Recommended Reading: David and Goliath

This is definitely an idea I should have had earlier, but I’m glad it popped into my head this morning anyway. As a coach and teacher, some of the most interesting books are on human psychology. Of course basketball books can be great too. This is our first ‘Recommended Reading’ post, but it certainly won’t be the last.

I just finished David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. It is an excellent book, another in Gladwell’s series of excellent books. At first glance it seems to be about how underdogs overcome the odds to claim victory, which would have obvious value to us as coaches when facing superior opponents. The true content of the book is that what can be perceived as disadvantages are sometimes anything but, and how success can be derived from those disadvantages.

There is a portion of the book dedicated to basketball, and many of you will be familiar with its story. It centers on how underdogs can use the press defense against superior opponents to try and tilt the odds in their favor. This idea, at least in coaching circles I am in, has gained plenty of traction in theory – but many coaches still fail to use it in practice. The difficulty of conditioning and teaching a team to press non-stop is pretty daunting.

There are more lessons than that in this book though, and plenty of ideas that had my brain working overtime. The stories of individuals who use their disadvantages or disabilities to rise high is incredible, and it gave me so much to think about in terms of how we help our players grow as individuals. I have met so many athletes that could have benefited from advice derived from the lessons learned in this book that I really wish I had read it earlier in my career.

I consider this book a must-read for coaches. All three parts of the book; The Advantages of Disadvantages, The Theory of Desirable Difficulty, and The Limits of Power, have powerful messages that can translate to our job as leaders and mentors. I hope you get a chance to read it soon, and good luck this season, especially to our first year coaches.

Attacking a Defense Through Spacing

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament provided what we have come to expect every March - the unexpected. Somehow despite our anticipation of one time upsets, extended runs by small schools, and last minute drama the tournament continues to surprise us. It is truly a testament to the excitement of the game.

As a convert to the Read and React system I can tell you how different it is to watch basketball on television, and of everything that stands out to me spacing rises above all as the concept that is easiest to identify and dangerous for teams to screw up.

Over the course of the weekend the shining example of excellent spacing was the Florida Gators. I didn't get to see their opening round game, but the game against Pittsburgh was a clinic of using simple (but powerful) concepts and good spacing to attack on offense.

Florida repeatedly used a high wide screen (attacking the middle of the floor) to put help defenders in a bind. This isn't a new concept of course, but doing it correctly requires discipline from the other players on the floor to maintain proper spacing. The spacing affects how quickly defenders can help and recover, how far a pass has to travel, and perhaps most importantly the angle of those passes.

Take a look at this play here. Two really great spacing and passing angle examples.

Sure, it's an exciting shot, a highlight reel three. But notice the two flanking players on the wing, If Wilbekin gets locked up by a defender there are clear passing lanes to two open teammates. Beauty is in the details, and right now the Gators are looking quite attractive to win another National Championship.

As coaches, we are always tasked with the application of these concepts. Lucky coaches will have a player (maybe more) who innately understand spacing and are frequently "in the right spot." What then, do we do about the other players? Spacing has to be a constant discussion for an offensive game plan. Are you going to flood one side of the floor, or maintain balanced spacing? How many post players are you going to use, and will you use spacing to create driving lanes or isolations on post entries? Even if you use set plays, your spacing is critical. After all, maybe that pass was intercepted not because it was a bad decision, but because the receiving teammate had drifted to far away from the ball handler. Understanding spacing allows you to see the game - on both sides of the ball - in a completely different way.

This weekend I'll be pulling for Michigan and Michigan State, teams who have coaches that I like and respect over most others. They are also teams will excellent spacing and ball movement, who are a lot of fun to watch. This weekend I'll be focusing on shot selection, and hopefully have a post written up next week. Thanks for reading.

Transition Synergy

This is an idea I've had in my mind for a long time, but haven't really gotten around to writing it. In my opinion its very important that you have a cohesive philosophy as a coach. Something that is often overlooked, even by good coaches, is whether your offensive system and defensive system work together to create a team system. If you have an offensive system that operates on completely different premises and values than your defensive system, you might not be getting the most out of your team.

When I played for my high school team, my coach had an well balanced coaching philosophy. Our offense was designed to create multiple predictable scoring opportunities in the paint in half court sets, and we were encouraged to slow it down and run our sets if we didn't have an obvious fast break advantage. On defense we rarely pressed, relying instead on changing defenses often based on offensive outcome and sometimes that would change each quarter or half. This forced the opposing team to use a significant portion of their offense to attack us, and waste quite of a lot of shot clock identifying and deciding how to do so. My point in discussing this first is to give you an example of a philosophy that worked well. Maybe you can see the synergy already. On both ends of the court we used or extensive offensive and defensive sets to test the other teams preparation and focus. We were a strong rebounding team, so we tried to minimize the possessions per game and try to come out on top of points per possession. Offense and defense felt the same, it was never jarring mentally to transition from one to the other. This isn't how I currently coach, but in retrospect I can see why it worked for us.

Why NCAA Pre-Season Polls Need to Go

I have so many other things I want to write posts about - not the least of which is in regards to the article about CourtVision I've recently read, or the series of articles about coaching defense. But this is something I need to post about, so here it is.

Pre-season polls for NCAA basketball and football need to stop. Its a pointless and ultimately damaging item that would be better served being eliminated. This is a purely emotional post, I'm not going back and looking at old polls or anything like that. But I think - intuitively - that I am right about this.

RnR Offense Installed

It has been almost exactly one month since the Read and React offense made its way into my playbook. I have a lot of things to say about it, but only one statement sums it up. I'm never looking back. This is the most dynamic offense I've been able to teach. And the thing that I'm going to discuss in this post is something I was never expecting.

The RnR is the most coach-friendly offense I've used. No contest.

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.

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.