The offense Collins and co. run (frankly most offenses do as well) a lot better with an initiator. Now an initiator can be any position. Think grant hill, Pippen, James, etc. I’m aware I used great NBA as an example but they’re good examples and easily recognizable. A 5 can do it if you have someone who can make great passes through the high post or low post and commands double teams. You also need get the ball there to start the play so someone with the ability to feed them. So that’s why you don’t see 5’s doing that for more than stretches during a game.
So a good initiator is someone who starts your offense and is a real threat passing. Doesn’t have to be able to make the pass like Russell food against us but making the right passes at the right times. Finally an initiator is at least a threat to score. Now being a bigger threat to score makes your job passing as an initiator a lot easier.
I realize that is where I saw Buies improvement at the beginning of the year was when defenses were scared of shooting and scoring his passing looked so much better and the offense ran super smoothly.
You also need a couple scorers other than the initiator for a good team. If we are doing NU teams think Law and Lindsey pre mono. When NU was playing it’s best basketball.
If you have those things then you need the fundamentals that make bad teams decent, decent teams good, and good teams great....Rebounding and defense. Thank you pardon and lumpkin. Law was also pretty good at those himself.
So the question is what is NU missing rn. Honestly I would have to say an initiator. Someone needs to step up and drive the teams offense. There’s a lot of pieces and talent on this team. Just needs to fall together.
Edit to say I’m not saying most offense run the NU offense just the roles a described are needed in pretty much every team ever.
I pretty much agree with everything you said.
But I think it's previous obvious it is an initiator from the outside. From the perimeter. Collins has no desire to force the initiation from the low post positions. I think that's fairly obvious.
Folks here can say all they want about Nance and Young. Deservedly or not, they still draw a double team a lot of times they touch the ball on the low post. There's an initiator. Yet, last night, Nance shot the ball 4 times and RY shot it 3 times. Scraps for the most part.
For the 2nd game in a row, we changed the starting 5 for the 2nd half, to go with the Nance at the 5. We double down on the perimeter motion offense. Collins is so not sold on RY being a starter. He just succumbed to pressure to do something. RY has now 15 and 18 minutes in the last 2 games. Collins does not believe in traditional 5s. Young is the first casualty of games not going well.
There were always initiators. You mentioned all time greats. Often Kareem was the initiator of 80% of the possessions in his day. The Jazz initiated 80% of the offense with Stockton/Malone pick and roll. But you don't even need an initiator in the classic positions. The triangle offense of the Bulls/Jackson/Winter often placed guards in the low post as initiators. Who knows if Audige could do that. It's on the coach to figure this out. And ours chooses to rely on players without the skills/athleticism to be slashers.
That's why trying something like a flex could make sense. I say the flex as it's so easy to execute, it can be just motion, really no trick plays. You can get a recreational league team learn in it minutes (not saying here there's not a lot of teaching to perfect it. There is, how to set screens, roll from screens, etc, etc).
