Thursday, July 18, 2019

Basketball Podcast Notes: Will Voight on Basketball Immersion

Chris Oliver interviews Angola coach Will Wright, a product of NBA (video coordinator initially) and international coaching staffs. He's preparing his team for play in China in a tough grouping including Italy and Serbia. 

 Tactics? "Your system starts...on your players...put those guys into a position to succeed." In preliminaries they play teams multiple times and make smaller adjustments with limited practice time.

 G-league experience. "You can't be rigid in your approach (with a very flexible roster)." 
Know YOURSELF and YOUR OPPONENT. 
  • "Even the best players in the world have weaknesses...simplify it for your players." 
  • Take your opponent out of his strength. 
  • This puts accountability on players. You can't tell a guy to stop penetration and then yell at him when a guy makes a jump shot. 


 "Five man shell is better." There's no four-man shell in the game. Where's your rotation on drivers (with a big) if he's not in the drill? 

 "If it doesn't apply...why are we doing it?" 

 Any defense...should be compact. Offenses try to spread you out. Five players are moving to the ball. Defensive anticipation can help keep players from getting out of position to react back/close out. 

 It's a war of spacing versus shrinking. Where does the help come from? Is it really best to bring opposite side defenders to the ball, exposing the diagonal skip pass? For example, if penetration from the wing happens...the on-ball player (abandons) rotates one player over. 

"Peel switching." Think of a clock. Guards are looking "weak side." (My graphical representation) This produces shorter rotations (by more players)  and limits the skips. It works because of superior communication (an Angolan core strength). 

 Voight explains that rolling out peel switching against Serbia (B teams) they produced 22 turnovers by challenging the natural outlets against penetration.

 How can you compete against the teams in YOUR league? Find a competitive edge. Maybe you can be competitive when you have no right to be...

 The NBA game is very different from college...size, skill, spacing. Trying to play NBA basketball without the core domain skills isn't so helpful. Expose yourself to more styles of play to generate more ideas. 

 Key defensive realities. 

  • 1 GUARD YOUR MAN. We don't have to accept lesser individual defense. Today's defender mentality (may) allows being beaten. 
  • 2 Better technique matters. Do you "get fat" or "get skinny" on the screen? (We call that beating the screen, attacking into the ballhandler.) 
  • 3 Shorten rotations. 
  • 4 more rotation disadvantages rebounding.

Why are we doing what we do? In pro ball, coaches use timeouts to set offense and in college to set defense. Why? Do we have enough transition off free throws? 

 "A bad shot in a two-for-one situation" likely still carries mathematical edge. 

 Young players lack experience and know how but we can gradually introduce our ideas to build their game IQ. I'm thankful for the summer participation we have, realizing our players have many alternatives. 

 Lagniappe: stressing the 2-3 zone defense




















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