(Are you a warrior?)
From SFGate.com
To celebrate the Warriors NBA Championship over next few days, sfgate will isolate key turning points in the Warriors march for a title. Here’s the first installment.
Turning point #1, Warriors decide to be revolutionary
When Warriors coach Steve Kerr was hired a year ago, he did what all coaches do, he looked at how to improve his new team. The first thing he and his assistant coach Alvin Gentry wanted was to push the offensive pace.
“I felt like if we played faster and got more possessions (we would score more) because of our shooting and the dynamic play of Steph (Curry) in particular.”
However, increasing pace is a risk. It puts huge pressure on a team’s defense because a faster pace also means more possessions for the opposition. In the history of the NBA, no team has led the league in pace and won the title.
But Gentry was adamant that being more up-tempo would benefit this team.
“Alvin Gentry was really the biggest proponent of the pace,” Kerr admitted.
The Warriors realized that the league had changed enough away from slowed-down, low-post play to accommodate their style. Still, when a team adopts an approach that has traditionally been questionable (just ask Charles Barkley), it takes courage.
It also takes a team that is in tremendous condition and has an outstanding defense. On the last point, Kerr credited former coach Mark Jackson.
“The defense was in place,” Kerr said. “Mark Jackson and his staff the last couple of years, they really built a defensive juggernaut. I felt like if we played faster and got more possessions, our defense will still hold up.”
This is a concrete example of how Kerr took what Jackson built and made it better. However, even Kerr didn’t anticipate that the quicken pace would be so outrageously successful.
“I thought it would work,” he said, “But I would be lying to you if I thought we would win the NBA title.”
By quickening the pace, the Warriors are also ushering in a new NBA, based on creating space for 3-point shots, switching on defense, and quickness over size. It’s a change that ultimately had the Warriors’ first-year coach drenched in champagne on Tuesday night and wearing a non-stop smile.
Click here for the original source
ANALYSIS
Innovation prevails when or if the chief decision makers have the right components within their framework. They must be able to inspire the team to offer their perspective before accepting the presented plan.
Regardless of the sports, offense win games but defense win championships. (In the game of cyber warfare, this strategic concept is slightly different for the apparent reason of competitive darwinism. We will focus on that topic in a future post.)
From the pages of Chinese strategic classics, this " Big Picture" principle (from JTG) declares that the quality of the leadership constitutes the quality of tactics (the approach, the means and the modes). The choice of tactics determine the resources (economics, manpower, etc.) The quantity of quality resources ascertain the technology (and the infrastructure). Conclusively, the quality of technology systems establishes the category of "efficiency and adjustability" within the strategy.
In the field game, the quality of the warriors determines the grand tactical approach/ formations. The grand tactical approach determines the type of field tactics.
Transposing that Grand Principle to Basketball
The quality of players determines the grand tactical approach. The grand tactical approach determines the quality of plays.
That perspective concludes that the coaches usually lose the games on bad decisions while players usually win games on talent, teamwork and persistence.
Thoughts From the Compass Desk
We will continue this topic in a future post.
