Coaches are the most selfish people. They want players on the floor who will make them look good. Everyone wants to play more; but everyone is not prepared to do what it takes.
Players and their families make big sacrifices to get on the court. But it’s not enough to want to play. You must earn your minutes, practice after practice, day after day.
1. You have to be physically and mentally ready. You makes choices about how you play and your decisions on the floor. You must keep your focus at all times. I’m a big believer in the mental side of sports and have encouraged our players to keep ‘success diaries’.
2. The team takes priority over individual players AND coaches’ needs. Life is a team sport. Alan Williams’ Teammates Matter is on our list of important basketball reading. A player may not have as much individual ability as another player, but their energy, ability to share energy, and decisive aggressiveness (edge) may make them a bigger contributor.
3. Defense and rebounding are our top priorities. You cannot win without the ball. Great defense and relentless rebounding get ball possession.
4. The first element of great defense is total concentration. Concentration leads to anticipation, reaction, and execution (CARE).
5. It takes five players to play defense. One player’s indifference or laziness can cause a total breakdown. As a team, your first goal is to take away easy baskets.
6. How do you take away easy baskets? There are many ways, but they include good transition (fastbreak defense), ball pressure, keeping the ball out of the lane, proper closeouts, and help defense as well as communication.
7. What you do when you don’t have the ball is critical? Off the ball defense and offensive contributions by player movement, screen setting and reading, and rebounding determine what kind of player you are.
8. Defensively, after your player gives up the ball, your first responsibility is to deny the return pass for a quick cut to the basket (give and go), also under the rubric of denying easy baskets.
9. Offense is about creating separation, to get higher percentage shots. Yes, we are REPETITIVE, because repetition leads to reinforcing neural pathways in the brain to allow execution. Separation comes via SPACING, BALL MOVEMENT, and PLAYER MOVEMENT.
10. You must learn to read and react to everything that happens offensively and defensively. The overplay defensive facilitates back door cutting and both on-the-ball and off-the-ball screens. Looser defenses demand better shooting to bring the defense out. Presses and zone defenses often demand ball reversal and sometimes getting the ball to the middle of the court.
We don’t just roll the ball out and let ‘em play. We expect our players to know the situation and to focus on the process to get the best results. We expect them to be leaders off the court as well. Nothing less is acceptable.
