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Friday, September 19, 2025

Basketball Lessons from "Inverting the Pyramid"

Adapt lessons from Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid - a classic history of soccer tactics. Learning across domains, find principles about space, systems, and evolution to apply on the hardwood. Here are seven takeaways coaches can use.

1. Systems Evolve With Constraints

Soccer formations changed — from the old 2-3-5 to the W-M, to 4-4-2, and finally modern pressing systems — because of rule changes, player skill, and competitive pressure.

Basketball parallel: The game shifted with the shot clock, the three-point line, and rule changes about hand-checking and freedom of movement. Create and prevent scoring chances. Coaches who adapt thrive. Coaches who don’t get left behind.

2. Space is Currency

Wilson shows that formations are less about numbers and more about where players occupy the field. Controlling and exploiting space decides games.

Basketball parallel: Offense isn’t just about plays, it’s about spacing. A five-out attack or spread pick-and-roll stretches the floor, just as collapsing defense shrinks it. Good basketball takes advantage of geometry.

3. Transition Decides Games

Great soccer teams punish opponents in transition — counterattacks when the defense is stretched or unbalanced.

Basketball parallel: The fast break is basketball’s counterattack. Transition offense produces high-percentage shots; transition defense separates disciplined teams from careless ones. Undisciplined teams can surrender a lot of points in transition. 

4. Balance Between Individual Brilliance and Collective Structure

Soccer always wrestled with system versus star — the Dutch pressing machine versus a genius like Argentina's Maradona.

Basketball parallel: The same question faces every coach. Do you feature your superstar, or build a balanced offense? The best teams — think the Warriors with Steph Curry or UConn women under Geno Auriemma — blend structure with freedom.

5. Pressing = Pressure Defense

Soccer pressing systems (high press, mid-block, low block) are about applying pressure in the right moments.

Basketball parallel: Pressure defenses — full-court press, 2-2-1, half-court traps — follow the same logic. You calculate risk, reward, and fatigue, deciding when pressure flips the game’s tempo.

6. “Inverting the Pyramid” 

The book’s title comes from shifting soccer’s attacking shape — fewer forwards, more balance, more build-up play and transition. 

Basketball parallel: Hoops “inverted the pyramid,” too. The 1990s revolved around post-dominant big men. Today’s game runs through guards, spacing, and the three-point arc. Geometry flipped, but the principle stays the same: tactics evolve with the times.

7. Culture Shapes Tactics

Wilson emphasizes how national identity shaped soccer — Brazilian flair, Italian defense, Dutch "total football."

Basketball parallel: Programs carry their own DNA. Some lean defense-first identity. Others run-and-gun. Some are blue-collar, others fast-paced. A coach’s job isn’t just to draw plays — it’s to shape a culture that players believe in.

Inverting the Pyramid teaches us that tactics are dynamic. They evolve, reflect culture, and reward adaptability. Basketball may be played on hardwood instead of grass, but jey lessons are the same: value space, master transition, balance system and star, and above all — keep evolving. 

Lagniappe. Narrow the gap between potential and performance. 

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