The Redick Way: Preparation for Excellence

Hat tip: Wes Kosel

This article discusses the Rise of Redick. It wasn't an easy transition for the Duke sharpshooter to the Serengeti plain of the NBA where the lions are that much faster...and don't care what you've done in college. 

Here are a couple of excerpts: 

Every Sunday afternoon in the offseason is the same for J.J. Redick. The third-year Clipper shuttles across the perimeter at full speed, mandating himself to make 140 spot-up two-pointers and 140 spot-up three-pointers. Specifically, he must make 20 shots at seven different spots on the court, one after the other. Next, imagining a hand in his face, he must make 42 pull-up jumpers off the dribble: 21 to the right, 21 to the left. Draining 20 free throws, the drill stretches to 342 total makes.

“I don’t take a shot unless I expect to make it. I expect to make every shot I take,” Redick said.

As a result of countless hours honing a more versatile skill set, Redick is moving without the ball and attacking the basket more. He’s catching and shooting 50 percent of the time, pulling up off the dribble 36 percent of the time and attempting shots within 10 feet 13 percent of the time. That’s Redick’s most even shot distribution since he arrived to the Clippers in 2013-14.

Bonus.


You can enhance the drill by challenging yourself to see how few shots you can complete the circuit in, add a time element, or both. 

Youth Basketball and the Ethics of Sport

The good news, comparatively speaking, is that we haven't heard of a parental basketball homicide by another parent. This might be surprising, considering the "life or death" atmosphere surrounding winning in youth sports. 

Everyone likes to win. But is winning at all costs, or at any cost, worth it? 

I played on the losing side in a Navy base championship game. A defensive player on the winning side "suckered" the officials into calling an offensive foul by pulling an offensive player (by the shirt) into him on an inbounds play. They won on that possession. I don't teach my players to do that, but teach them NOT to let someone do that to them. 

What constitutes cheating? It's not always black-and-white. We've had a number of players injured by moving screens over the years. I really can't know whether a coach of a well-coached team is oblivious to screening rules. But when I see sophisticated offenses blended with moving screens, I wonder what's coached. 

Playing your best players most of the time certainly isn't cheating or unethical. In developmental sports, you might argue that you're developing the better players or you're shortchanging others who sacrifice their time (and parents' money). I am NOT discussing varsity sports, where winning is clearly the object. 

Clock management is important in most sports...but some timekeepers take it more seriously than others, running off or adding (not starting time) seconds. How much of an issue is it? I don't know, because I'm too busy coaching.

Probably the biggest issue is officiating. I spoke with one coach last season before the game who told me to "expect bad officiating." He didn't mean one-sided officiating, just bad officiating. He told me that he had been at one game where a player was playing 'gorilla ball' but not getting called for fouls. Apparently, after the game, she drove home with the ref (allegedly her uncle). Nice. I am told that one team in our league has their officials on the program Board of Directors. Man, they are tough at home. I got warned for complaining about a (no travel) call when a player went to the floor with the ball. When the officials talk with the home parents during the game, you know what you're going to get. 

None of the games we lost last season were decided by officiating. Some of the games we won were miracles in face of home officiating. I don't want the benefit of the doubt; I want consistency and fairness...home or away. 

The biggest gray areas include "excessive physicality" (short of outright dirty play) and theatrics (simulating fouls and charges). I'm not sure where the boundary is on the former and I'm sometimes in awe of the latter. We have to rely on officials to do a difficult job and most of the time they are doing their best. 

Call me old-fashioned but I want the games decided by the quality of the players and how they play. I'm not interested in winning by cheat and deceit. The worst part of that is the poor lesson it teaches your team and we are in the instruction business. 

Fast Five: Modeling Excellence

Five minutes, five messages...

As coaches, we want to produce excellence; start by modeling excellence. Where do we start? 

It's not enough to be punctual; we have to arrive READY TO GO early. Phil Ford called it, "Dean Smith Time." 

I keep this notecard nearby as a reminder. Bring positive energy. "I am here to help you succeed." It's not enough to make an appearance...we have to make a difference. Education (by extension coaching) changes behavior. 

Players need to know that THEY matter. Whether you call it relationships, connection, communication, the message has to be "it's about the players." Belief and trust can only grow from solid ground. 




You need a vision, a process, a relentless edge. Work your process. Excellence isn't a part-time task. "You are a lion in a field of lions." To model excellence, radiate excellence daily. 



"How good do you want to be?" We choose whether to invest our time (in our chosen pursuits) or spend it. This is Coach Saban's most powerful message. 

Basketball Video Breakdown

Because basketball is 80 percent mental, finding sites that break down basketball video can be invaluable in increasing our game understanding. Whatever we think our players know, they know A LOT LESS. Get feedback. 

Here are sites I've found helpful:

BBallBreakdown Coach Nick analyzes team and individual play, uses video to illustrate the fundamentals that make or break success. The site also looks at the business of basketball, including the reasons behind free agent movement. 

FIBA videos. FIBA has hundreds of videos with international coaches teaching fundamentals. Coaches around the world rely on FIBA. 

Wes Kosel's Film Room Wes is one of the 'go to' young coaches for video and Xs and Os breakdown. Here's a sample page. 

Zak Boisvert Zak is another coach with a ubiquitous Internet presence. Here's a sample page. 

Coach Daniel has a series of videos with team and individual breakdown. 

Championship Productions Excerpts from basketball DVDs. 

FastModel (with video) Wes Kosel doing some heavy lifting. 

Miscellaneous A Bing search identifies many fascinating videos. Sample video

Notes: Hubie Brown Lecture (Five Star Camp)

1997 Lecture at Five Star...delivered passionately, clinical excellence combining offense and defense. Only a thousand views: really? 

Humility: Greatest player ever at Five Star was Moses Malone. Kicked butt, listened, never a problem. 

Teaching matters, not BS. 

Are you coachable? Be a sponge. 



When trapped, maintain your dribble and stay within the midpoint. Bring the trap down to equalize size. Defines types of passes out of traps...

Two-on-ones. Spacing...maintain dribble...stutter dribble (avoid charge)

Three-on-two. Be Steve Kerr. Shorten the pass and change the angles/move defenders

Feeding the post (angles). The PASSER needs proper angle. Pass from below the foul line. Post from first peg. When fronted, move up the lane one peg (with forearm technique). Play big. Demonstrates alternative fronting in the chest. Always avoid playing at a disadvantage. 

Scottie Pippen was the manager for two years at Central Arkansas...because he was a 5'9" point guard in HS. 

Pass and relocate...be prepared to catch against the closeout. Be prepared to repost on the inside-outside action to improve position. 

The subtle message is finding solutions to HELP your TEAMMATE.

Reading screens. They can't take away everything...but demos ideal defense...he teaches grabbing the screener's shirt (girls resist this technique in my experience). But with effective curl, may often open the screener. When defense cheats the curl, he shows how to reposition screen and BUMP. 

Pick and roll (pre ICE coverage). First goal = two dribbles to score; second (guard) is perimeter shot. Illustrates that even great players can LEARN. Gets back to COACHABLE
"The only way you get better is if you do what you can't do." Good players will expose your weaknesses.

Reviews PnR drills for guards at about 1:06 of video (2 dribble to drive, midrange, back off dribble to 3, crossover v trap into layup from both sides).

Gets back to COACHABLE to expand your game but be COACHABLE. Great players are always COACHABLE. 

Back Door Actions

We teach our players core principles to create scoring opportunities. Recently, I've shared zone offense sets, pinch post action, and staggered screen sets in the half court and special situations. 

With the season a couple of months ago, I'm putting together a list of offensive actions that I want to prioritize. Back door action (including slipping screens) belongs among that list. 

Young players should be able to define a back door cut: a cut toward the ball and then away from the ball. They should understand the power of back door cutting against pressure/overplay defense. 


This is one of the most famous back cuts ever as Princeton upset UCLA. 

In the staggered screen post, I showed the USWNT back cut into staggered screens.

4 would look for 2 on the back cut as a possible initial attack. 

The most dangerous pass in basketball is 'wing to top' as eager defenders look to intercept and score. That allows crafty point guards to find back attack down the middle. 

Instead of running triangle, 5 sets high ball screen and the ball side corner sets up the back cut. If x3 plays very low, 3 may be open for a perimeter shot on the pass from 1. 

Jake Presutti shared the next play on FastModel. 

Above, they run a ball screen into a weak side back cut. 

They run a different style of back door play above. What's not to like? 

Back cut is the 3rd option out of our base DHO series. 

I love the horns set, and here's a Wes Kosel FastModel share via Lithuania. 

The 4/5 ball screen turns into a back cut for 3. 

With young players, the emphasis is first upon execution...better to have a few options than many. 

Xs and Os - Staggering

Readers vote with their clicks. They want more red meat with their vegetables. Here are a few examples of 'staggered screens'.

It's almost impossible not to begin with the Spurs "Loop" play.



Coach Daniel with great video and options off "Loop". To be fair, Chuck Daly and the Pistons ran something very similar in their heyday. 

The keys are Parker's speed and his uncanny ability to read who comes open off defensive coverage.



Ridiculous. You can run options off it as well. 

Portland's game winner. 

Great offense comes with multiple actions. 

I love how Coach Auriemma creates multiple scoring opportunities off a modified 1-4. The initial 'blind pig' sets up a back door score and flows into staggered screens with either a mid-range jumper, drive, or elbow screen-and-roll. 

Maybe you like "Box" sets and want to run options that way? 

Celtics run IT4 for a pop off another stagger. 

So, a brief buffet of Loop, SLOB, USWNT, Box, and BOB. Now, can our players execute? 

Above the Line

Urban Meyer's Above the Line is a popular leadership text. 

Here's a summary. 

Below are five excerpts from the summary:

Leadership is a skill and like all skills it takes time and effort to develop. The timeworn quotes that have been hanging in your locker rooms for years are not nearly enough. Now I understand. Average leaders have quotes. Good leaders have a plan. Exceptional leaders have a system.

E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome) 
We don’t control the events in life and we don’t directly control the outcomes. But we always have control over how we choose to respond.

“I see better than I hear.” 
Andrew Luck: “Your actions are so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” 
We are not measured by our intentions, but by our actions.

Build trust (Need all 3, strength in one cannot make up for weakness in another): 
1. Character – ethical trust. Built through repeated experience of you doing what you say you will do. 2. Competence – technical trust. Built through repeated experience of you doing your job and making team better. 
3. Connection – personal trust. Built through repeated experience of caring, listening and fully engaging with the people on the team.

Every great leader I have been around or studied has demonstrated the unique ability to think. To think deeply, originally, and often, bravely. Leadership is a mindset first and a skillset second. If you don’t think like a leader, you won’t act like one.

Top 20 Teachers

Slide presentation on Top 20 Teachers. 

As coaches, we are teachers. How we teach (style and substance) profoundly impacts our students' learning. Excellence is a choice. 

Here are a couple of slides from the presentation above. 

We choose to make a positive difference or we can make a negative one. 

Motivation

"If you're going to smack a locker and have tears running down your face, it's only going to have an impact if they know that's you. If they know that's not you, your behavior will have no effect at all. They will laugh you out of the place. You must give them genuine sustained proof of how badly you want it and how much you're willing to sacrifice to achieve it." - Bob Cousy in on the Celtic Mystique

Candidly, I am not in the same situation as many of you. Coaching middle school basketball, I face no pressure about wins and losses. That doesn't mean that indifference to performance (our team went 21-4 last season). But I probably only have three or four players who even consider basketball their primary sport. I coach more soccer players playing basketball than basketball players. 

My first priority is helping prepare young people for life. And to succeed in life, they will need commitment to their education, discipline and focus, organization and time management skills, and authenticity to compete in the classroom, the workplace, and on the athletic fields. 

The most important motivation is intrinsic (self-regulated) not extrinsic (imposed). The seminal article on motivation in children discusses the value of "autonomy support." The authors note, "Parents may support children’s autonomy in the context of their involvement with children by attending to children’s work but allowing them to work on their own, often helping them to generate their own strategies for solving the challenges they encounter." 


Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire" expresses his frustration with his unfocused client Cuba Gooding, Jr., recognizing his limitations to change behavior. The emphasis is on using relationships to ADD VALUE and get BUY-IN. We help young people find solutions. 

Dan Pink elaborates (for adults) in Drive 3.0. High achievers don't emerge in 'carrot and stick' (traditional) settings but from Flow experiences at the intersection of autonomy (self-determination), mastery, and purpose. 

He asks which type of autonomy belongs to your core. 

I think that our process is central to results...and that begins with culture. I emphasize a culture of teamwork, improvement, and accountability (to the team). When we can stay in our lane working that process, then we have a chance to get our best results, which won't always equate to winning. 

Have you used any special techniques? With one group, before a playoff game, I had a "pledge" for them to sign, promising to give maximal effort on each defensive possession. But I asked them not to sign unless they fully intended to fulfill that obligation. It's a 'singular' use technique, not to be wasted. The team defended spectacularly, but like I said, it's consumable. 

I'm not a 'screamer'. I don't want to do it; they don't want to hear it. If our culture is diving on the floor for loose balls, their teammates remind them. 


Last season, I closed the huddle pre-game with this line. The players would respond, "Fight." That's good enough for me. 

The Inner Game of Basketball and the Macy's Challenge

The Macy's Challenge. That's an odd way to introduce basketball concepts. If my wife and I are in Macy's, while she shops, I look at clothing tags for country of origin. Do I ever find anything made in the USA?

Manufacturing represented more than 40 percent of American jobs. The efficient use of capital (capital flows to its most efficient use) drove those jobs overseas, in return for foreigners supporting our debt with bond buying. We traded jobs for foreign debt investment. That financed two wars and bank recapitalization. That IS. 

As coaches, we recognize that what "IS" changes. "The game" evolves with new rules, the ten (eight-second) line, widening of the lane, shot clock, three-point line, and so forth. Whether I want "life to be like it was" or not, basketball isn't going backwards. We need "non-judgmental awareness" to define the future. 

That doesn't diminish timeless values like commitment, discipline, attention to detail, sacrifice, and even sportsmanship. Bigger, stronger, faster doesn't necessarily mean better. 




As coaches, we still define "who we are and how we play." We determine who plays. 

Success depends on our ability to harness our awareness, choices, and trust. That means embracing our natural ability to learn within a framework of better choices and trusting a proven effective process. 

Pete Newell noted that young coaches often tended to adopt how they were coached. He also commented that generally "produced a poor reproduction of the original." I played in the Paleozoic era of no shot clock, no three-point line, and more contact allowed. We now see an up tempo game with the evolution of positionless basketball where "every player can be king." If I look at the "tags" on the players and 'stamps' on the game, I seldom find another era's marks. 

John Wooden remarked, "no progress occurs without change, but not all change is progress." With more people playing basketball worldwide and better access to information and coaching, the 'labels' on the game are going to keep changing. It's our job to keep up with the process or fall behind. 

Zone Offense Options

"Good artists borrow; great artists steal." - Picasso 

It seems unthinkable that developmental basketball coaches play almost exclusively zone defense to maximize their chances of winning. Devoting much time to combat zone defenses seems counter-intuitive. I would estimate that we probably faced 80 percent zone defense last season, mostly 2-3 zone. 

In addition to the usual principles (dribble into gaps, ball reversal, flash into gaps, post-up, and screens), we can steal working actions from other programs. 


This video highlights some approaches. 

In this "horns" approach, the 1 gets a middle attack into passing options. In the video they use a post give-and-go. 

In this diagram of Tom Izzo's MSU 'X', 1 moves the zone and then 4 and 5 set diagonal screens to give the wing an attack on the middle of a zone. This creates a great midrange shot, inside pick-and-roll, or pass across. 

Box Into Pinch Post Actions

There's a football saying that you create formations pre-snap and movement post-snap to put players into positions to make plays. We do the same in basketball. 

We can create the second option of the Triangle Offense out of a variety of sets. 

We have an unusual number of left-handed players that should benefit from this action. 

Checklist for Winning Basketball

Checklist manifesto from Astha Gupta

Atul Gawande shared the ubiquitous (outside) value of checklists in The Checklist Manifesto. Checklists help assure quality in aviation, construction, investment, the food industry, and elsewhere. Checklists help define your process. 

What's on your checklist? Start with Pete Newell's overarching theme. Add specifics. 

Players need to understand and execute the 'framework' of the game plan, also known as "Commander's Intent." 

Coaches assess and assemble players, prepare and practice a strategy and tactics, help develop individual and team execution, motivate, and continually reevaluate and provide feedback. But in the end, "technique defeats tactics" and true excellence in a few areas supersedes being good at many. 

But on our implementation checklists, we need both priority and emphasis confirmed by getting feedback from players both individually and collectively. We've all seen games (and sometimes championships) lost by failure to execute what was taught. I saw a state sectional championship lost by a point when a team doubled the post three times only to see the helpside defender fail to rotate (specifically assigned and documented in the game plan).

Included (but not limited to) on my checklist: 

Team and individual development plan

Conditioning within drills

Pressure defense/defeating pressure defense

Transition defense/Transition offense

Individual and team defense

Zone offense

Early offense (General sets and quick hitters)

Delay game/Comeback game

Competitive shooting/Free throw shooting 

Must situations: Best offensive sets, Best SLOBs, Best BOBs, Best Zone plays

End-of-game situations: e.g. leading or  trailing 3, no time outs)

We incorporate these elements within competitive situations, often within controlled scrimmages (e.g. O-D-O three possession play). 

Horns Iso Stagger

Opportunities depend on personnel. We have a very versatile "positionless" 5 that offers us versatility. 

Find ways to put the ball in your scorers' hands. 2 can come off the stagger for a shot, drive, PnR, 1-on-1, or pass.