Each day passes leaving a smaller sliver of daylight in our basketball lives. What would I do differently in another try?
Watching parts of two streamed games last night, I saw professional basketball creep further into high school basketball. And not in good ways.
A philosophy of teamwork, improvement, and accountability stays timeless. Start there. Start with rules of three.
Teamwork. People ask what the game lacks. Teamwork starts with individual performance, individual choices.
- Passing. Ask where easy baskets arise. "Basketball is a game of separation." Spacing spreads the defense to create advantage through cutting and passing. As Pete Carril preached, "the quality of the shot relates to the quality of the pass." Assists were rarer than hen's teeth.
- Ball containment. Yes, it's hard. As a result, people play a lot of "dead man's defense," six feet under the ballhandler. Defense starts with ball pressure, but needs containment. See the "dog drill" below. Strong teams apply and handle defensive pressure.
- Shot selection. I don't have a problem with high school players making threes. I have a problem with an incessant drumbeat of missed threes, badly missed threes.
Defensive habits start in practice. Kevin Eastman calls this the "dog drill."
Get your "nose on the ball." Deny dribble advancement. It's practice. Leaving your comfort zone is mandatory.
Improvement.
- "Every day is player improvement day." We only had three hours of practice a week for middle school. That's nowhere close to enough. Be more efficient using more baskets, more reps, more urgency. Although we spent more than half of practice on fundamentals, it still wasn't enough.
- Feedback. I love the phrase, "performance-focused, feedback-rich" from Thomas Crane's The Heart of Coaching. Give and get constructive feedback. Praise the praiseworthy.
- Study. Watch more video. What's the spacing, the player and ball movement, the quality of execution. Why did something work or not work? What was present (bad fouls) or absent (urgent cutting, pick-and-roll, help defense)?
Accountability.
- "NFL Monday." Why did we win or lose? As Bill Belichick says, "we need to play better, coach better."
- Reduce mistakes. "Winners are trackers." If turnovers and bad shots are problems, emphasize "doing more of what works and less of what doesn't." Living with turnovers in practice means dying with them during games.
- Look in the mirror. What can I do better? How can I study better, teach better, communicate better?
Lagniappe. Study a possession...the spacing, player and ball movement, and execution.
