There's a certain quiet superiority to the 3-4-4. It's not amazingly obvious until you've seen it or reasoned it out, and then after that every deviation is but a variant. As for caging, there are just so many ways to do it, and while some are better than others, it's not at all unlikely that a suboptimal caging style has been working against the competition level in any given place.grampyseer wrote:The 3,4,4 defense was pure magic, as none of them had seen it.....and strong cage play just wasn't there.
That, and there are a lot of other strategies which are occasionally effective and pop into and out of vogue. When my friend moved back from Eugene, Oregon, he brought with him this deep defense that totally threw me off... for one game.