Win with common sense. Great coaches share lessons and time shares experience. Emphasize to players what separates winning and losing.
1. "Basketball is a game of mistakes." - Bob Knight Prioritize limiting mistakes. Tell 'em what you're going to say, say it, and tell 'em what you said.
Don't miss assignments. You have to know your cover, PnR coverage, who does what in transition defense.
Stop bad fouling.
2. You don't trick good teams. Good basketball comes in many different forms. After players have sound fundamentals, then you can mix in other actions. Young teams don't win with Amoeba, the Freak, and hybrid defenses.
3. "Technique beats tactics." - Gregg Popovich Invest offseason develop in fundamentals. Some players play a lot of games without developing enough skills to win consistently. I've heard, "so-and-so played a lot of AAU." Did it translate to success in winning the individual and team battles that translate to success in actual games?
4. "There's no DH." Defense isn't optional. Good teams have to defend in the half-court, defend the pick-and-roll, and limit transition. Talking about playing defense isn't the same as playing defense.
5. "Silent teams lose." Talk energizes. Talk recruits. Talk intimidates. If we don't teach our teams to talk during practice, they won't talk during games.
6. Hard to defend actions. Most teams aren't loaded with 'knock-down shooters." If you don't have them, expecting to win with perimeter action is beyond fool's gold. Employ hard-to-defend actions.
7. Have 'aces in the hole'. Close and late, have 'best actions' that your team and you trust. That includes a couple of BOBs, SLOBs, ATOs, action versus man and versus zone. It gets back to having 'guys' who execute.
8. Be in great shape. Stay in great physical condition year-round. That might mean playing a lot, playing multiple sports, doing extra conditioning (jump rope, 220s, stadium stairs). To "play harder for longer" aerobic fitness is a must.
Former NBA player JJ Redick recently shared what he believes are two of the hardest actions in basketball to defend right now.
They are:
1. The "Ghost Screen"
2. The "Tap Screen"
Similar, but different. I'll explain:
With a Ghost Screen, an offensive player acts like they're about to set a screen but then quickly sprints through without making contact.
While in a Tap Screen, the offensive player acts like they're about to set a solid screen, but instead they simply tap the defender and slip to the basket.
Learn across domains and apply to sport and life. Morgan Housel wrote the bestselling The Psychology of Money. Some lessons apply to our lives and our game. Let's explore.
1. "We all think we know how the world works. But we’ve all only experienced a tiny sliver of it."
Basketball is an enormous discipline. We can't know or use everything. Avoiding bad choices (turnovers, fouls, bad shots, missed assignments) increases our chances of success. Success follows hard work to build skill, learn the game, develop physicality and resilience.
2. "We prefer simple stories, which are easy but often devilishly misleading."
The stories get told different ways. Some say Wooden's character and teaching transformed UCLA. Some argue that players like Alcindor and Walton separated the Bruins. Other argue Sam Gilbert made UCLA. Everything matters.
3. "There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need."
Identify what is 'wealth' in our lives and hang onto it. Our families and our reputation are wealth for many of us. Work-life balance is hard.
4. "The most powerful and important book should be called Shut Up And Wait."
Flanking the top of Wooden's Pyramid of Success are FAITH and PATIENCE. If we prefer, it's BELIEF and TIME.
5. "Getting money is one thing. Keeping it is another."
Success is elusive. Maintaining consistency and 'sustainable competitive advantage' is harder. "The wind blows hardest at the top of the mountain."
6. “Your kids don’t want your money (or what your money buys) anywhere near as much as they want you. Specifically, they want you with them.“
What sacrifices are worth it? "In his book Go Lessons for Living, gerontologist Karl Pillemer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience.He wrote: No one-not a single person out of a thousand-said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want."
7. "What you want is respect and admiration from other people, and you think having expensive stuff will bring it. It almost never does-especially from the people you want to respect and admire you.”
Many of you have seen the movie Field of Dreams. There's a scene where Kevin Costner asks James Earl Jones, "what do you want?" Know what you want.
8. "Savings without a spending goal gives you options and flexibility, the ability to wait, and the opportunity to pounce."
Balance action and patience. No matter how much you practice, sacrifice, or study, you are going to need to have rest and recovery.
9. "It’s hard to wake up in the morning telling yourself you have no clue what the future holds, even if it’s true."
With the advent of NIL and the Transfer Portal going full bore, nobody knows the future. Accept that and do our best with what we have.
10. “The four most dangerous words in investing are,it’s different this time.”
The greatest coach alive won't have a perfect track record of development or winning. That's because we work with people who have different priorities and goals. It's why "overnight solutions" like weight-loss drugs are popular. Simple is not easy. Change is hard.
11. "It’s my margin of safety.The future may be worse than in the past, but no margin of safety offers a 100% guarantee."
Make our best judgments in planning, but know that certainty doesn't exist with life plans.
12. "Market returns are never free and never will be. They demand you pay a price, like any other product."
To become a trained medical subspecialist, after high school I invested four years in college, four years in medical school, and six years of postgraduate medical training. That's fourteen years of education AFTER high school. That's not heroic or brilliant, it's reality. It's Isiah Thomas being upset with Larry Bird because some thought Bird worked and Thomas was born great. Everyone aspiring to success does the work, again and again.
13. "The common answer here is that people are greedy, and greed is an indelible feature of human nature."
"Greed" is the triad of minutes, role, and recognition. It is who we are, who our players are, who their families are. There's a finite amount to go around. You have to fight and claw for what you want.
14. "The bigger the gap between what you want to be true and what you need to be true to have an acceptable outcome, the more you are protecting yourself from falling victim to an appealing financial fiction."
Shrink the gap between expectations and reality. That can mean lowering expectations or building skill, knowledge, and resilience. Disappointments happen when expectations and reality diverge widely. "But I expected to start this season." That might be true, but others outworked you, outperformed you.
"Money" is one representation of wealth. But wealth and money aren't the same.
Lagniappe.
If I had one piece of advice for athletes about to play in the spring evaluation period it would be to get in shape. I don’t say that lightly b/c many have just wrapped up their HS season & their bodies need to break. But fitness is always the great separator.
Gravity appears in many contexts. Mediocrity has gravity. It takes considerable effort and time to achieve "escape velocity" when taking over a losing program.
Plyometric training overcomes gravity. Jumping rope is one of many exercises that tame gravity. Weighted vests help build strength leading to increased vertical without redistributing center of gravity.
Great players have gravity on the court, attracting defensive attention.
Great players have gravity in team building. Stars seek other stars in the 'superteam' space.
Some coaches have the gravity to attract players. "In a recent anonymous survey conducted by The Athletic, 25.3 percent of 95 players chose Popovich as the coach players would like to play for apart from their own." Tom Thibodeau was the coach players least wanted to play for.
The ball has gravity as defense loads to the ball (above) and 'shrinks space'.
Ideally offenses defeat gravity with spacing, ball movement (above) to create long closeouts for open shots or basket attack.
Of course, the greatest gravitational grab has emerged, attracting players from everywhere, NIL, legitimizing player payments.
Lagniappe. How are you impacting winning?
PLAYERS: If you want to have a GREAT TEAM, you need to figure out how you can positively impact your team! This isn't just when you're playing, but when you're on the bench, in the locker room, in training sessions, on road trips, in the weight room, or in the classroom.
Communication and action improve when we think clearly with fewer biases and distraction. Here's a valuable post about the late Danny Kahneman (Professor emeritus, Princeton) by Vadym Graifer.
Daniel Kahneman died at 90. Man who changed psychology forever. His book Thinking, Fast and Slow, changed forever the way I think of people, their actions, and life in general. A few memorable quotes from his works: - We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know. - Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it. - Your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to. - There's a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make. - We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments. - What you see is all there is. - A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. (This is especially frightening one, isn't it? -V.G.) - The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story, the mind has managed to construct.
Brilliant mind, accomplished man. Thanks for making me learn to think slow.
A Nobel Laureate, Kahneman partnered with Amos Tversky to develop critical theories (e.g. Prospect Theory) and psychological advances.
Although literally a legend in his field, Professor Kahneman took questions via email. I asked him a question about dementia via his Princeton email and he answered, "I can't believe anyone read the whole book (Thinking: Fast and Slow). Tedious." The book emphasizes that we have "reflexive" thinking for instantaneous decisions (that can save us) and "reflective" thinking that requires more mental work.
Michael Lewis's book The Undoing Project discussed their career with emphasis on Kahneman as Tversky had passed. One chapter is about the NBA's Daryl Morey and how analytics changed basketball.
Celebrate Danny Kahneman life and contributions.
Lagniappe. BOB thread from Coach Tim.
Before weekend 1 of March Madness gets started, let's talk baseline OOB sets or BLOBs. 13 of the top 30 BLOB teams made the NCAA D1 tourney this year. Small sample size, but let's look at the top 10 BLOB teams through 2 rounds. #FastModelMadness24#MarchMadness2024 thread π§΅
Coaching delivers a lot of possibilities. Teach interviewing with maturity and humility. Your answers define you, your team, and your relationships.
In response to winning an award, former player Cecilia posted on social media, "Thank you for the recognition as MVP! Super grateful to have been able to compete in my senior season alongside such great teammates and coaches..."
Dos:
Share credit with teammates and coaches.
Express gratitude for opportunities.
Thank others who have helped you.
Compliment the opposing team. "We were fortunate to beat a great program."
Provide thoughtful analysis when appropriate. "We were able to comeback by staying focused and together."
Don'ts
Never criticize teammates or coaches.
Avoid "attribution bias," i.e. blaming conditions or the officials.
Never make excuses.
A few things to keep in mind:
1) Bring the best version of yourself at all times.
2) Be positive.
3) It is not going to be your day every day.
4) The opposing team is doing their best, too.
5) You don't have to be perfect. Each interview is a chance to get better.
Lagniappe.
Someone might ask, "who's the best teammate you ever had?" You might answer, "that's a great question. I've been fortunate to play with so many great players and great teammates."
Lagniappe 2.
Tom Crean (@TomCrean) said, "Mental toughness is going from frustrated to focused. Mental toughness is going from angry to aware. Mental toughness is going from complaining to competitive."
"Playing with force" manifests both physical and mental toughness. Bad teams and good teams on bad nights find ways to lose by not "playing harder for longer."
Watch any game and list the ways teams fail to play with force. Forceful play includes both the physical and the mental. The list reflects common issues but is not all-inclusive by far.
Lack of ball containment - playing off, playing soft, fouling
Bad fouling - perimeter shots, poor technique, bailout fouls
Allowing scorers easy access to the ball
No talk
Poor blockouts
Standing around on offense
Lack of setting up cuts or urgent cutting
"Settling" by not attacking the basket
Bailing out against contact
Low "compete level" on 50-50 balls and rebounding
Coaches want teams to reflect their philosophy and the way they played. "Giving away" games through poor decisions, poor possessions, or low effort foster frustration.
Lack of force includes the dreaded 3 S's - selfishness, softness, and sloth (laziness).
Lagniappe. Reid Ouse shares drills. Against pressure, screens and back cuts offer relief.
Back cuts are an excellent way to relieve pressure.
Setup: π 2 lines - player in the right slot starts w/out a ball π Left slot passes to right slot & they drive π Cutter pulls behind π Hit the back cut & then pop for shot π Left slot swings the ball & the drill restarts pic.twitter.com/10ejg5r41a
Pete Carroll said, "It's about being the very best you can be. Nothing else matters as long as you're working and striving to be your best. Always compete. It's truly that simple."
Kata is a Japanese word (ε or ε½’) meaning "form" - Wikipedia
“This is a matter of practice related to what martial artists call kata — a set pattern that rewards repetition with excellence.“ - Sam Sifton, NYT
"The enemy of good is better." Form begets function, but "perfect form" is usually illusory. Better approaches outshine perfect. Winning is hard and excellent coaches and teams develop SYSTEMS to improve performance.
1. “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win. Everyone wants to win but not everyone wants to prepare to win." - Bobby Knight
How many young players fully commit to preparation?
2. Make maximal effort your brand. "Never cheat the drill."
3. "Obsess the product." That means "every day is player development day," in all facets. Build skill and athleticism.
4. See more. Newell's priority "see the game," requires study of great players, coaches, and video.
Learn from Kobe. Be granular (detailed).
Even great players aren't perfect. Learn from others' excellence and their mistakes, too.
Coach Nick shares his approach.
Scout with Bryan shares numerous insights.
5. Watch the game analytically.
See the big picture and the symmetry. What's the spacing and what's the defensive proximity (how close are they)?
Don't just be a ball watcher. What happens away from the ball?
Study 'common' actions - pick-and-roll, plays with cutting, downscreen DHO (Chicago/Zoom action), ram screens (downscreen into ball screen), complex screening (staggers, sequential screens, backscreen the roller - Spain action). The more you 'watch', the more you'll see.
In key situations, imagine what you'd do as a player or coach.
Watch your own video. What do you without and with the ball? How do you impact winning?
Systems to Promote Winning:
Have the will to prepare to win.
Make maximal effort your brand.
"Obsess the product."
Study the game 'professionally'.
Watch the game analytically.
Lagniappe. Learn to play more consistently off two feet.
“Catch on two, land on two”
A simple, fundamental drill that makes a HUGE impact in games by preventing needless traveling.
First weekend X's and O's thread. Using this to post diagrams from some of the best sets from the first week of March Madness. Will have clips attached to all too.
Duquesne upsets the offensive darling of men's basketball, BYU. Limiting them to 67 pts, 8-3pt baskets, and 38% from the field. Here's how Duquesne's defense pulled off the upset. A thread... pic.twitter.com/V58UAsv7Xv
Coach Geno Auriemma says that players must understand that coaching comes from the message, "I want you to be better." Telling a player "that's a lousy shot," doesn't mean you're a bad player. The lesson teaches "that type of shot doesn't help you or us be better."
Some see Barkley as an oversized kid, a clown. That's so far from the truth.
Absolute GOLD here from Charles Barkley ππ
Plays that are run for you are not always mean’t for you to score. They are for mean’t for the team to score. Be a playmaker within the offense π― pic.twitter.com/l1CnZf8JJw
Jay Bilas's words should echo in our players' heads, "It's not your shot, it's our shot."
Remind ourselves Newell's wisdom, "teach players to see the game." When they do that, gladly be illuminated in their reflected light.
Lagniappe. Show up.
Convenience is about showing up when you feel like it, when you’re told to, when you’re motivated to.
Commitment is about showing up when you don’t feel like it, when it isn’t convenient, because it’s a habit, , because you care, because it’s who you are.
Had an email from a parent whose son unfortunately did not make one of our 3 High School teams this week. She said her son said the tryouts were fair and run very well. She stated after our player/coach meeting her son now knows what he needs to work on to give him a better…
Jay Wright said, "Your attitude is your greatest characteristic. You don't control your intelligence, your size, or your God-given talents. What you do control, though, is your attitude. We can all have a positive attitude."
Find ways to deliver messages. Tolstoy uses 'literary constructs' to comment on society. Why not us?
Imagine hosting a dinner party to stimulate conversation, an opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall.
Whom should we invite? Do we want likes or diversity by age, gender, geography, sport? I've settled on Jack Clark, Dawn Staley, Geno Auriemma, and Jerod Mayo.
We're serving cheddar broccoli soup, roasted squash and onions, pan fried wild salmon, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
Host: "Great to have you here. It's your story. What makes you tick? Off you go." (Quotes come from a variety of sources)
Clark (Cal Rugby coach): "Grateful for Everything, Entitled to Nothing."
Staley (South Carolina women's basketball coach) : "A lot of people notice when you succeed, but they don't see what it takes to get there."
Auriemma (UCONN women's basketball coach): "I demand sometimes more than they can give. But I don't know what that is until I find out you can't give it."
Clark: "'I know what it's like to lose, and I refuse to feel it again.' What each of you chooses to do with these scars will define you as a person."
Mayo (New England Patriots coach): “What I will say is the more I think about the lessons I’ve taken...hard work works — hard work works and that’s what we’re all about.”
Staley: "I like the challenge of getting players to rise to certain levels, but that's the easy part. The biggest challenge is to get them to believe in what we're doing. They have to understand that it's O.K. to have good days and bad days."
Host: "Where do you see the challenges?"
Clark: "we don't give scholarships, and everything we have we've built ourselves."
Auriemma: "As a head coach you're probably only as good as your players and your assistants."
Mayo: “I want people around me that are going to question my ideas and the way we have done things in the past. “I don’t want to teach them what to think. I want to teach them how to think."
Staley: "I think most of the players who have jumped from playing to coaching have their egos in check. You played the game at a high level and that brings instant respect, but what you do to maintain that credibility is the key."
Clark: “We have a lot to work on.”
Host: "What keeps you going?"
Staley: "There were too many instances...we weren't ourselves. We didn't have enough fight. We had too many lapses to compete."
Auriemma: "I've never lost sight of the fact that it is just a game—it is a bunch of people trying to get together to accomplish something that individually you can't do by yourself."
Clark: "We are trying to uphold everyone's expectations of us. The campus has a mantra concerning "comprehensive excellence" and there is an expectation we're chasing excellence in everything we do. We accept this responsibility."
Host: "What are your thoughts on leadership?"
Mayo: "“As far as developing leaders, I think of it more as gardening,” Mayo said. “Gardeners, they don’t really grow anything. They just make sure the soil is right, they grab the weeds out of there, they water it every day. Whatever grows, grows."
Auriemma: "This time of year, it's the individual player that makes the difference.The things you do as a program get you to this point. Then individuals decide the outcome of the games."
Clark: "I believe in chain of command...I don't necessarily believe that everyone can't be a leader...ability to make those around me better and more productive."
Staley: "I think I’m very consistent with who I am. As a young person, I didn’t really talk. I was the youngest of five kids, so I sat back and observed. Once I got older, I started figuring out the things that have to be said. I govern my life, being a leader, a coach, a colleague, on how something looks, feels and sounds. If something looks or sounds or feels wrong, I’m going to say something."
What did their conversation teach us?
Be yourself.
Lead.
Make others better.
Lagniappe. What is your standard?
Damian Lillard is the standard for hard work
This was him during his pre draft in 2012
Sprints directly leading to pick and roll shooting is a great way to make shots when you are tired
