Former UCLA All-American and five-time NBA All-Star Marques Johnson (above), who is also an analyst for Fox Sports Net, spoke with The Times on Saturday evening regarding his thoughts about the Bruins' season-opening 69-58 loss to Loyola Marymount on Friday at the Sports Arena.
Did Friday night show that for all the hype about UCLA's big men, college basketball is really mostly about guard play?
That's what it's all about. That's the main ingredient for success. If you have good guards in college and adequate big guys, you can win a lot of games. If you have good big guys and average to adequate guard play, you're going to struggle.
Did Loyola Marymount expose anything with its approach to the Bruins' big men?
Smart coaches know you spread them out, whip that ball around the perimeter and get these bigs firing out and then use the quickness of their guys, the dribble penetration, to create all kinds of problems. It's gonig to be tough to stop quicker teams and that's what you saw.
Did Joshua Smith seem significantly different than last year as far as conditioning, and was he a disappointment?
Yes. And again, you say that taking into account that the defensive strategy that Loyola brought into the game was to surround him, front him, get deep backside, weak-side help to discourage the pass over the top. And UCLA's got to do a better job; they missed him on five or six occasions where he was either posting up or coming across the lane. That's the one thing they need to stress more in practice -- feeding the post. That was the same thing Kevin Love kind of went through at times when he was there. He might have great post-up position, and it's a small window of opportunity. It's like, one-thousand-one and it's gone and if you don't pull the trigger with a pass, the opening is closed. And that's where UCLA was a little slow in pulling the trigger on some of those passes.
The weight, I was hoping, as we all were, that he would come back in better physical condition. It is what it is. He's probably not going to be in shape to run up and down the floor to be an effective player within a month or so, but he's still a force. I'm watching him just beat up those interior guys last night establishing position and catching it. I mean, he's going to pound anybody he plays against, but he needs to get in better condition and once he does that, he's obviously going to play a lot better.
Does UCLA need to consider zone defense?
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