Players not plays.

I read a quote once that went something to the effect - "If your X's are twice as big as the other guys O's, then your X's look pretty good when they run your plays."


What I continue to take away from this quote is no matter what you run (or whether you run anything at all) your success is determined by the quality of your players against your opponents. For a long time I thought my job as a coach was to put in a system that if run properly would give us an advantage over our opponent. I've had high and low amounts of success with this concept. The two determining factors often tended to be how good the players in the system were and the level of our competition. You very quickly learn everyone has a system and if their ahtletes are bigger, faster, and more skilled their system wins.



Now I just try to make my players more skilled and work harder than our opponent. The reality then ,and now, is that we beat the other team when we play better, smarter, harder. Teams with more talent, size, skill or effort beat us everytime if they can at least match us in the other categories.


Now I spend less time on plays and more on skill. I want 5 players on the floor that can shoot it, and beat their player 1 on 1. I want 5 players who can handle the ball and make decisions. When you have 5 players that can do these things on the floor the game becomes so much simpler to coach and play. The guy with the ball makes a read to attack, everyone else reads and reacts, open guy scores the ball.


The same is true on defense. I don't need 6 different things we do on defense. I need 5 players that can use strength, footwork, and hustle to stop the ball. When we rotate, hustle, angle and battle harder then the other guy we win. When we don't, we lose.



Why do it:


1) You are actually coaching kids to play. Not making cogs in a system.

2) You end up with skilled kids that can play anywhere, any way for a lifetime.

3) Your job gets easier. Your not making adjustments for every detail and the emphasis becomes players learning, not you teaching.


4) Its player owned and operated. At game time its their reads, commitment (prior to and during), and ability that controls the outcome.



Why not to do it:


1) If you as a coach can't live with mistakes. This won't always be pretty, especially while the skills, minds and feet co-ordinate. If you need to mirco-manage and can't live with trial and error. This may not be for you.


2) If you can't live with short term butt kicking. In the developmental years and early on in their careers they are going to get beat. They will get beat because other teams use systems that maxmize the strength of their team without improving them for the future. In mini their big kid will score 20 pts a game on you because he/she was told to go stand by the rim and shoot. Your big kid is turning the ball over and feeling confused because they have to handle, pass and play on the wing. Short term success for them. In the long run your kids will be the better player in the short term they may lose.


3) If it is about your stuff. If you aren't ready to let kids go off plan, make reads, find their own ways to be successful, this isn't for you. If you have to know what your kids are going to do every second, not for you.

4) If you have clearly defined image of what you want every kid become. If in your mind you look at kids and have them pegged, pigeon holed, labeld or categorized this may not work for you. Tall cannot always = post and little cannot = shooter. You need to be willing to let kids work stuff out on their own for their own purposes not yours.

Getting a little handsy . . .

So I've been reading. What I've been looking at is the FIBA rules and the "Tower Philosophy" of advantage & disadvantage. I'ld like to say that this reading is beccause I have a genuine love of the game, but my movtives are a little more mercenary. I'm always looking to gain the extra understanding, language, or technique that I can pass on to help my kids be successful. My current adventure is out of a desire to reconcile what I'm seeing, experiecing and needing to coach in my summer work with BNB and what I'm seeing, experiencing and needing in my high school coaching.

My issue is with what to tell my kids. As a coach there is nothing more frustrating then telling a kid one thing and having him/her come back in the middle of a game upset because an official has contradicted something he/she has been told. The kid doesn't want either adult upset with them, what is a kid to do. I find this more often happens with hand, arm, body placement at both ends then it does with issues of violations or offensive skill execution.

What we need is an example. Case in point. Offensively and defensively we tell our girls (age 15-16) in the summer that there is going to be contact so they have to intiate it. "You can either, be the player getting hit or the one doing the hitting." Then they will go out and swim over on cuts, knock down arms in passing lanes, get forearm contact on screens, meet cutters with a forearm and hip, get hands in and out on the ball handler to keep distance and stop them from using their arms. We seem to have success and have been complimented on our aggression and physicality. Now when we come back to high school boys (age 14-19) we try to send the same message about being the aggressor we end up in foul trouble. I ask them to be proactive: jam and force the issue attack at both ends and we are told to back off. We are told we cannot reach, can not invade space, can not wrap. I hear a logical explanation and ask my kids to adjust because that is all we can do.

The issue comes down to advantage & disadvantage. Not all contact is basketball is foul, if it were then we would be out all night getting a half in. So the official uses their baseline rules about position and spirit of the game, while not allowing rough play, to determine whether illegal contact clearly and immediately gained an unfair advantage for one player or the other. What I struggle with is finding the middle ground to work with my kids. I struggle with how the same action can be good tough play in a 15 year old girls game, but excessive between to 17 year old boys.

Do not misunderstand. I have almost never recieved an explanation from an official that was not satisfactory. I may not have agreed with it at the time, but their rational is always within the scope of the rules. My frustration is managing the scope.

I had a young coach ask me the other day: I see a lot of reaching going on in games, and I tell my girls to keep their hands out . . . what is the rule.

I did my best to explain it as I understood they should not be using their hands to impede or make illegal contact with the offensive player. I also tried to explain that depending on the effect, or result, of the contact is going to determine a foul or not. I finally conveyed that each official is going to see it differently and kids will need to adjust. In closing I explained that we teach our kids to play with hands off at first, then we teach counters to offensive reads that require more and more phsyicality.

The fact is there is no right answer. There is what the rules say, but the rules are situational. There is what the official says, but every official feels a little differently. There is what I say, but different coaches teach things different ways. The simple truth is you have to teach kids how to do it all: hands on, hands off, in and out, arm bars and counters for the all those things. If you do not they will end up in a situation they are not prepared for skill wise or mentally.