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Friday, February 03, 2012

Echoes from Laettner's Shot Still Reverberate 20 Years Later

Gene Wojciechowski's new book The Last Great Game: Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds That Changed Basketball meticulously details the circumstances and aftermath of Christian Laettner's game-winning shot against Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA East Regional Final. Wojciechowski begins with the most strategically surprising aspect of that play--Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino did not deploy a defender to contest Grant Hill's inbounds pass--before providing tremendous historical context about a great game that culminated with one of the most indelible moments in sports history.

After hooking the reader with a brief account of the astonishment that basketball observers--including Dick Vitale, Jalen Rose and P.J. Carlesimo--felt about Pitino's defensive strategy on the final play of the game, Wojciechowski circles back in time to describe how Pitino and Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski first arrived at their respective schools and how they both rebuilt programs that had fallen on hard times.

Krzyzewski recently set the all-time NCAA record for career wins (breaking the mark held by Bobby Knight, who coached Krzyzewski at West Point), a feat that seemed unimaginable in the early 1980s when Duke alumni and fans demanded that Athletic Director Tom Butters fire Krzyzewski. The Krzyzewski era at Duke hardly got off to a rousing start; in his first three years, the Blue Devils failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament and set the school's single season loss record. Krzyzewski's 1-6 head to head record against Tobacco Road rival North Carolina during this period exasperated Duke partisans.

Duke started out 8-0 in 1984 and posted a 15-1 overall mark before losing four straight ACC games. Butters arranged a meeting with Krzyzewski and said, "Mike, we've got a problem. The problem is we've got a public that doesn't know how good you are. We've got a press that's too damn dumb to tell them how good you are. But my greatest problem is that I've got a coach who I'm not sure knows how good he is." Butters then offered Krzyzewski a five year contract extension. The Blue Devils earned their first NCAA Tournament berth of the Krzyzewski era with a 24-10 record and two years later they advanced to the NCAA Championship Game. It is easy to focus on the "lead actor" when telling the story of a famous person's life but without the encouragement of a "supporting actor" like Butters the world may never have had the opportunity to see Krzyzewski's greatness fully blossom.

Pitino arrived at Kentucky right after the program narrowly avoided the so-called death penalty in the wake of 18 violations committed during the Eddie Sutton regime (Sutton was not directly implicated, though it is difficult to believe that he had no idea what was going on under his watch, including the fact that his assistant Dwane Casey--who is now the coach of the Toronto Raptors--sent $1000 to the father of recruit Chris Mills). Pitino, after a quick rise through the collegiate ranks, had recently turned the New York Knicks into a legitimate contender but he was locked in a power struggle with General Manager Al Bianchi. At first Pitino was not sure if he wanted to relocate his family from New York to Kentucky and Kentucky Athletic Director C.M. Newton turned his attention to P.J. Carlesimo, who had just led Seton Hall to an NCAA Championship Game loss to Michigan. It seemed like Kentucky was on the verge of hiring Carlesimo when a funny thing happened: someone decided that Carlesimo's beard was weird and that it would not work to have a bearded Northerner helming the Wildcats. Suddenly, Carlesimo stated that he never really had been interested in leaving Seton Hall and the Wildcats were back to square one. Pitino had turned down the job the first time Newton offered it but upon further consideration Pitino accepted the offer and boldly promised to lead the disgraced program to a national title.

Krzyzewski coached Duke to runner-up finishes in the NCAA Tournament in 1986 and 1990 before capturing his first NCAA title in 1991. Pitino's first Kentucky squad went 14-14 in 1990 but his 1991 team improved to 22-6. Both teams entered the 1992 season with legitimate championship aspirations and those aspirations collided on March 29, 1992 in the NCAA East Regional Final as the teams battled to earn a Final Four berth.

Duke was led by Christian Laettner, who was perceived as a sneering rich kid who played with an edge, the kind of player who you hated if he was on the other team and might have still found irritating at times even if he was on your own team. Laettner actually did not come from a wealthy family and the first time he made it to the Final Four with Duke his parents skipped that month's mortgage payment in order to travel to Seattle to watch him play in person. Although Laettner was wrongly viewed by some as a kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the perception of his edginess was quite correct; Laettner grew up playing against older and bigger opponents, so he quickly learned how to take (and give) blows and he would not back down from anyone. Jamal Mashburn, a dynamic offensive player who could both score in the paint and nail the three point shot, led Kentucky. Both Laettner and Mashburn would later make the NBA All-Star team; several other players from both teams eventually played in the NBA, including Duke's Grant Hill, who made the All-Star team seven times and has recovered from a serious ankle injury to still be a productive player in 2012 at the age of 39.

Duke entered the 1992 East Regional Final as a solid favorite against Kentucky but Pitino thought that his team had a good chance to pull off the upset based on three factors: (1) Even though Duke had the more talented team, Pitino believed that Mashburn would prove to be the single best player on the court; (2) Kentucky's unique style--based on applying intense defensive pressure and shooting a lot of three pointers--would pose problems for Duke; (3) Duke had not played in many close games, so if Kentucky stayed in contact and gained confidence then the Wildcats could go on a game-winning run in the closing minutes. Pitino felt that if he employed the pressure defense too early in the game then Duke's starters would have enough energy to fight through it--thus gaining confidence while also deflating Kentucky's confidence--but if Kentucky could keep the score close without the pressure defense and then apply pressure in the final 10 minutes the Blue Devils might get rattled and/or fatigued.

The game unfolded according to Pitino's plan. Kentucky took an early 20-12 lead and only trailed 50-45 at halftime. Duke pulled ahead 67-55 by the 11:08 mark of the second half and at that point Pitino called a timeout in order to instruct his players to apply the pressure defense the rest of the way. Kentucky sliced Duke's lead to 67-63 in a little over a minute. Two minutes later, momentum could have--and should have--swung Kentucky's way after Laettner stepped on fallen Kentucky player Aminu Timberlake, an action that was worthy of ejection; however, the game officials elected to simply hit Laettner with a technical foul. Kentucky's players neither appreciated that ruling nor the fact that Laettner seemed to have singled out the one player--a skinny, well-mannered freshman--who would not respond confrontationally (that is the kind of move that Kevin Garnett and Kenyon Martin later became well known for in the NBA, taking a verbal and/or physical shot at a younger, smaller opponent while studiously avoiding confrontations with tough guys who would not tolerate such conduct).

The game was tightly contested the rest of the way and the outcome would not be decided until the final 2.1 seconds of overtime. If you are a true basketball fan then you have already seen Grant Hill's full court pass followed by Christian Laettner's game-winning shot many times but Wojciechowski's The Last Great Game does an excellent job of not only recreating one of the seminal moments in college basketball but also giving the reader an understanding of the thoughts, emotions and motivations of the participants from both sides of this dramatic contest.

Although Laettner's shot ended the game, it did not end that season and does not end the book; the Blue Devils still needed to win two more games to complete their run of back to back titles and Duke accomplished this by knocking off Indiana and the upstart, Fab Five-led Michigan Wolverines. Wojciechowski takes the reader behind the scenes of both of those games as well.

Should Pitino have put a defender on Hill to contest that fateful inbounds pass? Wojciechowski exaggerates a bit when he deems this "the eternal basketball question" but he is right this question is not easy to answer. Pitino's thinking at the time was that if he put a defender on Hill then Hill might run the baseline and Duke could employ an old strategy of Dean Smith's, placing a screener in the defender's path to try to draw a foul. Pitino considered the long pass to be a low percentage play whether or not it was contested and thus preferred to sandwich Laettner with two defenders; unfortunately for Kentucky, those defenders--concerned about being called for a foul--played very tentatively and gave Laettner plenty of room to catch the ball, take a rhythm dribble and launch a very controlled shot.

Pitino, who led Kentucky to a National Championship in 1996, casually dismisses the strategic question: "People make too much of it."

Errata

1) On page 61, the text states that Christian Laettner "made his official Duke playing debut November 19, 1998, at the Tipoff Classic in Springfield, Massachusetts." Laettner's freshman year began in 1988, not 1998.

2) There are multiple references to a 1988-89 Duke senior named "Smith" but his first name is not directly mentioned in the text (it is indirectly referred to in a quote) nor is he listed in the book's Index (John Smith is the full name of the player in question).

3) On page 114, the 6-8 Billy Owens is referred to as a guard. While Owens did handle the ball like a guard, he played forward at Syracuse and should thus have been described as a forward (in the NBA, Owens played both forward and guard but the book is referring to his college career).

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posted by David Friedman @ 2:45 AM

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Breaking Down Kobe's 61 Point Game

Tuesday's edition of ESPN's NBA Coast to Coast program included highlights of every point Kobe Bryant scored in his record setting 61 point outburst in Madison Square Garden plus a breakdown of how he created the 41 points that he scored on 19 made field goal attempts. Here is that chart:

Isolation: 16 points Off screen: 9 points Spot up: 6 points Pick and Roll: 4 points Transition: 4 points Cut: 2 points

Of course, Bryant also shot 20-20 from the free throw line, so that breakdown is not really complete because it does not categorize the situations in which he drew those fouls. Tim Legler filled in some of those blanks by describing what he thought while watching Bryant's performance: "Kobe Bryant is the only offensive player in the NBA who does not have a weakness. There is nothing he cannot do on the court offensively...It is time that we start giving this man more credit for what kind of a shooter he is. Typically, when you start talking about the great shooters in the league the first thing you think of are guys who can catch and shoot, have that pure stroke, guys who are open shooters who would knock down the most open looks. When you look at Kobe Bryant, the degree of difficulty on the shots that he makes--particularly his midrange pullup game--he does not really take a lot of uncontested shots. Most of those 18-22 foot shots he has a hand in his face and yet he is so pure, so perfect with his release--we just don't talk about that enough because we think of him as a scorer. This guy is as pure a shooter as there is in the league because he is so precise and he has worked so hard at becoming such a great shooter through tireless work ethic."

Before you even think of asking whether Bryant should be taking contested shots you should understand that if you are a great shooter/scorer and the defense is single covering you, shooting the ball is most likely a higher percentage play than passing to a teammate who is also single covered and much less capable of creating a high percentage shot. Remember, the Knicks did not trap Bryant for the most part, so if he did not take a contested shot then someone else would be taking a contested shot--someone who is much less likely to make that shot.

Jamal Mashburn added, "He reminds me a lot of what Allan Houston used to do with a hand in his face, those 1-2 pullup jump shots; he has the ability to elevate and get those shots off but what impresses me more about Kobe Bryant is his mental approach to the game. He understands that Andrew Bynum is going to be out for some time. He's going to go out there and really establish himself and his team as winners, not play down to the Knicks but elevate above the Knicks. To score 61 points--I've been in the 50 range a couple times but to score 60 is a whole other level. That is a lot more shot attempts, a lot more effort." Mashburn concluded with a very bold statement: "He can reach the 100 plateau."

I think that people who have never played basketball or were never good enough at any level to put up serious point totals simply do not fully comprehend just how difficult it is to score 60 points, let alone to do so in the context of the game (see below for what I mean by "context"). I've played recreational league basketball for decades and the most points I've scored at any level is 39; in general, I have been a good shooter relative to the competition that I have played against but it takes a lot of energy to score that many points even in a rec league, so to drop 60-plus points on elite athletes is amazing. I hit eight three pointers and shot a high percentage in my career-high game, so I think that I would have to play an almost perfect game to even approach 50 points and I don't think that there is any way that I could score 60. Former NBA players like Legler and Mashburn appreciate Bryant's high scoring accomplishments in a way that a lot of journalists and fans may not; Legler and Mashburn understand just how hard it is to score 60 points and what kind of skill set and endurance this requires.

This was not just a case of a guy getting hot or someone taking shots that are outside of his normal repertoire. I mean, Bryant obviously was hot--he shot 19-31 from the field--but he played the game within the context of his skill set and the options that the defense left open to him; as New York Coach Mike D'Antoni candidly admitted, New York elected not to double team Bryant because he is a very good passer and because D'Antoni hoped that Bryant would "shoot himself out." Apparently, D'Antoni did not realize that the Lakers were 64-30--now, 65-30--when Bryant scores at least 40 points, so that "shooting himself out" strategy is not a game plan that will be headed for the Hall of Fame in Springfield a la Bill Belichick's famous Super Bowl game plan (as defensive coordinator for the Giants) that went straight to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

It's funny--no, actually, it's sad--to see people try to denigrate Bryant's performance by citing the quality of the opponent or Bryant's lack of rebounds or the idea that even though the Lakers won this will set a bad precedent for future games in terms of Bryant shooting too much. The quality of opponent argument is silly--this version of Madison Square Garden has stood for 40 years, the Knicks had lousy teams for many of those seasons and no one else ever scored as many points as Bryant did. Also, in Michael Jordan's "double nickel" game he shot more often than Bryant (37 field goal attempts) and less accurately (.568 compared to .613) and he had four rebounds and two assists compared to Bryant's zero rebounds and three assists. As for the "bad precedent" idea, Bryant's entire body of work proves that the Lakers do very well when he scores 40-plus points and when one also considers that he has been his team's leading playmaker for most of his career it is silly to even suggest that Bryant is going to suddenly just start jacking up shots randomly and not keep his teammates involved.

Whenever anyone questions Bryant's motives or conduct in high scoring games, I always refer back to Larry Bird. Bird used to ask what the scoring record was in various arenas and then deliberately set out to break that mark; that was his way of challenging and motivating himself but imagine what the outcry would be now if Bryant brazenly declared that he was trying to do something like that. Also, just nine days after Kevin McHale set a Boston franchise record by scoring 56 points, Bird topped that total by dropping 60, but no one talks about how Bird got his final few points to reach 60. The Celtics had the game well in hand but began fouling the Hawks to get the ball back so that Bird could launch more shots.

When I interviewed Julius Erving--who had four 50 point regular season games in the ABA but whose NBA regular season career high was 45 points--he told me that he thought it was "crass" to try to pad one's individual statistics (in any category, whether going for a scoring record or a triple double) when the game is well in hand; he said that the bench players work hard in practice and once the outcome is decided they deserve the opportunity to get on the court and perform (he was not speaking about Bird specifically but rather answering a general question about players going out of their way to reach certain statistical milestones, such as Ricky Davis' infamous attempt to concoct a triple double by shooting at the wrong basket and intentionally missing in order to create a 10th "rebound"). When Erving's Sixers had the game won--and they posted the best regular season record in the NBA from 1976-83--Erving went to the bench instead of staying on the court to ring up 50 point games.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't think that Bryant has padded his numbers in his high scoring games and it is worth noting that in 2005 he sat out the entire fourth quarter of a rout after outscoring Dallas 62-61 in the first three quarters--but anyone who is going to say one bad thing about Bryant's 50 or 60 point games better do a whole dissertation about the way that Bird and many other players took extraordinary measures to amass their best point totals. Either Bryant's critics do not know the history behind several of the 50 and 60 point games by other players or they think that no one else remembers such things, but their weak arguments don't pass muster with anyone who knows the history of the game. Even Wilt Chamberlain's legendary 100 point performance degenerated a bit at the end, with the Knicks fouling Chamberlain's teammates before Chamberlain could get the ball and Chamberlain's Warriors retaliating by fouling the Knicks in order to get the ball back and feed Chamberlain so that he could reach triple figures (the Warriors won 169-147, so neither team was fouling for any strategic reason in terms of trying to change the outcome of the game).

For the record, the Lakers are 5-0 in Bryant's 60 point games and it cannot be seriously suggested that he padded his totals in any of them: in addition to the aforementioned Dallas game, the Lakers overcame a double digit deficit in his 81 point game versus Toronto, they beat Portland by just five when he scored 65 points, they beat Memphis by two when he scored 60 and he sat out the final moments at Madison Square Garden when he could easily have added more points to his total on Monday.

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posted by David Friedman @ 7:04 AM

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