Free Scorecasting by Tobias Moskowitz Page A

comfort zone.
    In the 1989–1990 season, tiny Loyola Marymount was the toast of college basketball, the up-tempo team averaging a whopping 122 points a game, running other teams to exhaustion, and coming within a game of reaching the Final Four. (That the team’s star player,Hank Gathers, died during the season added a sad layer of drama and exposure.)
    Intrigued by Westhead’s unique philosophy, his willingness to take ordinary “running and gunning” to a new level, the NBA’sDenver Nuggets poached him from the college game to be head coach for the 1990–1991 season. He stated that his methods would be even more effective a mile above sea level, as opponents would tire even more quickly. Westhead encouraged his players to play at a breakneck pace, shoot once every seven seconds—twice the league average—and take plenty of three-pointers. He reckoned that not only would shooting 35 percent on three-pointers yield more points than shooting 50 percent on two-pointers, but longer shots would lead to more offensive rebounds: When the Nuggets missed, they stood a better chance of retaining possession. On defense, the team played at the same methamphetaminic speed, using constant backcourt pressure and trapping. “The idea is to play ultrafast on offense and ultrafast on defense, so it becomes a double hit,” Westhead explained to
Sports Illustrated
. “And when it works, it’s not like one and one is two. It’s like one and one is seven.”
    Except that it wasn’t. At the pro level, Westhead’s experimentfailed spectacularly. Opposing players took advantage of the Nuggets’ chaos and the irregular spacing. The Nuggets’ strategy of shooting early and often led to easy baskets on the other end. As it turned out, it was the Denver players who were often huffing and puffing—and on injured reserve—from the relentless running. (One Denver player complained that his arm hurt from throwing so many outlet passes.) Games came to resemble the Harlem Globetrotters clowning on the Washington Generals. In one game, thePhoenix Suns scored 107 points, most on dunks and layups, in the
first half
, which still stands as an NBA record. The Nuggets started the season 1–14 and finished a league-worst 20–62. They scored 120 points a game but surrendered more than 130 and were mocked as the Enver Nuggets, a nod to their absence of “D.” Westhead grudgingly slowed down the pace the next season but was fired nevertheless.
    You might say it was a valiant effort by Westhead. Hey, at least he tried something different. And if his nonconformist ways failed in Denver, they sure worked at Loyola Marymount. Maybe it was just a question of personnel and circumstance. Barely a decade later, the Phoenix Suns, blessed with better players than Westhead’s Nuggets, were borrowing many of his ideas and principles, racking up wins with a celebrated breakneck, shoot-first-ask-questions-later offense nicknamed “seven seconds or less.”
    But Westhead was hardly cast as an innovator. He was considered an “eccentric,” one of the more damning labels in sports. Mavericks are seldom tolerated in the coaching ranks. A mad professor without tenure, Westhead—unlike so many who fail conventionally—never got another NBA head coaching opportunity. His next job was with a modest college program at George Mason University. From there, he caromed to the Japanese League and the WNBA, where he coached the Phoenix Mercury to a title. He returned briefly to the NBA as an assistant, but that was short-lived. At this writing, Westhead is the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Oregon, coaching a mediocre team that scores prolifically.

    Pulaski’s Kevin Kelley is an innovative thinker, but he is also exquisitely well placed to install his unconventional strategies. In addition to coaching the football team, Kelley doubles as the athletic director for Pulaski Academy. He is his own immediate supervisor. He draws his players from a