Basketball: Darwin and Basketball; Darwin Said It First.

Ecclesiastes 1:9. "There is nothing new under the sun."

Steal from history's great minds. Darwin rocks. 

1. Flexibility. Be willing to change. Plans fail. Mike Tyson reminds us that "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Changing a failing plan isn't weakness. 

2. No excuses. Darwin's studies argued, "that all humanity was linked." He couldn't justify treatment of one race differently than another. 

3. Attention to detail. Darwin owned the original "five-year plan" to study his universe. He even developed a pro and con list of whether to marry. Evidently, "better than a dog" won out. 

4. Efficiency. Darwin believed in organization and careful record keeping. His words apply to basketball, “Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.” Translate this to basketball-speak as "do well what we do a lot." 

• What's in our playbook?
• Revise and update our drill book. 
• Have a portfolio of "game winning" actions. (As a player, what's your winning move?)
• Write down and share the few things we want our team to do well. 
• Always write out our practice schedule. 

5. Work ethic. Darwin usually spent three ninety-minute sessions a day working. He wrote nineteen books despite believing in "deliberate rest." 

6. "Basketball is a game of mistakes." - Bobby Knight

7. Player development  (Teach Both Sides of a Controversy) 

• Defending the backdoor cut - open up or head snap? 
• "Ten toes" or "turn" (and exceptions)?
• PnR coverage and protection
• One-two or hop? 
• Always block out or hit and get?

8. Self-assessment 

"We have met the enemy and they are us."

9. Curiosity 

10. Teamwork. Collaborate and prevail. 

Lagniappe: "How Good Do You Want to Be?" - Nick Saban 

1. Be a Team - Together Everyone Accomplishes More
2. Work to Dominate Your Opponent
3. Positively Affect Our Teammates
4. Individual Responsibility for Self-Determination
5. Be Champions On and Off the Field

Lagniappe 2: Winning doesn't alway mean a work of art. 

Basketball- "There Are Always Opportunities to Lead" Plus John Thompson Tribute

“There are always opportunities to lead.” - Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams

Availability. Leaders are on display 24/7 which is why excellence matters. General McChrystal made a point of surveying O&I (operations and intelligence) briefings before presentation, greeting each presenter by first name, asking a relevant question, and thanking each presenter. In turn, the Task Force got value by making presenters feel valued. 

Authenticity. Coaches need authenticity, but only a select few (e.g Belichick, Popovich) get leeway to be sometimes brusque or dismissive. The rest of us should use courtesy and respect consistently. 

Attitude. "Use attitude to gain altitude." Coaches need to bring shared energy to raise the general energy level every day. Just as the director is "the keeper of the story," the coach is the keeper of team culture. Greet every player individually by name within the first ten minutes of practice. Thank them at the end of practice. Aspire to inspire. 

Tone. Our message includes what we say and how we say it. Good players want coaching, want to grow, want the truth. Be positive and be specific. "Work on transition defense because we allowed twelve points in transition. Let's review assignments and the technique we're using today."



Presence. Management guru Tom Peters discusses the importance of MBWA - management by walking around. General McChrystal refers to this as "battlefield circulation," visiting the troops to give and get perspective. Abraham Lincoln was well-known for visiting troops during the Civil War, eating the same hardtack they did. Pay attention to developing everyone on the team. 

Bear Bryant was famous for his perch in a tower over the practice field. 

Questions. Share the questions before the test. Compile a list of questions that everyone learns to be on the same page. Gives players a chance to read, study, develop ideas, and organize their thoughts and questions. And be "performance-focused and feedback rich." 

• "How do we defend the pick-and-roll?" 
• "Are we running a team off the three-point line or challenging them to make threes?"
• "What are the defenders' responsibility in transition D?"

Young players lead through attentiveness, work ethic, and toughness. Modeling "high character" play may not remove "territoriality" of older players but affords a grudging respect. 

Lagniappe: John Thompson, champion. Did you know...?

Basketball: Developing Our Offense, "Multiple Actions"

Chris Oliver is a superb teacher using video, his website, and podcasts. We all know that "great offense is multiple actions." Young players need video study to see possibilities within the game. Old guys and gals keep learning every day. 

Let's examine a brief video share from Coach Oliver and see how it applies. Then steal concepts that appeal to us and omit a few. 

At the youth level, choose actions you love and can execute. Few of these meet both criteria. 

1. Staggered screen. It's generic and easy entries come off horns, box sets, and Iverson action. (0:04)

2. Pick-and-roll...the second clip features a drag screen and rescreening action with a different screener. (0:23)

3. Pick-and-roll with roller screen. Instead of screen the roller it's roller screening for a shooter. I'd call it NIAPS (Spain backwards). (0:42)

4. Downscreen dribbler pitch...pseudo-stagger in effect. (1:02)

5. Flex Flare. Reminds me of "Corner Rip" but the Flex screener sets a second screen. (1:17)

6. PnR into High-Low Roller (below)



The roller gets low position by sealing on the roll. 

7. Wing entry, DHO. Stagger opposite. (2:40) We can't make this play. 

8. Rescreen into screen-the-roller (modification of Spain PnR) (2:54)

9. Pick-and-Pop into Stagger with Cross-Screen/STS (3:13). 

10. Curl into Screen-the-screener action. (3:55) Elegant.

Lagniappe:  Heat 

Antetokounmpo sets a wing ball screen. Heat in good position to help shut down the drive. 

The helpside loads even more to the ball. 




Subtle relocation opens a driving lane for Butler. 



The Bucks score, but watch Crowder (near corner) working to tag the cutter (and recover) who has cut backdoor against Butler. 

Basketball Monday: Make Music to Fit Your Ability and Mood

Reba McEntire says there's a time and a place for a song. It's the same way for sports as we leverage strengths and adjust to limit opponents. 

As we connect with artists (players), we need a message that resonates throughout the team. Some players "tune us out" if dissatisfied with their role. 

Coaches are lyricists, using stories to teach. Love your losses by learning from them. 

Select a "song" (play). As a youth (developmental) coach, prioritize skill development and "core" actions that work for you. 

• Pick-and-roll - PnR (develops offense and defense)
• Drive and kick
• Cutting (give-and-go, back cuts) 
• Off-ball screens 
• Screen-the-screener
• Screen combos (Iverson, Spain PnR, Corner Rip - serial screens)

GSW/Corner Rip (serial screening) 

I won't say we executed them to my satisfaction, but the players going into high school can't say, "I never heard that tune." 

Reba says, "If your gut says this is a good song (play), then it's a good song." In practice, the analytics should define "quality shots."

Relatability. A song (action) should play for an audience (team). Lob plays at the rim don't belong in our palate. Plays defined to combat switching only work if the mismatches are viable. 

Adapt what we see and what we hear to our domain and beauty emerges. I worked with a coach who told players, "I want to be entertained." Amen. 


Lagniappe: "It's not the world that needs to change, it's me that needs to change." - Larry, contestant, History Channel, Alone, Season 2. 

Lagniappe 2: An efficient scorer is not a selfish shooter. Volume shooting doesn't make someone a scorer. 

Lagniappe 3: NBA Teaching Highlights 



Two intriguing actions on this play. First, the split of the PnR and second a sidestep stepback on the Conley three. 



We share a lot of friendly debate about shooting mechanics. Five seconds of Jamal Murray's off-the-bounce three - hop step, turn, and dip are all part of his process. 


BTL (between-the-legs), BTL, stepback, three. 

Jerami Grant is a 34.7 career three-point shooter, but upped that this season to 38.9% and went 4-7 yesterday...fans can see hard work paying off. 



...a game of separation. With ever-increasing reliance on defending the three, players need to escape by practicing side-dribble threes. 

Basketball: Shared Consciousness (Teamwork) Means Opening Silos, Barriers and Opportunity

“Use good judgment in all situations” reads the small card handed to all Nordstrom employees. Strong management wants decentralized decisions when possible to satisfy the customer. They understand that success can't happen if management and workers inhabit different silos. When companies lose touch with frontline employees, customer service suffers. 



Dave Carroll and his guitar flew United, but the guitar didn't make the trip intact. In a highly-connected world, customers punch back. Carroll released the video above, lampooning United Airlines' ham-handed customer service. The video has over twenty million views.

The count was two-and two, two outs, runners at the corners. Protecting a 4-1 lead late, I faced a right handed slugger who had reached Double A. The catcher called for a curve away. I shook him off. He threw down the index finger and I threw a fastball inside corner above the waist. Strike three swinging. The pitcher has the final say, "extreme ownership." 

In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal notes that empowering troops was tough, but on time, frontline decisions were better. "We found our estimates were backward-we were getting the 90 percent solution today instead of the 70 percent solution tomorrow." Silos fell, performance rose. 

Coach - Player silos. Every play involves judgment. Players and coaches sometimes live in separate silos. Some players misunderstand the importance of the scorebook versus the scoreboard. They may not grasp how pieces fit together on the board. Claiming a bigger role only works with the skill and will to fill it. 

Coaches remember Bill Parcells' truth, "I can't think for everyone." Coaches can't micromanage real-time action. 

Player - Player silos. Players may have different agendas. Some seek exposure, numbers, and publicity over teamwork and winning. That dog won't hunt. The coach holds the ultimate tool, minutes. The bench beckons, "that is not how we play." 

Organization silos. Some communities have integrated programs from elementary school through high school. Others run independently. It makes sense that unified philosophy and teaching leads to better results. 

Players own many developmental decisions that go astray: 

• Shot selection
• Player and ball movement (cutting and passing)
• Setting and using screens
• Pace
• Conversion and transition
• Defensive coverage and protection

In a given offense, they should know "the merits of an early possession open shot," motion, sets, and bail out offense. Young players mostly lack the practice time (games emphasis?), experience, and video education to make consistently good choices. 

How many individual conversations have we had with players, reviewing film, discussing shot-by-shot decisions and quality? I don't mean a "are you kidding me" glance or general conversation. 



"See one, do one, teach one." Get players to teach. 

And Zak Boisvert classifies turnovers as either decision-related or execution-related. 

The long-term answer blends education, communication, and time.  

Lagniappe: These Guys Are Good (Storm-Sky) 



The Storm run the pick-and-roll to perfection. 



Cut hard and throw crisp passes.



"You own your paycheck." Breanna Stewart earns 2 by running hard. 



Horns-like action where gravity pulls defenders (draw 2) and the Storm get two. 

Lagniappe 2: Slow motion, hot Curry. 


Lagniappe 3: Nate McMillan Quotes 

Basketball - 50 years Distilled to Ten Enduring Lessons

A lifetime around the game teaches lessons. What are yours? Find one message to steal.

Never give up. 



"Teach your philosophy and stick with it." Teams win with many different styles. If a team lacks an obvious strategy, they probably don't have one. 

• "Get more and better shots than your opponent." - Pete Newell; Get quality shots and force one bad shot. 
• As a team, be exceptional at a few things (e.g. transition defense, half court offense, defending the pick-and-roll)
• "Do more of what works and less of what doesn't." 

"No ability without eligibility." The best high school girl I saw in person earned a full ride to a Big East school. She didn't have the grades and never enrolled. Take care of business with your grades. 

"Ego is the enemy." Players win the games. Like life, the game humbles us. What we learn today changes tomorrow. Keep learning.

"Invest our time don't spend it." The video explains. 



An old German proverb says, "the child whose brow taste salty when kissed will soon die." That is the old cystic fibrosis story. Boys have enjoyed a better prognosis. But other factors, including gender-related differences in infection, hormonal effects, and activity levels could contribute. The median survival age of CF has nearly doubled. 

"Let it go." Earl Weaver told baseball writers, "You're never as good as you look when you win or as bad as you look when you lose." I coach kids. Young players are up and down. We think they've turned the corner and then a mean reversion "stinker" shows up. Don't crucify kids on the altar of wins and losses.  

"Yelling louder won’t make us more right." If screaming defined better coaches, ADs would carry decibel meters. As a young coach, I yelled. Yelling was a poor substitute for knowledge and experience. 

Get smarter by listening. The first price for growth is paying attention. Teach players to listen and focus. One popular teaching phrase is "eyes on me" with or without 'call and response'. Mindfulness increases focus and attention as early as in grades one through three. Jordan, Kobe, and Olympians use mindfulness for sustainable competitive advantage.

"Fall in love with easy." Young players are easily confused. Some have learning disabilities (ADD, dyslexia). They don't come with warning labels. Embrace Don Meyer's "mature simplicity." Fight the temptation to add more plays and more drills. Edit and refine our catalog of plays. Study and replace. 


Zak Boisvert shares Mavs' BLOB series including the "easy" stack above. 

Leave a legacy. When asked about his team, Amos Alonzo Stagg replied, "ask me in twenty years." We can't know our players' future. Remind them that we are here to assist with recommendations, letters, and phone calls. 

Lagniappe: We know that Dort and Harden have watched this. Why don't we? 

Basketball Friday: 1-3-1 (Drill, Concepts, Play) - "Getting the Most Out of Our Instrument"

In the latest MasterClass, Jake Shimabokuro (never heard of him) offers us instruction in "Playing the Ukulele." In his introduction he offers to help us "get the most out of our instrument," a metaphor for life. 

Basketball Friday examines one drill, three concepts, and one play. Today, I'll share a pressure drill and sideline out of bounds plays (SLOBs). 

Drill: Carolina (Sylvia Hatchell) works to handle pressure. 

"Carolina" uses pressure plus "advantage-disadvantage." The coach (C) hands the ball to 1 with the initial x1 and x2 defenders one step away. 1 has a live dribble and players must relocate to receive the pass and the "trappers" must disallow escape. 

Concepts: Sometimes it's not enough to get the ball inbounds and other times that's exactly what we need, clinging to a small lead with little time left. 

Our seventh grade girls led by one with five seconds remaining with the ball at half-court. The priorities were getting the ball inbounds, running clock, and doing so far away from our own basket. If things went wrong, the opponent would need to score on the "long field." The other coach was knowledgeable and I expected him to "switch everything" (he did). I was looking for a "good hands" player to receive and a good free throw shooter. 

We entered the ball to the corner and unfortunately it turned into a held ball. With no time outs and a couple of seconds left, the opponents never got a shot. We earned a road upset win over the top-ranked team without our top player. 

1. Find a reliable inbounder with the quarterback instincts (vision, decision-making, and execution) to make on-time and on-target passes. Poor personnel choices sabotage the best play. 

2. Understand what you're looking to get from the play. Most of the time, we seek a scoring opportunity. Need a 3 point shot? 

This creates multiple options for three-point shots, starting with screen-the-screener. 

3. Make the defense make "hard choices" about where and whom to defend. 

Screening the middle of a zone can challenge defenses. 

Play. Here's video evidence of something that worked. 

The players improvised here with a zipper cut (base action), give-and-go pass, and seal with post entry. 

Lagniappe: Practice finishing off two feet for better base, balance, and bounce. Video from Coach Giesbrecht. 

More examples and explanation. 

Basketball: Finding Tools for Student Achievement Is Part of Our Job

"The difference between who we are today and whom we become in five years is the people we meet and the books we read." I encourage readers to read How to Remember What You Read. Coaches model behavior; education changes behavior. Encouraging high academic performance is part of our job. Share tools that students can use. 

Excerpts:

• Quality matters more than quantity. If you read just one book a week but fully appreciate and absorb it, you’ll be far better off than someone who skims through half the library without paying much attention.
• Don’t read stuff we find boring. 
• Finishing the book is optional. You should start a lot of books and only finish a few of them.

Reading an excellent book multiple times is better than reading many bad books. Sometimes we must abandon a read. 

Author Matt Haig wrote, "the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something’.” And remind players that how you play reflects how you live. Do you prepare, study, invest your time or spend it? 

Sport is a microcosm of life. Where in life or in basketball do you want to be in five years and what are you doing today to advance your chance to arrive there? 

Playwright David Mamet says storytellers ask, "Who wants what from whom, what happens if they don't get it, and why now?"  (This applies to the news, too.) 

Who wants what? As a player, when you "cross the red line" for practice or games, what is your level of commitment to your teammates? Don't play for the community, the school, or the coach. Play for your teammates, the group living shared sacrifice. When you have wants and desires, the magic is in the work. 

What happens if you don't get it? Sulking will not make you better, not endear you to coaches or teammates, or get you more minutes. Work harder, work smarter for more opportunity or go home. Never stand in a doorway with one foot in and one foot out. 

Why now?  Life is short. Your athletic career is shorter. NOW means playing present, having a sense of urgency, "making the next right play right now." Now because if not now, it may be never. 

What's the work product? A chosen few leave a legacy. Short-term leave an impression and impact the game. Longer-term make memories for teammates, coaches, and yourself. 

Lagniappe: Spurs SLOB with Flex-like action (multiple off-ball screens) into a DHO



Lagniappe 2: Dan Shaughnessy writes about the Celtics' historic role in seeking equality, from drafting Chuck Cooper, to starting the NBA's first all-Black five, and having the first African-American coach of the four major sports. It hasn't been perfect. 

Fast Five: Basketball and Physics - Gravity, Force, and Energy Matter

Core concepts in big domains translate to basketball. What does that mean for physics, the study of matter and energy? 

The ball has gravity. We could also argue that the ball has magnetism. 

Defensive gravity is great, creating an edge. We use alternative terms, "load to the ball" and "helpside I" but it's gravity. 

Offensively, gravity is a negative. 

• Offensive gravity opposes spacing. 
• "Don't cut to an occupied post." 
• Don't obstruct a driver. 

Friction is resistance of one object's motion relative to another. We want "frictionless" implementation of our systems. We impose friction with ineffective teaching or suffer it with player inattention or lack of focus. I've been guilty of this by prioritizing family and school, so players miss practice for grandma's 80th birthday or extra study before a big test. 

But players have the responsibility to "take care of business," investing their time to complete their homework and chores while being able to attend and engage practice. 

Momentum is the product of mass times velocity. We build figurative momentum through either mass (personnel), velocity (skill), or both. The global pandemic has reduced momentum. 

Force is interaction with an object that changes its motion. Players apply a variable degree of force. A player could have more "mass" yet play with little force. Skill is separate from force. Two very different players with high force are Goran Dragic and Marcus Smart. 

Energy. A system that has energy can do work. Energy comes in multiple, multiple forms, kinetic energy (energy in motion) and potential energy (conferred by position). We have higher and lower energy players. But energy depends on multiple factors including motivation, training, rest, sleep, and nutrition. Coaches assess the "energy state" of our team and decide what our team needs now and for the longer term. Sometimes less is more.

Summary: 

• Use concepts across disciplines.
• The ball has gravity and energy. 
• Basketball gravity can be positive or negative.
• Play with force.
• Recognize the obligation to supply and monitor energy. 

Lagniappe: repackaged "Five Pillars" which originated (I think) with Don Meyer. My mnemonic is PUSH-T ... passion, unity, servant leadership, humility, thankfulness. 

Lagniappe 2: "What's our vision of how the game should be played?" Player and ball movement... a few NBA Nuggets-Jazz moments as the best players from the best league in the world show why. 


"The ball has energy." 




Gobert "resets" the screen to free Mitchell. 


"Situational awareness" means that five seconds is a long time. Conley relocates and rewards his team for his trouble. 




"Great offense is multiple actions." The Nuggets set a high ball screen and Jokic rolls. Utah helps on the roller and Porter, Jr. "lifts" from the corner ("the ball is a camera"). Splash. 



On the baseline drive, bigs should look to dive to the middle. 

Lagniappe 3: Patrick Lencioni's Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team will get more thorough treatment in a future post. Do we have trust, conflict management, commitment, accountability, and focus on results? 

Basketball: Tit for Tat, Not All Battles Are Fought on the Court Plus Heat/Pacers Lessons

"Learn and share every day." 

Success demands understanding ourselves, organization, and relationships. I never heard of Anatol Rapoport until recently (my loss). Here's a quote about him: 

"Known for formulating the “Tit for Tat” strategy, his approach to game theory reflected a nuanced understanding of knowledge, wisdom, and ethics; the differences, for example, between modeling behavior—what works as an algorithm in a structured game—and solving complex human social interactions."

Rapoport began as a musician/mathematician, earned a doctoral degree and became an international expert on Game Theory, peace activist, and Professor at the University of Toronto. 

He won an international competition in Game Theory to solve the "Prisoner's Dilemma." His simplest of solutions found that repeating your opponent's last move was a winning strategy. His four lines of FORTRAN code read, "cooperates on the first move, and then does whatever the other player did on the previous move. It has a long history, since it can be identified with the ancient lex talionis (law of retaliation) or an eye for an eye.” Players do best through cooperation. This has also been called, "conditional niceness." 

Translation? Over the breadth of "competition", cooperation is favored. But if our competitor defects from competition, changing strategies to noncooperation until they cooperate is better. Be a welcome mat not a doormat. 

Envision how this works for team communication, contracts, and resource disputes (e.g. scheduling, practice time, budget). This strategy doesn't always win, but performs well over time in varying conditions. 

Lagniappe:  Today's Menu, Miscellaneous Highlights 

The Heat defense - ball pressure, nail covered, Helpside I, and ballside help that can still react to the corner. 

But NBA skill can overcome good defense as shown by Victor Oladipo. 


Cutting produces the highest NBA points per possession. 

And can it be an accident that the Mavs (Doncic) and Lakers (LeBron) are near the top? 



The Butler did it. "Basketball is a game of separation." Butler shows the head-and-shoulder fake to shake free. 



Iverson cut turns into "different" action with an off-ball screen and roll. Beautiful.