Dean Smith said, "If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot." Nobody enjoys losing and coaches hate giving away games.
James Patterson might ask what the crime scene and the crime tell us. I'm not saying the venue. A summer loss on asphalt carries less weight than a March loss in a basketball temple.
The loss arrived via failed transition defense, live ball turnovers transformed into scores, missed free throws. Did we lose because of skill, strategy, conditioning, emotional fragility, combinations?
Better teams and coaches find solutions not problems, anticipating breakdowns before they happen. Only you know your team's unique vulnerabilities. Some have no fix because you can't turn November chicken feathers into March chicken soup.
"Control what you can control."
- If we shoot poorly, practice shooting and take better shots.
- If we handle pressure poorly, practice advantage-disadvantage.
- If we can't defend the pick-and-roll, change coverage and/or defenses.
- If we foul too much, make reducing fouls a priority.
A Few Considerations.
- Young players who might make open shots (drills), often miss the same shots with proximity defense and a hand up. Practice with defense (a coach or an assistant with a hand up).
- Finish through contact. Use a football pad or even a pillow to create contact without injury to simulate finishing against contact.
- Force finishing from the three-point line in practice in one or two dribbles. Constraints force adjustments.
- Mix free throw practice in-between high intensity practice to simulate game conditions (fatigue, recovery).
- Scrimmage with players assigned four fouls. Fouling causes you to foul out. "Show your hands, stay vertical, don't reach in, don't lean on players with your chest."
I played a top player in middle school in foul trouble not to win, but to prioritize her ability to play with fouls. That might cost us a chance to win, but I played the long game to help keep her in varsity games that mattered. Is winning a middle school game more important than giving kids a chance to win championships?
Analyze what your team needs and how to create the conditions (pressure, fatigue, surprise) requiring them to figure it out.
Stop killing chances to win.
Lagniappe. "Movement destroys defense."
Many defenses fail because of hard cutting. Defenders must anticipate, jump to the ball, and be aware of offensive adjustment (e.g. back cutting). Help has to be aware of this (see the video). Lazy cutting makes the defense's job easy.
Lagniappe 2. This dream woke me up. 14 Low Orbits
