Saturday, November 17, 2018

Basketball: Recap of a Few Recent Blog Teaching Points

Missed blog posts? Here are a few highlights from the past two weeks. 

From Develop Our Gifts:

 Stories change lives.They inform epic triumph (The Boys in the Boat), powerful and unforgiving nature (Deep Survival), greed and loss (The Big Short), human psychopathy (Mindhunter), and more. Help players write narratives of achievement, empowerment, and teamwork. Our program graduates succeed in medicine (physician, nurses), teaching, banking, business, and the military. 

From Knight offensive notes:

 "The key to good offense is to run things you know you have difficulty guarding." 

Playing without the dribble in practice forces movement. 

Against zone, think "draw 2" by forcing two defenders to cover one. 

"The zone is designed to play the pass." 

From Kipling to the Court:
How will we score? 

"Fall in love with easy."  
- Get easy shots.
- "Movement kills defense." Move yourself and the ball. 
- "It's not your shot, it's our shot." (Jay Bilas) 

From Ed Tapscott, 2015 Coaching U Live:

 Thou shalt understand the difference between power and authority. Work tirelessly to develop power. Authority is granted. Power is earned. Power is greater than position. Power gets people to work overtime. It gets back to the difference between persuasion and motivation. Don't be a bully. "Kindness is the language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

 From Indomitable Spirit:

 Sacrifice today by doing what you don't want to do, so that tomorrow we can do what we want. Don't think HAVE TO; think GET TO. 

 From Critical Thinking

From Seeking Sustainable Success:

 Sometimes it begins or ends with force of personality. Sam Walker informs the power of one in The Captain Class. "The most critical ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it." 

And sometimes it ends because of management changes, player departure, or coaching change. After winning the World Series in 1997, owner Wayne Huizenga oversaw a "fire sale," claiming the franchise lost over 30 million dollars. Not so fast; you be the judge. The Marlins won a franchise worst (.333) 54 games.

From Individual Offensive Moves:


What play types work in your offense? 

 From: Why Coaches (And Players) Must Read:

 Readers gain insight from the world. Kevin Eastman writes, “To be a great teacher of the game you must study the game; know your craft & be proud of your knowledge; but never satisfied with your knowledge.” He adds, “Interesting thing about the best leaders is that they immerse themselves in both teaching and learning. Growth comes by both.”

 From Sympathy for the Devil:

 Scandal is neither unusual nor confined to "mediocre" schools. Stanford provided a list of easy courses to athletes. The NCAA whitewashed alleged academic fraud at Carolina. A relative of a dean at an ACC hoop power told me that when players were referred for disciplinary actions, the problems inevitably disappeared. Playing taking priority over punishment. Serial tripper Grayson Allen got wrist-slapping for tripping opponents. 

 From A Learning Culture Builds Anti-Fragility:

 Education builds antifragile states. In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb writes, “A loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on.” A learning culture makes us antifragile. 

From "Tell Me What I Don't Know":

 "Zone defense doesn't work in the pros." Why don't more NBA teams play zone defense? We can postulate that the spacing, ball movement, and perimeter shooting of NBA teams beats the zone. Is that true? Pro sports are copycats and dead dogs. Kevin O'Connor addresses the use of zone defense, highlighting brief successes by the Nets against James Harden and the Rockets. "Houston plays at a slow, deliberate pace, runs pick-and-roll on nearly every possession, and passes the ball less than all but one team in the NBA (Oklahoma City). But they dribbled less and passed more against Brooklyn. The freaking Nets made the freaking Rockets totally change their hallmark style simply by running a zone."

 From Podcast Notes Chris Oliver: 

 What happens at the NBA level that applies at other levels? 

1. "Guard your man...hardest thing to do...is closing out." (Create 'hard to guard' situations). Don't let help be your team crutch. 

"...contested shot is defender within three feet" (Analytics definition) Closeout: "run as fast as you can and stop as close as you can."  Want to arrive on the catch...don't want the open shot. Coach was at an AAU tournament...8 courts...EVERY TEAM was playing zone...not teaching defense. "There is serious technique." 

2. "At any level, you have to tell your team what shots you want and where you get them." (Corollary is defining what the other team can do.)

3. Hard to be in full denial all the time...would need a superior athlete at each position. "You can't catch every raindrop...take away something." 

From Coaches Are Directors (Spike Lee notes):

 "Actors can come up with something that's better than you wrote (see Lagniappe today)...you have to take your ego out of it."

"You may be a big giant star...but you might not be the right person for the role." 

"You want to get pieces that fit..." (to make the best film) 

 From Are We Addressing Our Issues?

 What are my weaknesses? Thirst for knowledge can suffer style drift to sophisticated complexity. The best coaches leverage simplicity and reduction. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo

Lagniappe:
Weakside back screen with post man emptying the space.

A similar play that Spurs execute perfectly (via Chris Oliver)

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