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Saturday, December 13, 2025

Basketball - Under the Magnifying Glass - What Do You See?

“You are what your record says you are.” - Bill Parcells 

“Good basketball” is intentional. 80 percent of drivers think they are better than average. I suspect that coaches are the same. But it’s a zero sum game and we’ve all inhabited both sides of the equation. 

Do a quick self-test on our team, putting process under the magnifying glass. Are our processes consistent with success? Do our players know their responsibilities and buy-in to craft success? They cannot do their job without knowing and paying attention to detail.

Basketball math works for us or against us. Doing well means strong performance in what we do a lot. 

Offense (Quality shot each possession)
  • Space the floor. 
  • Create advantage (separation) with player and ball movement.
  • Deliver passes on time, on target.
  • Take quality shots (and make some).
  • Avoid turnovers. 
Defense (One bad shot, hard twos)
  • Get back in time and engaged in transition.
  • Pressure and contain the ball.
  • Deny penetration.
  • Contest shots without fouling.
  • Rebound (seek > 75 percent defensive rebounds).
Failure in any key area can define us. The last team I coached had solid non-basketball (soccer) athletes who struggled to shoot well or to contain the ball in man defense. 

Find and fix one 'need' area...and then move on to the next. 

Ideally, we would have a data collection analysis to evaluate each possession with quantitative and qualitative breakdown. It would need to be automated to handle the data. 

Lagniappe. Enhancing focus could improve the product. 
Lagniappe 2. Improving metrics is possible and happening. 
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