At every level of experience, coaches seek effective and teachable offense.
What 'first principles' belong?
1) "We can't run what we can't run." Skill come first. Sacrificing player development for team action is a mistake. Practicing 1 v 1, two-man game, and three-on-three one-sided actions all deserve a lot of attention.
2) "It's about making plays, not running plays." - Coach K
3) What's our transition game? How big a role will it have?
4) Prioritize spacing. "Win in space."
SPACING DECISIONS FOR PLAYERS
Context: we were talking about players like Embiid that have advantages in the post lingering in the 3 pt line
Before we make a read and decision with the ball, we need to make a spacing decision. Offenses can’t run with poor spacing. Naturally… pic.twitter.com/DvGYKyi5oX
Also, a lot of actions flow from box sets. Take care not to introduce too much, too soon.
6) Multiple formations with the same play. Pick-and-roll runs well from many formations. Back cuts including blind pig deserve consideration.
7) Continuity and motion offenses. Regardless of whether you have "motion," we need movement. Actions on the help side keep defenders occupied and less available to "shrink space."
8) Pick-and-roll. Many variations arise, ranging from Zoom action (downscreen, DHO), straight DHO, Pistol variants.
9) Hard to defend actions. Aside from pick-and-roll, complex screening like staggers, elevator/sandwich, screen-the-screener, screen-the-roller (Spain) all offer separation with different spacing solutions.
10)Customize to your personnel and experience. The best scorers should get the most shots. Basketball is not a democracy.
Attend to free throw shooting.
Include 'fatigued' shooting with conditioning built in.
Proximity defenders (hands up) alters results. Free shooting has limitations.
Make it competitive. Track shooting among groups with time limitations such as shots made in 4:00.
Lagniappe. Horns clear, late clock DHO.
It's that time of year...what are you running at the end of the clock? This one was one I used "Horns Clear to Corner DHO"
Grant argues that innovation most often comes conceptually in the young and experimentally from the 'old masters'. In basketball, both apply.
Consider Don Meyer's 'three phases' of coaching - blind enthusiasm, sophisticated complexity, and mature simplicity.
Blind enthusiasm moves coaches hither and yon, wondering about this and that. Mature simplicity embeds persistence and failure, as in "that doesn't work; I abandoned it."
Consider our coaching. Do you coach the same way now as when you started? Coaches revise our psychological reserves, our teaching analogies, drill book, and playbook. What is right for teaching novices differs from teaching the more mature or the highly trained.
Consider Anson Dorrance's "competitive cauldron" of UNC women's soccer. He and his staff grade and rank every player daily. Everyone knows who inhabits the top and bottom of their world. For nationally ranked college players and teams, that worked. Young players with less experience and less established "ego," should never be exposed to that approach. If you want to create mental health problems and 'corporate rage', that would work.
Brian McCormick wrote "Fake Fundamentals," sharing what he considered outdated drills (above). In this post, I shared drills I used and abandoned for a variety of reasons, including injury prevention.
A worthy goal is not comparing ourselves to other coaches but comparing ourselves today to our prior coaching. That recognizes a permanent room for growth. Many great writers like Salman Rushdie argue that good writing is rewriting, with our creative self and our critical self.
Lagniappe. Sport rewards explosive athletes.
10 Exercises To Become A More Explosive Athlete WITH NO EQUIPMENT
Not Every Accessory Needs To Be Done With A DB And If You Are Traveling With No Access To A Gym There Are About 10,000 Things You Can Do pic.twitter.com/UPX4LOhOUm
Former SEAL Team leader Jocko Willink told a story about a team member who told him to limit the key pieces of information to know to three - that's all he could remember. Sometimes players get overwhelmed with information, too. Complexity is as likely to confuse our players as our opponents.
1) Have a clear philosophy such that players know, "this is who we are" and "that is what we do." Write it down and make it transparent.
2) Add value to get buy-in. Coaches add value via relationships, player development, and basketball education.
3) Embrace personal development. You model excellence for everyone around you, assistants and players. Find a mentor. Learn every day. That doesn't mean taking every piece of advice coming your way. A lack of humility always ends with the "stock trader's breakfast"...egg on the face.
Lagniappe. Blame is about ego defense and lack of accountability.
Kirby Smart said, "Don’t be a blame guy. That’s the first sign of loser mentality when you blame someone else for a mistake."
Blaming others is finger-pointing, it's not solution-focused. • It's avoiding accountability. • It's failing to take ownership.
Lagniappe 2. This is long. Save it and extract something you find useful.
5 Baseline Out Of Bounds Plays That Get Buckets!
This video goes beyond lines on a page. It will give you the key teaching points that lead to game-time execution.
These plays come from state champion high school and veteran college coaches across the country. They have used… pic.twitter.com/gWRFCWGYjl
— Joe Haefner | Breakthrough Basketball (@BreakthruBball) October 30, 2024
Lagniappe 3. Coach Hacks has some thoughtful ideas about tryouts. Over fifty years ago, a School Committee man tried to tank a coach and season when his son got cut.
1/ Use small sided games (SSGs)
This maximizes reps, requires following directions, and allows for more situational evaluations
“A primary goal of #teaching anything is the advantage that learning gives to people over their competitors who haven’t been as well taught.” -Bob Knight pic.twitter.com/60hXwA1ezv
System implementation - matching skill sets to mission
"Absolutes" - limiting turnovers and fouls
Video study and analysis
Winning close and late
Motivation
Watch a 'generic' struggling team. You know what to expect:
Poor decision-making:
Low percentage shots
Undisciplined fouling
Decision-based turnovers
Poor execution:
Unskilled shooting
Lack of ball containment and penetration containment
Execution-based turnovers
Effective coaches stay on point with their philosophy:
- "Sacrifice"
- "The ball is gold" (value the ball)
- "Pleased but not satisfied..." (no complacency)
Lagniappe. Bad reads lead to suboptimal execution.
Don’t Guard Yourself
So many players guard themselves by either not making good reads or by not having the skill to execute on the read. This makes the game tougher and results in them being less productive and effective.
Lagniappe 2. It's not enough to draw diagrams showing screens.
🏀 Bulls assistant coach Dan Craig explains why screening angles are the most important aspect of forcing defenders over a screen and creating a trigger. pic.twitter.com/mMhtuU5U9z
Bill Belichick and other NFL coaches invest Mondays to analyze what won or lost games. For professionals, that is where the rubber meets the road. Coaches and players should understand the distinction.
For coaches whose reputation, job, and lifestyle depend on winning, that makes perfect sense.
For developmental coaches, the equation differs. What advances or holds a player back? Of course, that doesn't devalue winning.
Quiz players on what wins and loses games, both overview and details.
What wins games? (Big picture, Bird's Eye View)
Talent
Execution (reading the game and finishing plays)
Number of Possessions
Quality of possessions - Defenses allowing "one bad shot."
Coaching
What wins games? (Granular, Frog's Eye View, Four Factors)
Differential shooting, effective field goal percentage
Forcing Turnovers
Rebounding (possession ending or sustaining)
Free throws (committing and drawing fouls)
What loses games?
Bad decisions (impacts offense, defense, conversion)
We hear stories about how "basketball saved my life." Some readers lived that story.
Everyone needs "life GPS," personal direction-finding equipment that comes shaped as family, teachers, coaches, passions.
Consider the movie Hoosiers, loosely based on a Milan, Indiana basketball team. On one level, it's an underdog story about a small town basketball team that wins a State Title in 1954. On another level, Gene Hackman lives a redemption story as Coach Norman Dale. And on a third, it's a love story between Hackman and Barbara Hershey.
Hickory players get discipline and direction from Coach Dale, who rediscovers himself.
"Life GPS" reminds me of artificial intelligence (AI), which has three goals - to make us happy, be accurate, and avoid mistakes. How can we provide Life GPS for our players?
1) Character - Both you and others should hold your character in high regard. Model excellence across all domains - home, school, sport, work.
2) Competitiveness - competitive character has to be the standard.
3) Feedback - praise the praiseworthy and correct the correctable. Coaching is not criticism.
4) 360 degree evaluation - get input from coaches, teammates, subordinates, and self-evaluation. Understand strengths and weaknesses and consider ideas for improvement.
5) Measure progress. Evaluation occurs over time. For long-term tracking, "report cards" three to four times a year would be plenty.
Lagniappe. Timeless advice from Coach Majerus.
Rick Majerus Timeless Keys to Successful Offense: 1) Get to FT line, via post ups, cutting & driving. 2) Maintain spacing: Is your team maintaining spacing on the 3rd side of the floor after 2 reversals? 3) Share the ball. 4) Shot allocation: Best Scorers taking the most shots. pic.twitter.com/0Hi3in1vYO
Nobody has their "A game" every day. Even the best have off days, searching for other ways to impact winning.
From Reddit:
It's pretty well known that Bill Russell was 21-0 in winner-take-all-games, but that's incorrect
It's been commonly stated over the years that Russell was 21-0 in winner-take-all games (example). If Russell's team played even with an opponent throughout a series or they both got to the same place in a tournament, Russell's team was ALWAYS going to pull it out in the end.
But where does that 21-0 mark come from?
At USF, his '55 team was 5-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
At USF, his '56 team was 4-0 in the tourney on the way to the title.
In the '56 Olympics, the US squad was 2-0 when it came to the winner-take-all final 4 for gold after the group stage.
In the NBA, the Celtics were famously 10-0 in Games 7's throughout his career.
That adds up to 21-0, but it's incomplete.
In the '66 playoffs, the Celtics won Game 5 in the best-of-5 series with Cincinnati (link), so Russell was actually 22-0 in winner-take-all-games.
Statmuse shows Russell (17-2) with two elimination game losses. Many factors go into elimination game record, yet even the great Michael Jordan is listed at 6-7 in elimination games. Not the be-all, end-all of comparison, just another set of statistics.
Other notables:
Magic Johnson 6-7
Kareem Jabbar 11-12
John Havlicek 16-5
Kobe Bryant 9-10
Steph Curry 9-5
Shaquille O'Neal 6-12
Larry Bird 15-9
LeBron James 15-13
Kevin Durant 6-10
Tim Duncan 9-10
When the ball isn't dropping, find ways to make a difference on defense, on the boards, with better passing, and more loose balls won.
Lagniappe. Make competition bring out our best.
"COMPETITION EXPOSES YOU." – Billy Donovan
Competition: a fight or battle where two or more people strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss.
Lagniappe 2. D White, a winning player sequence...
This sequence from Derrick White was really something else.
Hit a three over Giannis, defended Portis in a post-up, hit another three and then blocked Antetokounmpo. All in less than a minute. Garden was ELECTRIC, and the Celtics actually took control of the game from there: pic.twitter.com/7kpD6FfgUt
Adam Grant wrote "Think Again," discussing how rethinking benefits us in daily life. Knowledge about sport theory and practice takes years, especially the mental part of sports. In the interim, we inhabit an incomplete or erroneous database.
Grant suggests keeping a 'rethinking scorecard', a storehouse of corrected misconceptions. The best truths work across domains.
1) Officiating. Don't overthink it. I only recall a few games over the years where officiating mattered.... Mostly, "it's how you play, not whom," or the officials. Don't make excuses our brand.
2) Simplify. This isn't rethinking, rather consolidating. Some teams are celebrated and criticized for its 'simple basketball'. Don't go off the rails by reinventing the wheel or quitting what works. Versatility is good, except when it isn't. Have a clear plan of how to win.
3) Inside out. There are insiders, those with the most intimate knowledge of the program, at practice, with 'coaches' eyes' seeing strengths and weaknesses. Then there are outsiders who see the 'finished product', games and video. That doesn't reduce the outsiders to zero, but we have a fraction of insider knowledge.
4) False idols. Regular season win-loss record isn't the "be-all, end-all." It's much like baseball and better analytics. ERA, WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), and K/BB (strikeout/walk ratio) often share more insight than wins and losses.
5) "Scoring." Watch a game and mentally score, positives and negatives by each team. The best teams score the most points through their actions and losing teams often surrender points through errors, inconsistency, and mental mistakes. Watching is not seeing.
6) It's not so simple. Craft is earned. Technique and tactics have nuances. Balancing the big picture and granular details separate extraordinary from ordinary. Win individual battles and team play.
7) The Craft. Don't hesitate to use New Age training. Use the Jedi Mind Tricks. It's not enough to play a lot or to love the game. Study great teams, great players, and great coaches. Study the mental game. Maybe "Search Inside Yourself" or "The Inner Game of Tennis" are too much for teens. Or not.
8) The "Prime Directive." In Star Trek, the Prime Directive was not to interfere with the development of civilizations encountered during intergalactic exploration. In sport, The Prime Directive is parental advocacy for the well-being and situation of their children above those of the team. Parental advocacy is normal and expected. It can go badly, like a story of a Texas basketball coach fired by a parental donation of tens of thousands of dollars to a private school.
9) Transparency. How much is good, or bad? This is unresolved. Players need to know what to work on to improve. Coaching is a relationship business and the 'right amount' of transparency is hard. Two rules that help include the '24 hour rule' not to discuss a game until emotions have cooled and 'Your Child Only' rule, discussing your child's situation alone, never involving another team member.
10) Secrecy. Some communications are absolutely privileged. Those can't be revealed and go 'to the grave'. Even if a coach says, "this player is the best thing since sliced bread," don't share unless it's authorized.
These are just a few lessons learned over seven decades in sport.
Lagniappe. When the game is on the line, demand high performance from everyone.
"Great leaders are not askers. They're demanders. They're lovers, they're carers, they share...but they hold their players accountable." pic.twitter.com/JhrVoJbGvz
(SPCA - shooting, protecting the ball, crashing, attacking the rim)
2) Stop giving games away with bad decisions, bad shots, turnovers, and fouls
3) Be in great condition to win at the end with toughness, defense, rebounding, and smart play
Watch losing teams and see how they lose:
Lack of coherent plans on both defense and offense
Don't contain the ball or stop transition
Bad offensive possessions
Bad shooters take bad shots
Lack of physical and mental toughness
Be solution focused:
- Have a mentor to assist with critiques (Everyone needs a coach.). Great coaches are unafraid of improvement.
- Show video examples of what you want to see.
- Share shot charts with individual players. Everyone needs to know what is a good shot for them. A player was 1 for 19 from three on the season and passed up a three. Her father yelled at her. We shared the stats with him.
- Reward desired performance. "The best defender starts."
- Build skill. Increase the percent of practice devoted to fundamentals.
Lagniappe. Redeem yourself.
This is an amazing outlook on life
Special stuff
"If you want to be successful, you need to be bad, then you need to be good. Then when you're good, you need to fail. Then when you fail, you're going to figure it out”
The NPR "Wild Card" podcast inspired this piece. Guests answer questions picked from a deck of card questions. Author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale) was the guest. She said, "high aspirations, low expectations..." and "you know things when you're older than when you're 20."
The guest randomly picks the cards. Here are a few worthy candidates:
What was the best advice you ever got?
A. Be more assertive.
What's a piece of advice you were smart to ignore?
A. Pass.
What's an experience from childhood that made you realize your parents were human?
A. We were never poor, but never had extra money for 'real' vacations.
What was a disappointing experience that now feels like a blessing?
A. Having medical training in the Navy instead of the private sector turned out advantageous.
How do you manage envy (that you feel toward others)?
A. My job includes, "always do your best." Envy is no part of being our best.
Have you ever had a premonition about something that came true?
A. I anticipated being in a serious automobile accident and delayed entering an intersection by a few seconds. A driver sped through a red light who would have T-boned me.
Have your feelings about death changed over time?
A. Don't fear death; fear suffering.
What's your best defense against despair?
A. Self-belief. Confidence comes from proven success.
Lagniappe. What card questions do we suggest people think about? Food for thought...
Why was your favorite coach the favorite?
What was the best playing advice you got?
Who gave you the best advice as a coach?
What book taught you the most about basketball?
Who in basketball, living or dead, would you like to lunch with?
What was your most disappointing experience in basketball?
What's the number one reason you coach?
Who was your favorite teammate?
What was your worst coaching experience?
What would you change about coaching young players?
What do you think you do that other coaches won't?
What would you do over if restarting your coaching career?
Lagniappe 2. A big in the weakside slot messes up defensive rotation.
5 Slot Evolution
Quin Snyder's year-old innovation is slowly spreading around the league, from the Celtics to the Jazz to the Hornets
...or how simply moving the center to the weakside slot forces defenses to rethink — or overthink — their typical rotations pic.twitter.com/K6Zii6VPVq
"Analogy is a kind of similarity in which the same system of relations holds across different setsof elements. Analogies thus capture parallels across different situations. The elements that belong
to the two situations need not be similar, but the relations that hold the systems together must
be alike. However, as discussed below, analogical processing is easier if some concrete features
are also shared."
Bandwidth. To solve bigger coaching problems, acquire additional bandwidth. "He lacks the bandwidth to fix that."
Velcro. Want tighter defensive pressure. Maybe covering a player like a glove or Velcro is the answer.
Boomerang. UCONN women ran "Boomerang with Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck with Stewart the finisher.
Be on the same page. In school teachers get everyone on the same page of a book. If players aren't problems follow.
Gravity and escape velocity. Space travel requires "escape velocity" to overcome gravity. Program mediocrity can require escape velocity to become upper echelon teams. That can require coaching, players, or both.
"All hat and no cattle." Big talk and no action gets expressed in different ways. The Red Sox promised a "full throttle" off-season and delivered nothing.
Wyoming saying, "Talk less, say more." We used to joke in the Navy that a meeting would cram five minutes of information into an hour meeting. Brian McCormick says, "No lines, no laps, no lectures," at practice.
Marathon session. Any type of gathering, lecture, or practice can go on 'forever'. If our playbook requires marathon sessions to digest, it needs revision and shortening.
Work of art. A team or individual performance gets described as 'virtuoso' or work of art. That might imply both quality and duration of production. DaVinci's Mona Lisa was under construction over 16 years.
Hub and spokes. Some organizations are decentralized and others operate with a parent (mother ship?) and satellites. Organization occurs in different ways including 'vertical integration' such as youth programs.
Hitting a home run. Coaches want their programs to succeed with peak performances like a home run or grand slam in baseball or a 'sixer' in cricket.
Put the roller skates on him. In dating parlance, women discard or throw overboard a guy with a roller skate analogy. We can separate someone from an organization in the same way.
Moving the goalposts. Everyone wants to succeed. Sometimes people 'move the goalposts' to change the definition of success. A team has a poor record but claims success by redefining success.
Lipstick on a pig. Effect 'superficial' rather than real change by putting lipstick on a pig. You still have a pig.
Out of the Park. A successful project gets hit out of the park, similar to a home run.
Spread your wings. Experimenting, 'leaving the nest', or 'moving up in class' can all be considered as 'spreading your wings'.
Grass is greener. Keeping players 'home' becomes difficult amidst recruiting or 'poaching' at every level. With NIL the grass may literally be greener.
Lightning strikes. A major upset or surprising defeat could both result from a lightning strike, also known as an Act of God.
Frozen out. With limited supply (think musical chairs), some players or teams get 'frozen out' from selection for a team or playoffs. Did Jaylen Brown get frozen out (or blacklisted) by Nike?
Full court press. When we give maximum effort strategically, it's the full court press, or perhaps the 'hard sell'.
Verbal deception. "Your Jedi Mind Tricks won't work on me." A variety of sources try to feed us tales about players, coaches, or teams.
Torches and pitchforks. Everyone won't be a fan. Coaches may feel that an angry mob is after us. Sometimes a whole community can rise up with 'torches and pitchforks' or 'brickbats' or 'tar and feathering'. Early in his UNC career, Dean Smith was figuratively hung in effigy.
The more 'encyclopedic' our knowledge, the better our communication craft. One of my 'pet peeves' is coaches constantly lowering expectations or 'lowering the bar'.
Lagniappe. What's the DNA of our program? You saw that...
This is so great
Doesn’t matter how big of a star you are, Joe Mazzulla is going to treat you the same with the same expectations
Lagniappe 2. Don't give people a chance to make excuses.
What causes a Losing Mindset?
Excuses & Lies.
Here are 8 of them...
1. “They just got lucky” 2. “I don’t have time” 3. “Someone else will do it” 4. “I will do it tomorrow” 5. “This is just who I am” 6. “I will do it in the game” 7. “It wasn’t my fault” 8. “The refs were bad.”
AI Minute : ChatGPT comparison, basketball and political science
1. Transition Defense and Policy Reaction
Basketball: Transition defense requires players to move quickly from offense to defense, adapting to prevent an opponent's fast break.
Politics: Governments often need to pivot rapidly to address crises or unexpected events. A quick response, like in natural disaster relief or economic downturns, can prevent further destabilization, similar to how a fast transition defense can prevent an easy basket.
2. Offensive Rebounds and Public Opinion
Basketball: After a missed shot, going for an offensive rebound gives a team another chance to score.
Politics: Politicians often "rebound" from failures by adjusting their approach or messaging, aiming to gain public support for a second chance. Just as grabbing an offensive board can reset a play, changing tactics can help leaders regain favor.
3. Isolation Play and Political Maneuvering
Basketball: Isolation plays let a skilled player work one-on-one to exploit weaknesses in their defender.
Politics: Politicians or interest groups may maneuver alone, leveraging their position or resources to gain an advantage or sway decisions, similar to isolation plays. Both require recognizing when working alone may yield better outcomes.
4. Shot Clock Pressure and Political Deadlines
Basketball: Teams have limited time to take a shot, creating urgency and sometimes rushed decisions.
Politics: Political deadlines, like budget approvals or passing critical legislation, create pressure to act quickly. Decisions under time constraints in both basketball and politics may lead to strategic risks or unrefined outcomes.
5. Zone Defense and Coalition Building
Basketball: A zone defense covers areas rather than marking players, requiring coordination and trust to fill gaps.
Politics: Coalitions often resemble a zone, with various groups covering specific interests to address a broader goal. Just as players in a zone must rely on each other, coalition members must trust that allies will represent shared interests effectively.
6. Foul Trouble and Scandal Management
Basketball: Players with too many fouls risk sitting out, impacting their play style and the team’s strategy.
Politics: Politicians embroiled in scandals or ethical controversies often face similar challenges. They may limit public appearances or take a lower profile to avoid “fouling out” of their position. In both cases, managing risk becomes key to remaining in the game.
The best coaches get the most from their teams, players, and themselves.
Years ago after we watched the UCONN women practice, an audience member asked Coach Auriemma, "were you nice to the team today because an audience was watching?" He answered, "No. I was nice because they're babies. If I yell, they'll say, "Coach hates me. And then they won't play well.""
Back in the day, coaches weren't thinking about kindness during yelling, water prohibition, or video critiques. There weren't any water bottles at practice or games. For anybody.
Sure, coaches had occasional kind words for players and teams. It just wasn't expected. High praise from Coach Lane was, "I'm pleased but I'm not satisfied." And that was good enough for us.
Most people work harder and perform better with encouragement, praise, and gratitude than with "piling on."
Kindness doesn't preclude high standards. Set high expectations for tough, aggressive, unselfish, and smart play without abuse. Yelling more doesn't mean caring more.
Brad Stevens said, "be demanding without demeaning." Driving the bus doesn't entitle us to throw people under it. Inappropriate criticism includes calling players "useless" or "worthless" or worse.
Don't expect players to "run through a wall" for us after throwing brickbats at them.
Lagniappe. The Celtics used the dunker spot to take away rim protection. Most teams don't have the elite players to capitalize.
Joe Mazulla used Jrue Holiday in the dunkers spot very effectively in the NBA finals.
Inverting the offense is EXTREMELY effective at all levels.
The goal is to force the defensive PG to have to protect the rim. It also creates a huge advantage on the offensive glass.… pic.twitter.com/PgxGnM6zgg
Lagniappe 2. Body language is something to work on and teach players to work on.
Your body language is your nonverbal voice.
It communicates a story about your mindset, attitude, and beliefs. • It speaks louder than your words. • It bridges the gaps where words fail. • It's your solution to connect and influence.
Apply in our basketball framework. "Tell them what you're going to say. Say it. Summarize what you said." And then get feedback from our players. "What did I just say? What does that mean to you?"
1) Have a clear basketball philosophy. Mine evolved to TIA - teamwork, improvement, accountability. And you can't win 0-0. Teach them how to score both with talent and with concepts.
2) Develop a learning culture. "Every day is player development day." Find novel ways to pursue higher levels of excellence.
3) Erect a scaffold for improvement: Borrow Dr. Fergus Connolly's
Skills (technique)
Strategy (tactics)
Physicality
Psychology
4) "Get more and better shots than our opponents." - Pete Newell That combines fewer turnovers, better passing, rebound edge, and shot selection.
5) "Basketball is sharing." - Phil Jackson Sharing means communication, help and recover, rotation, switching, and more.
6) Anchor on excellence. Study top teams, coaches, players.
Who is your king or queen of simplicity?
What are your top examples of offensive and defensive simplicity?
Share an example of clarity and simplicity.
And then invert.
What complexity undermined a program or your program?
What are the worst examples of defensive complexity?
Share an example of confusion and complexity.
From ChatGPT. One classic example of complexity causing problems in basketball is the "Princeton Offense" implemented by former NBA coach Eddie Jordan with the Washington Wizards in the mid-2000s. The Princeton Offense, known for its fluid, read-and-react style with constant movement and passing, worked well in college at Princeton, where it was developed. But when Jordan tried to implement it in the NBA, it led to confusion and frustration.
The system required precise execution, constant decision-making, and exceptional basketball IQ from all players. However, the Wizards’ roster—featuring star players like Gilbert Arenas—was built around individual scoring talents, not the collective passing and movement required by this complex system. Players found it difficult to adjust to a scheme that wasn’t well-suited to their strengths, leading to miscommunication, turnovers, and a loss of confidence.
Instead of creating open shots and confusion for defenders, the complexity of the offense caused hesitation and disarray on the offensive end. In this case, a simpler, more straightforward system might have allowed the Wizards’ talented scorers to thrive, but the overcomplicated approach contributed to inconsistent results and ultimately, the team's underperformance.
This illustrates how simplicity and clarity in a system can often lead to better outcomes, especially when players know exactly what’s expected of them.
Ask ourselves regularly whether we are clear and simple enough?
Lagniappe. Majerus tips on defense.
Rick Majerus with some Defensive Thoughts: * Defensive Rebounding is the key to Winning Basketball * BLOCKOUT EVERY-TIME * Move on Air Time * Def is about Playing in Multiples, Multiple Efforts * We are talking & we are talking loud * I want guys who will play their Hearts Out pic.twitter.com/PvzI0ujImc
Good coaches want a lot from players, some under their control and others not.
Developmental (youth) coaching isn't the same as higher level coaching where job security, income, and perception matter. Time, role, and recognition don't belong solely in the players domain.
Play hard for each other (not for the coach or community)
Be a great teammate, put the team first (shared vision, sacrifice).
Give great effort daily, be your best version at home, in school, and in all activities.
Communicate on and off the court.
Play unselfishly.
Be coachable.
Focus on this play.
PTRW (Play the right way) - physically and mentally tough.
Be a student of the game, understanding what works or doesn't.
Respect the game, officials, coaches, and teammates.
Show sportsmanship.
"Don't whine, don't complain, don't make excuses." - Wooden
What coaches find difficult...
Players with agendas
Lack of attention or effort
Toxic attitudes, wherever they originate
ChatGPT input on being a great teammate:
Being a great teammate requires qualities that go beyond individual performance, focusing on how one's actions contribute to the collective success of the group. Here are key inputs to being a great teammate:
Selflessness: Prioritizing the team's needs over individual desires. Great teammates put aside personal agendas and do what's best for the group, whether it's sacrificing a play or helping others shine.
Communication: Clear and open dialogue builds trust. Great teammates share constructive feedback, encouragement, and ideas to keep the group connected and aligned.
Accountability: Accepting responsibility for personal actions and holding others to a high standard. Accountability fosters respect and a stronger commitment to team goals.
Support: Emotional and mental support during both victories and setbacks. A great teammate lifts others up, encourages improvement, and helps the team stay focused, even during tough moments.
Work Ethic: Consistent effort sets a powerful example. By showing dedication to practice and preparation, great teammates motivate those around them to push harder and stay focused.
Adaptability: Being flexible to roles or strategies, even if they are outside one's comfort zone. A willingness to play wherever needed enhances the team’s overall effectiveness.
Respect: Treating teammates, coaches, and opponents with respect, regardless of circumstances, creates a healthy environment that promotes long-term success.
Lagniappe. Simplify.
SIMPLIFY YOUR FREE THROW ROUTINE!!
Stop over complicating your free throw routine. Players love to add extra movements, dribbles, spins to their routine. None of that matters. Set the ball in your stance, lift, and finish straight to the rim. Done. Have the ability to set… pic.twitter.com/oiMblidJbj
John Wooden said, "A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that’s teamwork."
Great teams come together. • They trust. • They commit. • They hold you accountable.
