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Saturday, April 4, 2020

Basketball: Personal Growth as a Coach, Invest Our Time

Better or worse? Set program priorities now. Social distancing has made group practice impossible. Do what we can.  

Plan practices. When practice planning, I have a "short list" of activities to help construct practice. Activities change from time to time. 

Work on your drill book. If you don't have one, start one on Google Drive. This adds special value for younger coaches. 

 Refine your playbook. I use FastModel sports, with a variety of categories: 
Concepts
Defense
Delay
Drills
BOBs
SLOBs
Game winners
Half-court offense 
ATOs
Horns
Pressure
Screen-based
Tap plays
Zone offense 

 Some categories have too few examples. Others have too many...I have over sixty baseline-out-of-bounds plays, far more than we could ever use. Sometimes just scrolling through a category gives me fresh ideas. 

For example, this resembles a "Reverse America's Play" that we haven't used. 

From over 50 Horns sets, here's a UCONN Women's horns set they ran for Kia Nurse...left a simple backscreen facilitates a give-and-go. Right, there's a bump and slip. 

 Film study. Youtube has an endless amount of video for study, including video on learning to study video. 


Coach Nick discusses how to watch film. I like his idea to consider watching one player and how her actions impact the game. 

 Reading. Pick a subject, coach, or author to study. Consider coaches Newell, Wooden, Popovich, Etorre Messina, or Dean Smith. Few people become well-rounded without reading. Most successful coaches have a library. 

 Mindfulness. Mindfulness has many 'clinical' effects including resistance to anxiety and depression, improved sleep, better memory, lower blood pressure, enhanced immunity, lower circulating stress hormones, reduce risk of dementia, higher focus, and better grades and standardized test scores.

 Who uses or used mindfulness? Just about every NBA team, Michael Jordan, Kobe, Phil Jackson, KAT, and more. 

 "The heart of meditation is allowing thoughts to come and go."

 Here's a link to a Google Presentation. 

 Here's a link to FREE UCLA mindfulness scripts (self-explanatory).
Here's my favorite (short) mindfulness script, "Lion Mind or Dog Mind?" 

 Online coaching clinics. Youtube shares an "infinite" amount of free content. FIBA videos, individual development by many trainers like Drew Hanlen, Don Kelbick, and many more. Study coaches like Hubie Brown, Jay Wright, and Mike Krzyzewski or players. 

 Virtual coaching clinics abound, like this one organized by Lason Perkins. Thanks, Coach! 

 Writing. Why write? Writing forces us to read, study, think, organize, and edit. I believe Director Ron Howard's quote, "the director (coach) is the keeper of the story." Daily writing demands discipline to produce content that I want to read. 

 Take advantage of social distancing to restructure our teaching and learning.  As Coach Wooden said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." 

Summary: 

 - Take advantage of social distancing to improve as a coach.
- Refine our drill book.
- Edit our play book.
- Strengthen our mind and body with mindfulness training. 
- Read, study, watch film and coaching clinics to see the game better. 

 Lagniappe: via @Coach_DeMarco 
Great spacing with the offense getting an isolation against the zone. Good offense gives defense a chance to make mistakes. 

Lagniappe 2: attacking the PnR defense with screener walling off defense and occupying help with flare screen. (Images from Coach Dan Sokolovsky, CoachesClinic.com... underrated talk).

 Quick "show" is dissolving. Note flare screen forming at bottom of screen 

Screener sprints to get "under" hedger.


Driver has a step and screener defender is walled off just below the foul line. 

 Sokolovsky's presentation also showed other ways to attack the early, hard show (hedge, fake trap) including the short roll and flipping the high ball screen allowing the ballhandler to crossover for either a drive or shot. 
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