Just a few thoughts on the game. I’ll do a season wrap up and preliminary preview in the next few days to tie everything in.

First off, it’s a challenge to continue to write these and not repeat what’s already been said. If you’ve read one of these post game summaries after January 1st, I’m sorry to admit, you’ve read them all. The nuances of the story change, but the theme remains the same.

Simply put, this team continues to not do the little things it takes to win basketball games.

Defensively, this has to be the worst team Barnes has ever fielded during his tenure at Texas. They’re horrible. They don’t stay in front of dribblers, they don’t play good positional defense off the ball, they don’t know how or when to help to penetration or step-in to stop drivers, they don’t rotate correctly, etc. and so forth.

If you see anything sound that Texas does on the defensive end, then I’m all ears.

If it were up to me, I’d have these guys do the four man defensive shell drill every day until October, practicing simple ball-you-man defense until it was second nature. I wouldn’t even introduce a post or the dribble penetration aspect of the drill for at least a month.

They’re that bad.

So bad, that it effects rebounding. Our lack of any kind of team defense kills the ability to board because our players are never in favorable position to rebound the ball. We have good athletes, size, and strength inside, all the ingredients needed to be a good rebounding team.

To that point, there’s no reason Wake Forest should be playing volleyball on the glass against us like we’re an Ivy League school. It’s pathetic, and, along with defense, the two go hand in hand in a pathetic marriage.

Offensively, we have virtually zero identity/system/sets, etc., to fall back on when we’re having a cold shooting night, or teams have figured us out as individuals.

Our offense last night consisted of Jordan Hamilton hitting deep three’s off of a modicum of dribble penetration, Damion James driving past a power forward 20 feet from the basket, or J’Covan Brown on a screen and roll. To score against solid defensive teams, we usually need heroic efforts; otherwise it looks like we’re swimming upstream.

Thank God Wake was as disinterested to guard anyone last night as we were. I shudder to think what Kentucky would have done to us.

As for situational specifics, I railed on Barnes in the Open Thread for not making it perfectly clear to Brown that, as the team’s best foul shooter, he’s not to give up the ball with under 15 seconds to play. When you break the huddle or dead ball, even the simplest things are repeated.

Shit like, hey we have a timeout left if you’re trapped, or we don’t have any timeouts so don’t Webber, or no three’s here, or don’t foul here, or don’t pass it to your 50% foul shooter, or hey, you can’t run the baseline here. Seriously these “little” things are emphasized in every game on every team at every level. You’d laugh at how much elementary stuff is repeated out of a timeout or dead ball.

Well, my apologies to Rick Barnes. In the post-game Barnes explained that he did remind Brown out of the dead ball to keep the rock and take the foul that Wake was certain to give.

Calling a spade a spade here, but that’s a total mental breakdown on Brown’s part if his coach truly told him, only seconds earlier, to hold on to the basketball and take the foul. What a mental rock to give the ball up in that situation after you’ve been reminded. And, yes, I get it, it was Gary’s fault for not hitting his foul shots. That’s not the point.

In the plus column, I was happy with the players’ efforts for most of the game. Rebounding is tough if you’re always out of position so it’s not necessarily an effort issue, but defensively, especially in the last part of the second half, I thought we played with an intensity and effort on defense that had been missing for about a month. We weren’t always sound, but we played hard and that can cover up some of those defensive warts.

There was a four or five possession stretch where we really got in their jerseys, harassed dribblers, and got into passing lanes. I’m mostly talking about Brown, Bradley, and Hamilton so I hope that carries over to next year.

Speaking of those three, if they can continue to build on the chemistry they showed flashes of last night, they’ll be a solid group next year and beyond. Brown showed some quickness off the dribble, Bradley attacked the rim better than he has all year, and Hamilton proved he’s not only unflappable on the big stage by shooting us back into the game in the first half, but he’s also mature enough to defer as he did for most of the second half.

These guys are going to be really good if they stay together for a year or two.

So, certainly a disappointing game to cap off a disappointing season, but there are some positives to take away from this performance. We’ll continue to be who we are, which is a top 25 team with a special run in the tournament every decade or so.

Unfortunately, any higher level of expectation or emotional involvement beyond that point is folly in my humble opinion. As a fan if you’re okay with that, then good for you, because that’s where we’ll continue to be as a basketball team. We’re not ever going to be bad, but after watching this season, it’s doubtful we can ever be consistently elite.

Hook ‘Em

Well that’s good to know. I’ll sleep better at night knowing that for some poor 7 or 8 seed armageddon is imminent when the mighty Longhorns come to town. Then after Texas dispatches of that unworthy mid-seeded patsy there’s a one seed primed to go down in the second round. It must suck to be a top seed knowing Texas is bringing the danger. It’s coming. It’s right around the corner.

Be afraid Kentucky. Pull the covers tightly Duke.

Texas is bringing a veritable Roman phalanx of defensive basketball to the party. Get ready to dance to the Horns’ symphony of offensive basketball. Afterall, this is the same team that started the year 17 and 0, right?

“I don’t think there’s a team in the country that will want to play Texas,” senior wing Damion James said after the Longhorns lost 86-67 to Baylor in the Big 12 quarterfinals Thursday night at the Sprint Center. “We’re so talented. At one point, we were the best team in the country. We lost our focus and enthusiasm and passion, and we have to get that back.”

Yes, Damion, other than Baylor, a squad on par with Alcindor’s UCLA teams, there probably isn’t another team that wants to play Texas. We were the best team in the nation once. For a minute.

“We’re out of the Big 12 now, and we can play some other teams, teams that have never seen us play.”

Damion, I love you man but there’s some teams out there you’ve never seen play and I’m not sure you want to. Catch any of that Big East tournament? The MAAC champion can ball, bro. There’s also three Aggie teams in this tournament and they are playing better ball than the Longhorns. Utah State, New Mexico State, and certainly Texas A&M are dangerous. In fact I’d bet their dangerous is more dangerous than your dangerous. Afterall, get three Aggies together in any setting and the danger factor increases exponentially.

“We are dangerous; we’ve proven to be dangerous,” Barnes said. “I know people think we’ve had a disappointing season because of the expectations, but that’s because of how far our program has come.”

Yep, we’ve come a long way Rick. The Penders coached teams were just mildly dangerous. You avoided them for precautionary reasons. Like public bathrooms and travel to the Gaza Strip.

This Texas squad on the other hand is ebola virus dangerous. Grown men cry at the mere mention of our random screen offensive design. Women and children are hidden at the sight of our smothering help and recover defense. Tivo’ing Texas Longhorn games is tantamount to handling a hydrophis belcheri sea snake or coming back as Hillary Clinton’s bicycle seat. Longhorn guards pack enough venom to kill a thousand men with one entry pass, their shot selection as frightening as a statist’s derriere.

“Other than the first two lines in the tournament, I truly believe that in this tournament it doesn’t matter,” Barnes said. “If you’re a 1-seed, if you win that first game, you’re going to probably play a team from a power conference. The pressure then shifts to the higher-seeded team.”

Yep, seeding makes no difference, much like a bout of chlamydia doesn’t matter as long as you get a shot of petercillin.

Texas will find out where it gets it shot today and perhaps it’ll cure what ails them because of the all powerful “pressure shifting” phenomenon.

One things for sure, the Texas Longhorns are dangerous. They’re dangerous to their fans in the same way brisk sprints and cheeeseburgers are dangerous to an overweight dude prone to myocardial infarction.

This Miner backcourt of Randy Culpepper and Christian Polk is better than any combination of guards any University of Texas school has rolled out in the last two seasons. Randy Culpepper is the best guard to come out of El Paso since Tim Hardaway. His presence on the 2010 Texas Longhorn team would make Texas an instant top 10 club. I take him over Tweetie Carter based on hair style alone.

Culpepper’s backcourt mate Christian Polk is a nice complement to what Culpepper does. Imagine that, players with skillsets that mesh. Both can shoot the ball from deep, and they’re capable ballhandlers that can break down a defense.

In the frontcourt, the UTEP Miners have a couple talented players to finish what Polk and Culpepper start. Louisville transfer Derrick Caracter is a big body, but he also has a credible face up game from 15 feet out. The other post, Arnette Moultrie is a long forward that is a threat at the arc and a solid wing defender. They are plus rebounders that get the job done with different styles. Caracter is the bruiser inside that bangs his way to double digits rebounds. If you need a guy to carve out space and board he’s your guy. He’s Perfect weakside rebounder for the college game.

Moultrie is built like Anthony Jones of Baylor but he’s stronger at this point in his career. He’s also the perfect high/low complement for Caracter. The dude can ball.

If UTEP needs instant offense, the face up skills of the Miner frontcourt along with the ballhandling and terrific decision making of the backcourt allow Tony Barbee to go to the ballscreen game for easy offense. If they switched to the random screening offense, however, the Miners would be a solid favorite to take over the world and rule like Greek gods from the Franklin Mountains.

Speaking of Barbee and Greek gods, he’s one of the games up and coming superstar coaches who won’t be long for El Paso with this kind of career trajectory. But for now, don’t bet against Barbee’s Miners having a pretty long stay in the tournament. That’s good news if you were counting on rooting for a team in Orange representing the University of Texas system.

What happened tonight was eerily similar. In fact, it’s mindnumbingly frustrating that our staff made nary an adjustment to try to make the game respectable. Point blank, we were pimp slapped for the fourth time in a row by a program that is a few short years removed from college basketball’s version of the death penalty.

Think about that.

As far as this particular embarrassing performance goes, a couple things caught my eye.

First, we have absolutely zero floor balance especially against a zone. Floor balance means you have the correct distribution of players to attack the offensive glass while still having enough transition defenders to stop the break. Floor balance is very important against a zone because the location of the guards on defense are such that once a ball is shot the opposing guards are already in good position to get up the floor on the break. As for floor balance, getting back, stopping the ball, protecting the basket before you fan out to find your man…yeah, we don’t do that so well.

In fact, we usually use at least one guard to attack the interior of the zone or the baseline of the zone in our offense, leaving the other guard to get back on defense and protect the basket. If you couldn’t tell already, I don’t think our other guard has been made aware of this responsibility. In fact, I think there’s a solid chance that our other guard is being taught to hope the ball bounces to a “muthafucka in burnt orange!”, or simply hope against hope that the rock goes through the hoop.

Even still, I’m not sure the make gives this bunch enough time to get back on defense anyway. Perhaps we can get Suns coach Mike D’antoni on the horn to clarify if there’s some nuance with the “Random Screen Offense” as it applies to transition defense that we may be missing. I’m honestly all ears at this point.

The other thing that was interesting about this game was the insertion of J’Covan Brown into the lineup. I have to applaud the staff for trying to exercise this talent muscle that we’ll certainly need down the road, not only this season but next season as well.

I thought Brown played pretty well and did some things at the point that we haven’t seen out of the position for most of the year.

That typed, I thought the use, or lack thereof with respect to Jordan Hamilton was abjectly asinine. Unless this guy is validating his shoe size by exposing himself at midcourt, you have to play him as many minutes as possible to get him ready for primetime. Point blank. Bad with the good. Good with the bad. You do Jordan Hamilton, his confidence, team chemistry, and the program itself an absolutely huge disservice by having the talented wing on the bench to prove a point about a random quick shot. Especially when that quick shot happens amongst a litany of other player errors all over the floor. Come on, Rick.

This kind of hardline coaching has no value at all in light of what’s been going on this season. Zip, zero, nada. The benching makes little sense in the context of Hamilton’s marked improvement over the last month or so.

Put away the stick and grab the carrot.

It smacks of Hickory, North Carolina, small town coaching jingoism and nothing more. It’s stupid coaching dogma on par with always press a pressing team and not fouling up 3 with under 10 seconds to go.

There’s no reason for Barnes’ actions on this front other than to win some juvenile pissing contest that probably originated when Barnes was a player back in high school.

Other than that, the game was monumentally entertaining in a, “Hey look, HenryJames slipped Vasherized some rohypnol in a room full of Mexican midget wrestlers” kind of way. Every fiber of your being tells you not to watch, but you just have to, making note of which teabags are Lipton and which are generic.

Now imagine you’re sitting there, knowing that it’s your job to write up these Hispanic grappling shenanigans along with every horrifying detail about to ensue. That’s how I feel before I push the little red button on my DVR prior to a Texas game.

I’m looking for the tiny, masked Espectrito coming off the top rope in all of his diminutive glory. Lately, I haven’t been able to get out of his way.

The Hawkeyes Cyclones may not be a great team, but before tonight, they were only four victories away from being an NCAA tournament shop wrecker. That’s 10 straight wins away from a national championship if you’re scoring at home.

Why not? ISU, historically, has a solid basketball pedigree. Over the years they’ve featured great players including Jeff Hornacek, Fred Hoiberg, and Ashton Kutcher look-a-like Kyle Korver who now plays for the Jazz. Well not really, Kyle Korver played for Creighton, which is close to Ames, but keep in mind that I’m pretty sure Korver was recruited by Iowa State so that has to count for something.

The point stands that Iowa State is scrappy ballclub. They’re a solid squad and they usually have good, sometimes white players, that illustrate that fact. Forget that their best players over the years have been guys like Marcus Fizer, Jamaal Tinsley and Kelvin Cato, that’s not germane to their scrappiness. Neither is the fact that their most famous coach liked playing drinking games with 18 year old coeds. But then again, who doesn’t?

Focus people! Focus on the Cyclone scrappiness. We beat them today and a big reason for that was the fact that they played a really scrappy player in Scott Christopherson which afforded our own king of scrappiness Jai Lucas a suitable cover.

The Lucas vs. Christopherson battle was a huge development between an overachieving, scrappy jumpshooter and a ball-handling wizard garden gnome. Not because these two really played a big role in the outcome of the game, but because it allowed Texas to slide Avery Bradley on to Diante Garrett to stop the bleeding on defense.

You see, up until that defensive adjustment, Garrett was able to out-scrap Jai Lucas off the dribble and into the lane for easy layups and offensive board opportunities for the Cyclones. When Rick made the adjustment to slide Avery Bradley over to guard ISU’s less scrappy backcourt counterpart, Texas was able to hold ISU to zero field goals over a seven minute stretch in the second half.

That’s right, ISU went on a seven minute, nineteen second field goal drought when Avery Bradley was on the ball, which prevented the Cyclones from getting any easy offense, or difficult offense, nay scrappy offense, for a large portion of the second half. Tip your cap to coach Barnes for this huge in-game adjustment.

Offensively, your stars of the game are frontcourt players Dex Pittman, Gary Johnson, and scrapping warrior Damion James. The trio combined to go 23-38 from the field for 59 points and 31 rebounds. Pretty scrappy.

And that’s your ballgame. One defensive adjustment that allowed Jai Lucas to not only stay on the floor on defense, but spread the floor on offense to let GJ, Damion James, and Pittman work an undersized ISU frontcourt.

The win sets up a rematch against the Baylor Bears, and the Longhorns will be looking to avoid taking a size three collar against Scott Drew’s battling Baptists. They’re not the scrappy overachieving club that the Cyclones rolled out, but they’re very talented, and some segments of Longhorn fandom put a premium on beating talented vs. over-achieving teams.

Not me, I’m pretty stoked about beating an ISU club a mere 4 games away from the NCAA tournament. For those that aren’t pumped by the win, here’s a scrappy picture for you, courtesy of my two month old Raylee. Her scrappiness in this picture is palpable, and no, the pic is not staged. Like I said, she’s just scrappy.

–Trips

OK, how dumb was I? I bought tickets to this thing back in November for a few reasons, one of which was that I might get see some clinching of some championship or whatever.

Whatever.

Instead, I get to watch probably the worst Texas defense since… hmmm… maybe Acie Earl and Iowa gave Penders his only first round loss in the NCAAs?

I’d like to go into more detail about what I’m about to write, but I don’t have the time or much inclination. Whatever we thought was going to happen this season (good things, I mean), it ain’t gonna happen.

I’m honestly puzzled by lineups that force Justin Mason to guard someone 6-9. The only reason you do that is to have an advantage against the guy on the offensive end, but the 6-9 guy doesn’t have to guard him.

Gary Johnson plays like we hoped Dexter Pittman would play this year. And it’s not that I expected Pittman to have the quickness of a guy 50 pounds lighter than him, but Johnson can move without telegraphing his move. Pittman has pretty quick feet, this we always knew, and it works out great for him on defense. He can alter his position against big guys and be effective. But on offense, he just sorta plops into position on the lane, and because the guards are so poor at post entry, he never gets the ball. They occasionally shuffle him across the lane, but the same thing happens over there. And that’s the problem. He’s got nothin’ else. He may screen for the guard, but they never look for him on a roll. I’m down on Dexter as an offensive player, but he gets no help.

Texas needed Dexter to put up 14, 5 and 2 or so, every night. If he did that, they might be still be undefeated today, or at least in the mix for a No. 1, or 2 at worst. But as his good game against Oklahoma State showed, he can’t do this against someone his own size, or quicker. Could he do it if the guards could feed the post? Maybe. Woulda been nice to see.

The freshmen. I’d guesstimate now that they need about 40 points from these guys every night, with about 15 or so from each of two guys, so that they have to be guarded. Hamilton is doing his part — more on him in a bit — but Bradley and Brown are just not getting it done. Bradley looks like a whipped puppy right now. He hit six threes in a game three Saturdays ago, but now can’t shoot, and doesn’t drive. He plays defense, although it took until halftime for Barnes to convince the bigger guys that they had to show on Dunn when Bradley was getting double-screened. I coulda sworn some of those screens were moving, but so it goes.

Brown is no longer a chapter ahead of teammates on some of his passes, but he’s still a page or so ahead. Even if it’s only a paragraph or two, that’s still enough to throw off the play. The memorable one was the goofy flip intended for where he thought Chapman was supposed to go, while Chapman was just happy not to have turned it over when he gave it back to Brown. But I’d still rather see him at the point than Mason. And the shooting, of course, is not what it needs to be.

Hamilton keeps taking steps, but he’s still giving it up on D. I paid close attention a couple of months back, when SLX posted about how severe he thinks JH’s ADD is, and how he thought it was affecting him. Since then, I’ve watched Hamilton a lot, and I think SLX was on target. Between this and Trips’s continuous man-you-ball drill on this page, you can see that Hamilton just hasn’t made the jump defensively. The thing is, I think he really is trying, but he can’t seem to do much about it.

If you watch him before a play, you will see him try to find the ball and his man. But it seems like he’s thinking about the ball (because that’s most likely what he lost in the past, and they got on him about it). And then, his man moves, and Hamilton’s head jerks like he’s surprised. He’s kind of a loper anyway, but he’d be closer to closing out if he hadn’t lost an additional half-step when his man starts to move. Welcome to high D-I ball, son. I’m afraid there is no easy solution until defense gets a little more ingrained.

I understand why they try him at the point, but against the zone, it didn’t seem to matter, because he wasn’t in position to shoot from where he was, and he wasn’t a threat to drive into it.

I don’t know who was forgetting about Acy, but it seemed like everyone was. It’s a bad sign when ESPN makes fun of the D by counting Acy’s dunks on screen in the highlight package. I can only hope that with two more years of experience that Barnes will have ball handlers like Dunn and Carter. I thought one of the reasons they couldn’t get a run of stops on defense was that whenever things broke down, either of those two had the confidence and ability to get to the lane. That’s what we all thought Bradley and Brown could do, but they haven’t. I coulda sworn I saw Bradley do it for Findlay Prep, but I musta been mistaken. Anyway, 18 turnovers to eight. There’s a story in there, too.

Also, am I the only one that can’t figure out what they’re trying to do on offense? I never really know where the ball is going next when it goes from one player to another. IMO, random offense only seems to work well when each player can get own his shot — this is largely how the somewhat misfit but talented ‘06 team made things work. But these guys aren’t that good.

Also, like Trips, I’m ready to scrutinize the recruiting. Chapman still plays like a freshman. Hill doesn’t play at all, and he’s in his fourth year. Wangmene has to be able to catch the ball before he can score. Those guys are going to be eating minutes next year, with Johnson and Thompson? Really?

It seems like years since this team didn’t miss a two-point shot in the second half against Iowa. But the “new” rotation is still in shakedown while other teams — I’m talking about Baylor and A&M and Missouri and even Oklahoma State — are comfortable with what they are and what they do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that good teams haven’t really played a bad game against Texas since…. I can’t remember.

Now it’s on to Iowa State, which really isn’t a very good team, but still managed to go overtime the last two games with teams that beat Texas (while winning one, and on the road at that). I’d really like to not care right now, but after 30-plus years of caring, it’s hard to stop.

Every coach who’s any coach in the Big 12 can’t stand the guy for a variety of reasons, including Texas’ esteemed head man who happens to be leading the anti-Scott Drew charge. Hell, basketball fans for both squads tune in to the bitter end of Baylor/Texas games to watch the side show that this pair’s post game handshake has become.

But you know what. I’m over it. Scott Drew is a heckuva coach. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t type that because Drew continues to pants the Longhorns with a collection of basketball players largely ignored by the Texas program during the recruiting process. I’m over it because I really like watching Drew’s teams play.

The fact of the matter is that Scott Drew has built a really good basketball team from the ground up in a relatively short amount of time.

The impressive part about rebuilding on top of Dave Bliss’ smoldering ashes is that this Baylor team was constructed with a larger plan in mind.

The brick and mortar of Baylor’s team is a talented and complementary backcourt. Tweetie Carter makes everyone better because he can create with the dribble and stretch the defense as a credible jump shooter. LaceDarius Dunn is a shooter/scorer supreme who needs to be guarded as soon as he leaves the locker room. Mark Price and Bruce Dalrymple. Chris Corchiani and Rodney Monroe. Tweetie and LaceDarius. Sounds like a fit.

The backcourt is the focal point of the Baylor attack and their offense is designed to free these two players. When you over play Dunn in the off the ball screening game or over-hedge Carter’s ballscreens, Baylor is able to attack the rim with a ferocious collection of athletic finishers that can play with anyone in the Big 12 in Jones, Acy, and Udoh.

It’s basketball in its purest form. Run offense for the players that are hard to guard, and then counter off of the help that’s sure to come. Drew has done a terrific job of constructing a team with this premise in mind and the result is a team that complements each other well and plays a brand of basketball that’s fun to watch.

Even more impressive than Baylor’s ability to score (Baylor could always score) is the defensive adjustment Drew made for this club before the season began. Going into the season, Drew realized that his personnel probably wasn’t the most adept at playing traditional man to man defense, plus he knew he had depth issues in the backcourt.

So, you have some guys that have a hard time staying in front of dribblers, you have zero depth, and you have frontcourt guys that can rebound out of their area and block shots. What would YOU do? I’d zone, something Ursa Major touches on over at Bear Crawl.

The zone has allowed Baylor to stay in games defensively and stay out of foul trouble which gives that explosive offense more time to find its rhythm. The result is a Baylor club that you don’t want any part of in the Big Dance.

As for the Longhorns, there really isn’t anything else to say that hasn’t already been said. We have a collection of mismatched personnel that has responded poorly to the way they’ve been coached. It’s simple, really.

And the game? Well the game on offense, other than the turnovers, played out about as I expected. An active zone that doesn’t try to limit the paint area agrees with the Texas offense and especially its frontcourt personnel. Sweet spot. Wheelhouse. Feel free to mix and match your sports metaphors.

Had we just valued the basketball we could have made the game a shootout because we were getting good shots on offense everytime down to the extent we avoided a turnover.

The reason our frontcourt personnel is a perfect counter to an active, extended perimeter zone is that it dares you to attack the paint area from 15 feet in. The zone allows most passes right into the high post so it’s a virtual certainty that you’ll get the ball in the paint every possession. It’s the same thing Syracuse does with their zone. They simply dare you to make a 15 footer or attack their behemoths. And Texas has plenty of athletic scorers that are really good 15 feet and in.

So when you’re playing against this defense, you’re basically getting built in dribble penetration. Except your guards don’t have to dribble or penetrate. Cool, huh? I can hear Longhorn fan now, “I like this idea and wish to subscribe to your recruiting newsletter.”

The extended zone is the reason we shot over 50 percent from the floor, and the main reason Johnson, Hamilton, and James had good shooting days. We just need guards that have the ability to take care of the basketball and deliver it to these players in these spots on the floor everytime down. If we had any one of eight random starting Big 12 point guards for this game, the game likely goes down to the wire.

I’m not going to talk about the Texas defense because it’s tough to comment on what you can’t see.

As for players, there really is no need to hash things out. Here’s the boxscore if you’re into leather gimp masks, and want to draw your own conclusions.

Also, Nickel Rover has some good thoughts on what he saw. He’s right, our offense looked really crisp at times and the zone had a lot to do with that. I actually think Drew made a minor mistake by extending his defense so much.

So with that, it’s on to the Big 12 tournament where we’ll face Iowa State in the first round this Wednesday. A win means another shot at taking down Big 12 big dog Baylor. I’ll be tuning in to watch a fun brand of basketball and a team coached by the laughingstock of Dunder Mifflin. I’ll let the reader draw his own conclusions there.