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Sunday, July 7, 2024

Non-Negotiables, "The Bear" and Basketball

Hulu's The Bear isn't solely about food or the restaurant industry. It's about the obsession with excellence and what it does for and to us. 

Carmy ("The Bear") has a passion for food and a need for validation with a Michelin star. The star is his white whale. How is that different from executives, coaches, and players committed to excellence?

To support his dream, Carmy develops a list of non-negotiables. Some read as though from a coaching manual. 


For example: 

1) Less is more. Doing well what we do a lot adds more value than doing a lot of mediocrity. Simplify. 

2) Vibrant collaboration. Shared vision, shared sacrifice, shared results. Great teams are organized, coherent, and always 'on the same page'. 

3) Confidence and compliance. Confidence helps us survive bad moments and bad days. Return to our core state. 

4) Pursuit of excellence. Coach Nick Saban says, "high performing people don't like low performers and low performers don't like high performers." Everyone has to set the bar high. 

5) Details matter. Think back to Jay Bilas's Toughness list. It's all about details.

  • "Get on the floor."
  • "Set up your cut." 
  • "Play so hard your coach has to take you out." 
  • "It's not your shot, it's our shot.
  • "Talk on defense."

6) "Know your shit." Players know our competence both in substance and in style. Don't expect them to cut us slack when we don't measure up. 

Every team needs a list of non-negotiables. It's not enough to have the list but to have team members on board. 

Lagniappe. "It takes what it takes." 

Lagniappe 2. Hurley on Hurley. 

Lagniappe 3. Train speed.  

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Basketball Craft

Don't work at basketball to make the team, to get your name on a roster, to get a uniform. In other words don't work to 'be something" but to "do something." This resonates with other assignments. Finishing the task matters, but make it your best work. That earns the respect of the teacher, but more importantly, it earns self-respect. 

There's a story about a teacher who divided a class into two groups, one to be graded on the best photograph they presented and the other graded on the volume of photographs taken. The results were that the group taking the most photographs also handed in the best photographs.

"The magic is in the work." Malcolm Gladwell made an argument for "10,000 hours," although some have disputed that. The ACHIEVEMENT equation includes both PERFORMANCE and TIME because both matter.

Ben Franklin chose the printing trade despite its long nine year training requirement. He knew that it would take time to master his craft.

Although Van Gogh painted about 900 paintings in his lifetime, he sold only one. Fame came long after his passing.

Recall Hemingway's advice about writing. "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." 

Whatever your trade, invest the time.

If you say this post didn't discuss basketball skill, strategy, athleticism, or resilience, then you missed the message. 

Lagniappe. Some of you read Jay Bilas's Toughness. Bilas's father asked him to change out the contact paper at the bottom of his sister's vanity. It was a sticky mess, difficult to do, and Jay did the job, but not well. When his father came home at 9:00 P.M., he inspected the work and did it over. Young Bilas was humiliated. 

If you don't have the time to do something right now, when will you have the time to do it right?  

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Saturday, July 6, 2024

Basketball: Mazzulla-ball Making Winning Plays

Joe Mazzulla wants mathematical edges. Coaches work to refine and redefine our craft. Promote the message "possessions and possession." That means get more possessions and end possessions well. This is as close to Holy Grail stuff as exists. 

Where do more possessions arise? 

Offense: 

1) Offensive rebounds - anticipation and aggressiveness

2) Fewer turnovers ("the ball is gold")

3) No "shot turnovers" (bad shots = turnover)

4) Drawing fouls (leads to free throws - better shots)

5) Technical fouls

6) Situational awareness - two for ones at the end of quarters can lead to major +/- swings 

Defense

1) Better technique - ball pressure and containment

2) Steals 

3) Defensive rebounds are ours

4) Forced turnovers and violations 

5) Charges taken

6) Held balls forced 

Miscellaneous

50-50 balls won... there is no such thing...it's our ball. 

Where does a better possession arise? Find "possession enders," guys that get scores and assists. 

1) Open shots via passing. "The quality of the pass leads directly to the quality of the shot." - Pete Carril 

2) Higher points per possession plays - pass and cut, transition, live ball turnovers 

3) Don't settle for a bad shot. In the State Tournament, pre-shot clock, in 1973 we faced an Andover team that had won seventeen consecutive games. Our first possession included 22 passes until we got a wide open 15 footer for two. For the game, we shot 23-42 and won easily 58-38. 

4) Better shots for better shooters in better spots

5) Dominate special situations - BOBs, SLOBs, ATOs (you're sick of hearing about finishing practice - 15 minutes - with three possession games starting with BOBs, SLOBs, ATOs). 

None of this is rocket science. Put good and bad teams under the microscope. Bad teams do bad things - rebound poorly, turn over the ball, blow defensive assignments, don't stop the ball in transition, take bad shots and shoot poorly, foul relentlessly. Who has ownership for bad basketball? 

Lagniappe. 4 levels of training - skill, strategy, physicality, psychology. Level 3 - physicality. 

Lagniappe 2. Level 2. Player and ball movement.  

Lagniappe 3. Analogy power, external cues.  

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Friday, July 5, 2024

Basketball - The Ultimate Coaches Career Manual

My copy of The Ultimate Coaches Career Manual isn’t dog-eared or heavily worn. But I refer to it now and then for ideas. Thousands of coaches weigh in with their core principles.

Here's an example: Kathy Delaney-Smith

  • Be able to communicate. Be a good listener. Give positive feedback as well as criticism - both are  very important and should be done consistently.
  • Train minds as much as bodies. 
  • Have fun and make sure your athletes have fun. Find out what fun means to your specific group.
  • Have thick skin and avoid the tendency to defend yourself. 
  • Listen and learn. 

I offer five with the caveat that I believe the game is for the players. Mom would say, “who died and made you king?,” so I know my words aren't going into space on the next iteration of Voyager.

  • Truth. Help players embrace the truth about the game, the team, and themselves. 
  • Transparency. Coaching girls, I emphasized total transparency to promote trust and integrity. Parents were welcome at practice, pre- and post-game conferences. Few attended. 
  • Teaching. Teach the game - skill, strategy, physicality, and resilience. Teach respect for others including officials and teach sportsmanship. 
  • Simplicity. Keep it simple. Find ways to get quality shots using spacing, cutting and passing, and finishing. Disallow easy scoring chances for opponents.  
  • Culture. "It takes what it takes." Teamwork, improvement, and accountability are habits. Progress follows. 

Basketball has lost popularity for young people, especially girls who have migrated to volleyball and lacrosse. As coaches, we own some of that. Perhaps the culture of personality will change that.

How can we promote our love of the game, its rich tradition and evolution? Always be learning. 

Summary: Coaching Principles

  • Truth
  • Transparency
  • Teaching
  • Simplicity
  • Culture

Lagniappe. "The ball has energy." 

Lagniappe 2. Vision, decision, execution.  

Lagniappe 3.  Duke 200 Shooting. 

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Thursday, July 4, 2024

Basketball: All's Well That Inspires Herb Welling?

Herb Welling from the Facebook Group Herb on Hoops shared this Robert Fulghum piece from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.


The serious challenge, can we do something similar, a single page of basketball truths? Ideally, apply parallel construction. This is an initial attempt. 

"Basketball is sharing." Sportsmanship matters. "Foul for profit."

Limit mistakes, physical and mental. Take care of the ball. 

Leave the gym in better condition than you found it. 

Your legacy matters. "Leave the jersey in a better place." (Legacy)

Take care of yourself - sleep, nutrition, hydration, exercise, recovery.

Find a mentor, pay attention, and always be coachable. 

Seek balance among family, work, and sport. Find joy in your teammates and be happy for their success (Mudita).

"Play hard, play smart, and play together." Have fun. 

Learn every day. Create edges with space. "The ball has energy." Players and ball move. Execute in the scoring moment at the rim, in the midrange, and beyond the arc. 

"The magic is in the work." 

Be positive and speak greatness.

Be easy to play with and hard to play against. Good defenders pressure and contain the ball, help and recover, challenge shots without fouling, and end possessions with defensive rebounds. 

"No tree grows to the sky." What goes around comes around as the circle of basketball life is real. Today you're the windshield, tomorrow the bug. Karma is real.  

Basketball lessons are open source and the only 'secret sauce' is work. 

Everyone goes under the microscope, gets subjected to pressure, and takes criticism. When we're lucky or blessed, we do it with people we love and who love us. 

Lagniappe. "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal." - Picasso  Finish stronger off two. 

Lagniappe 2. Take care not to travel. 

Lagniappe 3. Play a lot with plenty of decision-making and touches. 





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Basketball: Dinner Table Conversations

My wife tells me that families who eat dinner together regularly enjoy more harmony. Once again, she's right...and more. Basketball families sometimes get cheated out of family meals. 

From Brave AI: What is the value of families eating dinner together?

Eating dinner together as a family has numerous benefits for both children and parents. Some of the values of families eating dinner together include:

  • Improved Communication: Sharing a meal together allows family members to interact and communicate with each other, promoting stronger relationships and bonding.
  • Better Nutrition: Eating together tends to promote more sensible eating habits, which can lead to better nutrition and weight management.
  • Stress Reduction: Family meals can help reduce stress and promote a sense of calm, as shared experiences and conversations can help alleviate daily worries.
  • Academic Performance: Research suggests that children who have regular family dinners have better grades, better vocabularies, and better behavior.
  • Healthier Habits: Family meals can help children develop healthier habits, such as eating a balanced diet, reducing the risk of substance misuse, and practicing good hygiene.
  • Increased Self-Esteem: Sharing meals together can boost children’s self-esteem, as they feel valued and included in family activities.
  • Therapeutic Insights: Family dinners can provide valuable insights for therapists, helping them understand family dynamics and develop more effective treatment plans.
  • Less Stress: A 2022 survey by the American Heart Association found that 91% of parents reported that their families were significantly less stressed when they ate meals together regularly.

Family dinners in our childhood often had a 'quiz show' quality. What did you learn in school today? Did you see "this or that" in the news?

Sara Blakely's father asked the children weekly, "what have you failed at this week?" They became less risk averse, capable of asking how to do better. Blakely leveraged risk into becoming a billionaire as Spanx founder and CEO.  

There wasn't any Google. We heard, "look it up." That meant the library, a vast storehouse of knowledge. That inspires intellectual humility and curiosity, the subject of this piece.

Excerpt: "What are the hallmarks of learning cultures? They value intellectual humility and curiosity. They put understanding above getting a top grade, feeling comfortable, or looking smart. 

In the research study, teachers who created learning cultures were more likely to have students who, at the end of the school year, could admit what they didn’t know—they grew in intellectual humility. And the effects lasted beyond that year and into the next. This means that learning cultures didn’t just change students in the moment—they changed them in the long run."

Dinner table conversations taught us to ask why? Metacognition... thinking about thinking...ask 'why?'. When a player struggles to learn, can we simplify, teach better, or find out if they have a learning disability...ADD or dyslexia? We've all had both. 

Dinner table talk shared a learning culture and a mandate for curiosity. When basketball problems arose, it was natural to put the program under the microscope without shame or blame. Easy answers might have been more minutes for the best players, not always acceptable in the developmental setting where parents pay for programs. 

What wasn't okay was applying pressure to children to get higher grades or score more points. "Do your best" was the best advice. 

Lagniappe. The why.  

Lagniappe 2. Sometimes the advice should be, "try easier. Slow down."  

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Read. Read. Read.

Read. 25 percent of Americans never read a book. Sure, some work two or three jobs to get by. Readers separate themselves from 'the pack'. Readers become leaders. 

I've read five of the nine titles on this list. Which is not to say that I'd recommend any for non-basketball folks. If I had to pick two, I'd pick "Wooden" and "The Smart Take from the Strong." 

A few thoughts (not necessarily mine):

1) Better to read a great book twice than ten bad books.

2) Abandon a bad book (unless it's an assignment).

3) "Every book is about 'someone searching for something'.

4) A popular book might not be well-written.

5) Director Werner Herzog requires all his students to read J.A. Baker's The Peregrine. “Work like a bird. The falcon spend most of its days in a meditative preparations for brief and intense period of activity. Instead of using your time to chase after myths about, immerse yourself in the context of what you hope to understand.”

Perhaps the three best books I've ever read are:

Boys in the Boat by Dan Brown

“All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were, in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.”

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

“Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we’re going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don’t defeat death, they come to terms with it.”

In These Girls Hope Is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais 

"We didn't get the encouragement we give you boys. If you were a girl and you liked sports, you could be a cheerleader.”

Why were they the best? They told great stories with wonderful prose. As great as these books were, if you had to read one book that you can finish in a day, I suggest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, an epic story about the struggle between man and nature. 

What does any of this have to do with us? Everything. These books inform characters with the inner strength to achieve and survive. They're worth the struggle to become more than you ever dreamt we could be.  

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Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Basketball: Get More from Basketball Practice

Economics is the study of the allocation of limited resources. Practice is the ultimate limited resource. Get more from practice. 

1) Cross the red line. It starts with attitude. Urban Meyer demanded that players be fired up and ready to go when they crossed the line onto the field. Players should be stretched out and mentally ready to go when practice starts. 

2) Run practice at a high tempo. Create 'efficiency expectations'. That gets back to Brian McCormick's no lines, laps, or lectures.

3) Reduce transition time. "Basketball is a sprinting game." Sprint from activity to activity. 

4) Condition within drills. Here are some of my favorite drills (not all are conditioning). In the "Lagniappe" in this link I share a drill we call "Racehorse," although we use only two passers per side and run it harder (in my opinion) 

5) Have your unique language. If I say Kentucky Layups or 3 by 3 by 3, the girls know what is expected. 

I believe in conditioning with a ball in your hand. The 3 by 3 by 3 shooting drill, tracking makes over five minutes does that. 

6) Make everything serve development and winning. If it isn't making players better or the team more competitive "bin it." Don't continue with drills or activities "because that's how we've always done it." 

7) Allocate more practice time to what matters. Shooting and game play (scrimmage) deserve more time in my opinion. I include the O-D-O (offense-defense-offense) three possession games in that framework. We practiced special situations at the end of every practice and dominated them in games. An official approached me after a game saying, "three time outs with three ATO hoops for eighth graders is special." 

8) Share relentlessly and be curious. Coaching is a giving profession. Share your best ideas with other coaches and ask them for their best ideas. I was on vacation years ago in Turks and had a great convo with high school coach from Indiana. 

Lagniappe. Here's good stuff from Chris Oliver: 

Lagniappe 2. Great advice from Steph Curry. 

Lagniappe 3. Say thank you. I appreciate all the feedback and advice from other coaches and other sources. I got a call recently from a patient with advanced cancer who thanked me for all the care and caring over decades. He explained he was calling to say, "goodbye" as he knew his time was short...

 

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Basketball: Bambi Might Be a Starting Point

Coaches believe in the alchemy of coaching. As Dawn Staley shared in her "Playbook" episode on Netflix, it's putting together pieces of a puzzle. 


Coaching isn't primarily Xs and Os and game management. The hard work comes long before that with roster management, player development, team development, strength and conditioning, psychology and more. Anyone who thinks, "any idiot with a whistle can coach," has dismissed every coach everywhere.

This is not a "smartest guy in the room" business. There's no prize for having the most basketball knowledge, nor should there be. Competence spreads across many domains including the ones listed above.

Here's a quote from Demarcus Covington, the Patriots new defensive coordinator via Boston Sports Journal, "I think, every day, trying to make sure that I do everything I need to do to make us successful, knowing that everything is not going to be perfect. So, it really is just learning from day to day. I'm making sure I don't make the same mistake twice. ...  I don't have all the answers. But I'm going to make sure I find out the right answer if I don't."

Break it down:

  • Self-reflection on process
  • Goal setting for team success
  • Knowing obstacles will arise 
  • Learning from mistakes 
  • Staying humble
  • Seeking the truth
Back to the Bambi analogy. Coaches seek transformation. 


We don't want "Bambi" on the floor in the big moments. Helping grow "Kiara" into "The Lion King" is our mission, our conviction. It happens a lot less often than we want and it takes a lot of inputs.  

Lagniappe. Self-control. 
Lagniappe 2. Good teams find ways to attack drop coverage. 
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Monday, July 1, 2024

Basketball: Breaking Down a Breakdown Video


"Share something great." 

Sometimes a video is so insightful it needs both viewing and dissection to share widely.

Introduction: Joe Mazzulla explains how West Liberty dominated with offensive rebounding, few turnovers, earning free throws, and shooting the right shots. 

0:35 High IQ veterans outsmarted their opponents. 

1:00 A switch everything team, the Celtics kept Porzingis out of the PnR by "preswitching" Tatum onto the center and then switching him onto Doncic. That shuts off the lob game and keeps Porzingis available near the rim. 

2:00 In addition to 'preswitching' they sometimes doubled Doncic and pressured him into turnovers. The 1.25 points/possession lob game against Minnesota was gone. 

2:30 The Celtics held Dallas to 0.68 points/play on their roll game. 

2:55 Holiday switches to cover the corner 3 shooter allowing Porzingis to help in the paint. 

3:20 The Celtics "concede" some above the break threes by staying out of scramble situations. 


The Celtics held Dallas to 6 percent corner 3 attempts, about 40 percent of what Dallas had the prior series. 

4:10 Dallas has the backdoor and Horford immediately steps up to deny a layup. 

4:25 In a "Draw 2" situation, Holiday comes and White switches to take away the corner 3. 

4:57 Scouting helped players stay home against Doncic upfakes at the rim. 

5:20 Disciplined defense resulted in Doncic drawing fewer fouls than in any of eight prior playoff series. 

6:10 They try to foul early in a possession (ahead by six) to prevent a pair of threes (two possessions) from tying. 

6:25 The Celtics had a guard in the dunker spot meaning that smaller defenders end up in rim protection. 

6:45 When Dallas started overhelping the middle, the Celtics allowed the help to come, then reversed the ball and got Dallas into scramble mode. 

7:55 The old adage of the ball moves faster than the player pays the Celtics a corner 3. 

8:15 Boston gets Lively to switch onto Tatum, who drives and kicks when Dallas helps (a little) off the corner 3. 

8:50 The Celtics "Screen Your Own" to open space for shooters. 

9:05 Boston also had Holiday slip high screens setting up Holiday drives or short roll passes out of the middle. 

The overarching lessons are that winning blended talent and strategy, not just "rolling the balls out." 

Lagniappe. Dean Smith understood that shot distribution shouldn't be equal. 

Lagniappe 2. This is incredibly important, especially for high school. Players who don't execute at high levels in the half court will often generate much higher points per possession in transition. Working to get transition in as many as thirty percent of possessions gets edges.  

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