It was a simpler time. We recorded "clinical pearls," medical formulas, and cheats in a 5" x 7" notebook that fit in our white coat pocket. PDAs and smartphones made them obsolete.
If smartphones disappeared or power lapsed what belongs in our basketball peripheral brain? What GO TO tools and tactics do you want at your fingertips? Transform players from know that to know how.
Have immediate storage ready to deploy. Call it experience, horse sense, savoir-faire, or something else. "Savoir-faire in French, however, means skills acquired by experience in various practical problems when doing one’s work."
Essential Tools
Skill Development
Timeouts
Timeouts
Special Situations
Habit Stacking
Software Upgrades
1. Skill development (from Amazon Prime video)
Nothing replaces skill. Every day is a development day. We perform to the level of our training. Study and steal from the many great skill development coaches. Standard sequences like the Villanova Get 50, Box drills, Wing attack series, and combination shooting-conditioning drills like Pitino "Quarters" build offensive players. Small-sided games help teach game play.
At lower levels, become skill development coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, sport psychologists, film study teachers, and more. Use all the resources at our disposal, from experience, to mentors, and to the Internet.
Timeouts are multitools. Timeouts stop the clock, interrupt momentum, allow substitution or rest, revise strategy, and help settle a team down. I knew one coach who took timeouts to "work the officials." Timeout management belongs in our peripheral brain. Train our teams to process information during timeouts (including injuries and disqualification). Practice using timeouts. Take a practice timeout and give a quick quiz.
3. Special situations.
Many games are decided by one or two possessions. Executing BOBs, SLOBs, ATOs, and "Game Winners" give us a decided advantage. As Adam Spinella shared in his lecture, we decide whether to have generic actions or targeted plays against specific opponents. During the pandemic, we have time to organize our lists and edit them into best practices.
4. Habit stacking.
Build better study habits and better people. We make our habits and our habits make us. The people players become are our legacy. Start by winning the morning.
Make habit work for you. My morning routine includes:
- MasterClass (20-30 minutes)
- Writing (including this blog)
- Reading (20-30 minutes)
- Professional study (New England Journal of Medicine online review course)
- Mindfulness (5-10 minutes)
Develop a morning kickstarter that works for you.
5. Software upgrades.
Communication defines us. It's not "Me Tarzan, you Jane." Trust takes time. Every player won't have the same buy-in, but our job is to raise everyone up. When players internalize our core lessons, they upgrade their software and their hardware. Their brains change.
- "If basketball is important to you, you can become a terrific player."
- "How you play the game reflects how you live your life."
- "I believe in you."
Lagniappe: Great video from Adam Spinella
Lagniappe 2: "In a weak culture we veer away from doing the right thing to doing the right thing for me." - Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last.
In Turn the Ship Around, Captain David Marquet describes a performance turnaround on the nuclear submarine Santa Fe. It went from the worst in its class to the best in a year. His leadership transferred the culture from a leader-follower model to a leader-leader one. And the results were spectacular, with reenlistment rising ten fold and nine of fourteen officers eventually achieving command. "An organization is most effective when everyone thinks and acts like a leader." This is vital for knowledge workers in today's world, versus the heavily task-oriented workers in yesterday's.
