Everyone bombs. The ball won't drop. Your assignment gets a backdoor layup. You throw a pass into the cheap seats. You travel or have "fumble-itis", repeatedly.
Sometimes we just stink out the joint...we ask ourselves whether it's an adversity one-off or deeper problems. Kevin Eastman says, "do it better, do it harder, change personnel, or #$%& it ain't working (change strategy)."
At each moment in a team's development, we ask "what does my team need now" and how can we advance that agenda TODAY?
Return to our core values - philosophy, culture, and identity. Where did today's
failure fall within those domains?
I return to our playoff loss within a higher division. We struggled against the star player, shifting defenses, and pressure. Containing the star player is a discussion for another time.
My philosophy coaching younger players has evolved over time. I believe that you need offensive firepower to compete against better teams. That doesn't exclude defense; defense matters because 'stops make runs'. Good offenses pass more (the Warriors literally pass more than 300 times per game) to create better opportunities. Cutting and passing works against man, zone, and pressure defense. We didn't pass and cut well enough. Defense can improve quicker than offensive skill, so offense needs practice and patience.
What makes better teams better? They're better teams because they score and generally have more talent, not better systems. They don't run great motion offense to get the lesser scorers the ball. They don't have a myriad of sets to balance the shots. They get their best players the ball where they want to score. Second, I believe that defeating and selectively applying pressure inform success, because the better teams press to force errors and score in conversion (from defense to offense) and transition. Third, 'defense first' teams struggle against deficits. Teams without ways (and players) to score can't excel.
"You fight for your culture every day." Culture includes the atmospherics, the teaching-learning interface, teamwork, thirst for improvement. How do we measure culture? I think culture appears in "Meyerisms"- passion, unity, selflessness, humility, and thankfulness. We could summarize those in one word, maturity. By definition, young players are immature. But veteran players can lack maturity by demanding roles inconsistent with their performance. How Carmelo Anthony is portrayed depicts his attitude about team versus individual achievement.
Know who you are, your identity. When people refer to your team, what words do you want to hear? Often teams reflect they're coaching - preparation, toughness, aggressiveness, sharing, intelligence, relentlessness. You want to hear, "they don't beat themselves" and "they're always ready for the situation." We never want to hear the "S" words, selfish or SOFT.
How do we respond to adversity? We can learn psychological fitness, emotional fitness, and social fitness.
Love our losses because they reveal our needs and light the pathways to improvement. Everyone bombs; resilient teams recover.
Lagniappe:
Film shows examples of good decisions.