Duh. Who would have ever guessed that's the way to win basketball games and championships?
You read this board as much as the next person. Reading this board, one would think playing defense is the only way to win. If you notice from my post, scoring points comes before defense and mistakes. A lot of points can cover up mistakes and a bad defense night.
You cite 3 major elements of basketball -- scoring points (offense), defense, and mistakes. In reality, mistakes are not a major element in the sense of offense and defense. Mistakes are nothing more than failures to effectively run the offense or defense. The more mistakes that are made on offense or defense, the more the performance in that element declines.
So, in reality, offense and defense are the 2 major elements of basketball. In any given game, performing either of the 2 elements better than average can cover for the other element being under average. The team that wins is the one that has the best combined performance in both offense and defense.
It doesn't really matter if your team either scores a lot of points or defends the other team from scoring a lot of points. All that matters is that your combined offense/defense results in your team scoring 1 more point than the other team at the end of the game.
The best teams are capable of playing a combination of offense and defense that results in them consistently having more points at the end of games than the teams they play. If your shooting is off and you're not scoring, your defense better be capable of stopping the other team from scoring. If you're allowing the other team to score a lot of points, your offense better be capable of scoring even more points.
I completely agree that the game comes down to offense and defense. To me it seems like the problem comes in when there is too much emphasis on defense. I'm not saying there is such a thing as "too much emphasis on defense," just that there has to be a good balance. A great defense can keep your team in the game to give you the chance to win in the end. But, when the game is on the line at the end, there has to be a closer that you can rely on to carry your offense to a win. McNees gave us some nice game winning shots, but we can all agree he is/was not and should not be our go to guy. We need someone who can open up the defense and be able to win the game in isolation (or even just from a good pick and roll). Someone who can hit that last shot...although I know just about every team in the NCAA wants that same person.