Simplify: Lessons Learned

Simple is hard. The late Don Meyer believed in three phases of coaching - blind enthusiasm, sophisticated complexity, and mature simplicity.   

What's our WHY? We're here to learn, improve, and have fun. You have to PLAY basketball. When teams 'work' basketball, it's not pretty. 

What went well? We are starting to make "basketball plays." 

But the devil is in the details. Koch and Lockwood describe "proposition simplifying." They write, "Proposition-simplifying works if you can make the product a joy to use, because it is easier to use, more useful, and more beautiful." Yesterday, we had a chance to go up late, but couldn't execute. 

Here's a simple ATO action. We scored on an 'unscripted' version earlier in the game. What went wrong? We got the entry pass. 2 set up her cut and had a step. But 5 tried a direct pass instead of a bounce pass ahead and it got deflected. There are several solid options, including 2 cutting through, with 5 going 1 on 1, or 2 cutting through with 1 getting a handoff to drive. 

After the game, I reminded the team that basketball actions are similar to football quarterbacking. You must make great decisions and solid execution (accuracy). 

Ask better questions:

- What went well?
- What went poorly?
- What can we do better?
- What are the enduring lessons? 

How do we know if our strategy is simple enough? 

What can we do better? 

In two games yesterday, we shot 28 for 107 (26%) from the field and 10 for 25 (40%) from the line. In this league, we won't beat anyone with that performance. With 30 seconds to go, down 2, we missed a wide open layup in transition. Earlier, with a chance to tie, we missed both free throws...badly. 

What are the enduring lessons? We played both games without a legitimate 4 or 5. All our bigs are injured or away? During the first half of the season, we AVERAGED twenty points a game. Yesterday, we scored 69 points in two games, but are overmatched both offensively and defensively in transition. "We're not tall, but we're not fast." 

What can we do to simplify under these conditions? 1) We can't get beaten in transition. The 1s and 2s have to get back and play enough defense to allow for recovery. 2) Limit turnovers. "The white shirts have to pass to the white shirts." 3) As one wag said, "you have to put the orange thing in the orange thing." 

These are great kids. Down a couple late, during a timeout, I asked how many girls had seen Hoosiers. A few hands went up. Then I asked, "what does Jimmy say?" 



Simplify.