Compete

Kids need to compete. Kids want to compete. The issue is what they and we as the adults in charge define as competing.

The dictionary definition of compete, has it as a verb meaning: to strive to outdo another for acknowledgment, a prize, supremacy, profit, etc.; engage in a contest; vie: to compete in a race; to compete in business.

Our kids tend to think of competeing as engaging in a contest. They "compete" when there is a score or prize or an opponent. The issue is that to become a high performing basketball player you need skills created through muscle memory and repetition on your own. Kids associate competion, and the accorded effort, to game like situations. In reality the competition should be striving to be the supreme basketball player, person and part of the best team they can be. The competition and drive should be internal not external.

Solutions that we as coaches can offer:

1) For kids who can't grasp the concept of internal vs external drive you can cheat a little. You can turn drills, and skills work in practice in games, with scores, winners, etc. Kids enjoy this and tend to work ahrder. They are going to struggle on their own and miss out on a lot of development since without the external factors they won't want to drill hard or at all individually.

2) Demand high performance all the time. There are no break drills, or drills where we don't go hard. Require that everything be done all the time at game speed and intensity. The drawback to this philosophy is that developing skills for young athletes often requires to walk before you run. On teams with varied skill levels someone is going to be bored or overwhelmed. It also requires kids that are committed to being better, kids that play for fun or to be part of something may not responsd well to constant demands and pressure.

3) Spend the time reminding, praising, punishing, talking, . . . whatever your kids need to create that internal voice that pushes them. I don't buy that there are driven kids and lazy kids. No one pops out of the womb ready to take on the world, or indifferent to their surrondings. Competing and demanding excellence of yourself is a trained skill and learned behaviour. You have to keep putting people who need to learn it in situations where they develop the proper attitudes and structures. The draw back is you are talking about personality, values and attitude which are shaped by all the influences in their lives. You get them after they've spent 6-16 years with other adults and peers shaping their values, changes may not happen over night or at all. If your message deviates or contradicts their prior programming there is no sure bet they'll ever buy in.

The most a player can do is compete every second they have available. The most we can do as coaches is everything we can to try to help them do that.

Tactics vs. Talent

Everyone likes to win. Ask my players after a game or practice, I'm about the win. Heck, ask my wife during a game of Scrabble. I'm about the win. That being said, I don't think as a coach it is my job to determine the outcome. It is the job of the players to go out and win the game. Out work, out execute, out read, and have better skills then the opponent.

There are lots of ways to use tactics to win a basketball game. Do you want to win in mini game? Press and full court deny letting them throw deep since most girls and not a lot of boys can. Get a big kid teach them to post up at the rim and let their teammates feed them the ball. Clear out on offense and let your best player attack the rim all night. You'll win mini games.

Do you want to win in high school in New Brunswick? Chase the stud all over the floor, zone off of everyone else and let them shoot. That will win you a lot of games vs. the skill set of NB kids. Have you made your kids better basketball players???

These are strategies, ways we find to win. You see at all levels of basketball. I heard a middle school girl last night say, "Hey coach you know what works against her. If we all just back off everyone else and 2 or 3 of us crowd her. " Its true there is always a tactic you can use to make it harder for a team or player to be successful. At elite levels (university, pro, National teams) most of what they do is tactical. This doesn't always make kids better basketball players. The young lady's idea to shut down the girl in middle school is great, but would she or her team become more skilled defenders or players by selecting that option.

Talent wins out in the end. We've all been on teams, or in tryout situations to get to a higher level where even though we worked hard, we just weren't good enough or at least as good as someone else. {Unless you are an NBA all-star (in which case thanks for reading).} Kids need to be able to play. Especially in the FIBA game of 24 and 8 with a move to a European style by Canada Basketball. Everyone has to be able to shoot, everyone must be able to dribble, everyone must be able to play at speed and defend all over the floor. If you want kids to be skilled, we should be putting them in situations where they have to be.

We've made a hard adjustment in the last year with my varsity boys teams. There are almost no assigned player positions, our offense and defense is concept based, everything everyone is being asked to do is about making reads and executing skills. Its tough. They play in league where defensive tactics and set plays are the norm over developing players who play. They want what the other team has. They want answers that never change, patterns they can memorize, and something that they can do everytime so the the pressure is on the kids who want it. In my mind the only thing you can everytime is be stronger, smarter, and more skilled. Its taking some growing pains but everyone is learning to play the game the same way.

Coaches give me all sorts of reasons why that is great but their team has to do this or that. The reailty is if you want your kids to develop skills (imho)you have to put them in a position to play, run and win executing those skills. If we tell them skills are important, but then use tactics that never let them practice new skills in games they take something away from our actions: finding a way to win is more important the learning the skill coach asked me to learn.

I'll end with this notion. One night a couple of coaches and I were discussing a similar issue one coach who disagreed with my view point passionately proclaimed, "My job as a coach is to put my kids in the best position to win games." I completely agreed with his statement. THe difference was he felt that what his kids did, and the schemes they used, to maximize their talent were what put them in the best position to win the game. I feel like what we do in practice, in games, and the off season to become better players than the other team should be what puts us in the best position to win. How do you feel?

94 Feet . . . Gimme a break

The court is a certain length. All any coach could ever ask of any player is to play the game all out for every second that they are on the floor. I personally feel like if we're asking kids to do that then they need the opportunity. This isn't 1955, its 2008 and in a FIBA game the game is played with skills executed at speed all the time. If we are attacking and defending the full length of the court it is giving my team and the other a chance to work and develop skills every second they are playing.

I hate it when people come over, or even classier yell over, "Coach why are you still pressing? Hey coach could you take off the press?"

That drives me insane for three reasons:

1) No one ever says anything where we're losing and playing full court. I'm developing my kids how I want, the other team is doing the things they want. No one says boo. This tells me that the issue is that there is anything wrong with playing the game full court, full out for 40 minutes. The issue occurs when the other team is losing. This means that their motivation in either situation is not the development of their kids game or mine, but rather the final outcome.

2) People who understand basketball understand that picking up full court is not the same as pressing. In a FIBA game with 8 seconds to get it over (and the knowledge that a huge percentage increase in made hoops happens in the first 7 seconds of a possesion) it is key that someone always be picking up and slowing the ball. We ask our kids to play every second hard and the right way. If we are still trapping, and zone pressing and running in every turnover up 40+ ok there is an issue. That is not the same as playing full court. Having ball pressure and control over what we do defensively is just fundamental basketball, don't complain because we're doing the right thing defensively and developmentally for our (and your skill set).

3) How does me not picking up full court help your or my kids get better? We are now meeting the ball handler 1/2 to 3/4 of the way down the floor which is terrible in terms of containing the ball and where the offense goes. Its also terrible in terms of teaching your kids to handle the ball in a game situation. Your kids get to dribble the ball over half with no pressure which if they can manage it, is clearly not a skill they need to improve. Both teams need to practice reads in full court, half court, transition, and breakdowns on both offense and defense. Waiting for you to run something eliminates half of what we and you can work on.

The game is being played to win or to develop kids: depending on your philosophy. Regardless once the win or loss is clearly no longer in doubt, the only issue becomes developing players. Players don't learn skills by going out an executing offenses or disrupting offenses. They develop by getting opporunities to execute skills at speed. The game being played 94 feet both ways gives them those opportunties. Let the kids learn to play, gimme a break.

NO such thing as big game players . . .

I really do not believe in big game players. I think their are people who can play at the level they train. What you see in big games is the players who have trained to compete in big games, instead of just training, can still hang at the that level. The average player that just works hard and puts in their time hasn't prepared for that moment and falls by the wayside. Its not a matter of stepping up as it is everyone else who hasn't earned it falling off.

My pet peeve is kids who train and practice as if their is a switch that they can flick on at game time. When the game is on the line, when everything is hard and everyone is moving at 100 mph so how they'll flick this switch and have skills they have never trained to execute in that environment. You play the way you practice, but if practice isn't championship level you won't be able to play in a championship game.

I don't know how you gets kids to play and practice harder. There seems to be kids who buy in regardless, and then others who you could try to reach any way possible who just won't give 110% all the time. It is these kids who end up struggling in the biggest moments looking for excuses, reasons or solutions and there aren't any. The solution was the last 6 monthes.

When basketball . . .

is played the way it 'sposed to be played, its in the air: floating, flying, soaring. The way the oppressed people of this earth see themselves in their dreams."

What a great quote. In a time when I'm frustrated with the basketball community at large it helps to keep me focused on the simple truth: this a is game, games should be fun. We get the opportunity to have fun, playing and competing when kids all over the world worry about the effects of genocide, land mines, religous oppression, arranged marriages, starvation . . . .

The list goes on. We have the luxury of feeling bad about medal counts and missing tournaments. The reality is what is great about basketball is not trips, tournaments, titles or all the other stuff we stress about. What is great about basketball is basksetball.

Being in the gym competing. Improving a skill set through hard work. Improving ourselves for that matter. Getting to play a game and be passionate about it is what is great about basketball. The rest of it is window dressing. We'll make memories regardless. There will always be somone we can play : it could be another school, a parent, our kids, adults in a rec league. Whats great is the game, everything else is details.

You can't take the game away. Who we play. Where we play. The rules we travel under. Whether we win or lose. Whether we get the respect of others or not. We still have the game. We will respect ourselves and our experience. The game only dies if we let it. Its the game that is great.

A Wing Thing

Constant source of debate between me and my coaching friends: what do you do with the perimeter player 1 pass away without the ball. Deny, Sag, Up the line (Off or On), Help, Zone, . . . the list of possibilties goes on and on.

Clearly players more than 1 pass away need to have their players sagged off into a help position seeing their person and the ball. The issue becomes what to do with the player who is a threat to recieve an immediate pass. Then you get into issues of it depending on the reciever, or the capabilites of the guy with the ball.

Maybe I'm too simple minded. Maybe I feel my players are too simple minded. My thought is: who cares, they don't have the ball. Players without the ball can't score until they get the ball. We zone the wing players, gapping up the line off the line. Our chest is sqaure to the ball handler and we a 1 sprint step away from close out.

If the ball handler is being pressured, then the biggest threat is the dribble drive. A pressured wing pass can just as easily be stolen from this position as up denying the wing. In fact, more so because a denied player is probably less likely to a be the target of a pressured pass. A pressured pass should be also easy to close out on since the catch shouldn't be clean. I think doing anything else just opens up drive lanes and requires defenders on bigs to help up (giving up a dump or lob) or help late (letting an attacking player get into the lane).

Maybe I'm wrong. I understand all the situations and reasons for other things. We will deny a kid who we don't want to become the target of a pass, but in that case we are denying all the time and that defender has no other reads/jobs defensively. For me its, its keep it simple. Pressure the ball to drive have everyone taking that away.

Handle . . .

If you are going to play the game at speed, which everyone should be doing (IMHO). Then you can be as fast as you want but if you can't bring the ball with you its all useless. Everyone needs to be able to handle the ball.

I don't mean everyone needs to be able to dribble the ball. I hate this idea that gettting from one end to the other unguarded and keeping control means they can dribble. I can roll out a basketball and my dog can get it from one end to the other and still end up with the ball. Everyone needs to be able to handle the ball = everyone needs to be able to attack defense with the dribble, handle the ball under pressure, protect the ball from 1st, 2nd and 3rd line defenders.

Protecting the ball from the 2nd and 3rd line defenders is more an issue of recognizing when they are going to be a problem and avoiding that problem. This means handling while scanning. I prefer the term scanning to head up because then kids need to know that the head up is doing something other than just not looking at the ball. Basketball really comes down to math: who on the floor can count to 10 fastest and figure out the best thing to do according to where the 10 are first wins.

The issue is that 1st line defender. They have to be a non factor. If the player with the ball is concerned the player guarding them, then they are never getting to worry about whats actually happening on the rest of the floor. Players need to be able to pivot, move in all directions and still maintain control of the ball, and their options with it.

Drills to practice ball handling:

Note: You don't need one thousand drills a few will do if you add to or load the drill to keep it challenging.

-Line dribbling: Exactly what it sounds like lines of kids going one at at time dribbling a ball.
                      Loads to the drill: ALternate hands, weak hand only, speed, changing speed, stop and go, change of direction moves, mutiple balls, mutiple moves, obstacles to negotiate, defense, scanning for things, off the catch, intersecting dribblers, race, complex series at speed.

- King Drills: Pass ball around head, pass around leg, pass around both legs, pass between legs.
                   Loads to the drill: Add bounces, remove bounces, add stance, add pivots, hops, lunges, complex series, defensive pressure, alternate direction.

- Spin outs: Being shadowed by a partner (Mimicing / guided defense) toss the ball to yourself catch with proper foot work, in a stance and pivot.
                     Loads: Add sweeps/clear offs, pivot and re pivot, contact, live defensive, add dribble by, add primary/secondary attack, add escape dribble, add competitive component.

- Chase:  Catch pass and go hard in an assigned directions.
                   Loads: Add finishes, changes of direction with and without the ball, alternate hands, mix in change of direction moves, add defense.

What the game means to me!

All of us come from different backgrounds. Basketball means different things to each of us. We come to it, have learned it, and take away from it different experiences. Lets talk about basketball for a minute and see if we can find some common ground.

For me basketball is not a series of events or actions. It is the sum total of moments that go beyond good or bad, right or wrong, it stems all the way down into purity of thought, emotion and action. For me all the hard work is worth it if it leads to those moments. Let me share a couple of those moments, with you, that make basketball important to me:

1) Have you ever stood in a school gym in the dark.

In those moments, a peace is created by the absence of life and activity. As you breath, your own soft echoes reverberating you will inhale and absorb the sensation of those places. The potential energy is electric. The smells, dents, banners, worn flooring, nicks and markings are not just wear and tear; these are a legacy of years, of lives lived, blood, sweat, tears, passion expressed and of success and failure.

Sports are a topic of nostalgia. Whether good or bad everyone seems to have had an experience that translates into a story. These are stories of heroes, embarrassments, fond memories and painful ones. An all-American backing out of the spotlight so their team-mate can get a win. Thousands of fans screaming and crying, faces coloured as much by their passion as by school colours. The roar of improbably victory and joy earned through hours of prior effort. The meeting of adversity and the growth of a team to overcome it. Young men and women enjoying the only success they might find in life, and a lifetime of memories built out of a uniform and a moment.

There are stories of heartache and of suffering. A young man sitting on the floor with tears streaming down his face, a childhood dream lost to him forever. Young women collapsing from illness, or exhaustion related to too hard, too much, or not enough. It could be the story of the girl that didn't want to do pushups in gym class , or of a teenage sensation turning professional and falling victim to adolescent maturity in a adult world.

For every story of joy there is one of suffering. Good or bad, anguish or elation, sports hold a tradition of passion and emotion. Fire and fury, found at a time in young people's lives when emotional attachment is at a premium, sports are a major source of concern. When people of all ages are brought together by sport changes in noise, energy, meaning, potential learning, and danger found with randomness ensues.

Sports builds moments. It can make heroes or victims. Spots helps to shape and create identity by making success and failure more concrete. In doing so it makes winners, losers, and all the variants in between. It forces the guilt, ego, frustration and triumph of life to be brought out in rivers of cascading moments.

All of this from an empty gymnasium. That which came before, allows voice to that which comes after. Those four walls and that floor have held a plethora of dreams, hopes, wins, losses, successes and failures. Hundreds of thousands of tears, hurt feelings, hugs, handshakes, drops of sweat and blood have mixed with years of effort and a million personal victories and epiphanies to make it that way. These places are a tribute to the power of sport, the potential of individuals and the test of the human condition. When you stand and breathe your breathing legacy.


2) Next time your in a huddle look up.

Look into someone's eyes and see if you can see beyond. See if you can see past the moment, past the frustration, past the emotion. Look and find that feeling that you would do anything, go anywhere and that nothing else in the world matters, because all you can see is the rest of your life. Feeling your body aching, but putting it aside instantly to push forward. The sudden certainty that you are part of something bigger then yourself. A sense of team and fraternity that makes you want to push yourself beyond pain, beyond illness, beyond healthy sacrifice without care because of what you can prove to yourself and those around you.

Look and see the unbridled passion of youth doing something it loves. Witness desire to a point of utter frustration melt behind passion, belief in ones invincibility, and refusal to ever stand down. Feel the wholesomeness of soundless feeling, lungs burning, adrenaline flowing, muscles aching but all leading to clarity of thought and certainty of purpose.

Search for that gleam in the eye of those performing or desperate to perform the impossible. Every ounce of their being will vibrate with the need and want, but they will know that they can never be in over their head, frightened of possible consequences or trying and failing. They will know this because in that same moment they will be looking for that same thing in you and finding that same certainty, that same life, that same belief shining through in your eyes.


These are just a couple of the thousands of moments that this game has that keep me coming back for more. Maybe as time goes on I'll add some more.

I hope there are moments that bring you passion and joy. In the journey of basketball and life you need only hold the same thought in mind: "There is no such thing as can I, can't I, will or won't it happen. There is only - Do I care enough?"