No Brainers

We succeed with pedestrian ideas. Postseason preparation begins with review. Wisdom comes with a dialogue between knowledge (usually from others) and experience. When we avoid being stupid in our aggregation, training, and deployment of talented, motivated players, then we can do well. 

"Stupid" includes lack of or unethical recruiting, inattention to fundamentals, and burnout or demotivational coaching. Find and reject stupidity. 

When fortune smiles upon us with athletes, simplicity favors teaching game structure, skills, and teamwork. 

The ultimate "no brainer" comes bundled as the player with size, athleticism, skill, knowledge, and psychological resilience. High energy, unselfishness, and leadership enhance the package. She doesn't happen by often. But rare isn't never. My job becomes not to mess her up; help her find more tools and get out of the way.  

Structure overview:

The first "no brainer" is movement. Those games with levers that shoot pingpong balls don't reproduce the game. The game presents symmetry challenges. Understand offense to execute defense. Recognize what is hard to defend to implement offense. 

Offense wants separation, ball and player movement. It also supplies more arrows to the quivers of the best archers. Defense restricts movement and separation, and particularly redirects the ball away from the basket (no middle, "force to tape." 

Defenders must recognize the intent, advantages, and limitations of offense. 

Many coaches run spread offenses. Defensive overeagerness by "taking the cheese," leads to defenders trapped by offensive mousetraps. On the left, major "easy actions" for offense and on the right "no brainer" defensive responsibilities. 

Defense knows that player and ball movement create headaches. This pertains specially to penetration (closer shots or penetrate and pitch for threes) and/or ball reversal creating open shots or closeouts. It informs combinations (multiple actions), like screen and roll, give-and-go, fake-and-cut (backdoor), screen-the-screener, staggered or serial screens, and so on. Experienced defenders communicate and adjust. 

The second part of structure is team coordination of offensive and defensive concepts. This is analogous to military "command and control." Communication is central. Complexity demands practice and patience. Players need time to learn to play together and leverage each other's strengths. 

The third rail of structure is situational play. That includes anything from jump balls, to knowing whether to save balls going out of bounds, and decision-making under time and score pressure. Situational practice is another no brainer. 

Lagniappe: (via Xavier newsletter)

A "box" like set, establish a triangle (top left), which could initiate 'triangle offense' or initiate help-side action (back cut). 4 would ordinarily be higher in traditional triangle. This depends on your personnel, facilitated by bigger guards and finishers. But the "triangle" flows into conventional ball screen action, with the 4 emptying the middle.