I was researching some David vs. Goliath-type upsets and found a terrific Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker from 2009. The sub-headline is ‘When underdogs break the rules’ — in basketball and other ventures, like wars.
For hoops, it presents examples of not-so-talented teams successfully using a full-court press to disrupt the flow of better-skilled opponents, and questions why the tactic is underused. Hmmm. Sounds like a team I know. Mind you, this is a physically exhausting strategy and European players are not exactly cardiovascular kings. Ex-Maroussi point guard Yannis Gagaloudis is a smoker (though darn quick, to be fair). And well-coached teams should be able to break presses.
Still, Maroussi is 0-17 and has a roster full of teenagers, so why not? Here’s an excerpt (bonus: it mentions The Cage) from the article:
“In January of 1971, the Fordham University Rams played a basketball game against the University of Massachusetts Redmen. The game was in Amherst, at the legendary arena known as the Cage, where the Redmen hadn’t lost since December of 1969. Their record was 11–1. The Redmen’s star was none other than Julius Erving—Dr. J. The UMass team was very, very good. Fordham, by contrast, was a team of scrappy kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn. Their center had torn up his knee the first week of the season, which meant that their tallest player was six feet five. Their starting forward—and forwards are typically almost as tall as centers—was Charlie Yelverton, who was six feet two. But from the opening buzzer the Rams launched a full-court press, and never let up. “We jumped out to a thirteen-to-six lead, and it was a war the rest of the way,” Digger Phelps, the Fordham coach at the time, recalls. “These were tough city kids. We played you ninety-four feet. We knew that sooner or later we were going to make you crack.” Phelps sent in one indefatigable Irish or Italian kid from the Bronx after another to guard Erving, and, one by one, the indefatigable Irish and Italian kids fouled out. None of them were as good as Erving. It didn’t matter. Fordham won, 87–79.”
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