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Thursday, July 11, 2024

Basketball: "How Champions Think"

My son asked, "How can you find ideas to blog about every day?" He writes for Bloomberg View several times weekly and has many thousands of readers.

About sixty thousand thoughts blast through our brains daily. How can we not find a couple to amplify or simplify?

Bob Rotella is a well-known author who mostly writes about golf. He wrote the popular, "How Champions Think." Each of us has our view of "Championship Mentality." That includes cognitive dissonance about ideas, programs, and people.

He included a story about Tiger Woods finishing every practice making 100 consecutive eight foot putts. Woods didn't miss a putt inside four feet that season. He practiced hard to make competition easier. 

Consider an oxymoron, "Flawed Champion." Few sports have a "perfect game." Bowling 300 is an example as well as baseball's "perfect game." Flawed champions aren't hard to find - the first that comes to mind is Mike Tyson although many others are out there, like Ben Roethlisberger and batting titlist Ty Cobb. 

Every Massachusetts State Champion in volleyball last season had at least one loss. "Iron sharpens iron." Playing tough regular season competition gives top teams a better chance of winning 'the big one'. 

What can basketball teams do to 'touch perfection'? That often means avoiding self-destructive play.

Where is the low hanging fruit? It's impossible to be good playing inefficient ball. 

  • Better shots. Our team isn't an NBA franchise shooting over 35 percent from three. If half of our threes are airballs, stop! Those are shot turnovers. 
  • Bad fouls. Kevin Sivils says, "foul for profit." Fouling three point shots, bail out shots, and bad shots awards opponents points. 
  • Turnovers. I tracked possessions for one quarter for a struggling high school team. Nineteen possessions, ten turnovers. That dog won't hunt. A turnover is a zero percent possession and live-ball turnovers historically translate to high points per possession for opponents. 
  • Transition points allowed. Set a standard. We wanted to allow no more than three transition hoops per game. The core defensive principle is no easy baskets. 
  • 372. Get three consecutive stops, seven times per half, two halves. When you do that, you win a lot. When a winless team comes into your gym and scores six consecutive possessions, it speaks volumes. 
Lagniappe. "The ball has energy." 

Lagniappe 2. Short doesn't mean helpless.  

Lagniappe 3. Many of us can improve our motion offense.  

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