Basketball - What Don't You See?

Everyone 'watching' basketball games sees something different. Some see the big picture, others the granular detail, still others a mixture. What if we watch the game with an eye for what we don't see?

In "Inside Man," a miniseries starring Stanley Tucci, in a pivotal scene, he asks what didn't you see? 

Think back to the last high school game you watched. You may have seen many three-point shots, some "bad fouls," and perhaps some transition hoops. 

Here is some of what I didn't see:

• Hard to defend actions (e.g. complex screens like Iverson action, screen-the-screener, Spain pick-and-roll)
• Pick-and-roll
• Taking charges 
• Urgent cutting leading to give-and-go scores
• Consistent on-ball pressure (saw a lot of "dead man's defense" - six feet under)
• Offensive rebounding with anticipation and aggressiveness

When "core" actions that separate 'success from less' are absent, questions arise about core skill development, priorities, and the ability to be comfortable with discomfort. 

How do we design systems to implement our philosophy?

A hard-to-defend system isn’t built on deception. it’s built on sequenced clarity: 

Show one problem. Hide the next. Score from the space created when they solve the first. That's what Mazzulla Ball is, seeking 2 vs 1. 

For example, consider a high ball screen with a filled corner. If the corner help leaves to defend the driver, "drive and dish" (penetrate and pitch) pass is exposed. 

Or, if the defense extends and opens the "short roll," then the defense has to adjust, which is generally not a strength for young players.

 

You've heard the saying, "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail." Three-point or nothing offense makes for a tough equation when teams have off nights or defenses work to limit the open three. 

Lagniappe. How do you adjust PnR coverage? 

More games are lost on Defense because Teams won’t change/ adjust their Ball Screen coverages in a Game when it’s obviously not working.
Having 3-4 different coverages in your “Bag” is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of preparation.

— Tom Crean (@TomCrean) December 27, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Do our players have a strategy to 'disrupt' 2 on 1 breaks? 

Basketball- Ten Coaching Points to Consider

Excellent coaches resemble archeologists, seeking artifacts that enhance their knowledge of our world.

1. When asked about his team, Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg said that he'd be able to give a better answer in twenty years. On Christmas Eve I ran into a fair of former youth players, Meg, our "glue guy" and Kiki, a toughness exemplar. One had finished her Masters in Finance and the other completing her advanced degree. They're shining examples of program graduates.   

2. Shakespeare wrote that sleep, "knits up the raveled sleave of care." Players should seek at least eight hours of sleep. Sleep consolidates memory and objectively improves basketball performance. 

Has extended sleep been studied in basketball players? Yes. Here are the highlights:

• 11 Stanford University basketball players
• Baseline measurements followed by 5-7 weeks of sleep extension with goal of minimum 10 hours/night 
• Performance measures (speed, shooting accuracy) and sleepiness scoring
• Improved sprint times, 9% improvement in free throw and 3-point percentages
• Sleepiness scores improved
• Subjective improvements in physical and mental well-being 
• Conclusion: better sleep improved athletic performance

3. Alcohol impairs memory imprinting and muscle recovery. Coaches don't impose arbitrary rules. Why would anyone who cares adopt a habit that’s intrinsically negative? Discipline defines destiny. 

4. Study more tape. Video is the “truth machine.” An abundance of teaching video (YouTube, FIBA, coaching clinics, etc.) and game tape are invaluable tools to boost basketball IQ. 

5. Ask better questions. If you aspire to be your best, what are you doing to make those around you better? What skills get and keep you on the court? If you don't know, they don't exist. 

6. Keep a “leadership scorecard” tracking how you acted like a leader.

7. Copy Don Meyer. Keep a notebook of basketball insights acquired.

8. Practice gratitude. Brad Stevens said, “Coaches get more than we give.” 

Cecilia gifted me a St. Joseph's Hawks hoodie for Christmas. 

9. "Never be a player's last coach." How does it feel to be coached by me? Every player deserves coaching. 

10.Players won’t remember the Xs and Os. They remember how we made them feel. As Dr. Bob Rotella would say, "It’s not a game of perfect.”

Bonus. Live ball turnovers kill you. They sabotage offense and translate to high points per possession, often in transition, for opponents. Players have to hear this again and again..."Turnovers kill dreams." 

Lagniappe. Playing hard is a skill. 

Talent might win you games, but culture wins you seasons.
A great high school basketball team has:
- Unselfish players who take pride in the assist.
- Tough kids who dive on the floor with zero hesitation.
- Leaders who know when to speak up—and when to listen.

— Steve Collins (@TeachHoopsBBall) December 22, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Zoom action variant.  

 

Basketball - Film or Flim Flam?

People learn best from different styles - verbal, auditory, kinetic. Film study isn't new...we watched grainy 8 mm black and white film in the early 1970s.

A few principles stood out:

1) "Everybody listens. Any "lessons" (screw-ups) that one player makes apply to everyone. Let's not repeat them." It wasn't personal...

2) There was no 'advanced' film study (although we did have scouting reports from a paid scout).

3) The ratio of mistakes to positive film shown was high. 

What's the "data" on video study, the dos and don'ts?

What's the decision? 

A strong line of research uses video scenarios (often with temporal occlusion, stopping the clip  before the key moment) to train players to pick the right action. An example in elite youth basketball found that video training improved decision-making tests and showed better passing decisions in small-sided games.

Application: show a clip and stop before the moment of truth. 

Example: 

      

I thought this was going to be the initiation of Zoom Action (downscreen, DHO) but was obviously off, as it could have been a great variation with a slip.

Example 2. End-game, white leads by three after a score, 11 seconds left, ball under their own basket. What are you thinking? 

Monkey See, Monkey Do.

Video demonstration can help young players understand what "good" looks like. Video modeling to training reported improvements in technical skills (e.g. passing, shooting, dribbling, defense).  

Application: use selected clips as fundamental training aids

Ownership Matters

In a motor-learning basketball study on the set shot, giving athletes self-controlled video feedback (they choose when to view) improved learning, supporting a broader motor-learning principle: self-determination helps.

Application: work with individual players on training film (time intensive)

Lagniappe. Doc Rivers preached to show no more than 13 clips because he felt players can only focus for so long. UNC Women's Soccer coach Anson Dorrance believed women should only see positive clips. 

Lagniappe 2. Ideas for decision-making. 

Three Underrated Books with Lessons for Athletes and Coaches

Little is more subjective than “Underrated.” Underrated sports literature should share timeless, valuable, and clear lessons. 

Great books deserve to be reread as they reveal new lessons and reinforce older ones. 

Here are a few:

The Boys in the Boat - by Daniel Brown 

Brown tells three stories woven with brilliant journalism. The Great Depression spawned millions of desperate Americans with hard work and dreams. Joe Rantz parlays a chance at the University of Washington crew team to become an Olympic oarsman. The team competes against great odds in the 1936 Olympics during the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. 

Brown's lessons inspire belief in hard work and competition, the possibility of overcoming long odds to earn a chance at becoming a champion. Both never go out of fashion.  

Application: Most NBA players don't emerge from a privileged few. They often overcome hardscrabble upcoming to find excellence through extreme commitment. Feeling sorry for ourselves earns us nothing. 

Maybe your life was hard. You probably weren't tossed out of your family at 15, the "biggest mouth to feed" during the Great Depression...left to fend for yourself. 

The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh

Walsh was the consummate coach and executive. He believed in his "Standard of Performance" a comprehensive philosophy centered on core concepts that prioritize preparation and mental excellence over immediate results. Professionalism mattered for the staff answering phones, workers striping the field, and coaches and players' attention to detail. 

Application. Few endeavors in life involve more collaboration than NBA teams. As great as individual players can be, they don't win by themselves. From the top of the organization on down, success demands total team effort. 

Relentless attention to detailed, winning process earns results. 

Book summary. Sometimes innovation is met with ridicule, even when it's winning championships. 

Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Ming Tan

Chade-Ming Tan was a Google engineer who shared his expertise in mindfulness, mental training that raised individual and team performance in one of America's most successful companies. The author shares how mindfulness works on a physiologic and anatomic basis in non-technical terms, and explains how everyone can benefit with raised focus and achievement, less stress and depression, as well as better immunity and sleep. He demystifies mindfulness in a practical sense.  

Application: Most elite professionals and Olympians have a mindfulness practice. This helped Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James just to mention a few. 

Neglecting the mental side, your software, leaves athletes and coaches less than they can be. 

Slideshare presentation

Lagniappe. Coaches have to give bad news. Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss explains how. 

What’s the best way to deliver bad news? Say, “I’ve got bad news,” pause for about a second, then share it. Never blindside someone/ They need a moment to prepare, no matter how serious it is. Wait too long and their mind starts spiraling. Skip the dramatic buildup. Give them a… pic.twitter.com/YcpoqiwEap

— Christopher Voss (@fbinegotiator) December 23, 2025

Lagniappe 2. The ball has energy. 

🎙️ Kon Knueppel on the importance of ball movement:

"That's how the game was designed to be played. Obviously, great players are gonna dominate the ball sometimes, but the game is designed to play together and as a team against the other team. When the ball is moving, it's the… pic.twitter.com/9WRZaQ0zxi

— r/CharlotteHornets (@HornetsReddit) December 24, 2025

Merry Christmas.  

 

Put It on Film

You are what you are on tape. The stat sheet isn’t the same as the video breakdown. Santa Coach knows who's been naughty or nice. 

Positives: 

• Possession Enders - scores, assists, rebounds plus defense, stops, steals, blocks and deflections
• Hustle plays
• Communication
• Help and recover
• Toughness - charges taken, screens, floor burns

Negatives:

• Bad shots
• Turnovers
• Missed or no blockouts
• No ball containment or pressure on passers
• Missed assignments
• Poor execution defending the PnR
• No help on defense
• Bad fouls 
• Poor transition defense 

On every possession you're either a positive, negative, or not involved. The tired claim of "it wasn't my guy" does not apply. 

• Load to the ball
• Cover 1.5 (yours and half of another)
• See both (yours and the ball)
• Help and recover
• Be part of the solution

Coaches aren’t nitpicking when we expect effort, production, and competitiveness on both ends of the floor. When coaches come to scout you in person, they look at everything expecting performance, teamwork, and "basketball character" - how you treat coaches, teammates, and officials. If, as a player, you're rolling your eyes here, you might as well count yourself out because coaches see it. 

Lagniappe. Impact the game. Coaches see 'selective participation.' 

There’s no stat for selflessness.
No highlight reel for diving on the floor or boxing out every possession.
But those things win games.

— Steve Collins (@TeachHoopsBBall) December 22, 2025

Lagniappe 2. The little things are big things. Skills to dominate.  

 

Basketball - Winning Reality

“It’s not really just as much as it's what I'm asking you to do, it's what the environment is asking you to do,” Mazzulla continued. “It’s what the game is asking you to do in the game today … and if and when that changes because of how the game is going, how quickly can you adjust to that? - John Karalis at BSJ

Can you handle the truth about winning? If we're not winning, what can we do differently. Good players adjust to different systems and make “winning plays.” 

1. It’s first about the talent. You need good players on an upward trajectory and "every day is player development day."  

2. Teamwork means global unselfishness. Wooden said, "Happiness begins where selfishness ends."  

3. Synchrony mean being on the same page. An unselfish team can struggle by not being on the same page. 

4. Leadership must arise from players in addition to coaches. Players have to be able to mentor each other and learn to appreciate the success of teammates. 

5. Excellent coaches add value, get buy-in, and excel in connection and communication. If  parents are always calling for every coach's head, then maybe it's not the coach.    

6. Culture includes everything in the ecosystem - positivity, individual and team development, system development, playing time, roles of assistant coaches, relationships from top down and bottom up. 

7. Health matters. Sometimes illness or injury sinks the talent. 

8. Luck - the ball bounces the right way, a call goes our way. You can’t control everything and sometimes it goes against you.  

9. Limiting mistakes (good teams find ways to win; bad teams find ways to give games away).  Good teams make better decisions. 

10. “Semantics” a.k.a. some antics. Avoid off court character failures -  academics, substance abuse, relationship problems. 

It’s not really just as mCan you handle the truth about winning in basketball? It’s not about ego or superior intelligence.

Basketball - Avoiding Self-Destruction

"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." - Charlie Munger, former Buffett partner

Flawed thinking comes in a lot of forms - physical, emotional, financial, reputational, etc.

Sport informs many examples of flawed decision-making. The Celtics got Bill Russell by getting Ice Capades shows for the Rochester Royals ownership. Then they traded Ed Macauley and the rights to Cliff Hagan to St. Louis for the second draft pick. The rest is history, eleven championships in thirteen years. 

Within our process where does flawed thinking arise most?

• Without scouting being overly aggressive in extended defense.
• Poor shot selection. Everyone is not a three-point shooter.
• Turnovers. Turnovers are zero percent possessions. 
• Excessive fouling, turning bad shots and perimeter shots into easy shots. 
• Help without rotation. 

How can one avoid each? 

• Don't be in a rush to extend defenses until seeing an opponent.
• Teach shot selection with shot charts and video and perform "range testing" to see where players cannot succeed. 
• Take care of the ball by avoiding driving or passing into traffic. Pass away from defenders, and don't "pass through hands." 
• "Fouling negates hustle." Don't reach in, don't slap down. Show video of excessive fouling or flawed decisions that caused fouls. 
• Practice "live shell" to reinforce loading to the ball and rotation. 

Lagniappe. "Tell me how this behavior is going to help you accomplish the goals that you have." 

 

Basketball- The More You Know

Less is more. A moment of clarity exceeds a lifetime of confusion. 

• Do well what you do a lot. 
• Do more of what works, less of what doesn’t. 
• Become more efficient to gain productivity. 

1. Don't return to the basics. Never leave. Find "four ways to score." 

Know your "go to and counter" move, signature move, and "closer move" if you're the closer. 

2. At some point, subtract a drill for each new one added.

3. Condition with a basketball, within drills for efficiency and skill development. 

4. Nobody wins 0-0. It's painful to watch high school teams shoot three consecutive airballs. Avoid denial. It happens in many high school games. 

5. Winning games = winning quarters = winning possessions. 

6. All defense starts with containing the ball.

7. Treasure possession enders, 'guys' who score, assist, rebound, and get stops with deflections, steals, blocks, and forced turnovers.

8. Teach more, overcoach less. 

9. Decide how you can add value. Be a mentor not a tormentor. 

10.Make every player feel valued. "How does it feel to be coached by me?"

Lagniappe. Coach Hacks reflects on "basketball character." 

Most teams that overachieve their talent level DO NOT have players:

▪️Making faces when they get subbed out
▪️Arguing with the officials
▪️Laying on the ground after they turn it over
▪️Moping on the bench

They have players that are focused on contributing to WINNING

— Matt Hackenberg (@CoachHackGO) December 10, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Versus 1-3-1, overload and screen the low middle. 

SHEESH 🔥🔥

This may be the best set we have seen against a 1-3-1 zone and really not that complicated

Add this to you early season playbook and keep it in your back pocket

(Via @CoachHackGO 🎥)

pic.twitter.com/BN2gKRH7Pl

— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) December 19, 2025

 

Basketball- Talking Dogs, Bingo Coaching (B 17), and Old Man Rants

Driving a country road, a coach saw a sign "Talking Dog $25." Curious, he asks the owner, can I talk with him? He asks the dog, "can you tell me your story?" "Sure. Early on, my master learned I had the gift of speech. Naturally, he sent me to the CIA. I could go where other operators couldn't. I was legendary. But I got old, so they retired me." The coach said, "That's incredible. You're selling him for nothing? The owner said, "he's such a liar. He never did any of that."

Coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "Basketball is about making plays, not running plays."

A weekend travel tournament coach sounded as though he were running a bingo parlor, calling out plays each trip down the floor.

"B-17"

"I-10"

"O-12"

What's the developmental coach's role, teaching basketball knowledge that transfers to anything from a pickup game to advanced levels, or running play after play (mostly to set up his daughter's shots)? 

What minimum offensive curriculum belongs in a player's offensive skill portfolio? There's ample room for disagreement; figure out your core. 

Right and left handed layups (either foot from either side of the basket)

Shoot off the catch, off the shot fake. 

Shooting off the dribble (either right or left)

Attack to separate (e.g. shot fake, jab/rip into drive or shot)

Attack on the run off the catch (stampede)

Back to basket attack (faceup) with front or reverse pivot

Separation dribble continuation (speed, hesi, in-and-out), change of direction (crossover, behind the back, spin, between the legs) and combinations (e.g. hesi-cross) - good players don't need all 

Cutting 

Passing (including feeding the post)

Isolation 

Two-man-game (e.g. PnR, inside-out, give-and-go)

Small-sided games (e.g. 3 v 3 with constraints)

Specialty - negative step, lateral glide (Durant), Eurostep, sidestep 3s

Watch a lot of high school games and you'll say, "(s)he never did any of that." 

Players can excel without "flashy" games. Somewhere along the way they need high volume repetition of separation moves (with and without the ball). 

Lagniappe. "All war is based on deception." 

Shot fakes need to be utilized at all levels

It’s amazing how much players will sell out for a block or a contest

Rep them in your workouts and use them in your games

pic.twitter.com/u3DVSiojZq

— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) December 14, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Thread from Chris Oliver about better teaching. 

Sometimes when players aren’t changing, it’s because the signal isn’t loud enough.

Exaggeration cuts through the noise. Push movements past “normal,” and you instantly make the learning clearer, faster, and more memorable.

A Thread. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/yjoqavR7Ha

— Chris Oliver (@BBallImmersion) December 12, 2025

Basketball - Stoic Advice, Learning Across Domains

Coach Wooden preached, "Little things make big things happen." Create sustainable competitive advantage with a "performance-focused, feedback-rich" approach.

We make our habits and our habits make us. For example:

• Did I speak greatness?
• Did I show empathy to my team? 
• Was I fully prepared for practice - mentally and physically? 
• Did I bring energy?
• Did my coaching present "the best version of myself?"

Reflecting on our performance closes the "feedback loop" of performance.

None of these ideas are new or radical. In "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations," Ryan Holiday shares from the Roman statesman and author’s Seneca. 

"What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve? At the beginning or end of each day, the Stoic sits down with his journal and reviews: what he did, what he thought, what could be improved. It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity and not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is also a form of practicing them."

Every coach preaches daily improvement, the "1 Percent Better" approach because we understand the exponential growth equation. 

Here’s the expanded 365-day compounding graph with both curves.

What the math says

• 1% better each day:

  $$1.01^{365} \approx 37.8$$

  → Nearly 38× improvement over a year.

• 1% worse each day:

  $$0.99^{365} \approx 0.03$$

  → You’re left with about 3% of where you started.

Leverage the power of compounding to improve whatever our domain - coaching, writing, teaching, sharing. 

Lagniappe. Growing culture demands intent. 

Elite cultures don't happen on accident.

Daniel Coyle (@DanielCoyle) studied some of the best cultures - Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and Navy SEALs to figure out what actually works.

In The Culture Code, he found 3 key skills that made their cultures elite👇 pic.twitter.com/0UHhOp3IZv

— Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness (@coachajkings) December 17, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Clever BOB with Zoom action and backscreen.  

Basketball - Minimize the Pain of Regret

• "An overabundance of choice, the fear of making a suboptimal decision, and the potential for lingering regret following missed opportunities can leave people unhappy." from "Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models" by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann  (Original quote from Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice. 

"Woulda, shoulda, coulda." As Jim Rohn remarked, "we must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret."

Miguel Ruiz's fourth agreement reads "Always do your best." Although our best may not be our best ever or 'the best' in absolute terms, our best mitigates against regret. 

Coach John Wooden took a practical approach, "Regret is valuable only when it becomes a lesson." A problem arises in that the magnitude of regret rises in big games, especially in the deciding moments. In championship games, a loss leaves no chance for redemption. 

Nick Saban said, "Regret is the bill you pay later if you dodge discipline now." That approach seeks buy-in on action today - conditioning, film study, recovery. 

Phil Jackson advocated caution about the words we choose, "because words become culture." It's better to lose a game than to lose a player or a team because of unthinking reactions. Jackson understood that mindfulness widens the space between stimulus and reaction. 

Overarching lessons

• Everyone suffers regret. 
• Giving our best reduces the chance of regret. 
• Regret is a consequence of failed preparation. 
• Benefit from the lessons of regret. 
• Choose our words carefully. 

Lagniappe. The ability to feel joy not jealousy for others' success is a worthwhile skill. 

“Those people who can celebrate others’ success live a more stress free, less anxious life” - Jeff Van Gundy

(Via @usabjnt 🎥)

pic.twitter.com/KCeqXqRoHM

— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) December 16, 2025

Lagniappe 2. Understand that growth requires multiple inputs. 

Adding Value - New Meanings for 2025 Basketball?

"...the mind is your most formidable weapon." - Jack Carr in "Red Sky Mourning"

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” - Jody Picoult

Facts are commodities. Search engines and publicly available artificial intelligence share incomprehensible amounts of truths. Can we extract something worthy of stealing and implementing? Use this post as a "thought experiment," asking "what can we do better or differently?" 

For example, consider this prompt:

Prompt: What actions in NBA basketball produce the highest points per possession? That could include anything from transition, to pick-and-roll, isolation, combination actions such as Pistol or Zoom, anything?

ChatGPT hallucination: 

Which NBA actions produce the highest points per possession?

Exact numbers move year to year and Synergy’s detailed PPP tables are behind a paywall, but across seasons the hierarchy is reasonably consistent: Canis Hoopus+3NBA+3NBA+3

1. Transition offense

   • Highest PPP on average.

   • Anytime you can run off a steal, long rebound, or quick outlet, you’re usually in the 1.2–1.4+ PPP range as a team.

   • Wide-open threes, dunks, and layups with a scrambled defense.

2. Pick-and-roll with the ball-handler creating (PnR BH)

   • When you have an elite creator (Doncic, Curry, SGA types), well-spaced PnR is one of the most efficient half-court actions.

   • Punishes drop, switch, and blitz differently (pull-ups, pocket passes, skips).

3. Pick-and-roll with the roll man (PnR Roll Man)

   • Short rolls and rim dives—especially with shooters spaced—are very high PPP (lob dunks, layups, fouls).

   • Articles on teams like the Bucks highlight how roll-man PPP can explode when defenses mis-tag or over-blitz. Brew Hoop

4. Off-ball screening actions (Zoom, Spain PnR, pistol combos, etc.)

   • These “combo” actions—dribble handoff into PnR, Zoom (pin-down into DHO), Spain (backscreen on the roller)—are essentially ways to supercharge PnR and DHO spacing.

   • They often track near the top of half-court PPP because they force multiple defensive decisions in one possession.

5. Spot-up and catch-and-shoot threes

   • Not an “action” by itself, but the destination of good offense.

   • Drive-and-kick, paint touches, and ball reversals that generate clean C&S threes are some of the most efficient half-court outcomes.

6. Isolation

   • As a primary diet, iso is generally less efficient than PnR and transition.

   • But elite iso players (your Randle-in-a-hot-season archetype) can post excellent PPP, especially in late-clock and end-game situations. Canis Hoopus

If you’re thinking programmatically:

• Build your offense around creating transition and early advantage (pace, stops, outlets).

• In the half court, live in PnR / DHO / Zoom-type actions that create paint touches and closeouts.

• Use isolation as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer—for your very best creators and in late-clock situations.

Ask the question differently and AI generates different information.

What does transfer?

Across NBA, EuroLeague, and high-level FIBA data, you keep seeing the same hierarchy:

• Most efficient: cuts, putbacks, transition advantages, roll-man finishes. ResearchGate+1

• Middle: good pick-and-roll with passing, open spot-up threes.

• Least efficient overall: post-ups and isolations, especially for average players.

The EuroLeague end-of-game study (1.58 PPP on cuts, 1.33 on putbacks, 0.78–0.98 on post/ISO/spot-up) shows the same ranking we see in NBA Synergy breakdowns and other analyses. ResearchGate+2Basketball Poetry+2

Followup prompt: How applicable is data from the NBA to college or high school basketball? 

Followup hallucination:

Short answer: the patterns are very transferable; the exact numbers are not.

What does transfer?

Across NBA, EuroLeague, and high-level FIBA data, you keep seeing the same hierarchy:

• Most efficient: cuts, putbacks, transition advantages, roll-man finishes. ResearchGate+1

• Middle: good pick-and-roll with passing, open spot-up threes.

• Least efficient overall: post-ups and isolations, especially for average players.

The EuroLeague end-of-game study (1.58 PPP on cuts, 1.33 on putbacks, 0.78–0.98 on post/ISO/spot-up) shows the same ranking we see in NBA Synergy breakdowns and other analyses. ResearchGate+2Basketball Poetry+2

That ordering is extremely useful for college and high school coaching:

• You want more cutting, screening, advantage creation, offensive rebounding.

• You want fewer low-yield, stagnant isos and forced post-ups unless you have a real mismatch.

What doesn’t transfer cleanly?

1. Absolute efficiency numbers.

   • HS players miss more layups, throw more bad passes, and aren’t as good from three. So your PPP will be lower everywhere—but the relative ranking stays similar.

2. Spacing and 3-point volume.

   • NBA: deeper line, elite spacing, more 5-out, more shooting skill.

   • HS: lane can be crowded, fewer consistent shooters, so some actions (e.g., certain spread ball-screen looks) won’t generate the same clean reads.

3. Physicality and rules differences.

   • FIBA vs NCAA vs NFHS differences (defensive 3 seconds, charge/block interpretations, goaltending, hand-checking) all tweak efficiency.

4. Talent distribution.

   • NBA data is about what works when all 10 people on the floor are very good.

   • In HS/college, one great player can distort the math—if your star gets 1.05 PPP in iso and your other options are 0.7, you might iso more than an NBA team would.

How I’d use it as a coach

• Use NBA/FIBA data to prioritize concepts:

  • Build an offense around advantage → spacing → cut/drive/roll → extra pass → crash.

• Track your own PPP by play type in simple form (even if it’s just “points per 100 possessions” on: transition, P&R, post, iso, ATO sets).

• Compare your internal rankings, not your raw numbers, to what the big boys find.

In other words: borrow the hierarchy, not the decimals. The shape of the efficiency curve travels; the exact values are league-specific.

Adding value to "our situation" will vary a lot:

- What type of players do we have? Fast, physical, skilled, smart or something far less? 

Analogy: "Don't bring a gun to a gunfight if our opponents have a tank."

- What can we teach and they learn? If we have a group limited by fundamental skills, do we focus on upgrading skills or believe "fool's gold" that strategy will overcome our limitations? 

Analogy: If we're not the hare, can we upgrade the tortoise? 

- What's the competition level? If we have the smallest enrollment and compete with other popular sports in our community, can we create a "paradigm shift" for our program? 

Analogy: If we're hopelessly "out-resourced," how can we compete?

Asymmetrical warfare (American Revolution, Vietnam War, cyberwarfare - see below for "Unrestricted Warfare" review:

Unrestricted Warfare, authored by two Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (1999), redefines modern conflict. The authors propose that warfare has evolved beyond traditional battlefields to encompass every domain of national life - economic, political, technological, media, legal, environmental, and psychological spheres. The authors inform that in globalized, interdependent world, "everything is a weapon, and everywhere is the battlefield".

Our task varies with our situation - to leverage advantages to overwhelm inferior opponents or to "level the playing field" with tools available to us. 

Lagniappe. Stop and pivot. 

James Clear: The ability to bounce back quickly is a key skill in life. pic.twitter.com/0RkGlxv9ym

— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) December 11, 2025