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Saturday, October 23, 2021

Becoming More Efficient as a Player

Every action or inaction impacts the game. I've shared a "Ratings Performance System" that allocates positive and negative value to actions. 

Excerpts: 

+3/-3 points (drawing a charge, committing a charge)
+3/-3 making or missing a three point shot

+2 (offense) two point goal, assist, screen leading to a basket, offensive rebound
-2 (offense) two point miss, turnover, missed free throw
+2 (defense) steal, forced turnover, blocked shot
-2 (defense) lost assignment, bad foul leading to free throws

+1 made free throw, defensive rebound, forced held ball
-1 allowed held ball, common foul

But how does a player become more efficient? It sums the components of vision, decisions, and execution

Vision: Aside from playing, players can improve their vision using software like Intelligym. The old "Asteroids" video game is the poor man's version. 

Decisions: Video helps reinforce positive and negative decisions. Positive decisions impact spacing, passing, shot selection, as well as defensive positioning, help, rotation, and recovery. Decisions affect everything. 

Execution: The former two unleash skill. Skill training must translate to game actions. Defense, pressure, and fatigue degrade execution. A player who designs his skill training has to take those factors into consideration. For example, shooting fifty consecutive free throws is not as good as shooting 3-5 and running a sprint or sideline to sideline in between. 

Returning to 'ratings performance' we find the low hanging fruit includes:

  • better shot selection
  • fewer turnovers 
  • reducing "bad fouls" (fouling bad shots, bad shooters, frustration fouls)

Tracking and recognizing "hustle stats" also rewards positive performance not available in conventional box scores. 


When I tracked field goal percentage, turnovers, and hustle plays as an assistant and reported them to the team, we saw relative improvements of 20-30% (not absolute improvement). Players became more accountable to doing the right things.

Lagniappe. A separating move and good observations about film. 


Lagniappe 2. 

Gregg Popovich - age
Geno Auriemma - age
John Calipari - age 
Mike Krzyzewski - age