“I see you guys trying to attack the rim and get to the foul line. I see you guys causing 30 turnovers and generating 27 steals. Nice to see you pick up on certain necessities when playing the backwards game. Now, can somebody please tell me what happened to my rebounding? Never have I ever seen such a putrid display on the boards. Never mind that we expected that outcome on the boards; we did not expect the bigs to just not show up on the boards at all. We also didn’t expect you guys to give up 80 points in the first half. Now, you got better as the game went on, and that fourth quarter looks nice on the sheet, doesn’t it? A 40 point quarter and we only gave up 21 is good, right? I mean, except for losing by 23, right? At least it’s better than losing by 24 like we did Saturday night, right?” Pio was not happy, but now wasn’t the time for anger. He was trying to teach a lesson.
“Coach,” Tovar began, “I’m not sure we understood the purpose of what we were doing this week. It wasn’t made entirely clear to us. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I‘m confident when I say the guards were not clued in on what the point was from the start. We kind of pieced it together after talking with the other position groups and assistant coaches. All we got from Coach Motormouth was ‘just get through this week in one piece and things will go back to normal’.”
“You shut your lying mouth, Tovar!” Allnite did not like that at all.
“Or what? You gonna tell us how you were so good shooting you didn’t have to do anything else? You gonna trash talk everybody else and not coach them up? Aren’t you the same guy that told us Monday in practice that, and I quote, ‘this week is all about letting the bigs get their rocks off by beating the guards around; all you have to do is survive’? Do I have that right?”
“That’s exactly what I said.” Air was incensed now. “I didn’t know you were so shallow that you never realized big guys like to take guards down low and beat the hell out of them. You think they like chasing you at the three point line on switches? This is how they get their revenge! If our guys rough you up and that’s too much for you, what do you think other teams are gonna do to you? Sheesh, this generation is just soft! Byron, when you got a chance to take a guard down low, what did you do?”
Helm smiled. “Punish them.”
“Marshall, what did you do when you had a guard on you?”
“Took guys like you in the paint and beat the snot out of them.”
“Pio, you were known as a defender. What did you do best?”
“I guarded the opposing team’s best scorer. If they wanted to go into the paint, I could make things a little difficult.”
“Back to you, you little pissant. When Guyton and Knowles were running the backcourt and you were running your mouth about being the best shooter on the team ---and by the way, you weren’t--- did you ever wonder why you didn’t get any run when Knowles or Mantas played some small forward? It’s because of your defense. You also can’t do spit inside. You can’t rebound, you can’t score inside or finish at the rim, you don’t defend. You’re useless. So, yeah, let the bigs beat the crap out of you. You either learn to survive, or you don’t. Learn to survive and you make the team better. You ain’t that good of a shooter to survive with just a pretty jumper, and yours ain’t that pretty.”