Developing a Basketball Ecosystem - "What Everyone Knows"

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Chinese Proverb

Basketball offenses evolved with rules changes, concept changes, and player development.

New and experienced coaches can benefit from rethinking ideas and approaches. There is not always an analogy. In Golf Is not a Game of Perfect, Dr. Bob Rotella recommends walking the course backwards from hole to tee to plan course management. That won't work "rim to top." 

Coaches often hear, "everyone knows that." Everyone knows to take good shots, limit turnovers, win the rebounding battle, limit transition hoops, deny direct drives, don't commit dumb fouls, allow "one bad shot." And in every game, what everyone knows gets ignored or forgotten. 

Share concepts:

• Player development
• Creating advantage
• Understanding the 'chain' of offense
• Exploiting defensive mistakes 
• A favored ecosystem

Player Development

Each player could envision "four ways to score" from among offensive rebounding, free throws, drives, shooting, cutting to name a few. 

That applies to 'common plays' such as PnR ballhandler, PnR roller, give-and-go, and individual actions from the wing and post. 

Among those individual actions, each player should develop a "go to" and "counter" move. The player has to have them in "their bag."  

 Creating Advantage

Advantage comes from separation and finishing. 

Separation is with or without the dribble, with cutting and/or screening. Screeners adopt "the screener is the second cutter." 

The Chain of Offense

The chain links spacing, to player and ball movement, to the "scoring moment." Contemporary basketball emphasizes layups, threes, and free throws as the "high velocity scoring moments."  

Exploiting Defensive Mistakes

In "Why the Best Are the Best" Kevin Eastman explained that the 2008 NBA Champion Celtics allowed 32 points in a game against the Lakers because of defensive mistakes and errors. Do we believe that high schoolers will make fewer mistakes? 

Common mistakes are missed assignments, poor communication, unchallenged shots, lack of help, poor defensive rebounding, and undisciplined fouling.  

Inhabiting Your Ecosystem 

Explain clearly to your team your expectations with specifics (examples)

• "Playing hard" means ball containment, no middle, limiting transition via specifics
• Sending 2 or 3 to the offensive boards (your choice, not theirs)
• "Greenlighting" specific players taking three-pointers
• Specifying pick-and-roll coverages  
• Observers should have a clear idea about offensive and defensive intent. If they can't, is it a clarity of purpose issue or execution?  

Patriots special assistant Ernie Adams kept a sign on his desk, "Stamp out bad football." A sign isn't necessary, but make the intent so. 

Lagniappe. Coach Hoiberg focuses on preparing his team for what they will see the most. 

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Lagniappe 2. A Hollywood analogy from Coach Chiesa 

A successful team is similar to a "hit" movie. Each template has 1) talented stars 2) skilled supporting cast 3) behind the scene contributions 4) inspiring director. All the components working in selfless harmony on set. #OscarNight

— Gordon Chiesa (@gchiesaohmy) March 15, 2026

 

Basketball - The "Third Eye"

Factors affect us beyond consciousness. In "The Mazarin Stone," Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson that he will watch him in absentia with "the third eye." The third eye is intuition.  

Research on expertise, from chess masters to clinicians, shows that the experienced see patterns that novices literally do not. That is the rational core of what traditions have called an inner eye.

Pattern recognition belongs to observant basketball minds. 

The "third eye" saw this action before it evolved. The defense did not. 

Intuition sees actions yet to unfold

• Back cut
• Slipped screen
• Rejected ball screen
• Stolen wing-to-top pass
• Chance to take a charge 
• Corner cut to rebound
• Evolving flex action
• Zoom action 

"See the game" before it happens 

• Play a lot 
• Watch your video
• Study video with commentary/annotation

Scout with Bryan is one of the best sites with commentary 

Lagniappe. Of course, scoring matters. So does everything else. 

One of the best things you can teach a young player:

You don't need to score to play well.

Defend.

Rebound.

Sprint.

Communicate.

Cut.

Screen.

Make the extra pass.

There are a lot of ways to impact winning.

— Pat Freeman (@pwfree23) September 30, 2026

Basketball - The Unit of Play Is the Possession

Depending on the level of play, a game features 70 to 100 possessions each for offense and defense.

The unit of action crosses domains:

Writing inhabits sentences.

Baseball informs "the pitch."  

Screenwriting portrays the scene. 

Playing "harder for longer" implies the ability to maintain focus and "win more possessions." Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla emphasizes post-game the 10-15 possessions that you'd want to do over. 

• Poor transition defense
• Noncompetitive shots
• Fouling perimeter shots

In football, Bill Belichick says that every game has five or six "gotta have it" possessions. In basketball, the number approaches zero in blowouts and more in nail-biters. 

Still, some possessions are eye-openers. Watch more video with players. 

A'ja Wilson personifies the "possession ender." She blocks the shot and gathers the rebound. 

Shot creation is a dramatic evolution in the women's game. Gray goes full-on Jerry West with a hard "pound dribble" into a mid-range bucket. 

Understand tendencies. Going left, Clark looks to "pull." Drop coverage on the PnR plays into this. 

Basketball is a "game of separation." Separate with the dribble, the cut, and combination including screening and cutting. The Aces run a beautiful staggered screen and earn an easy deuce. 

"Below the rim" doesn't imply a lack of craft. Gray leverages the PnR, keeping Clark on her hip, drawing two, and getting an assist. 

Earn success "possession by possession" with exceptional anticipation and game understanding.

Lagniappe. There's far more to basketball than X's and O's...everything matters. 

Stay in coaching long enough and you realize X’s and O’s are the easy part. Communication, culture, adaptability, and seeing things as they are matter more than scheme ever will. Scheme doesn’t always win Friday. Sometimes the other stuff has to.

— Coach Lowe (@CoachLoweIA) September 26, 2026

Basketball Resets

Everyone loses focus.

Learning mindfulness, give yourself grace when your mind wanders. Return to the breath. Listening works the same. During a podcast, film session, or classroom lecture, someone else's thoughts disappear among ours.

Basketball players wander, too. They return to the missed shot, the bad call, who's watching, playing time, or a possession three trips ago. The important skill isn't perfect concentration. It's coming back.

Productive people reset better.

Rubber Bands

Complaints aren't solutions. Action directs solutions.

Put a colored rubber band around one wrist. Each time you complain, move it to the other wrist. This creates awareness. Awareness interrupts the habit.

The basketball applications are obvious. Bad call? Move the band. Coach took you out? Move the band. “I'm tired.” “We can't guard them.” Move the band.

Wooden's standard applies: "Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't make excuses." The band says, "return to what you control: the next possession."

Paper Clips

Salespeople face the dreaded cold call. Contacts are like fishing. You can't catch anything without a line in the water.

One salesman kept two jars on his desk. One held 100 paper clips; the other was empty. Every time he made a sales call, he moved one clip. His job wasn't to make a sale. His job was to empty the jar. He became the sales leader by "brute forcing" sales. 

Basketball players can do the same.

Put 50 clips in one cup. Move one after every correctly executed weak-hand finish. Or every five made free throws. Or every possession of film reviewed with a notebook entry.

Don't say, “I need to become a better shooter.” Move the clips.

Winners Are Trackers

Darren Hardy writes, “Winners are trackers” in The Compound Effect. 

As a kid, I tracked free throws on old-school graph paper. My goal was eventually to make at least 90 of 100 every day. It took years to get there.

I made 100 of 100 only twice. Graphing measured shooting, concentration and will. Making free throw number 93 after missing number 92 is different from free shooting.

Track what matters. Free throws. Turnovers. Offensive rebounds. Deflections. Strength work. Sleep. Film study. What we measure, we value. 

Pomodoro

Learning is fundamental to sport.

The free Coursera course Learning How to Learn teaches the Pomodoro technique: concentrate for about 25 minutes, then take a short break. That works for athletes, too.

Twenty-five minutes of focused film study is better than an hour of “watching film” while checking your phone.

Attention is finite. Be intent. Recover. Repeat. Keep the main thing the main thing.

Schedule the Work

James Clear ("Atomic Habits") writes about the power of systems and consistency. Large outputs come from small amounts of work repeated relentlessly.

Three pages a day eventually becomes a book in a hundred days. 

1,000 summer shots a day became Kobe Bryant. 

Coach, writer, and speaker Kevin Eastman described reading for two hours a day. Every day. Over time, the accumulation becomes massive. 

Sarah Blakely says, "Obsess the product." Serious people schedule what matters.

Players often tell us they want more playing time, starting, all-League recognition, championships. "Show your work."

Nobody stays perfectly focused. Great players feel frustration, distraction, or disappointment. They reset their better. 

Lagniappe. Excel in your role, while working to expand it. 

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Basketball - What Is Your Superpower as a Coach?

What is your superpower as a coach?

A Dick Bennett acolyte might offer a combination of:

• Passion
• Unity
• Servant Leadership
• Thankfulness (Gratitude)
• Humility

Any discussion of humility would require mention of Benjamin Franklin's thirteen virtues. 

And Franklin realized his limitations. Paraphrasing about humility, he offered, "If I should ever achieve it, then surely I would be proud." 

Intangibles can only take you so far. 

The most successful coaches master combinations of: 

• Recruiting (nobody wins without talent)
• Resources (The compensation arms race is a battleground)
• Player development/Teaching (surround yourself with good people) 
• Leadership and Culture
• Attitude (Jay Wright as a paradigm)
• Organizational skills 

I think it was Danny Hurley who said that the process is streamlined because coaches can eliminate some recruits by asking, "What's your number?"

Teddy Roosevelt understood that "Comparison is the thief of joy." Any discussion of 'the greatest' becomes tainted by "Yeah, but" with qualifiers like, "If not for Sam Gilbert" or "If not for Michael Jordan" or "I never got the endless stream of first round talent." 

So what does an aspiring coach need to do?

1. Decide what she needs to do and what sacrifices are doable?

2. If (1) is a go, commit to your process.

3. Learn every day. 

4. Accept an 'apprenticeship', ideally with a good teacher. If you don't surround yourself with good people, success is unlikely. 

5. Find a mentor or mentors.

6. Study the game (video, books, clinics, websites, blogs)

7. Make player development a high priority.

8. Study great coaches but be authentic to yourself. 

9. Work on resilience. Mindfulness can help. Mira Nair said, "You need the soul of a poet and the hide of an elephant." 

10.Maintain perspective. If you have to be the smartest guy in the room, then you will need to find smaller rooms.

In her MasterClass, Helen Mirren was asked what it takes to be successful. Her answer was brief. "First, always be on time. Second, never be an a*hole." In the infinite universe, I'm a nobody without a superpower. I can live with that. 

Lagniappe. "First above all to thine own self be true." 

Joe Mazulla says he got rejected for the Utah Jazz head coaching job because he tried too hard to win the interview, and says he’ll never wear a suit again on an interview

“The first thing I learned? I’m never wearing a suit again. I wore one there, and I felt too uncomfortable.… pic.twitter.com/JRWCi3Vgl3

— Josh Chambers (@JoshChambers) September 26, 2026

Coaching Truths*

*Adapted from my volleyball blog

Every coach develops a philosophy, intentionally, habitually. Mine is imperfect and still evolving, but these are the principles I work on. 

1. Coaches are truth tellers.
Tell players what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear. Growth begins with honest feedback delivered with respect. The truth does not always land smoothly. 

2. Coaches and players succeed together.
A coach depends on the performance of individual players and the team. The notion that a coach wants a player to fail rarely survives a moment of honest reflection. When players improve, everyone wins.

3. Coaching is a privilege.
Brad Stevens said, "Coaches get more than we give." The opportunity to teach, challenge, and encourage young people is an honor. The greatest rewards often come years later when former players return with gratitude and stories about lessons that lasted. Players craft the memories. 

4. Speak greatness.
There is a profound difference between saying, "You did well, but..." and "You did well, and..." One language closes the conversation. The other builds on success while inviting continued improvement.

5. Correct without discouraging.
John Wooden often placed correction between genuine praise - a "sandwich" of encouragement, instruction, and confidence. Players should leave a conversation believing they can become better.

6. Build with positives.
Research consistently shows that healthy relationships require many more positive interactions than negative ones. Coaching should challenge players and create confidence, hope, and belief.

7. Coach with conviction.
Bob Knight famously observed, "If you listen to the fans in the stands, soon you will be up there sitting next to them." Coaches should listen thoughtfully to others. Decisions ultimately rest on principle, preparation, and judgment.

8. Coaches do have favorites.
Not favorite people - favorite habits. We naturally value players who arrive early, work hard, compete relentlessly, accept coaching, and put the team first. Those behaviors are available to everyone.

9. Never underestimate encouragement.
Few moments are more satisfying than honestly telling a player, "Good job," "Thank you," or, on rare occasions, "You're one of the best I've ever coached." Authentic praise endures.

10. Trust determines opportunity.
Talent matters, but trust determines who is on the floor when the game matters most. Reliability, discipline, and good decisions earn opportunities.

11. Never be a child's last coach.
Every athlete should leave your program believing that sports enriched their life, regardless of playing time or wins and losses.

12. Accept that criticism is inevitable.
No coach earns universal admiration. Leadership demands difficult decisions that cannot satisfy everyone. If you need unconditional approval, you're in the wrong profession.

13. Remember the Prime Directive.
Parents naturally place the well-being, role, recognition, and playing time of their own child ahead of the needs of the team. Coaches must respectfully acknowledge that reality (The Prime Directive) while committing to giving the entire team the best chance to succeed.

14. Protect everyone.
When difficult conversations are necessary, have another adult present whenever possible. Document important discussions and decisions. Keep them private to avoid shame or embarrassment. Transparency protects players, families, and coaches alike.

15. Ask the hard question.
"What does it feel like to be coached by me?"

Players deserve honesty, accountability, respect, and hope. Seek feedback, reflect on methods, and strive to become better teachers and better people. 

Coaching is ultimately about relationships. Wins matter. Championships matter. But years later, players rarely remember every score. They remember how sports challenged them, how coaches treated them, and whether their coach cared about helping them improve as a player and person.

Learn every day. Teach what you know. Leave every player better than you found them.

Lagniappe. Overcome adversity. Women need to be seen and heard. 

 

Basketball - The Daily Laws

Robert Greene is the best selling author of "Mastery" and the "48 Laws of Power." His "Daily Laws" also has adherents. How can we apply them to coaching? What are our "daily laws?"

Here are ten paraphrased recurring ideas from The Daily Laws: 

Extracted and edited

Master your emotions. 

Reacting on impulse hands control to other people, so detachment is a source of power. Note: we can't control much of what happens to us, although we control how we respond. Few good things happen when we lose emotional regulation. Books like "Moby Dick" share the destructive power of emotion. What's the first thing you think of about Woody Hayes? 

Study people, not just their words. 

Motives and insecurities explain behavior better than what people say about themselves. Note: Some say the biggest personalities have the greatest insecurities. Seek contribution not validation. The "never enough" person can lose boundaries when interacting with others. 

Treat learning as an apprenticeship. 

Deep skill comes from years of patient, deliberate practice, not shortcuts. Note: "Mentoring is the only shortcut to excellence." When we've received mentorship, pay it forward. "10,000 hours" might not be correct, but overnight expertise doesn't happen. 

Find your life's task. 

Your calling shows up in what you were drawn to early. Note: Confucius said, "Do what you love and you don't work a day in your life." That may be an exaggeration. 

Think long-term. 

Strategy means anticipating moves ahead instead of reacting to each. Note: Most of the time, chess is a poor metaphor for basketball. My high school coach, Ellis Lane, assumed a 3-17 program with poor infrastructure and won a top division sectional title in three years. 

 However, with experience we may anticipate actions such as backdoor cuts or Iverson action.

Keep a journal or "commonplace book" about what the game has taught. 

Guard your image. 

Mystery maintains curiosity. Overexposure can dampen influence. Note: Great coaches like Don Meyer, Wooden, and Dean Smith shared lessons freely. Reputation takes years to develop and minutes to destroy. Brand is not the same as character. 

Expect envy and hidden aggression. 

Society loves to watch the mighty fall. Deserve success based upon work ethic and how you treat others. Remember Nassim Taleb's Silver Rule, "Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you." Note: Being an a*hole plays into the desires of others.

 
Stay adaptable. 

Rigid plans break under pressure. Remain flexible and stay open to change tactics. Note: Stay constant with values and standards but open to new ideas.

 
Win with actions, not arguments. 

Demonstration changes minds far more than debating it. Note: for example, a Galton Board shows the spectrum of possibilities from 'random' events.

 
Confront your own shadow. 

Blind spots and self-deception cause the most damage when ignored. Note: "Life is about the management of risk."  

What are our daily laws? Consider to making a bigger list and whittling it to something manageable. 

1. Learn every day. (Kevin Eastman's advice to read for two hours daily is rational for developing expertise.) Basketball is public domain and only constrained by imagination. 

2. Share something great. (Every missive won't be life-changing.)

3. Be a credit giver not a credit taker. (Adam Grant's "Give and Take" provides many examples.) 

4. Consider the first order consequences and beyond. "I wonder..."

5. Seek balance. (Extremes create special, unanticipated risks.)

Lagniappe. "Eyes sell lies." 

Eyes Sell Lies.

Most guards look right where they're about to pass. That's not court vision — that's a gift to the defense. You don't even have to guess what a guard like that is doing. Just watch his eyes.

Great guards do the opposite. They stare one way and go another. They… pic.twitter.com/bOSlYXYtsE

— PGC Basketball - Point Guard College (@PGCbasketball) September 23, 2026

Elementary...and not Easy

Literature provides fertile ground for sport. Hemingway penned The Old Man and the Sea, an epic man versus nature challenge. Daniel Brown wrote The Boys in the Boat, a tapestry of sport and society culminating in the 1936 Olympics.

And Arthur Conan Doyle shared the dry wit and wisdom of Sherlock Holmes. How can Holmes inform basketball and coaching? 

"Elementary, my dear Watson," never appears word-for-word from Holmes.  

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." (The Sign of Four)

The impossible happens with surprising regularity in basketball. 16 seeds beat ones. UMBC defeating Virginia and the Harvard Crimson women beating Stanford in Palo Alto. And UCLA upset by Ivy League upstart Princeton.  

 

 A future ER doctor scored the winning hoop. 

 "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." (The Boscombe Valley Mystery)

A most frustrating truth happens upon hearing, "Well, everyone knows that" or players say after an egregious mistake, "I know, I know." Learning from others' mistakes makes painless progress.  

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty." (The Sign of Four)

Preparation precedes high performance. Process is king. And evaluating a team without seeing their practices writes an incomplete story. 

"Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay." (A Study in Scarlet)

Video is the truth machine. Analytics are the necessary fuel for objective measure of scoring creation and prevention. Ignoring either ignores the coaching imperative of putting the team in the best position to succeed. 

"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere." (The Sign of Four)

Popovich challenged players to "figure it out." Sports coaching and playing is about solving problems in real-time. Winning is valued because it is hard. 

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." (A Case of Identity)

Attention to detail never goes out of style. Detail comes in the 'macro' strategy and the micro, execution at the decision-execution scoring moment. 

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last." (The Red Circle)

Continuing education and training are the hallmark of excellence. The greats of the game and permanent students. 

"Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. (The Adventure of the Crooked Man)

Achieving simple is never easy. Dedication to the fundamentals marks great careers like those of Kobe Bryant and Bill Walton, of whom Wooden said that he never tired of practicing footwork. 

 

 

 

More on Navigating Hard Conversations

Hard conversations in coaching are the sounds of inevitability. Do better through study, preparation, and attitude. Some of us feel a need to "win" every conversation or negotiation. That leaves negative residue and our conversation partner must therefore "lose." 

Show empathy (work to understand how the other side feels) and seek perspective through more tools. 

Alison Wood Brooks provides the acronym CALM, not without irony.

C - confirmation

A - admit uncertainty (can lower the temperature)

L - learning

M - making it human

The acronym itself embraces preparation and perspective. 

Confirmation

This represents an effort to get on the same page. These are the facts as best as I can tell. Help me by sharing your understanding. Changes in a player's role or playing time often get seen as either threatening, punitive, or personal. 

Admit Uncertainty 

As coaches, we prioritize what is best for the team as our first objective. It's not always clear. The "good soldier" senior doesn't want to hear that the talented sophomore is 'stealing' their spotlight. We could say, "I know this is hard for you to hear, especially with how hard you've worked. Some changes are coming that affect you, and we'll see how that works out for the team." 

These conversations should be well considered, always held with another adult present, and be private to limit potential for shame or embarrassment.  

Learning

We can't know everything. We can work to understand whether other factors lurk in the background - injury, family, academics, bullying, or any of a hundred possibilities. 

Behavior is data, not always explanation. Sometimes an explanation exists, but exploring for it makes everyone involved uncomfortable. 

Make it Human

Coaches practice our art amidst complexity, with incomplete information, and can't separate feelings from the process. Emotion is often uncontrollable (e.g. sadness), but behavior is. We can be frustrated with another person, but we can't punch them in the face. 

With younger players, often the fact-finding avenue has to run through the parents. Let them know that we are on their family's side and ask whether issues exist that we should know about. Nothing guarantees positive reception, but understanding can only arise through mutual participation.

I'd be kidding readers and myself if "perfect conversations" were my standard. Most parents are reluctant to say, "I hate you and your coaching." That doesn't make them wrong. Certain approaches don't work well for everyone. For example, an aggressive style may not work for a less forceful or physical child. Most parents appreciated a holistic approach. Not all.

Sources:

MasterClass, Chris DeVoss (author Never Split the Difference)

MasterClass, Alison Wood Brooks

Lagniappe. Here's an AI take on Voss's likely tack:

1. Label the emotion before arguing the facts.
   “It seems like you’re frustrated.” “It sounds like you feel you haven’t been given a fair chance.” Voss’s point is that naming emotion tends to reduce its intensity. In coaching, that matters before you explain playing time, role, effort, or behavior.
2. Use calibrated questions.
   Instead of “Why aren’t you communicating?” try: “What’s making it hard for you to communicate right now?” Or, “How do you think your current approach is affecting the team?” These invite reflection without surrendering standards.
3. Get to “that’s right,” not “you’re right.”
   “You’re right” can be a conversation-ending concession. “That’s right” means the player feels accurately understood. Summarize her position so well that she recognizes herself in it before you move to your point.
4. Use an accusation audit.
   Say the negative interpretation out loud before the athlete does: “You may think I’ve already made up my mind,” or, “This may feel like I’m singling you out.” That takes some of the sting out of the objection and shows you are not avoiding the uncomfortable part.
5. Don’t confuse empathy with agreement.
   This may be the most important coaching lesson from Voss. Tactical empathy means understanding the player’s perspective, not endorsing it. You can say, “I understand why you’re disappointed,” and still say, “Your role is not changing right now.”

For a coaching blog, I’d probably distill the whole thing to:

Hear first. Label the emotion. Ask better questions. State the standard. Leave dignity intact.

Basketball - The Assistant Coach

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I invested about 60 percent of my coaching experience as an assistant - which suited me fine. Ralph Labella did a great job as Head Coach. As a private practice physician, I couldn't always guarantee availability, but that wasn't the only issue.

Assistants:

• Don't have final say on team selection
• Don't have primary responsibility for game management
• Aren't the first line of defense for parental complaints

Assistants have different opportunities for teaching, player development, and sometimes individual communication with players.

Head coaches want support, unquestioned loyalty, and assistants who will make their life easier by reaffirming "one band, one sound." 

Conversely, I appreciated having an assistant who could supervise one group during three-on-threes at both ends and who provided another perspective to me and to players. 

What are your top three from Kevin Eastman's list resonate most to you?

1) You're a coach, your not The Coach. 

2) Add value.

3) Help provide solutions not just enumerate problems.

Another assistant, Mark Pearson, provided invaluable perspective. He said that it's unreasonable to expect consistency from young kids. At times they will beat expectations and others they'll underperform. Don't get too high or too low. 

Lagniappe. The "hot hand" exists in certain circumstances, yet not necessarily in games because of so much situational variation. 

Lagniappe 2. Be a giver. 

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