CFH and I had a chat… everyone once in a while he crawls out of his hole to talk rather than type, today was one of those days.
Sifting through the hyperbole and the endless comparisons of him to Steve Nash/John Stockton/Jay Adams/[insert greatest athlete of all time], I tried to pull what I could out of him that was actually useful.
As always I got a lot of hot air coupled with some fine good ideas. Frank is crazy, period. But beneath his madness and undying love of DiscHoops, Indian Pizza and tomatoes are some sound sports principles that can be applied to ultimate. Many of them are already being applied… but they are not always emphasized enough to his liking and he lets us know. Lost in sea of drop-step-swimmy-swim-swim moves and travel calls are ideas that exist in the game today but Frank wants to buff them out and make ‘em shine.
His hope is that as people realize the true value of certain things (that usually get overlooked) and that change in value will change held theories about what is important. The problem is 1. he’s crazy. 2. He has no respect for current ultimate philosophies.
#1 He humbly asks you to ignore. Which is easier to do in person where you can get the instant gratification of laughing at him directly and where he can qualify his insane statements, when you say, “whaaaat?”, with some sort of explanation that makes a little more sense (it usually is just a matter of removing any snowboarding, skateboarding or basketball references and talking about it with respect to ultimate, not ’scoops).
#2 Unfortunately is tougher to over come. Mostly because he has no interest in learning the ‘why’ behind current ways of doing things… it’s easier just to say, “that’s dumb”. And we have no interest listening to a guy who dismisses all that we do. This will forever prevent him from making any real headway. The problem is that neither party really recognizes the similarities of his ideas to current philosophies or that they both hold similar things to be valuable (this disconnect stems more often than not from failed execution of philosophies… this failure can be so great that it appears that the philosophies are inherently different). So the more he distances himself from current ways of doing things, the further he is actually pushing people from his own ideas.
That’s where I come in… at least for today.
Crazy Frank 101… today’s lesson, the value of Honoring The Thrower… the expanded art of the give-n-go.
Frank is good at putting general philosphies to players’ styles/strengths (if they are similar to his own). Obviously I’m no where in his league skill wise, but at times you can see we have similar approaches. So although I don’t get a ton of “new” information from him… he does help quantify what I already do or think. This allows me to see places it can be applied elsewhere or by others that may have different approaches.
I would contend that what I explain below is not only of use to today’s teams within the structure of whatever offence they run, but that in one way or another teams are already implementing it. Below is the bread and butter of Frank’s philosophies… the same ones that have so many people scratching their head.
So what does CFH want? He wants teams/players to do it more… he believes we don’t place the proper value on it and that getting caught up in other things is taking away from our ability to do things that have a higher pay off. So the question you have to ask yourself is this… will Honoring The Thrower more often than you currently do, hinder your game so much that it will have a negative net impact? Or is it something you already do almost instinctively that with a little more effort you could actually take advantage more? Or is this nothing new to you and you laugh at it being offered as something new (this is what I mean by the differing philosophies being closer than they seem). Whatever your situation, if nothing else it’s valuable to put it out there in a more abstract manner to allow us to understand our own games better.
Honoring The Thrower:
The basic idea is this… on most receptions there is one teammate the receiver knows the location of, the relative positioning of his defender, etc. And that person is the guy who just threw him the disc. The thrower in turn knows where his defender/marker is, he knows where the receiver’s defender is and has a good vantage point from which to see the rest of the field (read: available space). At the moment of the catch these two players know more about each other’s specific situation than any other potential thrower-receiver pair on the field. This fact should be honored… it should be used to your advantage.
And it often is. This often plays itself out with a basic give-n-go. Some players do it a lot, some teams do it a lot. Some do it all the time in specific situations. Throwing the disc back towards the middle, towards where it came from, usually to the previous thrower is often referred to as “bouncing” the disc back (Trademark Dr. D circa ‘00 I believe). An example of not honoring the thrower in this case would mean the receiver catching the disc and immediately turning up field to see what other pass is available to them. This often happens much to the dismay of a cutting player who is cutting wide open for a short pass back but is frustrated… not because he was looked off, but because he was never even given a chance because the receiver did not honor him as the thrower.
But honoring the thrower does not have to apply in just a specific situation (that would be nothing new). CFH wants people to apply it more often than they do now (you can see how this philosphy would transition into the motion offense he has been spewing for years.. even so, it’s still usefull). And to be sure, honoring the thrower does not just mean a give-n-go or bouncing it… it simply means you recognize the fact that there is no other potential thrower-receiver pair on the field with more knowledge about each other’s situation… and any defense must respect that… if the offense makes them.
If the offense makes them? Well, a defender need only respect what an offensive player sees/knows as his options. So when a receiver turns up field right away, the bounce back to the middle is no longer a viable threat. That means A. the new marker can focus on stopping downfield passes and does not have to flash towards the cutting player. B. the defender on the old thrower does not need to beat his man downfield, instead he can stay behind him and be in optimal position when that player returns back towards the disc.
So as a receiver you aren’t just honoring the thrower so you can do a give-n-go.. you are doing it to force the defense to take a more conservative approach to marking you because they know you have more options that they have to respect. This honoring can play itself out in several ways… here are a couple.
- The give-n-go, bouncing, etc… You pass to a player.. he honors you by recognizing where you are and what you are doing right after he catches it. He sees you making a hard cut near him. The fact that you took off right away catches your defender off guard, you’re open for a quick pass back and you get it… now your team has the disc facing downfield in an attack position and the receiver never even had to pivot around.
- Return pass… you get a pass, the throwers marker sluffs off so much that best thing to do is to give right back to him without a mark.
- Play action… same as #1above but you fake it the pass to them. This gets the defenders to react (both your marker and the defender on the cutter) and potentially opens up a pass against the mark as your marker has put himself in a compromised position thinking he was denying an easy pass back.
- Misdirection… you cut for a swing/dump, your next move is usually to just throw a “continue” in the same direction allowing the disc to completely cross the field. You know this, your defender knows this, the downfield players know this. But you know where your thrower is.. so Instead you do a reverse pivot so that you can clearly see the guy who just gave you the disc. In that moment he has flashed in one direction or another and you can give the disc back to him.. or if they collapse on that, you can give it to some other player who is now open because his defender also assumed you’d just throw the continue. You do this once and the next time you cut for a swing your defender can’t safely assume you’ll throw the continue.. forcing him to be more conservative with his approach… allowing for an easier continue, or more yards, or even giving you the freedom to throw it deep because he is concerned with a everything but a huck.
- You do nothing… just because you honor the thrower doesn’t mean he has to be invovled in the next pass. Instead, once you realize he is not making a move to be invovled you turn up field and throw to somebody else. But you can do this knowing full well you had no other better option.
And on and on and on. The concept of honoring the thrower is simple. It is not something that needs to be done or should be done at all times. But there are likely opportunities to do it that go above and beyond what you are doing now.
And that’s it.
The reaction to this and things like it are usually, “Nothing new… knew all about this.. been doing it for years”.
I know you know. Everybody knows. We all know everything… good for you. We just don’t do it as much as we should.
Jam 2008
In other news, Jam is holding its first of 4 tryouts this weekend… wanna join? Damien is captaining the ship this year… which is exciting and scary. Exciting because it is the first time since 2001 I won’t be a Jam captain and I’m glad Damien stepped up…so I’m just trying out like the rest of them (well, except one of my best friends is the captain). Scary because it is the first time since 2001 I won’t be a Jam captain… I’m just trying out like the rest of them.
Bay Area Gossip? Nothing to exciting… l asked to not be captain of Jam, Damien stepped up, Baby Zalisk is moving back from Boston (the Bay Area boy band “99 Degrees” will be getting back together), basically all of ‘07 Jam is trying out again for ‘08, except Greg and Brandon are unknown at this point. Revolver has new captains, but basically everybody is back (but smartly made all players cuttable… it’s never about saying the previous year wasn’t good enough, it’s about being a team where every player earned their spot… which is usually why a team was probably good in the first place). Fury has their ‘07 squad for worlds… several veterans are claiming they’ll retire at that point, but I don’t think they will (nobody gives a shit about worlds except the team who wins, so it’s not really something to end your career with… nationals is.).
2008 Prediction… if both Bay Area mens teams don’t make nationals, the one that doesn’t will close up shop (or at least see a major change of some kind). The only way to maintain two highly competitive teams from the same metropolitan area for an extended period of time is to have them both consistantly make it to nationals. And after this year there is a chance that one of the teams will not be able to call themselves consistant national qualifiers (missing 2 out of 3 years). Over the years both teams have been run by current and former Jam players… so it’s obvious why they have similar philosophies as to the what they want their teams to be all about (in an nutshell… improve players individually, be the best team they can be, build strong bonds off the field). Now those philosophies seem to be independant of any nationals qualification… but competitive teams who take a nationals-level approach to ultimate are made of up players who strive and expect to play at a high level. Jam comes into it’s 10th season, Revolver its 3rd. Three years has been the been the breaking point for competitive non-Jam teams over the years. But it’s been 10+ years since there have been two teams whose collective strength has been this high. Huh… the last time there were two teams that were this good, they both had subpar seasons and combined the next year. Revolver is touted as the ‘younger’ team, but all teams are young at different points in their life-cycle. It will be interesting is if Revolver doesn’t make it again but everyone stays committed to coming back for another year and the top 1/3 doesn’t defect to join Jam or some other new team with Jam players. It wouldn’t be as interesting if Jam went in a new direction if they/we didn’t make it. We saw what happen after a frustrating year in ‘05 of just making semis of nationals… a shake up after not even making nationals would be expected. Anyway, here’s hoping we both make it to Nationals.
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