Total Pageviews

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Basketball - The "Junk Drawer"


Feedspot Top 100

Everyone has a "junk drawer." Tape, stamps, a ruler, elastic bands, local phonebooks, and other flotsam inhabit the universal storage space.

Packing tape and bread ties - we need them when we need them. 

That doesn't make either the drawer or its contents useless. Who and what reside in our metaphorical basketball "junk drawer?"

Consider a "bad team." Bad teams show occasional good plays and illustrate great video examples of bad play. Video study of bad play, ours and others', sheds light on 'what not to do'. A few examples:

  • Lack of communication
  • Flawed defensive stance and positioning - six feet under, upright, hands out (Snowman Defense), flat-footed
  • Weak or non-existent blockouts
  • Dribbling or passing into traffic ("win in space")
  • Bad footwork leading to violations and lack of separation
  • Failed conversion and transition defense
  • Crosscourt passes into enemy hands
  • Passes to ankles and hands of stone
No coach wants his team used as negative examples. This reminds me of Jim Bouton's sequel to Ball Four, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally."

There's a saying, "One bad play, bad play; two bad plays, bad player; three bad plays, bad coaching." That's a huge oversimplification - chicken soup from chicken feathers thinking.   

The junk draw contains fundamentals. Every tool can be wielded well or carelessly. "Cutting" lives in too many junk drawers. Urgent cutting is heaven sent and lazy cutting is the idle hands devil's work. 

"Everybody knows that." What coach doesn't lament the player looking at the bench saying, "I know, I know." If you know, then stop doing it. Junk drawer.

The junk drawer holds myriads of antiquated drills and seldom-used 'actions' that deserve better. We extinguished hamburger drills that don't instill toughness, only exposing players to injury. Once we brought "Tiger" out of the junk draw. 


It worked six decades ago and still does. 

It's cousin, LION, helped win us a game with the slip on the cross screen.
 

Some items don't belong in the junk drawer. Watch a high school game without pick-and-roll or complex screening (Iverson, Spain, screen-the-screener) and marvel at 'what you don't see'. 

What's in your junk drawer that belongs or what isn’t and should be? 

Lagniappe. Basketball is "a game of ____ " (mismatches) 

Lagniappe 2. "Casual failure" or causal failure? 

Lagniappe 3. Consistency is underrated. 

 

Posted by at