"Everything is COPY." - Steve Martin
“Everything that we see, hear, or experience is usable.” People perform heroic actions or sacrifice and mind-numbing cruelty or selfishness. Be inspired or horrified but derive specifics to help.
Anything can trigger coaching ideas. Analogies from other domains are often relevant.
Are players ingredients in our competitive cauldron? If so, remind ourselves that grill master Aaron Franklin says, "sometimes you have to cook what you have."
If our team is struggling, why? If not, what can we improve?
1. Person > Player (Brett Ledbetter)
- How is our communication? Youthful assistants can have different relationships with players.
- Are we getting buy-in on minutes, roles, and recognition?
- How is our team health? Are we worn down, impacted by seasonal illness or an academic grind?
2. Work backward from the game to the process ("Game Changer")
- How are we scoring (or not)?
- Is our half-court, PnR, or transition defense the problem?
- What is the quality of our decision-making in special situations?
3. There's "never" enough talent
- Excel at player development (ask for help when we need it). My good friend Ralph Labella always insisted I never played the best players enough. Studying player development pays the highest dividends other than ability to recruit.
- Compete at practice. Reserves who progress can push the best players.
- Balance intensity and volume. Players cannot withstand both.
4. "Kill your darlings."
- Find stuff to cut. Less can be more. Do we have too many defenses, too many pick-and-roll coverages, too many special situations plays?
- "Be good at what we do a lot."
- Make everything impact winning.
5. Find allies and partners.
- Listening to the radio, I heard discussions about the importance of allies and partners in foreign relations.
- Almost everyone benefits from coaching, including coaches. Coaching doesn't obligate us to change.
Summary:
- Take the team's temperature.
- Work back from winning to process not the other way around.
- Player development, player development, player development.
- Simplify, revise, cut.
- Utilize allies and partners.
Lagniappe: A continuity box-and-one offense (off staggers)
If one has enough talent, I've heard of one team isolating the "star" on one side and playing 2-on-2 on the opposite side.
And there are always other ways to try to get the 'star' open.