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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Finding Basketball Edges

Success demands edges. 

  • Academics - organization, focus, spaced repetition, self-testing
  • Poker - understanding odds, game play, 'reading' tells
  • Investing - fundamentals of valuation, technicals, psychology, accumulation, expectancy. US Senators historically dramatically outperform the market because of unique access.  
  • Campaigning - message, opposition research, polling, "ground game" 
  • Invention - imagination, persistence, analogies

What is your edge as a player or a coach? Consider some possibilities:

  • Knowledge 
  • Teaching ability 
  • Player development
  • Game management 
  • Experience 
  • Psychology  
  • Recruiting

Sustainable competitive advantage includes recognizing both edges and what are not. 

Intelligence per se is not an edge. Mentoring is. Lawrence Frank was a student manager at Indiana under Coach Bob Knight. Frank became an NBA head coach. 

People. Players are the ultimate edge with a variety of skills, intensity, work ethic and what Brad Stevens calls competitive character. 

Strategy (includes organization). Excellent players make proper reads as individuals and teams, play with tempo appropriate to score and situation, and have the flexibility to adjust on the fly. 

Technology. Teams and players have access to similar technology including video study, analytics, sport psychology, strength and conditioning. Everyone won't derive the same benefit. It requires self-awareness to identify need areas. Apply "old fashioned" tech like shot charts and turnover counting and trending. 

Operations. Operations means execution, both what and how much we do. Turnovers result from either poor decisions or flawed execution. I watched a college game recently where the team had three consecutive three-point airballs (shot turnovers). If we can't execute, it makes little sense to worry about Xs and Os. But if we can execute, use more hard to defend actions such as pick-and-roll, urgent cutting, and complex screening (screen-the-screener, Iverson actions, Spain action). 

Work ethic and court sense. Play harder for longer. Focus on making teammates better, unselfish play, and aggression to impact winning. 

Lagniappe. How good is our spacing? 

Lagniappe 2. Coach Bob Knight opposed "free shooting." The more competitive that we practice, the more realistic the results. The same goes for ball handling and defending.  

Lagniappe 3. How competitive are our players? Players who play only offense don't have enough competitive character at that point in time. They may develop it but coaches have to demand it. If players don't go to the floor, set poor screens, and never take charges those are all deficiencies in competitive character. 

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