As I got home today from work I flipped through some tv channels and who do I see? Buzz Anthony playing for "We Are D3" in the Basketball Tournament. TBT is a basketball tournament played for a million dollars that's on ESPN in the summer. I won't give away the outcome for the game but if you have ESPN go back and watch it. He played well, I just wanted him to shoot more.
Buzz is the perfect example of the difficulty of sponsoring a team that isn't likely to win the whole thing. Most of the guys who sign up are doing so to get exposure for their next professional gig. That means they need to know they're going to play and they're going to want to showcase their talents. This year's squad did a VERY good job of passing and playing together, but with so many strong scorers and ball dominant guys, you really can't set the team up in a way that gives them the best chance to win.
Ideally, you'd want to put the ball in Buzz's hands and let him set guys up (as he did on the way to a national title), but it's tough in a week of practice for everyone else to get used to playing that style. Nichols and Azor are creators and you end up needing a 300% usage rate to really showcase your squad.
Coach Rej has tried a lot of things - bringing in role players to fill gaps, for example - but with the competition in this tournament, you need size, speed, scoring, and defense - at our level, that means bringing in a full roster of guys who want the ball all the time - not necessarily in a selfish way, but certainly in a way that minimized Buzz's particular skill set.
You saw, on the plays where he got to run the offense with guys who were willing to space the floor and spot up, he made some good things happen. It's just not the ideal scenario for that to work out.
Plus, the organizers really like the idea of the D3 team knocking off a top seed, so they under-seed WeAreD3 every year, making it very difficult to win. I think this is the third time it came down to the end against a top ranked opponent.
This was, I think, among the best squads D3 has put out, though. If you can keep a lot of these guys together and add one legit big (cough, cough: Alex Sobel), you'd have a real formidable team.
Willy Workman is playing for The Nerd Team (another one with a lot of D3 connections) and he'd've made a huge difference down low.
