you have to look at the whole thing as a package. the number to look at is defensive efficiency (points allowed per possession), which encompasses all of defensive FG%, defensive rebounding, turnovers, etc into a single metric. Igor is probably too much of a dinosaur to grasp advanced statistics, but the fact is that Syracuse has had a top 30 defense eight of the last 11 years (and never lower than 65th) and has been top 20 for four consecutive seasons - fifth best in the nation last year.
Despite what Igor says, JB has been evolving his entire career. Decades ago, SU played mostly man. He didn't switch to all zone until the 96 team, and he has been studying and tinkering with it like a mad scientist ever since. The numbers do not lie - SU is giving up less than 1 point per possession (.908) for 11 years, and just .889 per possession for the last 4 years.
The reason that so few coaches have joined JB in embracing the zone is because it takes commitment and dedication to a long term vision. You have to play it and study for years to reach the level of sophistication that is the Syracuse 2-3 zone. Nearly 20 years ago, JB saw what this could become, and it was his stubbornness in sticking with it (which his detractors have always taken as a flaw) that allowed it to become such a weapon.
The defensive stats here are really striking - it's just amazing what the team has been doing for the last few years.
I wonder a lot about how he got there. We'll never really know, because of course most of it occurred in one not particularly effusive guy's head. You've got a pretty good story there in your last paragraph, and of course that's obviously at least part of the story.
But I am not sold on it being the whole story. It's too pat and heroic and linear - JB decided he was going to be the best damn zone coach ever in 1995 and has played mad scientist ever since, and now look where we are. (Awesomeland is where we are.) I think it's rare that life works that way, and I don't know that the history really supports that.
Here's the story I would tell, which I think was something like the conventional wisdom five years ago even among those of us who were big JB fans. He started using the zone more and more in the mid-90s, particularly when probation left him undermanned. He struck something like lightening in a bottle with the '96 team, a team that in retrospect looks remarkably like what we now know to be the perfectly constructed zone team (very tall guards, rangy forwards, heady centers). The success of that season moved him to adopt the zone more or less full time, and over the next few years he became highly identified with it. He stuck with it out of stubborness, because it was his identity, and because it worked. And really no matter how you sliced it, it was not worse than man. (Whether it was better was maybe an open question.)
At some point, obviously, he realized the zone is a much better weapon in the hands of Michael Carter-Williams than Jonny Flynn. But Jonny Flynn just matriculated six years ago. The building the team to the zone is a very new idea.
Sometimes the answer to this is that Flynn was such a transcendent talent you had to take him. I agree. But the thing is - he was totally in character for recruiting at the time. These are Syracuse's starting point guards from 2002 until Brandon Triche:
James Theus
GMac
GMac (Edelin for a spell)
GMac
GMac
Josh Wright/crap sandwich
Jonny Flynn
Jonny Flynn
Those are not players made for the zone. There's a good story you can tell about all of them, but that story can't be "he was recruited to excel in the zone."
