Rookie of the Year Race

At RealGM, a look at the career paths of Nikola Mirotic and Tobias Harris and why the award no longer matters.

Oklahoma Preview

At Barking Carnival, a look at what Lon Kruger has going on in his fourth season in Norman.

Post Rondo Rotation

At Mavs Moneyball, a look at the new mix of players that Rick Carlisle is using.

Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys may not end up winning a Super Bowl, but they have the best team since the last time they won in 1996. They have a 12-4 record and a remarkable 8-0 record away from home - their style of play translates anywhere and gives them a chance against anyone. The big difference for this year's team is their offensive line, which allows them to control the clock and keep the other team's offense off the field. The Cowboys control tempo as well as any team in the NFL and they force you to play their style of football.

The Cowboys have always been able to put up a bunch of points with Tony Romo at QB, but they have mostly done that through the air, with Romo connecting to guys like Terrell Owens, Dez Bryant and Jason Witten. Under Romo and Jason Garrett, Dallas has traditionally thought pass first, pass second and pass third - the idea was to pass in order to set up the run. That philosophy has allowed Romo to break almost every passing record in Cowboys history, but it repeatedly came up short in the month of December and in the playoffs, where Romo has a career 1-3 record. 

The big change in their philosophy this season is they run to set up the pass. With DeMarco Murray running behind Tyron Smith, Zack Martin and Travis Frederick, Dallas has been able to control the line of scrimmage for most of the season. It's real simple football. They force teams to commit extra men into the box to stop the run and then they kill them over the top with Dez Bryant, one of the most indefensible 1-on-1 players in the league. If they overload on Dez, Romo can kill them with guys like Witten, Terrence Williams and Cole Beasley. With the offense holding the ball for most of the game, the defense gets to play from ahead and the other offense has a hard time getting into any rhythm against them. 

That was the formula they used in one of the most impressive wins anyone has had all season - a 30-23 victory in Seattle in November. DeMarco ran the ball 28 times for 115 yards and they held the ball for 37 minutes. There's not much the Legion of Boom can do when the Cowboys are constantly picking up 4-5 yards on the ground on first down. Even if they have to go into Seattle in an NFC championship game, the Cowboys style of play gives them a chance. 

In that sense, they remind me a lot of the Memphis Grizzlies. Memphis is one of the biggest and most physical teams in the NBA and they are one of the teams that no one wants to face in the playoffs precisely because of their style of play. Since the Grit 'N Grind train got rolling, take a look at what they have done in the post-season:

2011:

- Beat Spurs (61 wins) in 6

- Lose to Thunder (56 wins) in 7

2012:

- Lose to the Clippers in 7

2013:

- Beat Clippers (56 wins) in 7

- Beat Thunder (60 wins) in 5

- Lose to Spurs in 4

2014:

- Lose to the Thunder (59 wins) in 7

They have sent three 55+ win teams home in the last four season and it's just not a match-up issue with one particular group of players - they have W's over the Thunder, Spurs and Clippers. Even when you beat them, it takes a lot out of you, as three of their four L's came in seven game series. 

The secret is their ability to control tempo with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. When people say the games slow down in the playoffs what they mean is that eventually you will run into a team with a lot of big men who can dictate tempo and force you to win in the half-court. It doesn't matter how fast you want to play, when the Grizzlies can hold the ball for 20 seconds and throw the ball inside, the game is eventually going to be played at their pace. The only other alternative is to speed up the game by aggressively pressuring and trapping their guards, but they have an All-Star caliber PG in Mike Conley who can't really be sped up. For a look at what this dynamic looks when a big team with shaky guard play has to face a small team that wants to play in transition, take a look at Game 7 of the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals between Miami and Indiana. 

Going into a series against Memphis, you know that their big men are going to hold the ball, create offense for themselves and create offense for others. On defense, they are going to control the offensive glass, beat you up physically and not allow you to get many free looks at the basket. Over the course of a series, as the refs get more used to their style of play, they are able to get away with more and more. Z-Bo has choked guys out and punched guys in the face on national TV. Ask Kendrick Perkins about how real it can get against the Grizzlies. 

#NeverForget

That's something you need to keep in mind when you hear some of these offensive gurus talk. All that scheming stuff is great until someone on the other team decides to physically assault you. You are going to have to take and deliver some blows if you play the Grizzlies. It's the same thing with the Cowboys - Chip Kelly's schemes are great, but they couldn't get his defense off the field when the Dallas offensive line imposed their will on the game.

When you compare them across sports, three big things stand out between Memphis and Dallas:

1) The Cowboys offensive line doesn't play defense. With Gasol and Randolph, the Grizzlies control the paint on both sides of the ball. Imagine how good an NFL team with one of the best OL's and best DL's in the league would be and you can see why Memphis is a perennial title contender.

2) The Cowboys secondary doesn't have anyone like Tony Allen. Allen is the Darrell Revis of the NBA - he's the best 1-on-1 perimeter defender in the league and no one has consistently made Kevin Durant's life more difficult. If you imagine a team like the Detroit Lions lining Calvin Johnson 1-on-1 against Revis and throwing the ball at him 15-20 times, you can see that Allen is still going to give up points to big-time scorers, but that he's always going to make you work for them. Dallas, on the other hand, has pretty average DB's. That could come back to kill them if they end up facing a QB like Aaron Rodgers in the playoffs.

3) There's no Dez Bryant on the Grizzlies. Conley is their Romo, but he doesn't have any big time playmakers on the perimeter he can give the ball to in order to close out games. When the game is on the line, Dallas can give the ball to Dez in any part of the field and hope he makes a play. Even if the defense can contain him, he will command so much attention that someone else will be open. The Grizzlies best 1-on-1 scorer on the wings is Vince Carter, who could end up being a huge addition for them.

Throw that X up!!

Neither one of these teams is perfect, but their weaknesses can only be exposed by other elite teams ... i.e in the playoffs. And if you are wagering on which sport is more likely to have a flawed champion, you have to go with the NFL. 

However, here's the good news for the Grizzlies and the Cowboys. As long as each team has those big guys upfront, they will be a threat to beat anyone. Big guys can play practically forever. Marc Gasol is 30 and he is playing the best basketball of his career. He is one of the best offensive linemen and best defensive linemen in the sport and he has Memphis playing high-level basketball on both sides of the ball. That's why he's my MVP of the first third of the season - he gives the Grizzlies a chance against anyone.

It's the same thing in basketball as it is in football. The MVP always goes to the perimeter playmaker, whether it's the QB, the RB, the WR, the PG or the SG. Those guys are important, but if you don't control the line of scrimmage and you can't dominate what Hubie Brown liked to call "the painted area", it doesn't matter. Eventually, you are going to run into a team that does and you have a real good chance of losing. Marc Gasol doesn't have the pure offensive numbers to beat guys like Steph Curry and James Harden for the MVP in the same way that the Cowboys offensive line doesn't have the statistics to put them above Tony Romo and DeMarco Murray. Romo and Murray are great. There's no question about it. But the Cowboys have had great RB's and QB's for awhile and have never been as good as they are now.

If they end up winning a Super Bowl, it's because they became the 1998 Denver Broncos. The pieces are there - Romo is John Elway, DeMarco is Terrell Davis and Jason Garrett is Mike Shanahan. None of that would matter without the guys upfront. There's only one thing Romo or Murray would need to say at a press conference for an MVP award:

Pseudoscience in Milwaukee

At RealGM, a look at the puzzling rationale behind the Bucks decision to draft Jabari Parker over Dante Exum.

Karl Towns vs. Montrezl Harrell

At The Cauldron, a look at the NBA prospects in the battle of the Bluegrass State.

Bill Self and Cliff Alexander

The mock drafts don't mean anything. And I would tell the guy if he was here doing the mock drafts. They don't mean anything. They're ridiculous. - Bill Self

Kansas coach Bill Self started a minor brouhaha in the media two weeks ago, when he ripped the concept of "mock drafts" to reporters. Like Jim Boeheim, who had a similar rant about draft coverage earlier in the season, Self isn't pleased about some of the things being said about two of his highly-touted freshman - Kelly Oubre and Cliff Alexander - and he's taking it out on some of the most visible names saying it. The cynical interpretation is that Self and Boeheim are nothing more than two self-interested college coaches who want their players to stay as long at school as possible and help them win a bunch of games. That may or may not be true, but there is more to the story than that.

Coming into the season, Oubre and Alexander were projected to go in the Top 5 in most of the mock drafts out there. They were five-star recruits, the best of the best, the No. 4 and No. 6 overall recruits in the country, according to Yahoo! With Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid in the NBA, there were a lot of minutes and shots available in Lawrence and it seemed like Self could slide his two star freshmen into the place of his last two and the ball would just keep on rolling.

However, after watching Cliff Alexander at the McDonald's Week practices at the end of his senior season of high school, I could see this narrative going off the rails. While there is a lot to like about Alexander's game, he is by no means ready to play in the NBA anytime soon and he doesn't really have the skill-set to be a star at the next level. You have to keep in mind that recruiting rankings are as much about high-school success as they are NBA potential because there's no conceivable scenario where Cliff Alexander could be higher ranked than Karl Towns if it was otherwise. The recruiting rankings are great for what they are but I have learned not to trust them on an individual level - the guys who compile them make mistakes the same as everyone else.

Just because a guy was ranked in the Top 10 of his high school class doesn't necessarily mean anything. The Harrison Twins are a great example of that - two 6'6 twin guards who were seen as future lottery picks in high school because they could tower over smaller players but who lack the type of explosiveness and change of direction to allow them to be high-level NBA players. The first time I ever saw them live was in a non-conference game against Baylor at Cowboys Stadium and in that game, they had no ability to stay in front of Kenny Chery. Chery was playing with total confidence because he knew he could go around them whenever he wanted. They just did not have the size/speed ratio you would expect for guys as highly touted as they were. Unless they become knock down three-point shooters, I have a hard time seeing either being an NBA player.

I can see why Alexander was so highly rated in high school - he's long and active, he has an NBA body and athleticism, he plays in Chicago and he squared off against Jahlil Okafor a bunch of times. However, that doesn't mean he is a sure thing at the next level. If you break down Cliff's game from that POV, a number of worrisome things jump out to you:

1) At 6'9 250 with a 7'2 wingspan, he is an average sized PF and a very undersized C at the next level. If he's going to be a C, he's going to have to come off the bench. The best NBA C's are way too tall and long for him and he doesn't have the type of elite, elite athleticism to make up for it. Compare him to Thomas Robinson and you will see what I mean. That was a guy with a permanent turbo button at the college level.

2) If he's playing as a PF, where is his perimeter game? Alexander is the farthest thing from a polished player. At this stage in his career, he's not an advanced dribbler, shooter, passer or post-up player. That's not a big deal for a college freshman but it's something to keep in mind when you think about his draft stock.

3) When you look at Alexander like that - an undersized PF without elite athleticism, a high feel for the game or much perimeter skill - it's pretty obvious that he was never going to be a Top 5 pick after one season of college. With the way the NBA is going, Alexander is going to have to craft his game a lot just to find a niche. The league is quickly going towards four-out basketball, which means that prospects who play on the inside have to be big enough to be 5's or they had better start to learn how to be stretch 4's.

The good news for Alexander is that he's in the perfect place to develop those types of skills. Bill Self has put a ton of big men in the NBA over the last decade. There's no country in the coach that does a better job of developing guys inside/outside games and putting them in the position to put up the type of stats that will intrigue NBA teams. Look at all the Kansas players who have been drafted since Self took over in 2004. A lot of these guys weren't anywhere close to being elite high school recruits:

2005 - Wayne Simien
2007 - Julian Wright
2008 - Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Mario Chalmers, Darnell Jackson, Sasha Kaun
2010 - Xavier Henry, Cole Aldrich
2011 - Marcus Morris, Markieff Morris, Josh Selby
2012 - Thomas Robinson, Tyshawn Taylor
2013 - Ben McLemore, Jeff Withey
2014 - Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid

A rookie contract can make you a bunch of money. But it’s not about making the NBA but lasting in the NBA. A 10-year career can make you a lot more money. - Kyle Korver

Most coverage of the NBA draft is centered around positioning - Is this guy a lottery pick? What type of year does he need to have to move off the first round bubble? How many draft picks are there on this roster? By that reasoning, the most important thing a guy can do in college is maximize draft position, since being drafted higher gets you more money and higher picks have better careers.

Bill Self has been around long enough to know you need to deal with these guys as individuals, not aggregates. It doesn't matter if you are drafted in the lottery if you haven't developed your game to the point where you can help your NBA team. Just ask Thomas Robinson.

When you have been doing this as long as Self has and you have seen generations of your players fail or succeed at the next level, you start to develop a fairly good feel for which ones are going to bust out and you know what they need to do in order to stay in the league. I will go as far as to say this - the draft is not a crap-shoot for Bill Self, not when it comes to his own guys. If you gave him a truth serum in 2012, he could have told you that T-Rob better invest that rookie deal like someone living on a fixed income for the rest of his life.

You can forget the college stats, which are completely dependent on the context of the teammates around them. Robinson didn't come into the league with a better chance to succeed than Darrell Arthur, who was taken at No. 27 in 2008. Unlike Robinson, Arthur only spent two seasons in college, not getting a chance to put up huge numbers as a junior. The entire starting 5 from that team, which won the national title in 2008, was drafted, so Arthur didn't get to dominate the ball. He wasn't quite as athletic as Robinson, but he was an excellent athlete in his own right who had developed into a two-way player with the ability to stretch the floor. In short, he was everything T-Rob is not.

Despite being in the league for 7 seasons, Arthur is still just 26 and he is only getting better. After adding a three-point shot to his game, he has been eating into Manimal's PT in Denver and he looks headed for a 10-15 year career in the NBA. Just imagine how valuable he would be for a team like the LA Clippers or his hometown Dallas Mavs, who desperately need a two-way floor spacer who can swing between the 4 and 5 off the bench. What does it matter if Robison's rookie contract was higher than Arthur's? He's fighting to stay in the league after Portland didn't pick up his 4rth-year option.

Self knows the deal with Alexander. He has the size and speed to make it in the NBA, but that's not enough, in and of itself. If he wants to have a successful career at the next level, he needs to model himself after Arthur and work to improve himself on both sides of the floor. This draft positioning stuff kind of misses the point with him. He will get a shot in the league. It will come down to what he does with it. You can throw away the recruiting rankings because Alexander isn't in the same discussion as guys like Karl Towns and Kevon Looney.

People are wondering why he can't dominate like Embiid, but he's just not that type of player. Even though Embiid had less experience playing the game, he was more polished than Alexander, who mostly tries to bully guys and dunk on them. His defense is even more of an issue, as he still has to learn how to protect the rim without picking up a lot of cheap fouls. Cliff picked up two fouls in the first few minutes of their loss to Temple on Monday and he would have picked up about 2-3 more if Self had left him in the game.

Self's system is suddenly the problem as if we didn't just see Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and Ben McLemore be high lottery picks after only one season in college. If a freshman is ready to play at a high level, Self will put them in a position to succeed. Self did a great job of minimizing both Wiggins and McLemore's weaknesses when they were in college, which will become more obvious with Wiggins as the season goes on.

There are plenty of opportunities for both Alexander and Oubre to grab minutes. No one for Kansas is playing all that well now, which we saw in the 25 point drubbing they took at Temple before Christmas. At the moment, they look like one of the most vulnerable teams Self has had in a long time and there is a chance they don't win their 11th consecutive conference title.

With Perry Ellis entrenched at the 4, Alexander is fighting for minutes with Jamari Traylor and Landen Lucas at the 5. Oubre is one of several young wings, along with Brannen Greene, Devonte Graham and Sviatovslav Mykhailiuk, trying to establish themselves next to Wayne Selden and Frank Mason Jr. on the perimeter. Self is trying to win, so he's going to put the best guy on the floor. If Alexander and Oubre can't get huge minutes over other NBA prospects it doesn't necessarily mean that Self is holding them back. It may mean they are a little farther away than was initially expected. I'm much higher on Oubre than Alexander, but we shall see.

Self is not going to try and stop a guy from leaving if he's ready to go. He doesn't need any of them - if Alexander walks after one season, Traylor and Lucas can give you about the same level of production, especially with another year of experience under their belts. He's going to look out for what's best for his players because it's ultimately what's best for the program. The more guys who have long careers in the NBA, the easier it is for Self to walk into a prospect's living room and tell their family that he knows what it takes to get them to the next level. That's why Cliff Alexander is in Lawrence, so that Bill Self can coach his ass up and make sure he makes it to his second and third contracts in the league.

That's what matters, not where he lands on some mock draft in the middle of his freshman season. When it comes to the eventual outcome of his career, that shit is pretty meaningless. That's all Bill Self was trying to say.