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Friday, February 21, 2025

Basketball - Ten Ways to Give Your Team a Better Chance to Win

"Everybody wants to go to heaven; nobody wants to die."

Win more with more positive actions and fewer negative ones. The latter is Coach Bob Knight's "Power of Negative Thinking." Part of winning is avoiding giving games away. 

Offense:

1) Take better shots. Hold players accountable with shot charts and video. I think it's preferable to share these individually than as a team. The goal is improvement not embarrassment. Kevin Sivils preached "range testing," where players have to prove they can make shots at a distance. 

2) Pass better. Pete Carril's quote, "the quality of the shot relates to the quality of the pass" applies. Passes to ankles and far off the body put the shooter in an unfavorable position. 

3 x 3 x 3 - usually run for five minutes. This helps conditioning and shooting. Passer calls out player's name to help communication and passes to the shooting pocket.  


Short version (can use as pregame warmup) 

3) Advantage-disadvantage. I can't emphasize this enough. Five versus seven full court, no dribbling, requires pass and cut mentality. When players learn to defeat the press against disadvantage, five versus five becomes advantage. 

4) Pressure free throws. Over fifty years ago we practiced with four sets of ten with a partner, tracking total makes. Partners could say or do anything but not interfere with the shot. It usually took 38 or more to win the day and face off against the coach. 

5) Abandon 'free shooting', another Knight principle. Add constraints like defense and time pressure while working to achieve your personal best (PB). Old video of Steve Alford...

Bonus. Excel in special situations. We finished every practice with 10-15 minutes of special situations three possession games starting with BOB, SLOB, or ATO. 

Defense: 

1) Have clear vision. Teach "one bad shot" or "hard twos." The implication is challenging the shot and blocking out to prevent second chances. 

2) No second shots. Practice five versus five with a coach or manager shooting and everyone blocking out. ONCE in a game, everyone blocked out, the rebound landed in the middle of the lane and one of our guys picked it up. 

3) Commit to ball pressure. Whatever it takes. One coach yelled at the defender, "don't back down." Others say "nose on the ball" or "crawl up into them." Insist on ball pressure in practice. Show defenders video of the on-ball defense you want. And show unsatisfactory video privately.

4) Stop fouling. Bad defenders reach in, slap down, don't move their feet, don't communicate, don't help and recover, and don't take pride in stopping their opponent. Brad Stevens preaches "show your hands" so the officials know that you're avoiding fouling. 

5) Get real. Stop praising mediocrity. Hold players to a higher standard of defense. Again, for individual players, hold a private conversation with another adult present explaining what to work on. I told players that the best defender would always start. Put your minutes where your mouth is. 

Lagniappe. Work on your core strength. 

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Lagniappe 2. "Spacing is offense and offense is spacing." - Chuck Daly 

Lagniappe 3. Practice with purpose.  

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