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Message: [QUOTE="Coach Orange, post: 2062970, member: 2260"] I agree with most of this. One question I would ask, and I don't mean that you have to answer it, Anti, just rhetorically asking: could the reason that we haven't landed more top players recently be that we play almost exclusively zone, which may slow the development of skills NBA teams look for when choosing players for the man-to-man systems they utilize? For example, we don't teach help defense, close-outs, or ball-screen rotations the same way man-to-man systems do. Hypothetically, I can imagine that NBA teams know they will have to spend extra time teaching these skills to our players because they don't learn and practice them for 1-4 years in our system. The logic there would be that top players go elsewhere to avoid that stigma. I would offer that some of our players have still been drafted (a couple of them quite highly). None of those players, save perhaps Wesley Johnson, is really known for strong defense in the NBA, though. I certainly don't know the definitive answer to the question, nor would I profess I know more about our recruiting than Coach Boeheim and his staff. For conversation's sake, though, it does seem that the argument can be made both ways. The zone lovers can argue that we can't get top talent, so we play zone, and look how successful we are. The zone critics can say, "We play zone; therefore, we can't get top talent. Maybe we could get better talent and be a better team if we played man." The argument is a "chicken or egg" one, then, and probably doesn't really help either side's case. At any rate, to suggest that the zone can't work at all is to ignore data that says it can work fine, both here and elsewhere. Data does suggest, though, that it works better over a series of years when teams mix it with other defenses. [/QUOTE]

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