Basketball: You're Asked to Give a Brief Clinic. About What?

"Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes the tuition is high." Support young coaches and share a handful of information that doesn't come cheaply. Be specific. 

1. "Simplify and clarify." 

• Get everyone on the same page. Share common language. For example, do you call your primary pick-and-roll defense HEDGE, SHOW, or FAKE TRAP? What kind of idiot calls it FAKE TRAP (Coach K)? 
• We called a 2-1-2 zone "FIVE" because it looks like a die. 
• Be "performance-focused, feedback-rich." Ask players to explain the what and why.
• Kevin Eastman counsels, "Know your NOs." (E.g. no middle, no dribble penetration, no uncontested shots)

2. "Fight for your culture every day." - Doc Rivers 

• What's important to your culture? Specify. Collaborate, appreciate teammates. Don't ASSUME. Praise desired behaviors. 
• TIA. Teamwork, improvement, accountability.  
• "It's the scoreboard not the scorebook." Don't be a STAT HUN. 
• This is who we are; that is not who we are. "Humble in victory, gracious in defeat."
• Help kids make memories. 

3. "Develop great habits." Make it easy to do the right thing. 

• "We make our habits and our habits make us." 
• Study the formation and maintenance of habits. "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. 
• Consciously build your day. 
• Commit to learning, reading, film study every day. 
• Track your habits. "Winners are trackers." ("The Compound Effect")
• Ask players what book they are reading. 

4. "Possession and possessions."

• Be opportunistic. 
• Win this possession.
• A game is the sum of individual possessions. 
• Use actions that are hard to defend...pick-and-roll, ball reversal, hard cutting. 
• Can you play harder for longer than your opponent? 

5. "Be good at what you do a lot." Pick a couple of key metrics for our team. 

• Define as a team what we're going to excel at. 
• Offensively, limit turnovers ("the ball is gold") and take good shots. 
• Quality teams get more assists. "The quality of the pass relates to the quality of the shot."
• No easy baskets - define transition D responsibilities and clear PnR defensive technique. Better to have two good techniques than six bad ones. 

6. "Fall in love with easy." Make the game easier for yourself and for teammates. 

• Teamwork (communication, ball, and player movement).
• The best players make everyone around them better. 
• ROB shots - Range, Open, Balance. Nobody's good enough to overcome poor shot selection. Shot selection is the quickest path to immediate improvement. "Get 7s."
• I see summer video with players concerned mostly about their scoring not the team. 
• "Don't play in the traffic." 

7. "Every good team can apply and withstand pressure." 

• Break pressure with the goal of scoring off advantage. 
• Make practice hard so games are easy.
• Practice advantage-disadvantage.
• Affords scrimmage opportunity and conditioning. 

8. "Raise your basketball IQ." 

• Study great players. Mason Waters has great player breakdowns on YouTube
• Study great coaches. Billy Donovan's "95" - what are you doing the 95% of the time you don't have the ball? 
• Devote part of every day to studying video (Watching is not study. Consider building each day's study around a theme.). 
• Build a video clip library (e.g. with a spreadsheet on Google Drive). Share clips with players. 

9. "Everybody needs coaching; nobody needs abuse." 

• "What does it feel like to play for me?"
• Relationships are always a priority. 
• Everyone can choose to be a great teammate. Examples from Teammates Matter
• "Speaking Greatness" (Rod Olson). What we say and how we say it. "That's good but" is different than "That's good AND..." 
• "Never be a child's last coach." 

10. "Match roles to your people."

• Embrace your role because you can excel in your role and vice versa. 
• Most players are complementary players in every league. 
• "There is always a pecking order." - Eric Spoelstra
• Develop players for roles (they can expand their role from stopper, rebounder) during their development. A limited player may carve out minutes by excelling in that role (e.g. stopper). 

Lagniappe: Via Radius Athletics (Rip Screen) via Leicester HS

Lagniappe 2: Celtics Ball Movement



What has Brown done for you lately? 

Assists make everyone happy. 

Lagniappe 3: Find the leader. Last summer we were playing a game and a group of boys was waiting to come on the court. They encroached onto the court and were dribbling basketballs during the game. I went over to one who "looked" like a leader. I asked him as  LEADER OF HIS TEAM (politely) to get his teammates to respect the game and the girls. It worked that time.