We're responsible for teaching - the game, respect, and life. I'm not talking about teaching politics or religion, but values and sportsmanship. We model excellence or something less.
"Sweep the leg." Years ago, I saw a girl dive for a loose ball, up fifteen with five seconds left. Great hustle! But not when you clip a defenseless player and take out her ACL. Use common sense.
Drill. Box Drills. Footwork and finishing. There's no "too fundamental."
Great drills for bigs and wings. Adding a defender makes it even better.
Concepts.
Dumacity (a made-up word) is the "act or condition of being a dumbass." Drugs, drinking and driving, smoking, and many other plagues affect our children. Coaches exert dumacity, too.
Referee-baiting. Is it necessary or helpful to argue every call beginning with multiple in the first forty-five seconds of a game? Having coached about fifty games in the past two seasons, I don't think one game was decided by the officiating. If we teach our players "referee abuse," what have we modeled?
"Play hard." In our second postseason game, we're trailing by about fifteen with two minutes left. Our "deep reserves" are in the game. The opposing coach has multiple starters in, applying full court pressure, shooting threes. What's your point? My old coach, Sonny Lane told of a game where he was coaching a rag-tag bunch against an elite team, trailing by about sixty and the other team is still pressing. Or about the coach who had players intentionally throw the ball in to the pressing team who scored five consecutive layups. The coach yells at the other coach, "tell me when it's enough."
Alpha, Charlie, 27 Purple. As an assistant, I watch our (8th grade) opponent run a set play EVERY possession. Their playbook outweighed War and Peace. Again, what's your point? And most of the plays were to set up (airball threes) for what had to be the coach's kid. Teach the game, not an exhaustive playbook. Coach K said, "the game is about making plays not running plays."
Fight like a girl. We're playing a 7th grade contest and the opposing coach plays a 2-3 zone for the first twenty-nine minutes. We play man. We don't shoot well, but we pass okay and we're up by eight. With three minutes to go, I tell our kids to hold the ball out and make them come out and play us. The other coach starts screaming, "Play basketball." Seriously. Live by the zone, die by the zone.
Play. Duke Elbow Handoff.
Duke runs a variety of actions from Horns sets, including dribble handoffs.
Duke also liked clearouts with handoffs from a Horns set.
Lagniappe: What is lagniappe?
"Everybody makes such a big deal today about team play because there's such a scarcity of it. Greed is a reason. You have to understand the influence of greed. A player has to be selfish in the pursuit of the development of his skills, but he cannot be selfish when it comes time to blend them in with what's good for his team."
"I don't recruit players who are nasty to their parents. I look for players who realize the world doesn't revolve around them."
Lagniappe 3: Princeton's biggest moment.