The "object" of a basketball game is to win, and when the game is over the team with the most points is the winner.
A coach's job is to manipulate his/her available talent into the most favorable position to score more points than their opponent in the time allotted, not to be the first to score X number of points.
If controlling the game by minimizing the number of possessions (opportunities to score against you) your opponent has favored your team, I don't understand how anyone thinks that it's not a viable strategy to slow the game down. "Best team" does not automatically mean most talented or even better conditioned in my opinion, it means to me that the most prepared team to execute their gameplan with the most resilient players have a fighting chance against a group of more athletic players.
In football everyone loves to watch two teams with high flying offenses score 40+ points each in a shootout, but one of those two teams loses every game...when a "run the ball and play defense" style of team beats a team of that type in a 21-17 type game, it's fundamentally the same scenario that's being debated here except that nobody accuses the winner of being too cowardly to open up the playbook and throw the ball around like the '99 Rams, or of cheating the fans out of a "good game" to watch.
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tradertwo ·
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