The Forest and The Trees

"See the forest for the trees"

A famous saying, and very important to coaching basketball. A forest is made of trees; it is the larger picture to the smaller detail. But here is what is interesting for me as a coach: what the 'forest' is changes based on perspective.

Consider for a second the parents of your team. If they are parents of varsity athletes, their 'forest' is probably your win/loss total. Most parents I deal with fall into this category, simply because they see a small portion of what the team does. We generally have 240 minutes (of practice time) to prepare for a game, the game lasts 32 minutes (in high school), and their son/daughter may only play some of those minutes. Their forest is the game, their trees are their child. It makes sense, but it can also spell trouble for coaches.

The "Double Dribble" Drill

I created this drill out of necessity a year ago. I had a team that insisted on trying to beat the press and play transition offense with the dribble instead of the pass. You can guess how that went - badly. We did not consistently break the press, and we never got out and ran in transition. There were multiple games in which we had zero easy layups in transition. And still, we scored 42 points per game - completely out of half-court offense.

Creating a Practice Plan

Maybe this is a little simplistic for a blog post, but its still a very important thing - especially for new coaches to get right.

An organized practice is critical to accomplishing what you set out to do each day. I've gone through multiple different plans, both written and typed before my current template, which is done on computer and printed out before practice. I've placed download links below, one for Microsoft Word, and one for Macintosh Pages.

Installing the Read and React Offense

Where to start. My formative years in basketball were in high school, when I finally (like most boys) learned to harness my athletic skills into a more productive set of abilities. The varsity and junior varsity coaches at my school had the most to do with that. Our philosophy was simple. We ran motion offenses (multiple versions, including flex) against man defense, and flood type offenses against zone defenses. And this was the way I taught offense since I started coaching right after I graduated.

I scrapped that this week after a loss on Friday, but my dissatisfaction with my offensive philosophy is a long time coming. I consider myself a strong coach in terms of teaching and strategy, especially concerning defense. My teams generally improve their defensive scoring average in my first year. Last years team reduced defensive scoring average by 5 points on the season, and this year we gave up 43 points in our first game. But my teams also seem to struggle scoring, averaging between 40-46 ppg year in and year out. I attributed this (and somewhat rightfully so) to the disease of AAU/Summer League ball taking the place of practice and skill development. We got great shots - but we just didn't make them. Recently though, I've been thinking that this problem wasn't fully to blame.

Introduction

I love basketball. I have been coaching basketball for 11 years now (since I was 19 years old), and could not dream of doing anything else. I also recently started reading coaching blogs, and well, I like those quite a lot too.

Without moving too far along, I have to give credit to a few blogs that inspired me to get started. Chris Brown's exceptional football blog Smart Football, and another basketball blog X's & O's of Basketball. They are well run and well written blogs that make me a smarter coach (even though my football coaching days are over).

The purpose of this blog is simple. To provide people with information to help them understand basketball better, and to promote smarter basketball.