Game Ten: Beauty and Danger

Excuse me while I overwrite…

Three types of players currently get minutes for your Gonzaga Bulldogs.  Type One is the guy who works within the offense (and occaisionally, the defense), shoots when he’s open, gets his points when they come.  He’s generally consistent but doesn’t do much more than is taught in a Early Basketball for Dummies (now with less peach baskets!) book. He’s obviously very skilled at the game of basketball, but he’s also obviously unable to attack the basket, to play above the rim, to take a game over.  He plays completely within himself, but also without any of the athletic grace that separates basketball from the other spectator sports.  Of course, he makes up basically the entire roster and is thus the reason the Zags will win far more games than they will lose this season, but won’t do much more than that.  He’s vanilla, and that makes him the perfect player for a vanilla coach like Mark Few and a vanilla program like Gonzaga.

Type Two, on the other hand, can create his own shot with a series of spin moves in the post, fairly quick first steps from the wing, and a game that lives a little further above the rim than Type One can get even with a jet pack.  He attacks the rim like few players we’ve seen in a Gonzaga uniform, and he does it all with a strange efficiency that makes him a wonder to watch.  His movements on the court are completely controlled, almost tempered.  It’s as if he’s aware of the limitations of his own athleticism, but also aware that that athleticism is pretty tough to beat when combined with his size and strength.  Type Two is, of course, Elias Harris.  When he’s on, Harris is the best player on the team by far, but not entirely unusual, especially in Gonzaga history.  Dan Dickau, Blake Stepp, even Adam Morrison were all Type Twos.  Great non-vanilla players, could win a game when it counted, but also played in a way that spoke to the limitations of the human body.

Type Three is something totally different.  He plays basketball like it’s played in Space Jam by the Monstars, which is to say, completely outside the realm of human capabilities.  People can’t do the things Type Three can, at least not ones who aren’t cartoon aliens.  Whereas Type One plays within the offense and Type Two plays within his own athleticism, Type Three plays as if his own body were just a ball and chain keeping him from the basket.  When he has the ball, his every movement on the court screams “Move out of my way!”  Type Three personifies basketball, at least in my mind.  He wants to score (scoring is the object, after all), but not in silly, give-me-the-ball-when-I’m-open-and-I’ll-try-my-best-to-score kind of way.  No, for Type Three, jump shots are a waste of movement. Watch a Type Three player take free throws and notice how uncomfortable he looks. He looks like Tom Sawyer in his church clothes.  He just wants to get to the basket and to get there now.  This mindset lets him move quicker and with more purpose than anyone else on the court.  His game is both beauty and danger and it is a thrill to watch.  Gonzaga hasn’t had many players like him.  Maybe Ronny Turiaf.  At times Erroll Knight, but at least not since Jeremy Pargo.  Many will (and most likely do) look at Type Three and call him an incomplete basketball player and wish he played more like Types One or Two.  That would be to judge him on the same lines as Types One and Two, though, and that would be a mistake.  Those other players can only dream of playing Type Three’s brand of basketball.

Of course, Type Three is Guy Landry Edi (GLE).  Also of course, GLE played only one more minute (eleven) yesterday than he did the game before.  In his short time on the court, though, he took six shots, including two threes and two shots that followed lightning quick drives past hapless defenders.  I’ll be the first to admit that he needs to chose his shots a little better, but I’ll also say that Gonzaga basketball hasn’t been as fun as when GLE is on the court in a long time.  He takes initiative, attacks the basket, and wants to kill the rim like no player since Jeremy Pargo.  Him just having the ball opens things up for everyone else, and if GU is ever going to get where I think it wants to go as a program, it will need GLE in order to do so.  And it sure as shit won’t get there by having him average 10.5 minutes per game

Go Zags.  And free Guy Landry Edi.