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Thursday, July 25, 2024
Basketball: Reality Check on Fixable Negatives and Sustainable Positives
It's easy to go overboard with praise after a team wins a title. Understanding the 'why' adds more value.
Obviously, exceptional talent, executing with effort, and playing unselfishly craft success.
Take a granular, local view of our teams and why they succeeded or didn't. Rather than an exhaustive 'laundry list' of factors, simplify to generalize. I'll list three negatives and positives that regularly decide performance and outcomes:
Negatives
1) Transition defense. Bad transition defense gives opponents easy shots, translating to scores and momentum. "Be good at what you do a lot." Every team defends in transition a lot. If a team is poor at transition defense it could reflect poor organization, poor effort, poor awareness, poor coaching or combinations.
2) Live ball turnovers. Live ball turnovers translate into high points per possession for opponents. I don't care if you coach twelve year-olds or professionals, "turnovers kill dreams" and live ball turnovers are knives directed at the heart of your team. The US Olympic team has not taken enough care of the ball during their exhibition schedule.
3) Ball containment. If we can't contain the ball, it forces help with "draw 2" situations, drive and kick, or scramble situations which create advantages for opponents. Athleticism doesn't equate to ball containment, although it helps. Your on-ball defenders need that "dog" mentality which is far easier said than done. Somebody tells me a young player is "great" and they can't defend a statue? They're not as great as some think. There's no DH in basketball. As Bob Knight says, "everybody plays defense."
Positives
1) Player and ball movement. "Movement kills defenses." Movement creates separation and per Pete Carril, "the quality of the pass relates to the quality of the shot." Also, "the ball has energy." Although it doesn't directly appear in the "Four Factors," passing and cutting show up in better effective field goal percentage. Watch a high school game and see a team with four assists total. You don't have to ask who won. Get more assists.
2) Shot selection. Get more and better shots from your best shooters. Don't watch a player shoot eight threes in a half, with her coach father yelling, "nothing but net." Half are airballs. None score. Rein that 'stuff' in. The quickest path to improvement is better shot selection. A high percentage of "shot turnovers" means coaches are allowing bad shooters to take bad shots.
3) Free throws. Free throws are one of the "Four Factors;" make these high EFG% shots. Tom Hellen said, "a team that can't shoot free throws lasts as long in the playoffs as dogs that chase cars." Make more.
The "Pareto Principle" (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity[) states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. - Wikipedia
Pay attention to detail for these vital principles.
Lagniappe. Sleep better, play better.
Athletes with good sleeping habits gain a huge advantage over athletes who have poor sleep hygiene. Sleep = 🔑
On average, in-season student-athletes are getting 6.27 hours of sleep nightly while 8 hours of sleep is recommended.
Lagniappe 2. Better writing means better communication. Teach more than basketball. Gary Provost's book on writing adds value by sharing how everyone can write better.