I mentioned in another thread that Vila doesn't seem to be fully in sync with the other players. In Vila I see a classic Euro player. Very complete game -- good shooter, passer, rebounder, reasonable ballhandler. Mentally very solid.
But sometimes his passes seem poor and he does things that take his teammates out of rhythm. But what I saw was a guy trying to play Euro ball in a US style offense. Note this doesn't really affect defense and may make him a better defender than a lot of big men.
If I can really boil down the difference between US and Euro basketball philosophy it's the difference between spacing and space.
In US ball, the players motions within an offense is all about generating spacing -- isolating a player one on one with a player where there is a mismatch. The offensive player can then get the ball and make a move where he can either beat his guy directly or cause the other team to double-team him which leaves another player open. As he is making his move he pretty much knows where all his teammates will be as they are spreading out into essentially pre-defined positions, and they will either be open or not.
In Euro ball, the thought process isn't really to generate a one on one vs a defender. The thought process is to find an open space and move into it. This is why Euro players play facing the basket. They are looking for open spaces that their teammates will move into and pass to that space. Unfortunately, it appeared to me that there are times when a teammate is essentially moving from predefined point A to predefined point B and in Eric's head he was expecting them to look for the ball when they were in space, but they weren't expecting the pass, or didn't move to open space because they were heading to point B. This idea of moving to open space by the way, is exactly what Omar Thomas used to do. In US ball there is almost always a big gaping space between 10-15 feet from the basket and he would just move there and Fili would feed him and he would hit a wide open mid-range jumper.
The second thing that caused problems is this: The one thing a teammate must never do in US ball is get too close because that brings another defender over and kills the one on one isolation. The only time that's OK is setting a pick. A number of times he would pass the ball to a low post and then break to the top of the charge circle. His defender would double on the post and he would be wide open. One time someone hit him for an easy bucket -- I think it was Efe. Williams looked annoyed every time it happened because it screwed up his one on one.
Defensively, a Euro player is also essentially looking at space. They are anticipating the next pass and moving to cut it off. It's kind of like matchup zone and can be very effective. Those Euro instincts don't hurt a player defensively.
Eric and co need to figure out how to either stop doing some of those things, or his players need to adapt to what he does, or some combination of the two. I think if they can get that resolved it will be what makes them an NCAA caliber team.
Also, as someone mentioned, he needs to learn that on a press breaker if he gets the ball up around midcourt and they have numbers he needs to push it on up the court. I would have thought that would be instinct in his Euro game but maybe not.
