they would in a normal alignment. As you say, depth will play a big role if we do decide to run more. That isn't something we've had in a while...up tempo basketball just isn't as viable when you're asking your point guard to do everything on both ends for 38 minutes a night.
