It isn’t the same game anymore, not the way basketball is being played at the highest levels by teams that have figured out how to survive and prosper with unconventional lineups and inventive ways of generating endless baskets in a fast-paced flow.
It isn’t the same game anymore, not the way basketball is being played at the highest levels by teams that have figured out how to survive and prosper with unconventional lineups and inventive ways of generating endless baskets in a fast-paced flow.
If you saw the Golden State Warriors win the NBA championship last spring, you got a good look at 21st century basketball, which is, for basketball, analogous to what football’s spread offense was to the old Power I and T formation back in the 1980s. Yes, it is taking over.
Teams like the Warriors and coach Steve Kerr have established how spreading the floor with great shooters can dismantle any defense. In his first season as coach, Kerr, the former University of Arizona product and 15-year NBA veteran with five championship rings and the record for 3-point accuracy in the most competitive league on the planet became an NBA championship coach.
He had a little insight on winning, having been a teammate of Michael Jordan on those Bulls championship teams in which it was pretty clear that the old rules of winning with big power guys in the middle was no longer mandatory.
Now, you see the Warriors on a fast break and you might have Klay Thompson running for all he’s worth to a spot on the baseline, deep in the corner, with Steph Curry doing the same on the other side of the floor, leaving the middle wide open.
“It’s still basketball,” said UH-Hilo men’s coach GE Coleman, “but it’s a little different game these days.”
The wrestling matches under the basketball have given way to a more open flow. Raw force has given way to skills such as passing, cutting and, most importantly, shooting.
Coleman will get to see how the new approach works next week when the Vulcans open the season Saturday in Honolulu against Montana State of the Big Sky Conference. The opportunity for success should be enhanced by the transfer of 6-foot-4 inch junior wing player Parker Farris, a shooter in the classic mode from a small high school in McKinleyville, Calif.
He comes lacking eye-popping statistics, which is probably a big reason he’s here because Farris represents a direct line from Kerr to his college teammate, Craig McMillan, to Farris.
“He’s a good shooter,” said McMillan, his coach last season at Santa Rosa Junior College, “really one of the better ones we’ve had and we’ve had some good ones.”
Farris started at Humboldt State, didn’t feel comfortable, transferred to Santa Rosa and suffered a stress fracture in his foot last summer that essentially knocked him out of half the season. He received offers from schools as far away as Tennessee and Kentucky, and from many in the West, but he chose Hilo because of McMillan’s belief it would be a good opportunity because of the likelihood of playing time on a transformed roster and his relationship with Coleman.
Farris’ shot is balanced, steady and consistent, the last part being the key to all of it. McMillan was a top recruit at Arizona, started four years and played on Final Four team with players like Sean Elliott and Kerr and values the capacity to repeat good shooting form.
“The advantage he has right now,” McMillan said of Farris, “is that he understands about consistent habits. All great shooters perfect their shot and repeat it every time, they are always squared up the same way, they go up the same way, please the ball the same way.
“Streak shooters do it different every time,” he said, “their shot is never the same, that’s why their consistency is erratic.”
Farris has a picturesque, text book jumper that he works on daily, often rigorously. When he goes for a shooting drill, he will put up 250 3-point shots and maybe 150 more mid-range shots, looking for 60 or 70 percent accuracy, all of them focused on repeating proper form.
“I’m sold on that,” Farris said. “I watch these YouTube videos of (Golden State’s) Klay Thompson and it’s really amazing to see how every shot, I mean every single shot, is exactly the same in his workout, from wherever on the floor he’s shooting. That’s what I’m into.”
In a season on a new team in a league that doesn’t know him with first-year NCAA rules disallowing hand checking, Parker Farris might be a bit of a surprise.
“It’s a good ‘get’ for GE,” said McMillan, “because not a lot of people knew about him because he played so little last year.”
He fits right into the new approach because, for as much as the game has opened up, increased tempo and spreading the floor, there is still no substitute for precision shooting that can be replicated again and again.
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