“It’s not really just as much as it's what I'm asking you to do, it's what the environment is asking you to do,” Mazzulla continued. “It’s what the game is asking you to do in the game today … and if and when that changes because of how the game is going, how quickly can you adjust to that? - John Karalis at BSJ
Can you handle the truth about winning? If we're not winning, what can we do differently. Good players adjust to different systems and make “winning plays.”
1. It’s first about the talent. You need good players on an upward trajectory and "every day is player development day."
2. Teamwork means global unselfishness. Wooden said, "Happiness begins where selfishness ends."
3. Synchrony mean being on the same page. An unselfish team can struggle by not being on the same page.
4. Leadership must arise from players in addition to coaches. Players have to be able to mentor each other and learn to appreciate the success of teammates.
5. Excellent coaches add value, get buy-in, and excel in connection and communication. If parents are always calling for every coach's head, then maybe it's not the coach.
6. Culture includes everything in the ecosystem - positivity, individual and team development, system development, playing time, roles of assistant coaches, relationships from top down and bottom up.
7. Health matters. Sometimes illness or injury sinks the talent.
8. Luck - the ball bounces the right way, a call goes our way. You can’t control everything and sometimes it goes against you.
9. Limiting mistakes (good teams find ways to win; bad teams find ways to give games away). Good teams make better decisions.
10. “Semantics” a.k.a. some antics. Avoid off court character failures - academics, substance abuse, relationship problems.
It’s not really just as mCan you handle the truth about winning in basketball? It’s not about ego or superior intelligence.
"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." - Charlie Munger, former Buffett partner
Flawed thinking comes in a lot of forms - physical, emotional, financial, reputational, etc.
Sport informs many examples of flawed decision-making. The Celtics got Bill Russell by getting Ice Capades shows for the Rochester Royals ownership. Then they traded Ed Macauley and the rights to Cliff Hagan to St. Louis for the second draft pick. The rest is history, eleven championships in thirteen years.
Within our process where does flawed thinking arise most?
Without scouting being overly aggressive in extended defense.
Poor shot selection. Everyone is not a three-point shooter.
Turnovers. Turnovers are zero percent possessions.
Excessive fouling, turning bad shots and perimeter shots into easy shots.
Help without rotation.
How can one avoid each?
Don't be in a rush to extend defenses until seeing an opponent.
Teach shot selection with shot charts and video and perform "range testing" to see where players cannot succeed.
Take care of the ball by avoiding driving or passing into traffic. Pass away from defenders, and don't "pass through hands."
"Fouling negates hustle." Don't reach in, don't slap down. Show video of excessive fouling or flawed decisions that caused fouls.
Practice "live shell" to reinforce loading to the ball and rotation.
Lagniappe. "Tell me how this behavior is going to help you accomplish the goals that you have."
Driving a country road, a coach saw a sign "Talking Dog $25." Curious, he asks the owner, can I talk with him? He asks the dog, "can you tell me your story?" "Sure. Early on, my master learned I had the gift of speech. Naturally, he sent me to the CIA. I could go where other operators couldn't. I was legendary. But I got old, so they retired me." The coach said, "That's incredible. You're selling him for nothing? The owner said, "he's such a liar. He never did any of that."
Coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "Basketball is about making plays, not running plays."
A weekend travel tournament coach sounded as though he were running a bingo parlor, calling out plays each trip down the floor.
"B-17"
"I-10"
"O-12"
What's the developmental coach's role, teaching basketball knowledge that transfers to anything from a pickup game to advanced levels, or running play after play (mostly to set up his daughter's shots)?
What minimum offensive curriculum belongs in a player's offensive skill portfolio? There's ample room for disagreement; figure out your core.
Right and left handed layups (either foot from either side of the basket)
Shoot off the catch, off the shot fake.
Shooting off the dribble (either right or left)
Attack to separate (e.g. shot fake, jab/rip into drive or shot)
Attack on the run off the catch (stampede)
Back to basket attack (faceup) with front or reverse pivot
Separation dribble continuation (speed, hesi, in-and-out), change of direction (crossover, behind the back, spin, between the legs) and combinations (e.g. hesi-cross) - good players don't need all
Coach Wooden preached, "Little things make big things happen." Create sustainable competitive advantage with a "performance-focused, feedback-rich" approach.
We make our habits and our habits make us. For example:
Did I speak greatness?
Did I show empathy to my team?
Was I fully prepared for practice - mentally and physically?
Did I bring energy?
Did my coaching present "the best version of myself?"
Reflecting on our performance closes the "feedback loop" of performance.
None of these ideas are new or radical. In "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations," Ryan Holiday shares from the Roman statesman and author’s Seneca.
"What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve? At the beginning or end of each day, the Stoic sits down with his journal and reviews: what he did, what he thought, what could be improved. It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity and not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is also a form of practicing them."
Every coach preaches daily improvement, the "1 Percent Better" approach because we understand the exponential growth equation.
Here’s the expanded 365-day compounding graph with both curves.
What the math says
1% better each day:
1.01365≈37.8
→ Nearly 38× improvement over a year.
1% worse each day:
0.99365≈0.03
→ You’re left with about 3% of where you started.
Leverage the power of compounding to improve whatever our domain - coaching, writing, teaching, sharing.
Lagniappe. Growing culture demands intent.
Elite cultures don't happen on accident.
Daniel Coyle (@DanielCoyle) studied some of the best cultures - Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and Navy SEALs to figure out what actually works.
"An overabundance of choice, the fear of making a suboptimal decision, and the potential for lingering regret following missed opportunities can leave people unhappy."from "Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models" by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann (Original quote from Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice.
"Woulda, shoulda, coulda." As Jim Rohn remarked, "we must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret."
Miguel Ruiz's fourth agreement reads "Always do your best." Although our best may not be our best ever or 'the best' in absolute terms, our best mitigates against regret.
Coach John Wooden took a practical approach, "Regret is valuable only when it becomes a lesson." A problem arises in that the magnitude of regret rises in big games, especially in the deciding moments. In championship games, a loss leaves no chance for redemption.
Nick Saban said, "Regret is the bill you pay later if you dodge discipline now." That approach seeks buy-in on action today - conditioning, film study, recovery.
Phil Jackson advocated caution about the words we choose, "because words become culture." It's better to lose a game than to lose a player or a team because of unthinking reactions. Jackson understood that mindfulness widens the space between stimulus and reaction.
Overarching lessons
Everyone suffers regret.
Giving our best reduces the chance of regret.
Regret is a consequence of failed preparation.
Benefit from the lessons of regret.
Choose our words carefully.
Lagniappe. The ability to feel joy not jealousy for others' success is a worthwhile skill.
“Those people who can celebrate others’ success live a more stress free, less anxious life” - Jeff Van Gundy
"...the mind is your most formidable weapon." - Jack Carr in "Red Sky Mourning"
“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” - Jody Picoult
Facts are commodities. Search engines and publicly available artificial intelligence share incomprehensible amounts of truths. Can we extract something worthy of stealing and implementing? Use this post as a "thought experiment," asking "what can we do better or differently?"
For example, consider this prompt:
Prompt: What actions in NBA basketball produce the highest points per possession? That could include anything from transition, to pick-and-roll, isolation, combination actions such as Pistol or Zoom, anything?
ChatGPT hallucination:
Which NBA actions produce the highest points per possession?
Exact numbers move year to year and Synergy’s detailed PPP tables are behind a paywall, but across seasons the hierarchy is reasonably consistent: Canis Hoopus+3NBA+3NBA+3
Transition offense
Highest PPP on average.
Anytime you can run off a steal, long rebound, or quick outlet, you’re usually in the 1.2–1.4+ PPP range as a team.
Wide-open threes, dunks, and layups with a scrambled defense.
Pick-and-roll with the ball-handler creating (PnR BH)
When you have an elite creator (Doncic, Curry, SGA types), well-spaced PnR is one of the most efficient half-court actions.
Punishes drop, switch, and blitz differently (pull-ups, pocket passes, skips).
Pick-and-roll with the roll man (PnR Roll Man)
Short rolls and rim dives—especially with shooters spaced—are very high PPP (lob dunks, layups, fouls).
Articles on teams like the Bucks highlight how roll-man PPP can explode when defenses mis-tag or over-blitz. Brew Hoop
These “combo” actions—dribble handoff into PnR, Zoom (pin-down into DHO), Spain (backscreen on the roller)—are essentially ways to supercharge PnR and DHO spacing.
They often track near the top of half-court PPP because they force multiple defensive decisions in one possession.
Spot-up and catch-and-shoot threes
Not an “action” by itself, but the destination of good offense.
Drive-and-kick, paint touches, and ball reversals that generate clean C&S threes are some of the most efficient half-court outcomes.
Isolation
As a primary diet, iso is generally less efficient than PnR and transition.
But elite iso players (your Randle-in-a-hot-season archetype) can post excellent PPP, especially in late-clock and end-game situations. Canis Hoopus
If you’re thinking programmatically:
Build your offense around creating transition and early advantage (pace, stops, outlets).
In the half court, live in PnR / DHO / Zoom-type actions that create paint touches and closeouts.
Use isolation as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer—for your very best creators and in late-clock situations.
Ask the question differently and AI generates different information.
What does transfer?
Across NBA, EuroLeague, and high-level FIBA data, you keep seeing the same hierarchy:
Most efficient: cuts, putbacks, transition advantages, roll-man finishes. ResearchGate+1
Middle: good pick-and-roll with passing, open spot-up threes.
Least efficient overall: post-ups and isolations, especially for average players.
The EuroLeague end-of-game study (1.58 PPP on cuts, 1.33 on putbacks, 0.78–0.98 on post/ISO/spot-up) shows the same ranking we see in NBA Synergy breakdowns and other analyses. ResearchGate+2Basketball Poetry+2
Followup prompt: How applicable is data from the NBA to college or high school basketball?
Followup hallucination:
Short answer: the patterns are very transferable; the exact numbers are not.
What does transfer?
Across NBA, EuroLeague, and high-level FIBA data, you keep seeing the same hierarchy:
Most efficient: cuts, putbacks, transition advantages, roll-man finishes. ResearchGate+1
Middle: good pick-and-roll with passing, open spot-up threes.
Least efficient overall: post-ups and isolations, especially for average players.
The EuroLeague end-of-game study (1.58 PPP on cuts, 1.33 on putbacks, 0.78–0.98 on post/ISO/spot-up) shows the same ranking we see in NBA Synergy breakdowns and other analyses. ResearchGate+2Basketball Poetry+2
That ordering is extremely useful for college and high school coaching:
You want more cutting, screening, advantage creation, offensive rebounding.
You want fewer low-yield, stagnant isos and forced post-ups unless you have a real mismatch.
What doesn’t transfer cleanly?
Absolute efficiency numbers.
HS players miss more layups, throw more bad passes, and aren’t as good from three. So your PPP will be lower everywhere—but the relative ranking stays similar.
Spacing and 3-point volume.
NBA: deeper line, elite spacing, more 5-out, more shooting skill.
HS: lane can be crowded, fewer consistent shooters, so some actions (e.g., certain spread ball-screen looks) won’t generate the same clean reads.
Physicality and rules differences.
FIBA vs NCAA vs NFHS differences (defensive 3 seconds, charge/block interpretations, goaltending, hand-checking) all tweak efficiency.
Talent distribution.
NBA data is about what works when all 10 people on the floor are very good.
In HS/college, one great player can distort the math—if your star gets 1.05 PPP in iso and your other options are 0.7, you might iso more than an NBA team would.
How I’d use it as a coach
Use NBA/FIBA data to prioritize concepts:
Build an offense around advantage → spacing → cut/drive/roll → extra pass → crash.
Track your own PPP by play type in simple form (even if it’s just “points per 100 possessions” on: transition, P&R, post, iso, ATO sets).
Compare your internal rankings, not your raw numbers, to what the big boys find.
In other words: borrow the hierarchy, not the decimals. The shape of the efficiency curve travels; the exact values are league-specific.
Adding value to "our situation" will vary a lot:
- What type of players do we have? Fast, physical, skilled, smart or something far less?
Analogy: "Don't bring a gun to a gunfight if our opponents have a tank."
- What can we teach and they learn? If we have a group limited by fundamental skills, do we focus on upgrading skills or believe "fool's gold" that strategy will overcome our limitations?
Analogy: If we're not the hare, can we upgrade the tortoise?
- What's the competition level? If we have the smallest enrollment and compete with other popular sports in our community, can we create a "paradigm shift" for our program?
Analogy: If we're hopelessly "out-resourced," how can we compete?
Asymmetrical warfare (American Revolution, Vietnam War, cyberwarfare - see below for "Unrestricted Warfare" review:
Unrestricted Warfare, authored by two Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (1999), redefines modern conflict. The authors propose that warfare has evolved beyond traditional battlefields to encompass every domain of national life - economic, political, technological, media, legal, environmental, and psychological spheres. The authors inform that in globalized, interdependent world, "everything is a weapon, and everywhere is the battlefield".
Our task varies with our situation - to leverage advantages to overwhelm inferior opponents or to "level the playing field" with tools available to us.
Sport is not war. The stakes are not life and death. But we can learn from how people think about advantage. There's much to unpack.
In 1999, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote Unrestricted Warfare, a treatise on how weaker powers might confront military superiority. Their “first principle” is blunt: in modern conflict, anything goes -legal, economic, cyber, disinformation, social, and other tools blend together to create advantage.
Through a sports lens, that idea of “unrestricted” competition is unsettling and instructive.
Unrestricted doesn’t mean anything is acceptable. It means the toolkit keeps expanding, and we must choose our boundaries.
The Dark Arts: Advantage Becomes Manipulation
History is full of “unconventional tactics” that push - or blow past -the line:
Overheated visitor locker rooms in the old Boston Garden
“Deflategate”
Sign stealing in baseball and football
Convenient “malfunctions” of visiting team electronics
Attempts to pilfer playbooks
Fire alarms going off at visiting team hotels
“Honeytraps” or gold-digging aimed at professional athletes
Gambling enticements or allegations
All of these share a theme: trying to win by damaging the opponent rather than developing yourself. That may be “unrestricted,” but it is not who we want to be.
Contemporary Basketball: Legal and “Alternative” Levers
Fast forward to modern basketball and you get a broader, more complex environment. Some levers are rules-based and transparent; others live near the edge.
1. Rules-Based Edges
Coaches have long searched for tactical loopholes:
“Take fouls” to stop transition (now restricted in the NBA).
“Hack-a-Shaq” away-from-the-play fouling to exploit poor free throw shooters (limited in the final two minutes of NBA quarters).
These are examples of using the rulebook like a chessboard, until the league adjusts.
2. Financial Arms Race
Money has become a primary battlefield:
Tiered penalties and luxury taxes discourage building “superteams” with unlimited spending.
NIL payments in college sports now resemble free agency. Top players sign seven-figure deals; elite prospects can secure multi-million-dollar packages before playing a college minute.
Under recent legal settlements, schools can directly pay athletes from a capped pool that starts in the tens of millions per year and can grow over time.
Schools without big football footprints can redirect more of that pool to basketball, creating new recruiting centers of gravity (see St. John's in 2025).
Coaching salaries escalate in parallel. Witness the coaching arms race to attract, retain, and develop talent.
The result: some programs compete less on schemes and more on checkbooks.
3. Strategic and Analytical
Many organizations now treat analytics as a full department:
Analytics staffs dissect lineups, actions, and matchups to find hidden edges.
The “descendants” of Bill James and Moneyball have moved from baseball into basketball, football, and beyond.
The best programs blend data with coaching wisdom, not data instead of coaching.
4. Technological
Technology is the most visible - and often most ethically acceptable frontier.
The Gun and other shooting machines have boosted rep volume and charting since the late 1990s.
IntelliGym adapts cognitive training first developed for Israeli Air Force pilots into a “video-game” tool for decision-making and court awareness.
Noah uses overhead sensors and cameras to track arc, depth, and left-right miss on every shot, building a database for shot quality and consistency. Many NBA, WNBA, NCAA, and high school programs rely on it as a feedback system.
Team tracking systems (Second Spectrum, SportVU, Synergy, and others) record players and the ball in multiple dimensions, tagging actions and play types to study efficiency and outcomes. Spacing, cutting, closeouts, ball screens, defensive rotations - everything becomes data.
Used well, these tools reinforce a simple idea: technology should sharpen fundamentals, not replace them.
5. Sensory and Mental Experience
The frontier roars past conventional boundaries.
The Golden State Warriors have used sensory deprivation (float) pods to help players unplug and recover mentally. Steph Curry is often mentioned as a regular user.
Mindfulness training has become mainstream, with Phil Jackson an early advocate and players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James using meditation and breathing as part of their routines.
Some media and rumor circles mention microdosing of mind-altering agents like psilocybin, claiming reduced anxiety or better focus. Evidence is limited, legal status is complicated, and health risks are not fully understood. This is a line credible programs should treat with extreme caution.
The message to athletes: we can and should train the mind - but through safe, legal, and ethical methods: mindfulness, breathing, visualization, reflection, and quality rest.
What Does This Mean?
We live in an era of “unrestricted” competition. Almost anything that is not explicitly banned will be tried somewhere by someone.
But for our program, the question is not, “What can we get away with?”
It is, “What kind of edge can we build that we’re proud of?”
We choose to compete in the quadrant that is:
Legal
Ethical
Healthy
That means:
Master the rules, don't bend them to the breaking point.
Do our homework on analytics and tech, don't chase every gimmick.
Invest in strength, conditioning, sleep, nutrition, and recovery.
Build mental skills with mindfulness, visualization, and honest reflection and relationships.
Refuse shortcuts that rely on cheating, manipulation, or risky substances.
Unrestricted thinking helps us see the full battlefield. Our values decide which weapons we pick up - and which we leave on the ground.
"You can observe a lot by just watching." - Yogi Berra
"Seeing" demands looking for what "just doesn't look right." I don't know the officials, players, or coaches in this game and share principles, mostly JDLR situations.
Winning consistently means 'seeing' what JDLR means, teaching players what to do and what not to do, and following up.
Meaning what? Some examples:
Miscellaneous
On ball pressure
Awareness
Spacing and floor balance
Playing in traffic
Off ball positioning
Urgent cutting
Shot selection
Miscellaneous.
"Feel for the game..." a player in red moves in the lane for six seconds. The officials didn't call it this time, but they may when it decides a game.
On ball defense.
Everything starts with ball pressure.
Awareness.
Backcourt violation with no pressure. Some players will struggle in open space. Know not to get it to players within their skill set.
Spacing and floor balance.
Res ipsa loquitur. (The thing speaks for itself.)
Playing in traffic.
Excellent players "win in space," create separation, and finish. Your parent tells you not to play in the traffic for a reason.
Off ball defense.
Good zone defense looks like man defense with pressure on the ball and being in position to help off the ball. Against a team that wants to shoot threes, the low zone defenders are often hugging the paint.
Urgent cutting.
"Movement kills defense." Defenders are taught to jump to the ball after a pass and urgent cutting sometimes defeats that. "Simple basketball" works.
Shot selection.
Every player should know what a good shot is for themselves and teammates. Some teach "ROB" shots - in range, open, balanced. Others say to "Get 7s" on the 1-9 scale because nothing's guaranteed. A parent told me he watched a high school game where over half the shots hit nothing but glass or air.
It "just doesn't look right" when a team 'airballs' three consecutive shots.
Lagniappe. Signature moves can apply to offense (McHale move, Sikma move, Dream Shake) or defense. Video on the "Sniper Steal"
Years ago, Nike ran their Signature Moves series — short films, breaking down offensive skills.
That idea always stuck with me. Because it showed the details behind the craft.
So over the last couple months, I started my own version — but for defense.
