Excellence principles overlap basketball and medicine. Here's an inside look at a fraction of what happens during training.
Learning new skills, trainees hear, "see one, do one, teach one." I remember doing my first thoracentesis as an intern on Medical 6 (the National Cancer Institute ward), removing fluid from around the lung.
The operator (and the patient) doesn't want to hit blood vessels, which underlie the rib. A critical step is injecting adequate local anesthetic. My first did NOT have enough anesthesia. I forever reminded young physicians to use more local. Now radiologists do most of these under direct (ultrasound) visualization, so it's a lost skill for the trainee.
Basketball has similar principles, EDIR5 (explain, demonstrate, imitate, and repeat times five). Coach Wooden said, “I am not a strategy coach. I am a practice coach.” "Repetitions make reputations."
Great players make their coaches great. Interns "represent" at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy. "Your job is to make the 'senior' (resident) look good." The "show" is Morning Report, where trainees present evening admissions or challenging cases to senior Attending Physicians. Senior trainees can't have junior trainees making them look bad. And juniors "audition" for senior positions, sometimes in a pyramid scheme where few rise to the top. At Bethesda Naval, we had 26 medical interns. I was the one who moved on the next year to advanced training and later Chief Resident. The others went overseas to the Fleet or with the Marines.
"It's always showtime," including practice."The game is for the players." Coaches abhor players forgetting to move, defend, pass, and take quality shots. "One mistake, bad play. Two mistakes, bad player. Three mistakes, bad coaching." Understand, "you define your paycheck."
"Know your NOs." If the Boss thought we were going off track, he'd tell us, "you're following a lit fuse." Medicine and basketball are both about vision, decisions, and execution.
In basketball, players, know your responsibility - anticipate, react and execute. No middle, no dribble or pass penetration, no uncontested shots, no second shots, no bad fouls. If you don't know, you don't belong on the floor.
The Pain Trade. The pessimist says, "It can't get any worse than this." But the optimist says, "sure, it can." When young docs are overwhelmed by sick patients and workload, we would say, "They can always hurt you more." Hate the game; love the players.
To the struggling team, it feels as though no end is in sight. Kevin Eastman says, "do it harder, do it better, change personnel, and finally $#@&, it ain't working." Players get sick, injured, or tired. Coaches' food tastes bad and suffer tortured sleep. Chuck Daly remarked, “If you're going to have to beg them to play, it's not going to work.”
"The main thing is the main thing." In medicine, it's the patient. The patient comes first, before societal justice. Fight for their appointment, the imaging study or medication initially denied by an insurer, for a Coronavirus test. We fight every day.
But in basketball, the team comes first, a Vulcan mandate.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one." But situations force coaches to make "Sophie's Choice." The underclassman displaces the senior. The politician's son gets cut and the coach's neck is on the line.
In a preseason letter to players, Coach Wooden wrote, "You may feel, at times, that I have double standards as I certainly will not treat you all the same...I know I will not be right in all my decisions, but I will attempt to be both right and fair."
Summary:
- "I am not a strategy coach, I am a practice coach" EDIR5 (See one, do one...)
- For the player, "It's always showtime."
- "You're following a lit fuse...know your NOs."
- "They can always hurt you more."
- "The good of the team comes before the good of the individual."
Lagniappe: Low DHO Flex option from Horns
You can emphasize the DHO or run Flex from the weak side.
Lagniappe 2: "Comfort, the enemy of progress." - P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman
Tolerate discomfort on the path to achievement.
Lagniappe 3: 1 - 4 game.
We have never exploited the 1-4 game, despite its advantages. It moves defenses away from the basket, has no natural "help" side, and makes it risky to double the point guard.
We've never used it because it was the offense we ran almost fifty years ago and I remember Pete Newell's admonition that trying to copy what your coach taught usually resulted in a poor reproduction of the original.
Quick summary:
- six "quick options"
- can run to either side
- three entries - dribble (PnR), post, wing
- against overplay, ideal slip or backdoor actions
- can get isolations by emptying a side
- with post entry and failed backcut, wing can "button hook" and postup off the pass if has a mismatch in size or skill