The Cross Over Movement Blog

In an article on NBA coaches, David Dupree makes a point with which I agree:

Sure, you can run a Princeton offense or a triangle or another kind of motion offense as your basic set, but more times than not, every team resorts to some sort of pick-and-roll or just giving its superstar the ball and letting him create something. Coaches can play up-tempo, use a controlled offense or, as most prefer, a combination of the two. Defensively, coaches can insist that players go underneath screens, over the top or switch on them. They can play zones, double-team, overplay, trap, press or play everything straight. They make adjustments at halftimes, tweak things here and there and often rely on the common sense of their players. If the coach stresses defense as much as offense, he has more options to go to when things aren’t going well, so too much emphasis on one and too little on the other results in falling short of a championship.

I bolded the part about the pick-and-roll and star player because more and more, at every level, I realize that most offensive plays end with an individual play. Teams run sets to try and get a shot, but most of the time they do not work, so a player has to make an individual play. The genius, I suppose, behind the dribble-drive-motion and similar offenses is that it eliminates the plays and moves straight to the individual making plays. In Game 4 of the Cleveland-Boston Series, LeBron James shot a low percentage again because he had to take a bunch of bad shots against the shot clock. The Cavs need to learn from the DDM approach and get the ball into James’ hands earlier in the shot clock so he can create better shots for himself and his teammates.

I once wrote on this site that “I am not a drill guy.” I think coaches look to drills to solve problems. I watched Kicking and Screaming the other night and Will Farrell picks up a soccer book and reads from it while trying to organize the kids to practice. It doesn’t work.

Drills are a part of coaching and can be used effectively as a learning tool. However, drills alone do not make a good coach. When I first published Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, coaches emailed and asked for more drills. One businessman contacted me and wanted me to make the book more specific to the point where it became a checklist to follow for good coaching.

I don’t think such things are possible. Coaching is a people business and the most important skills are not technical, but interpersonal. If a coach cannot communicate with his players or fails to understand their learning styles, how can he be a successful coach? Using Coach K’s drills or copying Jim Boeheim’s zone defense from a DVD does not make a great coach. Everyone now has access to the same information. You can watch thousands of basketball games a year on television and buy thousands of DVDs or books. Knowledge does not separate coaches. It’s how a coach uses the information, relates to his players, motivates, inspires, etc.

In How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in life), Don Seidman writes:

Specialized knowledge or expertise differentiates you for a moment in time, but it likely won’t carry us through an entire career. Changing jobs, companies and even industries now often involves adapting knowledge skills to a new set of conditions.

Yet, the drive for differentiation - personalm professional and organizational - lies at the heart of business endeavors…We all still want to stand out, to be bold, to be uniquely valuable, to distinguish ourselves from the competition, to do things others can’t copy and to be number one. We always will. But, in a commoditized world, we are running out of areas in which to do so.

There is one area where tremendous variation and variability exist, however. One place that we have not yet analyzed, quantified, systematized or commoditized, one which, in fact, cannot be commoditized or copied: the realm of human behavior - how we do what we do.

I saw The Visitor yesterday, which I thought was an excellent film. In the beginning, Walter, an older college professor, takes a piano lesson from a woman. The woman offers the same instruction she gives to little kids and ultimately Walter decides to find a new piano teacher. The woman says that it is very hard for a man of Walter’s age to learn a new instrument.

Later, he meets Tariq who teaches him to play the African drum. Tariq explains that playing the African drum is very different than the classical music to which Walter listens. Classical music is based on a four-count while the African drim is based on a three-count. Tariq challenges Walter to keep playing and eventually gets Walter to play with a drum circle in NYC.

While the move was not about learning musical instruments, the approach each takes was very telling. When the woman failed to get through to Walter, she blamed Walter. It was not her inability to instruct, but his age which she saw as the limiting factor. She had a belief that at his age, learning the piano was not something he could do.

Many coaches fall into this trap. When players make mistakes, they blame the players for not paying attention, or maybe suggest that the player lacks the ability to be good at the particular skill. Rarely does the coach address his own short comings in his technique.

The piano teacher tried to reach Walter, a college professor, with the same tools she used with little kids. If nothing else, this is insulting to the man and likely does not provide the same value in terms of the explanation as it does with a kid.

Coaches sometimes do the same thing, trying to use the same teaching style with all players. Teaching a nine-year-old and teaching a college players are different tasks requiring different skills, even though the game is the same. The instruction which makes sense to a nine-year-old does not always make sense to a 20-year-old, or vice versa.

Tariq had no preconceived notions and brought his enthusiasm for the drum to his teaching. The piano teacher showed no enthusiasm for the piano. Tariq’s enthusiasm was contagious and he wanted to share the drum with others. He used an important teaching technique, pointing out the difference between his previous experience with classical music and the drum. Then, he got Walter playing immediately. He did not dwell on details - like the rounded of his fingers when playing the piano - but focused Walter on the sound and the beat.

Tariq showed the goal and gave Walter the opportunity to reach it. He challenged Walter, but did not push him too fast. When they arrived at the drum circle, Walter was nervous. Tariq encouraged him. Walter declined. So, Tariq told him to feel the music and join when he was ready.

Many coaches and parents push their kids before the child is ready for that next step. Tariq provided the challenge, but allowed Walter to take the first step. He did not force the performance onto Walter before he was ready.

Tariq used many of the concepts from Cross Over and LTAD, using his enthusiasm as his greatest teaching tool to a beginner and progressing slowly when Walter was psychologically ready, while the piano teacher, with her formal teaching background, illustrated a cluelessness in terms of learning.

I did a coaching clinic in Montreal this weekend, and I started by saying that communication is the most important aspect of coaching. I tend to criticize coaching clinics because coached seem to want the magic drill or play that will solve their problems, but there is no such drill or play.

This morning, while catching up on the news of the last four days, I saw an article about Larry Krystowiak on True Hoop. Krystowiak blamed his problems with the Bucks on his communication:

“As a first-time coach, you know you’re going to be behind in certain elements, which I was, with just the learning curve of the whole situation,” Krystkowiak told the Journal Sentinel. “And kind of looking back on it, I wish I could have focused more attention on communication and some of the emotional issues of some of the players.

Many times, we get distracted by the basketball side of coaching, but coaching is a “people” job and communication, and different things which fall under communication like relating to players, is the most important skill for a coach to develop.

Since Memphis lost in the NCAA Championship Game, everyone has slammed John Calipari for not calling a timeout to tell his team to foul.

I like Calipari’s overall approach. He trusts his players to make plays. That is his coaching style. If you trust your players all season, I think you have to trust them in the final minutes as well. If your style is to call timeout in this situation, like most coaches, then you call timeout. I don’t think you change just because of the situation.

I like coaches who let players make the plays. I think we should encourage coaches who take a step back and give players control over their game and making decisions on the court. It did not work in this case, but Memphis did set the standard for wins in a season.

From the current issue of ESPN the Mag:

“Mike Maddux calls the young American pitchers coming up through the Brewers’ system ‘academy kids’ because they were taught to play by micromanaging coaches on travel-ball teams where the fields were always perfect and the drills always robotic. ‘All they’ve been taught is how to take instruction.”, Mike says. “We were taught how to play the game.’”

The same could be said of basketball players, too.

At my boxing class today, there was girl who was in her second class. She was the only girl in the building. We were hitting the speed bag and she was struggling. So, the instructor comes over and says, “It’s easy. Do it like this.”

This is poor coaching. Rather than explaining and demonstrating how to do it properly, he basically insults her. For him, it is very easy; he is a former professional boxer who has hit the speed bag for 20+ years. He forgets what it is like to be new to boxing and struggle with something for the first time.

Too many times, basketball coaches do the same thing. We look at schools from our viewpoint, rather than from the viewpoint of the player. What is easy to an experienced coach is often foreign for a novice player. When we instruct, we must remember who we are teaching and instruct at their level, not ours.

I frequently write about creativity. I wrote an article a couple years ago titled, “The Mechanization of the Modern Player,” where I argued that players’ creativity is drilled out of them during practices. One of the reasons I wrote Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development is because I feel that we need a new system of development which enhances and nurtures players’ creativity rather than constantly supressing it. We complain about players lack of basketball IQ, but coaches at every level take all decision-making away from players. How can players develop creativity and a higher level of understanding if they are never given the freedom to try new moves or make decisions?

I received the following video from Mike McKay of Canada Basketball through another Canadian coach. The talk is about creativity in the educational system, but it very closely parallels the problems in the basketball development system as well.

On another site, I saw a question about stationary ball handling drills and their efficacy for varsity players. The first response was that Bruce Pearl uses stationary ball handling drills, implying that if it is good enough for Pearl’s players, it is good enough for a varsity team.

Is that the only measure of a drill? Should you use a drill just because a famous coach uses it? Are any of Tenneessee’s players even really good ball handlers?

Are stationary ball handling drills effective for varsity players? In my opinion, it depends what you are developing. The question suggested the stationary drills are not gamelike, which seemed to indicate a lessening of their value. A stationary ball handling drill is not gamelike, unless players dribble in one position during games.

Furthermore, a stationary dribble and a dribble on the move differ in the way the angle of the hand as it receives and releases the ball.

However, a stationary drill can be used to develop the feel for the ball and confidence with the ball. Ball handling drills, in general, can be used for different reasons, not just to improve a game move. I use drills to train basic coordination, hand-eye coordination, hand quickness, reaction time and more.

The question also suggested that dribbling two balls is even less gamelike than a stationary dribble. I disagree. Dribbling two balls is basic overloading. Dribbling two balls on a sprint practices the same dribble used in a game more closely than a sttaionary dribble with one hand because of the way the ball is received and released.

When choosing a drill, we need to understand why we use this drill. Doing a drill because a famous coach does the drill is not a good reason. How does the drill fit into your development program? What do your players need to develop? Where is their weakness and their strength? What drill is most useful to improve a weakness or challenge a strength? How can you apply a skill which was trained “not gamelike” to the game? These are the questions coaches must ask and answer about the drills they use. Why do you use a particular drill? If you don’t know, or if the answer is because a college coach uses it, it is probably time to re-evaluate the drill’s purpose or eliminate the drill altogether.

On ESPN last night, a reader’s email asked Bob Knight about the most important skill. He said concentration. He said that you need concentration to be observant and that you need to observe the play, so if a man cuts off a screen, you observe it and help if your man is beaten. He said more.

But, rarely have I heard anyone suggest that concentration is the most important skill in basketball, so I found it an interesting point.