Basketball: Solve Puzzles to Win Plus Double Bonus Material

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley revealed her fondness for solving puzzles. Coaches solve metaphorical ones. 

What analogical puzzles become routine for coaches? 

Personnel. Red Auerbach said that it wasn't about finding the best players but the players who played best together. Putting our five best out is seductive but that may not balance ball handling, scoring, defense, and rebounding. Can the group share the ball and get stops? 

Matchups. Irony is that the 'pieces' of offense may fit better by creating mismatches - big on small, small on big, size or speed disruption, especially in an era of heavy switching. 

On the left, a switch yield big on small. On the right, a PnR might yield a speed mismatch. 

Style of play. 'System coaches' find players to fit their preferred styles. Other work to match the style to the players. One season we had almost no size, but exceptional speed and played a modified version of The System. We went something like 21-3 and lost in the playoffs during "promotion" to the top division. Regular season winners got promoted and laggards were relegated to a lower division. 

Sales. Remember Chuck Daly's quote, "I'm a salesman." Doc Rivers 'sold' Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett on taking fewer shots and getting fewer numbers to earn a title. There's the old joke about the only man to hold Michael Jordan under twenty points a game (Dean Smith). Coaches sell value and hope for 'buy-in'. But don't get caught selling hope without adding value. 

Space and Time. Coaches solve how best to use space (full court or packed) and adjust tempo to opponents. Talented teams benefit from playing faster and their opponents should want to slow tempo. More possessions magnify talent. 

The Credit Game. The game is about the players. Coaches who understand that have a better chance to prosper. Fairly or not, some coaches take credit for wins and pin losses on the players. Train your best players, who get publicity, to deflect credit and recognize teammates. That makes a stronger culture and takes nothing away from themselves. 

Cecilia is one of the top players in Massachusetts, but she's about "we."  

Lagniappe. Turnovers and bad transition defense kill dreams. 

Lagniappe 2. Kelly Olynyk played last night versus the Celtics. Two points: he grew up playing point guard (he's a seven footer) and he has a great shot fake. 

Think "slow" and go, too. 

Basketball: Please Give Me One Minute

I lied. Please give me fifteen minutes of your valuable time...one minute to read the blog and fourteen minutes for Cal Newport's video. 

1. Add value by producing "rare and valuable" content... writing, music, imagination, great basketball. 

2. Maximize your intensity (focus, attention) to get more done in less time. Remember:

ACHIEVEMENT = PERFORMANCE x TIME 

We all need less multitasking and more 'deep work'. 

3. Diminish anxiety through shared personal experiences with your family and friends. 

Read Widely and Learn

Study experts. 

Running a business is like running a team. Few have run one better than Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger - Berkshire Hathaway. They use the "float' (cash from insurance operations) to invest in 'great companies'. Those companies grow profits and cash. 

Here's a quote from Munger's "Poor Charlie's Almanack": 

"There Are two types of mistakes: 

1) doing nothing that Warren calls "sucking my thumb" and 

2) buying with an eyedropper things we should be buying a lot of."

Translate that into 'basketball'. You don't win if you can't score. I see teams with no discernible plan to create advantage:

a) Spacing

b) Player and ball movement

c) The Scoring Moment (finishing)

There's no "you have to run Princeton" or "dribble drive motion" or "Horns sets" or "Spread offenses." Maybe you have overwhelming talent and you can 'roll the ball out' and win. Only a handful of teams have that luxury.  

When you have no plan, you're Buffett's "sucking my thumb." 

Second, use "hard-to-defend actions..." a lot. 

If you watch a team run almost zero ball and off-ball screens, then you see a team deprived of separation. Conversely, a team like Bishop Fenwick got to the state finals and scored a ton off pick-and-roll and screening actions designed to get their bigs open. If you run one pick-and-roll a game, you're "buying with an eyedropper." 

Expecting results overnight is unreasonable. Another Munger quote: "I don't know anyone who learned to be a great investor with great rapidity. Warren has gotten to be one hell of a lot better investor over the period I've known him, as have I. So the game is to keep learning. You gotta like the learning process."

You say, "but we're not good at executing the pick-and-roll." That's why we practice, to strengthen what we're good at and to improve where needed. 

Summary:

• Great businesses are like great teams, masters of execution.
• Doing nothing is "sucking my thumb." 
• Be all-in on value. 
• Run hard to defend actions. 
• Use practice to reinforce strengths and temper weaknesses

Lagniappe. Learn to counter defensive actions... "player and ball movement." Remember "the ball is a camera" and has to see you. 

Basketball: Ageism and the Aging Coach

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations." -Isaac Disraeli

Coaching is art. Grandma Moses started painting at 76 years old. 

Mike Krzyzewski, 76

Gregg Popovich, 74 

Jim Larranaga, 73

Tara VanDerveer, 69

Geno Auriemma, 69

Tom Izzo, 68

John Calipari, 64

I hear the whispers. "Have you thought about hiring him?" "He's really old. Cripes, he knew God's dog when he was a puppy." 

Yes, coaches are not immune from aging. Remember President Reagan's line about youth and inexperience. Sometimes physical decline beats us. 

The twin torments of older coaches are 1) resume and experience and 2) the inevitable failures to use against them. Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger (age 99) says, 

"We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent."

Part of the coaching game is study to become better year after year. Older coaches have the advantage of "compounding," leveraging gains accrued over time. "Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes the tuition is high." It's the "he's forgotten more than most coaches will ever know." 

There's something called the 'survivor effect'. You seldom see full-on hatchet jobs done on older coaches. If they were so incompetent and contentious, they'd already be out. 

Use analogies. Here's another Munger quote on Berkshire-Hathaway, their company in Munger's book, Poor Charlie's Almanack: 

"The key is having good businesses." There's a lot of momentum here. I don't think our successors will be as good as Warren at capital allocation. Berkshire is drowning in money-we have great businesses pounding out money.

Restate: "The key is having good players. I don't think our successors will be as good at player development. (We) are drowning in performance- we have great players pounding out performance." 

Another Munger quote, "We're trying to buy businesses with sustainable competitive advantages at a low, or even a fair, price." The question for us old coaches becomes, "what are the sustainable competitive advantages?" A legacy might help with recruiting but not necessarily player development. 

1) Recruiting. There are some programs that aggregate talent. I'll credit the coach for his recruiting. Great job finding those players. 

2) Player development. I've seen a number of highly competitive youth teams whose development didn't translate into high school. I doubt it was because the high school coach was incompetent. I suspect the players scattered to the winds. I can name exceptional coaches who develop players and teams, but get overshadowed by the aggregators. 

The lessons? Study, study greatness, keep getting better, see sustainable competitive advantage, whatever our age.

Lagniappe. Among the "big four" - skill, strategy, physicality, and psychology, don't neglect your body. 

Lagniappe 2. Give-and-go drill off a face cut. 

1v1 Face Cut

Finishing at rim with a small advantage off of a cuthttps://t.co/oYvPJDE1dh pic.twitter.com/wvMx0ey2xQ

— Matt Hackenberg (@CoachHackGO) March 29, 2023

Basketball: What Musts Belong for This Program to Improve?

For most, the offseason has begun. Bad teams want to become respectable. Average teams seek the next level. Strong teams want championship performance.

Formulate your MUST NEED WANT list. If this list seems daunting or too long, reduce it by half or two thirds. 

There's seldom "low hanging fruit" to be plucked, the "Jimmy Chitwood" of Hoosiers whom the coach needs on the court.

"Every day is player development day." Be specific. 

1. Shoot better. What are some possibilities? 

• Better shot selection including more shot allocation to better shooters. (Review film and shot charts)
• Better passing. "The quality of the pass relates to the quality of the shot." - Pete Carril
• Better warmups and shooting practice. 

2. Better percentage on layups. 

• Box drills without defense with finishing off either and both feet from either and both sides of the basket. Then add defense. 
• QB layups (no fouling)
• Track results and add constraints (e.g. time limit) to challenge personal bests

3. Improve player and ball movement, especially against pressure. 

• 5 on 5 full court no dribbling. Ball hits the floor, live-ball turnover going the other way.
• 5 versus 7 full court no dribbling. Pass and cut or fail. 
• 4 on 4 half court. No dribbling. Forces pass and cut.
• Kirby Schepp movement drills inside the volleyball lines. 

4. Play a lot. It's not so easy to find a playground to play at. But nobody said improving would be easy. 

5. Reduce turnovers. Did your turnovers arise from bad decisions, bad execution, or combinations? Do players have issues with passing and catching because of strength and conditioning? Passing weighted basketballs might be an answer as well as teaching "shortening the pass" getting passers and catchers moving to each other.

6. Reduce fouling. Bad teams tend to foul excessively giving opponents high percentage (free throws) shots. 

• "Show your hands." If it looks like a foul, it will probably be called. 
• "Don't swat down." Ditto from above.
• "Move your feet" to get and maintain legal guarding position. 
• Never foul jump shots and especially three pointers. 

7. Improve your separation with fundamentals of footwork and fakes for more advanced players.  

• Jab series
• Float dribble/hang dribble
• Negative step/load step
• Deceleration practice into change of direction.  

8. Improve hard-to-defend actions, especially pick-and-roll.

• Rejecting the screen
• Basic decision-making 
• Slipping the screen. 

9. Winning actions in close games. Study video of prior seasons (e.g. final four minutes of every close game (e.g. two possessions).  

• Special situations including developing in-bounders
• Pressure free throws 
• Offensive and defensive delay games
• If breakdowns occur, how? Ball containment, fouls, shot selection, inability to rebound? 

10.Teach players to watch and study video.

• Observe offensive spacing and defensive 'shrinking' space
• How do players combine to create advantage (player and ball movement)?
• How does an individual player have a variety of finishing actions? 

Lagniappe (something extra).

• Can our team play 'harder for longer'? If not, why not?
• Encourage players to work out in pairs or groups to 'drag' the middle class upward toward the high performers. 
• Review time out use. Can we use them more effectively. 
• Review the data. What was our effective field goal percentage? Free throw percentage? Turnovers per game? Assists per game. Bad teams seldom have many assists.

Lagniappe 2. You don't need a full gym to work on footwork. 

This is Great Footwork No traveling required 🤝 🤝🤝🤝💪 https://t.co/8eERKGr60y

— Coach Davis Sr 🔗🆙🔑 (@UOrangemen) March 29, 2023

"The Politics of Coaching" Thoughts from Carl Pierson

Carl Pierson's "The Politics of Coaching" adds valuable contribution to the coaching literature.

Coach Pierson coached multiple seasons of multiple sports and shares the many difficulties associated with coaching and community politics. Everyone has their stories and I'll share a few. 

As high school players fifty years ago, we heard community 'noise' questioning winning versus participation. A local politician's child had been 'cut' during tryouts, triggering a veritable kangaroo court. I call this the "Prime Directive," the reality that parents want what is best for their child over what is good for a team.

Pierson discusses ways that parents work to exclude young players from competing for spots against existing team members. That includes preventing incoming high schoolers from competing with high school teams in workouts or offseason teams. 

A minefield awaits new coaches. Does the new coach give 'preference' to existing players (seniority) or allow younger players an equal competitive footing? This robbing Peter to pay Paul upsets people who don't see younger players as having "paid their dues." Of course, it doesn't recognize what investment actually occurred. And when the younger players compete at an equal or higher level yet get robbed of opportunity, many quit. 

Here are some Pierson quotes:

"Recognizing who the key decision makers are in the hiring process and who exerts the most influence over those decision makers is the beginning of running a successful campaign."

"Know your strengths and acknowledge your weaknesses before you begin your campaign for a head coaching position."

"When conducting individual meetings it has become critically important that the head coach not be alone in the room with the player when the conversation happens."

"Any mention of playing time ends the discussion. Any mention of a player other than your child ends the discussion."

"A coach that refuses to communicate with the players and parents in their program is creating the breeding ground for a coup."

"Parents have one agenda and that is to do whatever is necessary to help their kid."

"A lot can change between now and the start of next season...be extremely careful about making promises..."

"Keep comments broad or generic and you will do a great deal to diminish public criticism." 

"Never provide parents or opposing teams with ammunition." 

"A coach's job as it pertains to the media is to promote their program and project a positive image..." 

"When a coach is visible at these (youth) events, the youth players and their parents take notice. They see the coach is genuinely interested in them and their progress." 

"As hard as it is to accept, sometimes playing to win is what costs a coach their career." (Have definitely seen this.)

"Stat rats are players that are concerned only about their individual performance and statistics." 

Lagniappe. Score more easily. In real estate it's "location, location, location." In sports, it's often RELOCATION. 

Basketball: The Problem Statement

To find solutions, state the problem clearly. Find areas to improve. Where to start, especially if you can't aggregate talent (recruit)? 

Usually it's a multitude of problems not a "point source." 

Every aspiring coach needs a blueprint, understanding that's an outline, not key details. The "any idiot with a whistle can coach" fallacy gets coaching transition. 

Player Components: 

• Skill
• Strategy/game understanding
• Physicality
• Psychology/resilience

Offensive organization: 

• Spacing
• Creating advantage (player and ball movement)
• Finishing/offensive rebound (the scoring moment) 

Defense:

• Transition defense
• Ball containment
• Interior defense
• Perimeter defense
• Pick-and-roll defense
• On and off-ball screens
• Possession ending (rebounding)

Game Play:

• Handling pressure
• Limiting/Forcing Turnovers
• Special situations
• Closing out games
• Fouling (Loyola of Chicago made a priority of limiting fouls)

Leadership and Organization:

• Unifying philosophy 
• Coaching 
• Player development (subset of coaching)
• Culture/Communication
• Offseason development program
• Youth program 
• Community and media relations
• Building and maintaining tradition

Intangibles:

• Toughness (toughness is a skill)
• Effort
• Character

Highest priorities:

1) Player development (skill)

2) Identify and support leadership

3) Clarity of philosophy, identity, system (style of play)

4) Implement culture: team, sacrifice, improvement

5) Emphasis on key play areas:

• Half-court offense
• Half-court defense
• Pick-and-roll 
• Defeat pressure
• Transition defense

Lagniappe. Five questions I'd want to be asked if I were interviewing for a basketball job. 

1) What is your basketball philosophy? (Be prepared to defend it.)

2) What is your philosophy on playing time? (If the committee wants democracy of playing time are we prepared to buy that?)

3) Parents pay "user fees." What is your responsibility to them because they pay for their child to participate? (Players earn minutes. You can't buy playing time and everyone gets opportunity to compete for roles in practice.)

4) What makes you qualified for this position? (It's the "why do you want to be President" question plus more.)

5) What are the overarching lessons that high school athletes should learn from participating and how will you fulfill that teaching responsibility? 

• Bring your best self to the court every day. 
• We can't hide who we are on the court. 
• Do more to become more. "Do the unrequired work." 
• Earn buy-in by adding value.  
• Leaders create leaders.  

Lagniappe. Study others' work.

 

Basketball: Make Friends with the Dead

Go big. About five percent of everyone ever born is still alive. Make friends with the dead - Dean Smith, Pete Newell, John Wooden, Pete Carril, Pat Summitt. 

Great thinker Charlie Munger made friends with Benjamin Franklin, so much that he named his book, "Poor Charlie's Almanack." 

This reminds me of what Lincoln was alleged to say, "I learn something from everyone I meet, usually what not to do."

My "dead friends" left indelible marks. 

Dean Smith. Where to start? Smith shared that he never felt like a loser, even before he won two National Championships. 

• Charlie Scott and Smith broke the color barrier.
• Shot-quality scoring during scrimmaging helped build habits that tended to make UNC the best 'percentage shooters' in the ACC.
• Coming from behind eight points in 18 seconds to tie Duke and beat them in overtime. Never give up.
• Humility. "A lion never roars after the kill." 
• "Four corners" with Phil Ford. It still works. Ford set his watch ten minutes fast to be on Dean Smith Time. 

Pete Newell. Criminally underrated. 

• His teams beat Wooden's in their final eight meetings. 
• A coach's primary task was teaching players to "see the game." 
• "Footwork, balance, maneuvering speed."
• Big man moves. Teach 'em in the post and translate to the perimeter.
• Scorer, facilitator, screener. You have to have a skill. 

John Wooden. Every truly great coach is a great leader. 

• "Make every day your masterpiece."
• The Pyramid of Success. Coach Sonny Lane introduced it to us in our 'team room' over fifty years ago. The room reeked of sweat, Tuf-Skin, and orange peels.
• "Little things make big things happen."
• "Never confuse activity with achievement." 
• Wooden said that Walton was great because "he never tired of the attention to detail in doing the small things." Watch the win over Memphis State.

Pete Carril. Anyone who knows me can relate to the Carril sense of style. 

• "The Smart Take from the Strong." Do the mental work. 
• "Lightbulbs." Get players who light up the court. 
• "The quality of the shot relates to the quality of the pass." 
• Condition within drills. 
• Beating UCLA 1996. The video never gets old.

Pat Summitt. The pioneering 'dynastic' coach. 

• People forget that like Wooden, she was a great player. 
• Her "Four Corners" was something entirely different. 
• Emphasis that playing was a privilege not an entitlement. 
• Filming the bench. You had better be in the game. 
• The "Definite Dozen" 

I hope someday when I'm gone that people will 'make friends' with me. 

Lagniappe. Dr. and Phil? 

 

Bad Beats

Everyone takes "bad beats," unforgettable losses through bad vision, bad decisions, bad luck, or bad execution. Minimize them. 

Red Auerbach absorbed his worst loss as a prep coach. Up one point late, his in-bounder threw a behind-the-back pass that was intercepted and converted into a layup for a loss. Every thrilling winner has an opposing crushing defeat. All of us suffer soul-crushing losses at some point. 

As a player, we lost in overtime to the two-time defending State Champion. Poor execution against the press was the biggest culprit. Our coach told us we lost not because they were better but because we didn't believe in ourselves. Fate was kind to us as we beat them twice later than season including the sectional championship. 

Poker champion Phil Ivey said that bad beats are part of the game. Overcoming them is part of the process to becoming an elite player. Ivey misreads his hand.

Because vision, decisions, and execution are the setup, bad beats emerge from failures. 

Failed vision. "I did not see that coming." Fred Brown's mysterious pass in the final moments against North Carolina seems like a blind spot. 

Flawed decision making and play. There's not a "specific" bad beat in this video, but a number of issues that contribute to losses. 

• Habitual immediate dribbling on the catch 
• Low effort going for loose balls
• "Cheating the drill" in practice
• Hot dogging finishes instead of making the easy play
• Trying to be James Harden

Better execution. The underdog sometimes makes a great play.

 

That basketball factory Harvard upset top-ranked Stanford in 1998. 

Lagniappe. Hate math? Love angles in attacking the basket.

 

Basketball: Exceptional Teams

Great teams forge elite collaboration. Coach K likens it to a fist, generating more power than a finger.

What makes exceptional teams? Reflect on personal observations, research, and artificial intelligence.

Personal Observations:

1. Talent. There's a literature of "Talent Is Overrated" but good luck winning without talent. In the technique, tactics, physicality, and psychology hierarchy, talent leads. Great teams have 'possession enders' who score, force stops, and rebound.

2. Technique. If one offense - DDM, Triangle, Princeton were best, everyone would use it and advantage would disappear. The same goes for defense. How you play matters more than what you run. Coherence, playing as one separates teams. 

3. Consistency matters, the ability to play more good possessions. Play harder for longer. 

4. Make moments in the big moments. Exceptional teams find an extra gear when needed.

5. Unity. Great teams have clear identity, clear communication, and work off the same script. 

Study greatness. And share. Don Yaeger interviewed over a hundred coaches looking for insights. 

Yaeger's search wasn't unique. Leadership author Simon Sinek asks, "what's your 'why'?" Put a team under the microscope. What do we see? Long before the Red Sox won anything, there was a saying, "25 guys, 25 cabs." Great teams win collectively, greater than the sum of their parts. 

When Coach Mike Krzyzewski coached USA Basketball, he showed them great teams - on military bases and on a trip to Arlington National Cemetery. The trips informed superstars about the meaning of sacrifice for a common goal. 

Yaeger asks, "what kind of a leader does our team need?" Can we be the type of leader the team needs or who we are? 

Exceptional teams have both high IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence). That impacts communication and self-regulation. 

To reach the level of great teams, reevaluate everything:

- Player development (individual and team actions)

- Strategy 

- Strength and conditioning

- Resilience and sport psychology

Winning becomes the result of great process. 

Great teams have great competitors. Competition can create conflict and selfishness. 

This reduces to "this is who we are together" and "that is what we do." 

Artificial Intelligence answer:

Great teams typically possess the following characteristics:

1. Clear communication: Great teams communicate openly and honestly, with respect for one another's perspectives and opinions.

2. Shared goals and vision: Great teams share a common purpose and vision, and are committed to achieving shared goals.

3. Trust: Great teams trust one another and have confidence in each other's abilities, which allows for collaboration and innovation.

4. Diversity: Great teams are made up of individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, which allows for a wide range of ideas and approaches.

5. Accountability: Great teams hold each other accountable for their actions and responsibilities, which creates a culture of ownership and responsibility.

6. Flexibility: Great teams are adaptable and flexible, able to pivot and adjust as needed to meet changing circumstances.

7. Positive attitude: Great teams have a positive, can-do attitude, and are motivated to overcome obstacles and achieve success.

8. Continuous learning: Great teams are committed to continuous learning and improvement, seeking out new knowledge and skills to stay ahead of the curve.

9. Supportive culture: Great teams create a supportive and inclusive culture that fosters creativity, innovation, and growth.

Overall, great teams are characterized by a shared sense of purpose, mutual respect and trust, diverse perspectives and skills, and a commitment to ongoing learning and improvement.

Lagniappe. Hard work and professional work live on separate planes. 

Basketball Lessons from Reading Including "The Boys in the Boat"

Study sport and the world to choose among possible futures. 

"Leaders are readers." The Boys in the Boat weaves a tapestry of sport, society, and politics blending rowing, the Depression, and the rise of fascism in the early 1930s. 

Today, the basketball community feels uncertainty amidst a banking crisis and political polarization. It's not just partisan in Washington, but basketball recycles coaches of questionable character while denying deserving candidates who toil in the shadows. 

Dan Brown shares history amidst lyrical prose:  

“It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.”

(Comment: How much pain and effort can we take?)

“You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart... And a lot of life is like that too, the parts that really matter anyway.”

(Comment: Great teams have shared vision, shared sacrifice, and shared success.)

“Every man in the boat had absolute confidence in every one of his mates... Why they won cannot be attributed to individuals, not even to stroke Dun Hume. Heartfelt cooperation all spring was responsible for the victory.”

(Comment: Basketball teaches indelible lessons about teamwork for those willing to learn.)

Keep our eyes open to world events. Remember the saying, "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes." That matters with both economics and politics.

(Comment: ignoring injustice doesn't stop it.)

“It takes energy to get angry. It eats you up inside. I can’t waste my energy like that and expect to get ahead.”

(Comment: Choose full engagement not distraction. Be all in on the signal and ignore the noise.")

“The ability to yield, to bend, to give way, to accommodate, he said, was sometimes a source of strength in men as well as in wood, so long as it was helmed by inner resolve and by principle.”

(Comment: This reminds us of Bruce Lee's admonition to "be like water." Be adaptable to circumstances.)

“But there was a Germany the boys could not see, a Germany that was hidden from them, either by design or by time. It wasn’t just that the signs - ‘Für Juden verboten,’ ‘Juden sind hier unerwünscht’ - had been removed, or that the Gypsies had been rounded up and taken away, or that the vicious Stürmer newspaper had been withdrawn from the racks in the tobacco shops in Kopenick. There were larger, darker, more enveloping secrets all around them.”

(Comment: Literature echoes history. See not only what's in the light but what lurks in the shadows. Averting our eyes allows others to be blinded.)

I believe "Boys in the Boat" is one of the important books of our time and one worth reading and study as a team.

Lagniappe. Take better notes. Players win on the court and in the classroom. Coaches win when we help build great students, great leaders, and great people. Excellence is a full-time business. 

• Handwritten notes are better.
• Revise notes
• Attend to details
• Decipher what's important (the speaker will share)
• Stay focused until the end
• Replay the lecture if you have a choice

Basketball: Focus on Culture, Mindset, and Process

High performance demands extraordinary focus. How? Start with Charlie Munger's reminder, "Invert, Always Invert." 

What is the opposite of focus? The opposite is distraction. The world surrounds us with distraction - cellphones, streaming media, social media, television, and more. 

Read about focus here.  

As coaches and life-long learners, where should we focus? 

1. Culture

Our middle school team culture had three "narrow-focus" priorities:

• Teamwork "It's the scoreboard not the scorebook."
• Improvement. "Get better today."
• Accountability. "Hold ourselves to high standards."

Winning was not the top priority. But from the two three-year groups of middle school players coached, we've had two in state championship games during the past three years. They learned how to play and how to win. 

2. Mindset 

• Hard work builds success. "Do unrequired work."
• Adopt good ideas from all around us. "Good artists borrow, great artists steal - Picasso"
• Study greatness (players, coaches, systems). Some rubs off. 

3. Process

• Build and track habits. "We make habits; habits make us."
• Obsess preparation and skill development "Obsess the product." - Sara Blakely 
• Find mentors.
• Use Pomodoro technique (25 minutes on, 5 off). Focus fatigues.
• Have a mindfulness practice, proven to improve focus. 

Embrace culture, mindset, and process. 

Lagniappe. Timed multi-level shooting drill that extends some of the "30 buckets" drill that we ran for mid-range shooting.

 

Basketball: Deceleration

"Basketball is a game of separation." Explosiveness. Acceleration. Change of direction and change of pace. 

Unheralded or unheard is deceleration. Some guys go zero to sixty and some can go sixty to zero. 

This is an important video as it shows how James Harden gets so much separation with deceleration off EITHER foot and how quickly he rebalances. 

The video emphasizes that the deceleration allows him many options - pullup, step back, crossover, and drive. 

It's unnatural and must be trained.

 

The video shares ideas on how.