NBA in Varese: Houston Rockets system with Luis Scola and Matt Brase at the helm / News - Basketnews.com

Openjobmetis Varese has been one of the best teams in the Italian league this season. With an American head coach who loves to play fast and brought different training methods, the Italian club wants to return to the elite of domestic basketball.

Credit: Zuma press – Scanpix Credit Zuma press – Scanpix

Do you remember the movie Moneyball? There is a scene where Brad Pitt, who plays Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics, argues with the franchise's head scout. The scout does not understand the new policy undertaken by the club, which is so different from the rest of the teams in the league, and Brad Pitt replies, 'Adapt or die.'

The movie is based on one of the bestselling books 'Moneyball: the art of winning an unfair game,' written by Michael Lewis.

The book discusses Billie Beane's work and how the Athletics GM started a real revolution in baseball, using entirely new criteria to evaluate and identify players, including advanced statistics and algorithms.

That statistic revolution spread rather quickly to other American professional sports as well, including basketball.

The most striking example of Moneyball in the NBA came from the Houston Rockets during the Daryl Morey era.

He began to change the game in a noticeable way, focusing very much on the 3-point game and on finishing at the rim while almost entirely leaving low-percentage shots from the midrange aside.

In Houston, the Moneyball soon became "the Moreyball". Luis Scola, the current CEO and majority shareholder of Varese Basketball, experienced those years firsthand, having played for the Rockets when Morey had already become the franchise's GM.

Since the Argentine basketball legend became Varese's top executive, he has tried to bring some of the NBA style and techniques to Italy, along with GM Michael Arcieri, another former executive at the NBA level.

After avoiding relegation from the top division in the last season, Scola met his first full offseason as the shot-caller in Varese. Scola decided that he wanted a head coach with an offensive mindset who would shape an entertaining style of basketball.

To do so, Scola decided to rely on a coach who knew the Houston Rockets' system inside out, Matt Brase, the grandson of legendary University of Arizona coach Lute Olson.

Credit LPS via ZUMA Press Wire-Scanpix

Brase had worked for several years within the Houston Rockets, including a stint in the G-League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Rockets always used Vipers as a laboratory for their offensive experiments and for evaluating the growth of specific players.

Brase also worked for a few seasons as an assistant to Mike D'Antoni, the master of the '7 seconds or less' offensive system. The Lombard club wanted a clear break from the past, so recruiting a coach directly from the United States seemed the best solution to bring a different kind of basketball to Italy.

The results, so far, are rewarding Varese. After the first 9 league games, Coach Brase's team has a 6-3 record. The last defeat came against Virtus Bologna, one of the strongest teams in the league, in a game that was extremely hard-fought until the very end.

The high-tempo and particularly offensive game of the Varese team is also proven by several numbers, which are not all that surprising considering the club's goal from the beginning.

Varese is the best offensive team in Serie A, with 92 points per game. Brase's players are also third in assists per game (18), third in steals (8), and first in 2-point percentage (57.7%).

Varese also takes the most 3-point shots in the entire league, with an average of 32 triples attempted per game and a 34% split from deep. The American coach also brought quite different training methods from those seen in Italy and Europe.

Brase's men do only one training session a day, usually in the morning, for about three and a half hours. The first part of the session is devoted entirely to individual work with individual players or sometimes to role-based work, thus focusing on guards, wings, or big men.

The work on player development is crucial for Coach Brase and his staff. The rest of the time is then devoted to teamwork on the court, video sessions, gym work, and sessions with trainers and doctors.

A constant in Coach Brase's training sessions is the presence of music. The players are always accompanied by music while working on the field, an element that makes it smoother and less stressful.

The players, so far, seem to have absorbed Coach Brase's methods very well and often show up at the gym even on days off, to do quick shooting or gym sessions. The results, of course, help, but even more, it helps that the team has been built to reflect as much as possible the system and characteristics desired by the American coach.

During the offseason, perfect players arrived for this kind of system. An athletic big man who runs very well in transition, like Tariq Owens, who came straight from the G League.

A versatile wing with good 3-point shooting skills Jaron Johnson, a quick point guard with good instincts, Colbey Ross, and a shooter with NBA experience Markel Brown.

This small group of Americans added to last season's core, composed mainly of Italian players like Guglielmo Caruso, Tomas Woldetensae, captain Giancarlo Ferrero and the very young Matteo Librizzi and Nicolò Virginio, now permanently part of the first team.

Coach Brase seems already pretty content with his situation in Varese. When Luis Scola and Michael Arcieri approached him this summer, he decided to leave his job as an assistant coach in Portland, thinking that the opportunity was too good to be turned down.

"I had a good situation in Portland, but when Luis Scola and Michael Arcieri told me about the possibility of returning to the same type of basketball I used to do with the Rockets and the Valley Vipers... The more I talked to them, the more convinced I became," Brase said in a recent interview.

Credit LPS via ZUMA Press Wire-Scanpix

"I had worked as an NBA assistant for several seasons, and the opportunity to come back as head coach and work and play the way I prefer was a big one," Brase continued. "I lost a few nights of sleep, but I believe that confronting challenges outside your comfort zone and thinking outside the box is the way to try to grow."

The American head coach trusts his players a lot, and even when the team suffers a negative break, sometimes he chooses not to call a timeout and let his players figure out the best way to get out of that situation.

Matt Brase's approach on the sideline always looks very calm and positive. It's very hard to see the coach screaming or going up and down the court.

"It's what I learned from my grandpa Lute Olson - you don't teach by the tone of the voice. Mike D'Antoni had the same approach. I try to give my players suggestions and small corrections, like 'Did you see that situation? Think about that'," Brase explained.

"Putting pressure doesn't help; likewise, it doesn't help to give too much information, which risks making players overthink and slow down on the field."

So far, such a different approach from what we are used to here in Italy is paying off. Varese looks like a healthy team with pretty clear ideas.

Luis Scola wants to bring it back to the top of Italian basketball with a precise project, taking advantage of his international experience.

He may soon get some help from the Pelligra Group, which is ready to enter the club by acquiring about 45 percent of the club's shares and already has major plans to build a new arena.

After difficult years, Varese seems to be on the right track to return to the elite of Italian basketball. It will take time, but change always takes time to apply.

As Brad Pitt said in Moneyball, 'Adapt or die.'

Subscribe to BN+ and get access to exclusive content.