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Thursday, August 1, 2019

Basketball: Benchmarking from Theory to Practice



"How can you not be romantic about baseball?" - Brad Pitt, as Billy Beane, Moneyball

Find one idea to improve your team today. 

Benchmarks are measurements, assessing the effectiveness of our process. Benchmarking uses specifics to assess progress. It finds and devises best practices. It's not Moneyball's buying runs, it's building point differential



Figure from ISixSigma.com 

Which numbers mean the most for us? Can we achieve sustainable competitive advantage? 

We all know the "big four" of Effective Field Goal Percentage, Turnovers, Rebounding, and Free Throw attempts correlate with winning. Embrace them. 

We have additional "favorites" as benchmarks linked to success. 

372 - a defensive metric, get at least three consecutive stops, seven times per half, in both halves.

3 - allow no more than three transition baskets per game. 

> 75% haul in over seventy-five percent of defensive rebounds...part of "possession and possessions" philosophy. 

QUARTERS - win at least three individual quarters.

A sustainable competitive edge only works with the discipline to apply it consistently. 

Lagniappe: "None of that inherently matters, except for the fact that it works."
Lagniappe 2: "Practically speaking, what I know doesn't matter. What our players know and use successfully defines their success. It's always about them."