Margaret Heffernan: Culture, Change, and Basketball Through an Unusual Prism

Knowledge becomes the power to effect change. How much do we understand organizational culture?

Margaret Heffernan is a former CEO, author, and thought leader. Does it translate to basketball? She is a firehose of ideas based on corporate experience, shared in a Farnham Street podcast, annotated below. 

Small change can make a large difference. 

What's wrong? An organization can be too tactical. "Every week three people are going to tell us who they are and why are they here." People had to look at each other as human beings...get people to see each other as people, not as titles...or rivals. (Build social capital.)

"It only works if people are connected...it isn't automatic." (Establishing trust never ends.)

"Want to help each other." (Teamwork is not a given.)

"What impedes the flow is distrust, rivalry, or not knowing what other people need." 

"Culture is deliberate...some leaders believe that more people compete the better the organization will be." (Forced ranking pits everyone against each other...competitive mindset). "You foment status contests." (I avoid Anson Dorrance's quantitative competitive cauldron with middle schoolers.)

"If I feel threatened (in that environment), I'm not going to help you (even when I know what you need)." 

"What can I do to get people to help each other?"

Literally "knocking down walls" can create fewer safe spaces for people. 

"It is going to take time...people need to understand why it is important." 

"Signal...the kind of behavior you want." (Coach Shawanda Brown used to tell players, "that is not how we play" at the hint of selfishness.)

"Value of collaboration...aggregation or compounding of talent and creativity..."

"People have quite a good sense of who the TAKERS are...they like to feel their contribution has value." 

"There's always more experience and talent in organizations than manages to get out..."

"Very good people can go bad...willful blindness..."

"Creative people can do uncreative work." (Don't waste or abuse people's time.)

(On binary thinking:) "It's much easier to think something is good or bad...it oversimplifies."

"Bedrock belief, a writer should be a lie detector...I care disproportionately about trying to get things right."

On statistics, "My job is to prove (her) wrong." (If not, carry on.) Analogy: Players turning the ball over repeatedly are WRONG. That must change.

If somebody wants to argue (intelligently) with you, they care. (There are nefarious people who argue for selfish reasons.) 

Collaborative argument, "If that were true, what would that mean for me?" 

"It takes intellectual rigor...do you want to get it right or just win (the argument)?"

"What were the conditions when I did good work?" (Environment and context conducive to creativity, productivity)

Constructive arguments can occur with (context of) trust, safety, and freedom. (As I recall, Alfred Sloane would say that without disagreement nothing constructive would emerge.) 

"We all had to feel that the decisions were for the good of the business...the only job description is what's right for the business?" (Winning or development?)

"It's not about me and it's not about sucking up to me." Power disrupts. 

Willful blindness means ignoring facts available or knowable...ignorance and willful blindness are quite different. (Do we accept inadequate free throw shooting?)

"The problem with mental models...is that they attract confirming data." (Sample size and recency bias can dominate our thinking to our detriment.)

We are attracted to similar people with similar approaches which tends to repel disconfirming data. As people we are conformists. 

"Calling the fire department is not in my job description." When people don't rock the boat, it can sink because nobody reports the malfunctions or holes in the hull.

Contrarians often care deeply about organizations. They are not 'troublemakers' but truth seekers who see willful blindness. They can be the "early warning system." Speaking against the status quo won't be appreciated but isn't necessarily wrong.

She discusses Enron's failures in depth. She includes that organizational morality can shift from "being a good person" to "doing a good job." That can create cognitive dissonance or  bad behaviors. 

The assumption that "I'm a good person, therefore I can do nothing bad" is patently false and widespread in organizations.  

"It isn't that women don't like power, but we think about it differently." She distinguishes collaborative power for achievement versus power as domination that may lead to harassment and intimidation. 

She wonders whether the #MeToo movement will trickle down to small organizations to have lasting impact. "What is the concept of power that replaces (it)?"

"We are trapped in our own biases." (Have I become too offensive-minded?)

Enduring lessons: 

"I can always be wrong...if I were wrong, what would I see?" 
"Don't take an argument personally." 
"When do I dig my heels in or let it go?" 

"I'm very interested in mistakes and willing to acknowledge them..." (because that's what she wants in her organizations)

"If you're going to experiment, do it with the best people...be exposed to high quality thinking." (Know what excellence looks like.)

"Reliability is the most undervalued concept." (Who are our reliable players?)

Containing the Star Player

Defending the star has limitations. Acquiring three "stars" starts superteam construction. History reminds us of Chamberlain, West, and Baylor, or Russell, Cousy, and Heinsohn, or Reed, Frazier, and Monroe. The examples continue endlessly. It continues today, although Golden State has a quartet of stars - Curry, Durant, Thompson, and Green.  

Teams struggle to contain the "center of gravity" when offensive dispersion spreads the defense over a solar system of talent instead of focusing on the hub and dealing with the spokes.  

But at lower levels of play, stars can dominate. Do we accept "the star gets his" and defend the team or contain the star and challenge the 'cats and dogs' to beat us? 

First, review our defensive goals...no easy baskets, one "bad" shot, and "hard 2's." The amalgamation of team defense seeks to:

1) Pressure the ball
2) Deny the middle
3) Deny penetration (dribble or pass)
4) Challenge shots without fouling
5) Rebound assertively

Focus on containment versus stopping the star. Elite players 'draw 2' and pass to capable teammates create Scylla or Charybdis dilemmas. Substituting layups (2 points per possession) for contested shots isn't the answer.

LeBron James excels for many reasons, but he 'volume scores' in the restricted area. 

But he's such an effective passer that collapsing on him frees up perimeter shooters, eliminating an "easy" option. 

If we want to contain stars, we need to know where and how they score. The Celtics lead the league in perimeter (three-point) defense because of their willing switching and length. Even the best scorers have shooting degraded with pressure. One "universal" is that nobody scores without the ball. Total denial (chest-to-chest) will limit some players frustrated into offensive fouls or who don't cut and use screens well. Blitzing to force them to pick up the dribble sometimes helps provided a team has superior communication, help, and recover skills.   

Other options include zone defense to limit some drivers, doubling and digging the post for interior scorers, and 'junk' defenses (box and one, triangle and two) to provide additional help. We choose our poison. 

I believe that it's worth the effort to identify and develop defensive stoppers starting in Middle School. Reward them with additional playing time as incentive and commit to defensive mindset. As a practice, I reward the best defender with a starting position. That paid dividends at the high school level. 

One of the great upsets in college basketball happened in 1957 when North Carolina beat Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in the National Championship. The Tarheels fronted and surrounded the Jayhawk star limiting him to only thirteen field goal attempts. 



Randy Sherman shares his take on defending the star at Fast Model Sports. 

Coaching Interview: Herb Welling

Welcome to the inaugural Herb on Hoops coaching interview, with Herb Welling. 

Coach Welling shares a wealth of experience and passion in studying, teaching, and coaching basketball. He oversees a popular online website for basketball enthusiasts, has created multiple basketball videos (below), and remains a highly regarded coach and instructor. He describes himself as "an old school gym rat with an unmatched passion for instructing kids on the fundamentals of basketball. I study the game, seek a basketball understanding from his vast network of high school, college, and pro coaching cronies, and then apply that knowledge in his instruction."





RPS: Do you have any opening thoughts about the direction of basketball? 

Basketball is continues to grow in the World.  The rest of the World has caught up to us as for as Teaching is concerned.  Once the Camp era ended in the USA Teaching has started a downward trend.  The evidence is in the NBA by the numbers of players from other Countries.  The Pete Newell quote is right "Over Coached and Under Taught".  Recreation Centers and Fitness Clubs are full of kids nowadays but their Skill level is not what it used to be in the USA.  Our Greatest Generation of Coaches has long been gone.  The elite are still treated the Best in the World and gives us a slight edge over the other Countries!

RPS: What is your core basketball philosophy?

RPS: Describe your ideal team culture. How do you create the culture you want for your team? 

Family Atmosphere created by Peer Pressure System.

RPS: What was your most recent team's 'identity'? Did they find it easily or struggle? 

Aggressive Gamblers by nature picked up easily they looked for each other Offensively and Defensively.

RPS: How has your basketball thinking changed in the past five years?

I believe that Shooting is now catching up to what I thought it should be the whole time.

RPS: What's the biggest area in coaching that we can improve for players? 

Teaching everyone how to Shoot and Score.

RPS: What's your favorite basketball fundamental team drill? 

UCLA 3 on 2 Plus 1

RPS: What advice would you have for your fifteen-year-old self?

Go live with my Grandparents and my Grandfather would have helped me more in Basketball.

READ THIS NOW: Good Ideas Are Sticky (Basketball and Life)

Get it right by writing. Steve Kerr began his coaching manifesto long before ascending to the Warriors. The rest is history. 

Great ideas surround us. Sites like Farnham Street blog, Medium, and WhatDoesn’tChange create springboards. As we absorb worldly understanding, apply and share with our community. 

Leaders become learning machines. Fools celebrate ignorance. Halftime might mean water and orange slices to players, but for coaches it means analysis, problem solving, teaching, motivation, and more. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863 informs the classic underdog victory. Suvorov evolved from sickly child to the undefeated general. 

Lason Perkins shared some mental models with me, including an expansive '80-20' Rule treatise that many know as the Pareto Principle. Mental Models are 'big picture' ideas that increase productivity or understanding of how the world works. 

The course emphasizes headlines as grabbing attention:

"A concrete example of how I’ve applied it to my business regards article writing. I very quickly realized, after talking to different experts and studying top authors, that headlines are the 20 percent of effort that produces 80 percent of reader views. The main way that readers find an article is through social media. The first thing they see is the headline, the cover image, and the subtitle. By focusing on creating great headlines, we probably gained 20x the amount of readers—a huge gain."

In James Patterson's MasterClass, he emphasizes the importance of the first sentence and the first paragraph of his novels. 

How can we apply the 80-20 Rule? 

In our coaching, what is the Main Thing? I'll argue that we succeed or fail depending upon our relationships...with players, families, other coaches, and administrators. We cultivate those relationships by listening, by communicating, and through our integrity, energy, and positivity. 

Those relationships are 'root' or character inputs, illustrated in Stephen M.R. Covey's The Speed of Trust (above). Communication informs player and team development and technical competence (strategic detail). Poor communication and failed relationships guarantee problems when developing roles, teaching, and motivating cohesion. 

What are your sticky basketball ideas? Share some that you've stolen or developed.

Find ways to make your teammates better. 
Cut and pass...or sit. 
Create and deny separation. 
Invest time don't spend it. 
"Do more to become more; become more to do more."

Lagniappe:

"Many ball screens in Spain are not designed to penetrate the defense. They’re simply used to disorganize the defense."

Chris Oliver shares video and concepts from Spain. 

Bombing in Basketball

Everyone bombs. The ball won't drop. Your assignment gets a backdoor layup. You throw a pass into the cheap seats. You travel or have "fumble-itis", repeatedly.  

Sometimes we just stink out the joint...we ask ourselves whether it's an adversity one-off or deeper problems. Kevin Eastman says, "do it better, do it harder, change personnel, or #$%& it ain't working (change strategy)." 

At each moment in a team's development, we ask "what does my team need now" and how can we advance that agenda TODAY?

Return to our core values - philosophy, culture, and identity. Where did today's
failure fall within those domains? 

I return to our playoff loss within a higher division. We struggled against the star player, shifting defenses, and pressure. Containing the star player is a discussion for another time. 

My philosophy coaching younger players has evolved over time. I believe that you need offensive firepower to compete against better teams. That doesn't exclude defense; defense matters because 'stops make runs'. Good offenses pass more (the Warriors literally pass more than 300 times per game) to create better opportunities. Cutting and passing works against man, zone, and pressure defense. We didn't pass and cut well enough. Defense can improve quicker than offensive skill, so offense needs practice and patience. 

What makes better teams better? They're better teams because they score and generally have more talent, not better systems. They don't run great motion offense to get the lesser scorers the ball. They don't have a myriad of sets to balance the shots. They get their best players the ball where they want to score. Second, I believe that defeating and selectively applying pressure inform success, because the better teams press to force errors and score in conversion (from defense to offense) and transition. Third, 'defense first' teams struggle against deficits. Teams without ways (and players) to score can't excel. 

"You fight for your culture every day." Culture includes the atmospherics, the teaching-learning interface, teamwork, thirst for improvement. How do we measure culture? I think culture appears in "Meyerisms"- passion, unity, selflessness, humility, and thankfulness. We could summarize those in one word, maturity. By definition, young players are immature. But veteran players can lack maturity by demanding roles inconsistent with their performance. How Carmelo Anthony is portrayed depicts his attitude about team versus individual achievement. 

Know who you are, your identity. When people refer to your team, what words do you want to hear? Often teams reflect they're coaching - preparation, toughness, aggressiveness, sharing, intelligence, relentlessness. You want to hear, "they don't beat themselves" and "they're always ready for the situation." We never want to hear the "S" words, selfish or SOFT. 

How do we respond to adversity? We can learn psychological fitness, emotional fitness, and social fitness. 

Love our losses because they reveal our needs and light the pathways to improvement. Everyone bombs; resilient teams recover. 


Lagniappe:



Film shows examples of good decisions. 

Basketball - Putting People First

Show me. How does our coaching empower players? We make a difference to the extent that we change lives.

We remember Dean Smith for many achievements, including coaching Michael Jordan and encouraging his early entry into the NBA. But bringing Charles Scott into the ACC changed the game and history.

Some say that Alabama’s crushing defeat by USC in 1970 did more to integrate the South than any political act. Bear Bryant and John McKay left fingerprints on history...and the Crimson Tide won the rematch the following season.

Jerry Tarkanian went into tough neighborhoods and gave kids a chance to succeed. UNLV went from basketball unknowns to national champions.

Andrew Smith may be best remembered for premature death. Brad Stevens eulogized the twenty-five year-old but helped design the center’s two Final Four trips for Smith’s Butler Bulldogs. 

Patrick Ewing started Georgetown as a polished athlete and with John Thompson’s mentoring became a willing student, capable media personality, and college coach.

Brett Ledbetter’s What Drives Winning and seminars emphasize growing the person ahead of the player. 

John Calipari’s NBA train rolls on. If advancing players to the Association to get paid is his primary mission, then he’s minting money for many athletes.

Tim S. Grover practices his preaching in Relentless. Training superstars like Jordan, Kobe, and Wade left indelible marks on the sport.

Even the ultimate task-oriented Bob Knight believed in practice time flexibility, because he trusted players to know what worked.

Taking time to educate players in media relations advances their cause. We teach them to  recognize team and teammates first, and prioritize team values like selflessness, sharing, and humility. 

What about us? Are we promoting academics? I have multiple former players earning masters degrees this month. Many coaches help players find jobs, and others sponsor players into an AAU program or subsidize their own programs. We help players find the right college fit, write recommendations, and even help players into service academies.

We belong to a noble profession. Coaches who last put people first. 

Basketball- Changing Defenses, Real or Imagined

Defensive structure informs our ability to change offensive logic and function. We don’t need a myriad of zone and combination defenses to alter offensive play.

I’m coaching to introduce winning concepts...contain penetration, deny the middle, close out under control, force hard 2’s, contest shots, show your hands to limit fouling.

Know what you do. Playing multiple versions of one defense has advantages over playing many defenses. 

Man-to-man defense operates in numerous flavors from full court pressure, halfcourt full denial, sagging contain, and options for trapping, switching, and ‘run and jump’. We teach a preferred defense of aggressive ball pressure and ball side denial with zone-like help on the help/weak side. 

We may ‘show’ zone defense, lining up in a 2-3 zone and adjusting to man-to-man. We have played a junk defense once, facing an eighth grade team averaging 63 points per game with an elite point guard. On that day we played pressure/denial on her, had a rover to double on her but otherwise work ballside elbow and played a triangle underneath. We held them to 43 points but still lost.

How do you signal your defense? As a player, we played with two digits, the first the defense and the second the extent. 83 was 2-2-1 three quarter court, falling back into 81 man. 52 would be 1-3-1 half court. 14 was man full with run-and-jump switching. But coaches use team names, colors, and football yardage (99 = full court, 75 three quarter, etc.). Some teams use hand signals, e.g. two fists up for full court. You can use blends and call one as deception and use hand signals as actual. But you don’t want to outsmart yourselves.

I teach players to trap to force mistakes and to avoid reach ins. “Put them in the box” and avoid fouling.

Solid teams generate and survive pressure. Defense demands players function ‘tied on a string’ both physically and mentally. One player out of position sabotages the operation. Players with good defensive man principles can easily adjust to zone schemes in high school. But youth defense favors individual assignment principles first.

"It's Not Just You" Coaches as Authors and Editors

“Are you building a program or a statue?” Author a memorable ending. James Patterson discusses 'endings' to stories, reminding writers that "it's not just you." The game is about the players.

What's the setup for the story? Do we overcome adversity, go from rags to respectability, or succeed unconventionally? Does the team massively disconnect, the proverbial “twelve cabs for twelve guys?”

How do the relationships play out? Does the team mysteriously gel or collaborate to succeed unexpectedly? Is the team destined to fail or overcome? Does the story ride ambiguity into the sunset where we’re unsure how it all ends?

What are the stakes and how does the group leverage the outcomes? Maybe the team leader is more focused on numbers than winning. But her rival decides that she deserves more shots and won’t pass. I’ve heard parents debating the shots and the glory. 

The program outline defines expectations. Are they realistic or pipe dreams? What conflicts (rivals, friends, parents, illness or injury) advance the story? As coaches we expand the characters, the dialogue, and the plot, but the characters have their own subplots and agendas. We can’t yield our editing resources.

"I didn't see that coming." That may work for fiction not coaching because we must anticipate and confront problems. 

Study why endings worked or didn't. One possession (e.g. Malcolm Butler) can change a season and destiny. Teams that share sacrifice and contain ego might not always triumph, but enjoy the ride more. 

Endings have "logic and emotion". Without logic, we may only get chaos. Without emotion, we find staleness and robotic play. Great endings leave a wellspring of emotion that can transform individuals for a lifetime. 

Having a vision of a memorable ending and the narrative skill to engage the ‘characters’ and the ‘readers’ separates ordinary from outstanding coaching.

Basketball Conversations

We constantly signal those around us, regardless of our intent. Find and create tools to engage, educate, and challenge players. 

Greet each player by name as they arrive at practice and games. Validate them. 

Always remember, we work as collaborators. When that stops, we're done. That applies to relationships among teammates, between coaches, and between the coaches and the team.

Time out in practice...draw up a play. Test our players' ability to read a diagram, follow directions, and execute. Simulate game conditions.

Ask players to present mini lectures on a basketball topic. Engage them in teaching.

We don't treat everyone the same. Red Auerbach had an agreement with Bill Russell. Red would blast Russell to show teammates that nobody escaped criticism and coaching. They learned, if Red can call out Russell, he can correct me. I've had that conversation with top players, "I'm going to yell at you, because you can take it and your teammate might have a problem with that." But she has to understand and agree. 

To reduce mistakes, players need to see 'universal mistakes'...playing out of control, watching, sloth in transition, "alligator arm" rebounding, "dead man's defense" (playing six feet under the ball). 

Nothing has more power than "I believe in you." A teammate can boost her teammate by reinforcing that message, "you can do this. We need you." Coaches can hasten that process by asking stronger players to send those signals. 

When players are in a rut, ask if they’re okay or if anything is bothering them. Showing that we care about them as a person comes first.

Remind them that we’re available for references and recommendations. High school coaches reach out to area college coaches to network and establish relationships. 

The best coaches network with youth coaches to promote their program, clinics, and share their experience. Benefits can flow in both directions.

Keeping parents informed about process, expectations, gains, and needs creates goodwill. It’s not perfect or easy. How much is too much? Transparency helps as sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Basketball Polarity - The Tale of Two Cities

“I don’t like her personality.”  Translate that.

We did JAGMAN investigations in the Navy, that followed a script - Findings of Fact (what happened and when, with references, Opinions (based on findings), and Recommendations derived from facts and opinions.

In a postfactual world, opinions vary wildly. The team finished with a 25-1 record, best in school history (facts). Susie and Mary, both freshmen, led the team in scoring and rebounding (facts).

Joan and Sandra, both seniors, played fewer minutes than they had in the previous seasons (facts). Both had played basketball since third grade (fact) but both missed three games while on a Senior Class trip (fact).

When they returned from the trip, they played even fewer minutes (fact) as Coach Smith thought their conditioning and timing were impaired (opinion). Joan and Sandra’s families were upset at how the season went for their children and complained to the Superintendent (facts).

Coach Smith was competent/incompetent.
Coach Smith was goal-directed/insensitive.
Coach Smith established roles/disenfranchised established players.
Coach Smith gave young players a chance/devalued kids who ‘paid their dues’.
Coach Smith did a great job/has got to go. 

This narrative encapsulates the coaching dilemma in 2018. Economics studies the allocation of limited resources. In basketball, minutes, shots, roles, and the consequences like notoriety, publicity, and satisfaction confuse goals of teamwork and excellence.

We choose how we interpret facts. Did it matter that Coach Smith met with players and families preseason and reiterated the opportunities and need for commitment? Did it matter that both freshmen ran the Mile Test in under 5:30 while the seniors came in at over a minute slower? Coach Smith’s husband had coached Susie and Mary in middle school, where they played 60 games each year. Did that count as Dues Paid? Attendance tripled this season as the community supported the team. Should that matter?

Coach Smith worked a miracle at Flagstaff High. The @#&$ is gone. 

**All characters are fictional...but the problem is real.

Exploration, the Basketball Journey

Grab from other disciplines. Astronaut Chris Hadfield discusses astronaut training in his MasterClass. He explains that you begin as an Astronaut Candidate, literally an “Ass Can.”

His first day he’s sitting next to John Young (six trips in space, two to the moon) and another astronaut, a physician studying Russian for Space Station duty. He feels humbled, but then, as a test pilot, explains he must become a generalist.

He learns First Aid, weather, geology, electronics repair, survival training, and more. He trains in pools and weightlessness, in operating rooms, and an Emergency Department. In space, you don’t always have a consultant. You lose communications, you figure it out or suffer the consequences. No timeouts? You need to know what to do. No one can hear you scream in space.

Maybe you make part of practice silent. You describe the scenario and players solve it disallowed from speaking. They appreciate and value communication.

Players can’t be one trick ponies...you can’t choose not to care about defending complex screens, free throw blockouts, mastering cuts, reading defenses, or zone offenses. Or you can in which case you won’t grow, earn minutes, respect, and self-satisfaction.

Astronauts function as a team because survival demands it. You thrive as a team because success requires it. 

Some players struggle to grasp Xs and Os. One coach gave them a test and told players the results determined who started. The players all learned the sets. If you can learn algebra, antiquities, and Italian, you can learn basketball.

As coaches, we create the domains and conditions to challenge players to grow. Spoon feeding works for babies. But as Jaylen Brown remarked, “the NBA has no time to babysit anyone.”

Keep our eyes 👀 open 24/7 for teaching and learning. You never know when understanding makes a Bask Can. 

Lagniappe: How Utah grounded the Rockets

Length, effort, nose over toes...the EX factor

Bleep You. Basketball Reality

"Bleep you.” The Pope claims infallibility on faith and morals. Coaches claim infallibility about nothing. Nobody has cursed me to my face in coaching...only in medicine.

When we coach, we expose ourselves to criticism. We're gonna get the cream pie in the face...and worse. At least pie tastes better than crow. 

Fans and parents question qualifications and competence, lineups, minutes, strategy, roles, tempo, timeouts, commitment ("picking up a check"), demeanor, motivation, and more. Even great process won't guarantee good results. Irony allows that slim chance, fat chance, and no chance all mean the same. 

Fast flame outs follow wanting to please everyone and angering the key person who has the power to sack you. Wildly inconvenient that we can't know who that is in advance. 

You won't get a second chance to make a first impression. Establish credibility about basketball philosophy, team culture, and identity. Where do you set expectations? Incumbent players may feel entitled. Newcomers don't want sacrifice on an altar of seniority. Promises of equal opportunity for roles meets challenges by loving parental eyes. Who keeps the account of 'dues paid'? 

Sophisticated software tracks minutes and stats. Interested parties can use that data to air dirty laundry about perceived inequities in minutes and shots. Even winning teams aren't always happy teams. Chemistry ain't them and me. 


Setting roles and lineups creates both order and chaos. The haves get order and the have nots feel chaos. Competition won't always resolve the issue. Feelings get hurt. 

Shots can keep you in contention or having contention. Coaches decide who gets the shots. That the best players get the most shots only guarantees unevenness in distribution. Inequity means unhappiness. 




"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one." The most skillful coaches convince the team that collective success eclipses personal goals and needs. When that comes together, beauty can emerge. 

Lagniappe:

Zone offense with overload principles allows for paint touches and ball reversal. 

Zone Offense and Hatchell Notes

Sylvia Hatchell knows hoop. Someone mentioned she gave a great presentation on zone offense. Snipe hunt! 

Older Hatchell notes. Her book is excellent. 

Her zone offense chapter subheadings are straightforward/classical teaching:

Beat the zone before it sets up (transition).
Make the zone move.
Reverse the ball.
Attack the seams of the zone with the dribble.
Make two players guard the dribbler.
Use ball fakes.
Attack the zone from behind.
Flash from the help side.
Use the short corners...vulnerable for all zones.
Attack the boards.

These diagrams show the MSU zone set "Fist down" screening and attacking the middle of the zone. Coach Izzo's teams have attacked the Syracuse 2-3 with this. 

Screen grab (above) from some Hatchell notes. 

What has she written about zone offense? She discussed middle attack, flattening (distorting the zone), and overload. 

As a general rule, ball reversal and pass fakes create east-west distortion and shot fakes move defenses north-south. 

What do young players see? Show players the diagrams. Get Socratic. The point guard DRAWS 2 defenders and penetrates to pass. Do they see how the initial wing entry stresses the low defender? Did they note how the post players set up BEHIND the zone, becoming invisible? Did they spot how they FLASH into open spots? 

Ecoute' et repete'. Mi acronym es su acronym.  

DR FLAPS

Dribble into gaps.
Reverse the ball.
FLAsh into open spaces. 
Post up. 
Screen the zone. 

Players learn to the extent of their aptitude and attention. Repetition renders remembering. The more we accelerate their learning, the better they become. 

David Blatt Coaching Profile

The New York Knicks seek a new coach. Will it be David Blatt? 

Philosophy: Blatt played at Princeton from 1977-1981 and Princeton influences remain. Many consider Blatt an offensive genius. From Joseph Gill, "Blatt's Princeton-style offense, with its quick-hitter sets which quickly morphs into very NBA-style read-and-react scenarios." 

He has strong feelings about psychology and relationships in coaching. That didn't work out in Cleveland. "David was hired to coach a developmental team and young players who would've wanted to please him," one team source said. "He ended up coaching a finished product where the players expected him to please them."

Coaching Notes:

1) Via Basketball Immersion

Highlights

-Peers are the best teachers to learn from (Strategy, people, learning and teaching)
-Your players need to see you in a way that makes them believe you can help them.
-Teach to go further – “Excellence starts on the doorstop of your limitations.”
-Need depth of knowledge, philosophy, understanding of people, passion

2) PICKANDPOP.net 

Comprehensive. I cannot do this justice. 

Find different ways to get into sets with multiple options. 

Video: from FearTheSword 



Blatt High-Low sequences run from Horns variants.

via Ryan Pannone

PnR Hammer action

Horns DHO PnR action (could expand help side movement into screens or back cut from corner)

Modified 4 out with stagger setting up top jumper or roller.

Enduring lessons: Blatt's offenses use 'preliminary' motions to set up quality shots. For our purposes, a myriad of possibilities shouldn't distract from core values/fundamental development. 

Basketball: Moving Your Story Forward

Inform and challenge readers to consider, "how can I do this better?" Coaching, we grow the players, individually and collectively. We write our narratives.

You know the term gym rat. Extend that to SEPARATE. There's A RAT in separate and we teach creating and denying separation. Poor writers litter their work with spelling and grammatical errors. Efficient players craft preparation, effort, and execution. They do their homework. They fill in the blanks. 

Writing drafts (practice), write originally with tempo. Flesh out the characters (build player skills) and how they fit (team play). 

Practice edits our understanding and execution, just as accomplished writers integrate plot, characters, and dialogue. While editing, James Patterson sees his flaws. "What did I do wrong?" He notices when he's not moving the story forward. 

We progress with addition by subtraction. Don't reflexly put the ball on the floor. Don't dribble the air out of the ball. Don't expose yourself by going for the steal. Don't play in the traffic. Don't always go dominant hand. See the help defender. Anticipate what will go wrong. 

Think quicker. Write better. Edit smarter. 


Bring your best stuff. "Never bring a knife to a gunfight." 



Even great players fall in love with the dribble. 

Excellent play entices fans to want what comes next...play becomes 'page turning'. Sister Jean was the side story to Loyola University of Chicago basketball. Their craft, art, and finishing moved the story forward. 



The extra pass moves the story forward. Technical or tactical (strategy), clarity and simplicity advance our process. 

James Patterson describes editing (coaching), "You didn't make mistakes; you're making it better." 

Lagniappe:

Modification of Coach Wilkes Tandem Post Action 

Xavier runs possible backdoor action, reverses the ball, and sets up a staggered screen instead of an Iverson cut. It turns into a double screen.