El Niche Cache
June 5, 2020
The Niche Cast Podcast
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Scotty’s Word
Lovely sports plays make me happy and last weekend Manly Sea Eagles offered one of the more intricate plays in the NRL against the Bulldogs. NRL teams have all sorts of backline plays involving decoy runners and sweepers sliding behind the decoys, although none quite as beautiful as this one.
Most importantly this play involves the three most important players for Manly; Jake and Tom Trbojevic are the only lads who touch the ball in this play and Daly Cherry-Evans is a great decoy. Also playing a key role is Curtis Sironen, who runs the decoy for the short-ball off Jake and Dylan Walker who plays a minor role in making this appear as though the ball is going to DCE and thus Walker.
As the play develops, DCE fades out wide to create some space for Tom - plus the key idea of making it appear as though Jake may pass to DCE. There are three options: short-ball for Sironen, short-ball to Tom and cut-out ball to DCE.
Their target is Lachlan Lewis (purple). DCE’s fade catches the attention of Lewis and the Bulldogs are in a decent position to deal with Sironen if he gets the ball (Dylan Napa’s coming to help Dean Britt - both are forwards).
At this moment, Jake has to decide whether to hit Tom or DCE. Most likely though, Manly have already sussed out this specific play and the way this is designed leads me to believe that it is all about Tom. As you can see, it’s 2 vs 2 inside Tom and 3 vs 3 outside Tom. That’s 5 vs 5 and then Tom is the extra man - usually the extra man presents an overlap out wide but this play is about isolating Lewis and forcing him to make a move.
Lewis jumps out to cover DCE, leaving a massive gap for Tom. This play is actually, all about Jake as he executes the perfect pass at the perfect time and while other forwards stack up big running metres, this is a small example of what makes Jake Trbojevic one of the best forwards; every tackle whacks and he can play-make with nuance. Tom straightens up as he gets the footy to further expose Lewis and it’s an easy try.
Over the past few months, I’ve heard two different podcasts with the same guest - Boyd Varty. Both podcasts come from a similar play as Aubrey Marcus and Kyle Kingsbury have worked for the same company (Onnit) and both share ample information to help you be the best that you can be.
These episodes with Varty are nek level because Varty comes from an animal tracking background in South Africa and I definitely never thought too much about animal tracking, let alone insights from that to help our human life. If you’re feeling any type of way about the world or more importantly, you’re own journey, then jam this episodes and ponder the plethora of ideas. There is obviously some crossover between the episodes, but primarily different ideas are presented in different ways to compound the information.
The Kyle Kingsbury episode doesn’t have a video, so here’s the iTunes link and here is the Spotify link.
Also plenty of juice to these yarns..
Wildcard’s Notebook
When the NBA was suspended due to the coronavirus, that was sort of like the tipping point for so many people to take that thing seriously. Other sports leagues had been affected already, empty crowds and postponements, but a lot of that was in contained countries and for many folks it was only when it infected the NBA that it became something that affected them and not just others on the news. The NBA led the way with that... so obviously they were gonna have something out of the box for their return.
Like the English Premier League, the NBA is in the top tier of financial power which invites all sorts of conflicting drama into the mix. As far as the basketball goes, it’s long since gone without saying that it’d cost more to cancel the league than it would to play it. So, like the EPL, it became a matter of how to do that in a way that suited as many people as possible. America has been ravaged by the virus. Plenty of players have been personally affected (elephant in the room: there’s also the (righteous) BLM stuff going on at the moment, though that won’t affect the NBA’s return like virus fears – if anything it’ll enhance it by giving players their platform back). Ideas were toyed with, many of them leaked to the public, such as going straight into playoffs, singular locations, various timelines. All of which expose those conflicting dramas.
Straight to playoffs, for example. If you’re the eighth seed in the east then you don’t really wanna come back to be swept by the Bucks and then have to go home again. You wanna make it worthwhile. And if you’re a mid-seed playoff team in a competitive matchup then you’d rather have a few warmup games to get going – for rhythm but also for fitness and injury prevention. But then the bottom ranked teams have no interest in taking unnecessary risks just so other teams can get some reps in.
So here’s what’s about to be approved by the NBA, a complicated but sneakily clever solution (in the ways in which it’s possible to solve). 22 teams will return, with an 8-game regular season to take place. The 22 teams that will take part are the 16 playoff teams under current standings and the teams (five from the West and one from the East) who are within six games of eighth place. Most teams have between 14-18 games left to get to the usual 82... that’s not gonna happen. But to make up for the lost potential wins, if a ninth seed finishes within four games of the eighth seed then both will take part in a play-in tournament – double elimination for the eighth and single elimination for the ninth. Which means the ninth seed would need to win consecutive games to advance at the expense of the eighth – think of it like a normal playoff series in which the eighth seed goes in with a 3-2 lead.
The entire thing will take place in Orlando at the Disney Campus. As in Disneyland (note that ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Corporation). There’ll be a full on bubble protocol there with constant testing and social distancing and all the things you’d expect from this kind of thing in the middle of this kind of thing. If somebody tests positive within that environment, they’ll be quarantined individually and the league will continue. Bench players have to sit spread out. Inactive players will sit in the otherwise empty stands. Players can’t shower until they get back to their hotel rooms.
Players will gather later this month and training will begin in July with games beginning on 31 July and lasting at the latest until 12 October. The league has been suspended since 11 March. Teams not included in this plan are a bit pissed at the possibility of nine months between games but the players association is on that one and no doubt there’ll be some kind of compensation, as well as organised training camps to make up for some of that disadvantage going into next season. What this means for free agency and the draft, who bloody knows. But they’ll figure something out. Old mate Shams reckons the draft lottery will take place in August, the combine too (that’ll surely be after the regular season concludes). Should be fun.
And here are some Steven Adams highlights to get you excited for it...
Reading Menu
Flying Kiwis – June 1 (Football)
The Welly Nix Will Get To Play It Out And Try Win A Championship, Come On You Nix (Football)
27fm Album Jukebox – May 2020 (Music)