Use Your Unique Experience to Run Your Show

Think about your team as a drama. Your experience is unique. As a coach/"show runner", you own the writing, the editing, the rehearsal, and production. 

What philosophy do you embrace and why? What inspires or saddens you? Find more inspiration (e.g. teamwork, separation, transition) and less sadness (selfishness, sloppiness/turnovers, play in traffic, bad or forced shots). 

Story. Character. Dialogue. Conflict. Stakes. Coaching is a miniseries. We are complexity not stereotypes. 

What story does our team tell? When we watch a game, each team tells a story.

• Speed to control the whole court
• Size and toughness owning the paint at both ends 
• Aggressive individual defense
• Separation with player and ball movement
• Defenses morphing into multiple configurations
• Intelligence and controlled offense
• Blends among the above
• Disorganization, diffidence, indecision

Characters. Do we have leadership, willing supporting cast, role players who know their lines? What actors drive the plot and how? Are they getting it done? Are there subordinate characters whose ethos, actions, lines, and progress foreshadow bigger roles? 

 

Dialogue is underrated. It's everything said on and off the court. It's practice, communication, and media interactions. Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott shares, "I don't believe that playing video games in the locker room is part of earning the right to win."

Conflict isn't de facto bad or good. It may drive competition which is vital to progress in the competitive cauldron of team development. But it may harm a team if players refuse to play together. I saw a game (live streamed), where it was apparent one player refused to pass to another. What's the source of conflict and who addresses it? 

In a drama or novel, stakes drive interest. What is the coach's future? Is there a "ticking clock" that the heroine must defeat? Skin in the game matters.

The game is the show, a hit or a bust. We don't see everything when we watch, who has a sick sibling, borderline or exemplary grades. Rewrite a better narrative every day. We are the keeper of the story. 

Lagniappe. Make the defense cover the whole floor by spacing. 

Basic video of '5 out' concepts. We know this; our players may not.