[Editor’s Note: The author, Alissa Hirsh ’16, is an extraordinary point guard and a captain of Grinnell’s Women’s Basketball team. She was recently recognized as the Midwest Conference Women’s Basketball Performer of the Week and is currently averaging 22 points per game (second in the MWC). All of this is to say: if anyone is qualified to write about the System from a student-athlete perspective, it’s Alissa.] In November of 2012, Grinnell College junior, Griffin Lentsch, broke the Division III single-game scoring record against Principia College, pouring in 89 points on 55 shots. Lentsch, a 6-4’ silky smooth, catch-and-shoot guard went on to lead the nation in 3-point field goals made per game, and was likely eyeing the national scoring title going into his senior year.
But then Jack Taylor, a sophomore guard from UW-La Crosse, transferred to Grinnell. Although Taylor’s jumper didn’t look quite as pretty as Lentsch’s, he could shoot off the dribble, which had important implications for potential record setting: by eliminating the necessity of time-consuming, off-ball screens, Taylor could fire off threes at a rate Lentsch never could. All Taylor needed was the ball, and an opponent from the National Christian College Athletic Association.
By the time Faith Baptist Bible College arrived at Darby Gymnasium to play Grinnell in November of 2013, the word around campus had spread: the new guy from Wisconsin was going for 100 points.
Throughout the game, I watched uncomfortably as Lentsch, along with Grinnell’s other stars, sacrificed wide open jumpers and natural driving lanes to instead force the ball into Taylor’s hands, who often times had to make difficult moves to get open or to the basket. The atmosphere was an eerie mixture of excitement, confusion, and chaos, with subtle traces of apprehension.
Taylor finished the game with 138 points on 108 shots in 36 minutes. Lentsch took three shots in 14 minutes. Despite a senior class somewhat dismayed at the seeming lack of humanity in forcing Lentsch to participate in the shattering of his barely year-old record, the message was clear: it was Taylor’s turn to ride the System to stardom.
This is the wacky world of Grinnell College Men’s Basketball, where 3-point shooting is king, record breaking is the name of the game, and defense is for losers. So how does the System actually work? I honestly have no idea, but I’m going to spend the next several pages giving my best shot at an analysis. In a run-and-gun style of play developed many years ago by Coach Arsenault, “shifts” of five players are subbed in and out approximately every 45 seconds, with each of the 15-20 players receiving an average of 14 minutes per game. Offensively, Grinnell aims to shoot within 12 seconds of the shot clock having begun, taking almost exclusively 3-point shots. Defensively, they run a trapping press that usually forces their opponent into either a turnover or a wide-open lay-up within ten seconds of the shot clock beginning.
So why does it work? Theoretically, it works because 3>2, taking shots early in the shot clock = opportunity to take more shots, and other mathematical identities that serve as the basis for the System’s “equation.” In practice, however, a variety of other forces play much more significant roles.
One of the System’s core tenants is maximum participation. However, “participation” means many different things, for many different players. For example, participation for non-Jacks in Taylor’s shift means literally standing around watching Taylor decide whether he’s going to use his hesitation, killer cross, or one-dribble-shot-fake to create just enough space to fire off a trey. On defense, it means playing 4 on 5, because, put simply: defense is not Taylor’s job.
The System is most successful when it has the right combination of parts, and an ideal shift is made up of the following components.
1. “The Guy”
The Guy’s job is to score the baskets, and is required to take the majority of the shift’s shots. If The Guy is a catch-and-shoot player like Lentsch, he is in a constant state of coming off screens—often double and triple screens—and has the green light to fire away. If The Guy is an off-the-dribble shooter like Taylor, he gets ball screens and clear outs. If the Guy is a versatile scorer, like my personal favorite Guy, senior Luke Yeager, he gets a mixture of off-ball screens and clear outs. All Guys get the Big Guys (see #2) working round the clock to snag offensive rebounds, which they fire right back out to the Guy. The Guys are not technically required to play defense, but some of them, probably out of some misguided sense of nostalgia for traditional basketball, do anyway
2. “The Big Guy”
Because of the System’s steal-it-within-the-first-10-seconds-or-concede-a-lay-up trapping press, most defensive possessions disintegrate into 3-on-2 or 2-on-1 fast break scenarios. It is the Big Guy’s job to block the ensuing lay-ups, or foul hard so that the next shift can sub in. The best Big Guys can also shoot threes, though this is not a necessity.
3. “The Defense Guys”
These are the System’s engines. Quick, scrappy, and lightning fast, it is the Defense Guys’ job to force turnovers and chuck their steals up to The Guy. The Defense Guys also double as the Screeners, but the best Defensive Guys are consistent shooters as well. Exceptional Defense Guys often times earn the green light to occasionally do rogue drives to the hoop if they see open lanes on offense. Individuality is a privilege, not a right.
4. “The Julian Marx”
The Julian Marx, named after current Grinnell sophomore, is a lights out three-point shooter. When defenses collapse on The Guy, the Julian Marx rotates expertly, receives The Guy’s pass, and knocks down the wide-open three. The best Julian Marx’s are allowed to develop other moves as well; current Julian Marx spent his off-season perfecting a “Floater”, widely considered the most beautiful move in basketball. These components provide insight into the true genius of the System, which is a complete, machine-like division of labor. Collective success simply requires each individual to excel at their one job for 45 seconds at a time, 14 minutes a game. The Julian Marx’s don’t have to worry about being good drivers, The Guys don’t have to play defense, and the Defense Guys don’t have to be offensive threats. A more extreme form of specialization often arises in the end of game settings, where separate shifts will sub in for each offensive and defensive possession. This usually means subbing in two second string Defense Guys for The Guy and Julian Marx when Grinnell is on D, and subbing in the second string Guy and Julian Marx for the Defense Guys when Grinnell is on O.
However, various constraints arise out of the System’s seemingly flawless efficiency. For one, players’ potential to utilize or strengthen secondary or tertiary dimensions of their game is severely limited by the System’s mold. Somewhat paradoxically, this is especially true of Jack Taylor. Taylor has one of the best court visions I’ve seen at the Division III level, and is easily one of the best passers on the team. Maybe he’s even a good defender too—who knows. The System does not demand these things of him, and so he rarely does them.
Herein lies the most frustrating aspect of the System, at least for me: we can really only speculate under which conditions, and for which players, the System is debilitating versus liberating. It’s an experiment without a control group. We’ll never know what would happen if a regular 8-man rotation played conventional basketball; we’ll never know if the Julian Marx’s would have survived, evolved, excelled or fizzled out in a traditional setting. Another one of the System’s unintended consequences is the prevalence of the Might Have Been The Guy syndrome. Because the System advantages certain players on criterion that are somewhat arbitrary in the context of what it normally takes to be an exceptional basketball player (on the backs of the rest of their teammates), it isn’t necessarily obvious who would make the most successful Guy. Nor is it easy for aspiring Guys to swallow the reality that they might spend their college careers as a servant to the Guy.
But what about all the records? Setting single-game individual scoring records is simply one application of the System’s formula, when the pre-condition of an egregiously horrible opponent is met. During these scripted events, as was the case for both Taylor and Lentsch, The Guy plays the full game, and shifts of four are subbed out around him and instructed not to shoot. If the Guy manages to hit 40-50% of his shots, boom: an unheard of point-total, a spot on Jimmy Kimmel, and a precarious place in the record books. Thus, in the context of the System, these events are not half as astounding as they are purely pragmatic. Our small liberal arts college gains unprecedented notoriety, 15 Division III players get national attention, and Coach Arsenault can use it as a recruiting tool to effectively restock his machine.
What is astounding, then, was the shallow, pathetic news coverage surrounding both of Taylor’s 100-point performances. In place of doing any serious investigation, major news outlets– from ESPN, to USAToday, to the New York Times– simply accepted the Grinnell coaching staff’s narrative that Taylor just happened to get hot, and chose to focus on the Twitter reactions of Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant. On the other side of the aisle, Deadspin blasted the record and called the System a “bastardization” of basketball, and CBS’s Gregg Doyel accused Arsenault of perpetrating the farce to sell his books. What all of these conclusions had in common was that they were seriously under-informed. And, as a result of analyzing one box score and deciding that the entire System is a bastardization of basketball or reading one headline and blogging that Jack Taylor is going to the NBA, you miss out on appreciating a nuanced reality. The reality is this: Jack Taylor is an outstanding Division III player who wasn’t even voted MVP of the Midwest Conference last year, playing for one of the most fascinating interpretations of basketball in existence.
So does it matter that everyone got it so wrong? In the case of the public’s opinion on a college basketball player and team, probably not at all. But using singular events to inform broader judgments without seeking out a thorough understanding of the context in which the events occurred is a potentially destructive habit which can have problematic effects in other situations.
For example, when we decide that reading two Ferguson headlines and half of one Grand Jury testimony qualifies us to deliver lectures on race relations in America, there are grave consequences. Our propensity to offer up these ill-informed conclusions at the same rate as the experts seriously inhibits the potential for achieving a meaningful dialogue. This idea hints at the possibility that polarization in our country is often times a function of both sides using incomplete data, rather than a legitimate ideological separation between parties. The longer we choose to operate under the assumption that actually knowing what the hell you’re talking about isn’t a requirement for entering into a debate, the farther we get from convergence or understanding.
But there is good news. Jack Taylor was not the first Jack Taylor, and he certainly will not be the last. Another manufactured record is coming—there are rumblings, maybe as soon as Saturday’s contest against Simpson—and with it comes an opportunity for redemption. So, media outlets and civilians alike, I challenge us all: when the story breaks, let us first put on our critical thinking caps, ask questions, do research, conduct interviews, watch game tape, and then, and only then, take to the Twitt/Blog/News-ospheres for a healthy debate about what implications these records, and the System, truly have. God knows we could use some practice.