One month ago we wondered why they would even field a team against the likes of John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Brandon Knight, and Rajon Rondo. UK fans around the globe thought that group would simply toy around with the Domincan team only to blow them out of the freaking water in the end. But then it happened…they actually played the Dominican Republicans and got beaten…badly. Don’t let Tuesday night’s final score fool you; the far and away better “team” here was from outside this nation.
By the by, this was my first official time being a member of the media. I first went to the will-call window to get my press pass. I was then told I had to go to the press entrance to get my pass. I knew that, I was just…joking, yeah that’s the ticket. I then continued to hide the fact that I had no idea where I was and where I should be. After getting lost a couple of times, I figured out where I should be and it got easier from there.
Back to the game, I made a list of key factors explaining why the pro’s lost Tuesday night. The first factor was Defense or lack thereof. Sure there was individual effort but if a defender got beat there was no help defense. Many of the players were more focused on running the fast break and dazzling the crowd as opposed to guarding their man and boxing out. I realize that this was an exhibition, but the DR team did not.
The defense the DR team played on the pros was terrific. On one side of the ball you had Wall, Bledsoe, Knight and Rondo. Who on planet earth could guard that? No one right? Right, no ONE, but as a team the DR really caused the pros some serious shooting woes.
The pros had no offensive game plan. Well that’s not entirely true, the game plan was to have a guard drive as deep as possible and throw it to the perimeter and then have that guy drive as deep as he could and so on and so on. I never saw the total count, but the pros must have had a Gillispie like turnover margin. Oh how many times did the pros make one too many passes. Whenever Rondo and Wall would just go to the rim they would score more often than not. The other game plan was have Wall and Rondo shoot 18 foot fade away jumpers nonstop. Good grief, Wall may have led the team with 26 points but he also led the team with 26 fadeaways.
Finally the biggest reveal to me was the huge difference John Calipari actually makes. People say all the time “he’s a great recruiter, but he’s not a great coach”. That to me is bollocks now. In just 2 weeks, he took a team that’s third best player is an ex-Pitino point guard and turned them into a competitive team that beat a team FULL of professional athletes…twice. On top of that, he beat the same players that he coached and was successful with. What does it all mean? The whole “Anyone can win with these guys” statement just isn’t true. I understand that the pros only had 1 day to practice and the DR team had 2 weeks, but once again we are talking a team comprised of Garcia, Horford, Sosa and Martinez aren’t exactly scaring anyone. The reason the score was so close at the end was Cal never played the aforementioned players in the second half. He played all bench players and still came out winners.
There were some other factors that probably contributed to the loss as well. For one, the ball was smaller. I did notice Rondo had some issues in the open court dribbling which I never see watching him in Boston. One other factor is every single time Cousins made a move in the post or when Wall drove to the hoop the DR team went all “hack a pro”. It worked, since Demarcus and company missed a bunch of free throws. And lastly the refs weren’t great, the performance was better than one in Rupp but still wasn’t great.
All in all, it was a fun time and it feels great to be breaking down basketball in August. 40,000 people attending 2 exhibition games? You people are crazy.
