wolfpackaz: 5/10/09

In yesterday's good but long Bill Simmons' column, a conversation was brought up "why don't more NBA teams press"

Lainks:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part1
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part2
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part3

GLADWELL

The biggest question, though, is whether there is any way to apply the press at the pro level. Thoughts?

SIMMONS

You're preaching to the floor-burn choir. I watched the press succeed (to a decent degree) during Pitino's first season in Boston, and attended most of those home games. Of course, Coach P undermined his own cause by panic-trading rookie Chauncey Billups after 50 games to acquire Kenny Anderson, an all-offense guard who was making $10 million a season and had no interest in sprinting for 40-plus minutes, especially when he hadn't yet sweated out all the Courvoisier from the night before. Still, three things happened during that 50-game stretch to make me believe presses could work at the professional level.

1. That 1997-98 Celtics team overachieved. Pitino made so many preseason moves that they started with just three incumbents (Antoine Walker, Dee Brown and Dana Barros) and played 19 different guys in all, but they still finished 36-46 with a group of rookies and castoffs, as well as Antoine shooting 42 percent, making 292 turnovers and offending approximately 572 officials as their crunch-time guy. Before the Billups trade, they had one really nice pressing unit: two athletic rookies (Billups and Ron Mercer), young Bruce Bowen, Walter McCarty (the best cog in the history of Pitino's press, as the coach told you) and either Travis Knight or Andrew DeClercq (two agile, coachable and extremely pale big men). This group wreaked havoc a few times. I remember attending one November home game during which they dismantled the Nuggets with it. Just for kicks, I looked it up on basketball-reference.com. The Celtics won 96-86. They forced 29 turnovers. They had a whopping 16 steals. Denver's point guard (a young Bobby Jackson) committed eight turnovers. Seven Celtics finished with two-plus steals. If Pitino had just kept that nucleus -- Walker, Billups, Mercer, Barros, Brown, McCarty, Bowen, Knight and DeClercq -- been patient and allowed his young guys to take their lumps, we would have had something (and remember, Pierce was coming in the '98 draft). So frustrating. Pitino took the concept of "own worst enemy" to new heights.

2. Once Walker got his big contract (a max extension before the '98-99 season), suddenly he wanted to jog around and jack up bad 3-pointers, and since he was guaranteed $71 million, who was going to talk him out of it? This proved that a press can only work professionally if you are using guys who carry 10s and 20s in their wallets instead of 100s. Which leads me to the following tweak, something that Pitino even mentioned when you spent time with him. …

With a 12-man roster, you'd only need to train five or six guys to pull off that press. Let's say next season's Bulls trained the following five: Joakim Noah, Ty Thomas, Kirk Hinrich, Lindsey Hunter and Generic Athletic/Hungry Swingman X. They practice and practice until they become a well-oiled pressing machine. For the first five minutes of every second and fourth quarter, they unleash that killer press on their opponents … who, by the way, would be playing backups during that time, making it even more effective. Wouldn't that be an ENORMOUS advantage? Wouldn't that swing a few games? Wouldn't opponents dread playing them? Wouldn't opponents have to waste practice time preparing to break that press? Wouldn't it be even better at home with the Bulls flying around and their fans going bonkers? The key would be not putting "press miles" on your top guys and your wealthiest guys (who would never be totally invested because, again, they're really, really wealthy and don't need this crap). In this scenario, the Bulls wouldn't press with Rose, Deng, Brad Miller, Ben Gordon or even John Salmons if they could help it. Which brings me to my third point. …

3. You can easily find 10th, 11th and 12th men to make that press work. You know how many athletic swingmen are out there? Oodles. There's always another Dahntay Jones or Josh Powell killing himself in the D-League hoping for a chance. It's just a logical way to use your roster. You could build the press around one scorer (one of your top-five guys) and the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th guys on your team. Like the 2008-09 Clippers. Couldn't they have pressed for 10 minutes a game with Al Thornton, Mike Taylor, DeAndre Jordan, Fred Jones and Mardy Collins? Why the hell not? Oh, wait, I forgot … they have a dunce as a coach.

The bigger point: NBA teams rarely, if ever, think outside the box, and that's one of at least 50 reasons why I could succeed as a GM. Over the course of an 82-game season, a killer press might swing five or six games. If I ran an NBA team, I would study tapes of those first 50 games the '97-98 Celtics played with Billups. Carefully. They were 21-24 through 45 games with the youngest team in the league during an extremely competitive season. Hmmmmmm.

GLADWELL

Let me get this straight. Pitino uses the press at Boston for 50 games and achieves a surprising result. And an entire league full of very thoughtful and knowledgeable coaches watch him do that, and in the past decade not a single one has even tried to follow Pitino's example?

SIMMONS

Yup. Although the late '90s were the peak of the NBA's Too Young Too Much Too Soon Era: too many young guys getting paid too much too soon, and handling it about as well as your average group of successful child actors getting their first fake IDs. This stretch was dominated by posses, tattoos, crotch-grabs, sneers, coach-choking and everything else; just a bunch of immature guys who carried themselves like superstars even though they hadn't done squat. Really, 1993-99 was one of the two "Wasted Eras of Young Talent," along with 1978-86 (the coke era). So the thinking was probably "I can't even get these guys to run a high screen without them glaring at me or MF-ing me … I'm gonna get them to press?" Players are much more humble and responsible and self-aware these days, so it might have a better chance.

GLADWELL

Still, is there any other industry in the world (well, outside of Detroit) so terrified of innovation? I went to see a Lakers-Warriors game earlier this season, and it was abundantly clear after five minutes that the Warriors' chances of winning were, oh, no better than 10 percent. Why wouldn't you have a special squad of trained pressers come in for five minutes a half and press Kobe and Fisher? Worst-case scenario is that you exhaust Kobe, and make him a bit more vulnerable down the stretch. Best case is that you rattle the Lakers and force a half-dozen extra turnovers that turn out to be crucial. And if you lose, so what? You were going to lose anyway. When you become GM of the Timberwolves, I'm guessing you'll put the special-press-squad concept into effect immediately.

SIMMONS

Yes. In a heartbeat. It's one of the few roster advantages you have: By using that killer press, you are turning your 10th, 11th and 12th men into assets instead of guys who are measured by their ability to execute chest-bumps and feign excitement over someone else's success. So … yeah. The killer press is on the agenda.