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Saturday, October 10, 2020

Basketball: Ten Hard-Won Epiphanies

Epiphany - "A sudden insight or intuitive understanding."

Play and watch the game for a lifetime and epiphanies stick. Epiphany implies openness to find better ways. 

1. The beauty of the NBA flows from the brilliant spacing. Winners win in space. Great defenses take it away. 

2. Seek out great mentors and become one. Mentoring is the only shortcut to success. 

3. The future is player development

4. Team play cannot overcome the inability to win individual matchups

5. Follow the colors. At a glance, see defensive proximity on the catch. Bad teams play "neighborhood defense" and good teams play in your face. 

6. Get past bad - bad decisions, bad shots, bad passes, bad defense, bad blockouts. Every player must know what good shots are for each other. 

7. So many great players around make the ability to score to win imperative. 

8. Get players to understand how destructive fouling is. The amount of fouling of three-point shots is absurd. Mediocre free throw shooters make two of those three shots. Plus you build up individual and team fouls. 

9. When you can't apply and defeat pressure, you fail. 

10. "Don't beat yourself up; there will always be someone else to do it for you." There are millions of 'geniuses' who never accomplished anything. The better the players, the better the coaching looks. 

Lagniappe: Teach young players that "great offense is multiple actions" and "great defense comes via multiple efforts." 

Lagniappe 2: Are you about getting yours or getting ours?