The Cross Over Movement Blog

I am a fan of the D-League. However, I also am not sure of its effectiveness to this point, though more and more players are matriculating from the D-League to NBA rosters.

To get a better idea, I emailed the Head Coaches of most of the D-League franchises in an effort to interview one about player development for my Hard 2 Guard Player Development Newsletter. Joe Wolf, Head Coach of the Colorado 14ers was the only coach willing to answer some questions.

BM: How closely do you work with NBA staffs, especially in regards to a player who has been sent down from the NBA to get more playing time or improve?
Wolf: The players we work with every day because they are players on our team. The NBA staffs we speak with on a regular basis but never really meet with them during the season.

BM: With a limited coaching staff [most team web sites list a Head Coach and one assistant compared to NBA teams which typically have 4-5 assistants, a player development coach and a strength coach], how do you ensure that players get enough individual attention and skill work?
Wolf: I have a player development coach that works with individuals after practice and I also work with players on an individual basis when needed.

BM: Do you have a player development coach or a strength and conditioning coach?
Wolf: We have both.

BM: How do NBA teams use the NBDL? Do teams offer feedback on players?
Wolf: This year we won’t have any players sent to us by our affiliates. We receive comments and suggestions throughout the year from all different types of NBA personnel.

BM: What is the difference between a top NBDL player and a rotation player in the NBA?
Wolf: Sometimes it’s just the opportunity and sometimes it is experience.

BM: Is there a paid off-season for skill development?
Wolf: Not that I know of, although the NBA does have different summer leagues.

BM: How is practice time distributed? It all depends upon schedule, travel, number of games, injuries,…etc. How much time and how many team drills are dedicated to fundamental skills (i.e. shooting, ball-handling, passing)?
Wolf: We dedicate about ½ of practice to skill work.

BM: How do you approach big-man development?
Wolf: We try to develop basketball players and therefore big men will develop the same way as our guards…through skill work.

BM: What guard skills are most important to success and translate most effectively to the professional level?
Wolf: On the ball pressure without giving up the paint and pick and roll offense are two important factors.

BM: How do you track and measure individual performance improvements?
Wolf: Through film work and various statistics.

BM: How do you balance game preparation and winning with player development considering the league exists primarily as an avenue for young players, coaches and officials to develop and get to the next level?
Wolf: They go hand in hand

BM: Do NBDL players typically need to improve their technical skills (shooting, post footwork), tactical skills (defensive rotations, running a pick and roll) or athletic skills (quickness, strength, body composition)?
Wolf: Yes

I saw this on ESPN True Hoop:

“In addition to a rigorous offseason training program, Wizards forward Caron Butler attributed his career-high 21.5 points and .481 shooting percentage to the work of shooting coach Dave Hopla, who joined Washington’s coaching staff this season. One of the elements of Hopla’s expertise is shot charting, which is new to Butler and his teammates. It allows a player to see the spots on the floor from which he’s shooting well — or poorly. ‘It lets me know what I need to work on,’ Butler said. ‘And with the percentage now, I know from the floor, I’m shooting like 80 [percent] from 16 on in. It gives me confidence. I can come to a spot on the floor and know it’s a good shot. I can be like ‘Coach, I’m shooting 80! It was a good shot!’”

Don’t all teams do this? During my first year as a high school assistant coach, we used shot charts during and after games. I assumed everyone did it, so I have used them ever since. Now, admittedly, I do not use them as extensively as this with individual players, but when I applied with a couple teams this summer for a job as a player development coach, I assumed this is one of the tools a player development coach would use.

As I interview coaches from different areas for my Hard 2 Guard Player Development Newsletters, few have good systems for measuring players’ improvement. This is a question my friend Rick Allison urged me to ask. When I did a lot of individual training with experienced players, I tracked every shot during our workouts and kept a notebook of all the players’ workbooks. I knew the number of shots they took in an hour, where they shot from and how many they made. Without these numbers, how do you judge improvement? Now, I mostly work with beginners, and I work with players sporadically, so I am not as detailed in my notekeeping, as I measure their performance through the improved form on their shot, correcting a weakness, rather than through makes and misses, as they are early in the learning process.

But, with varsity, college or pro players, how do you know if a player is improving if you do not track their shots? Are they shooting a higher percentage because they shoot better shots? Are they only shooting open shots? Have they extended their range of consistency? Why are they improving or not improving?

Sam Mitchell talking about Andrea Bargnani in a Sports Illustrated article:

“Everybody’s worrying about Andrea. I’m not worried about Andrea. Because I understood a long time ago that Andrea is a young player and that Andrea has added to his game. Now you can’t continue to do the same thing in the NBA because people are going to start taking things away from you, so your game has to evolve. And is it painful sometimes? Yes. But what’s wrong with a young player going through some struggles? Isn’t that what we do in life? Doesn’t it build character? Doesn’t it make you better when you come out on the other end? Don’t it build toughness — mental toughness — and don’t it make you appreciate everything? Andrea’s working harder than he’s ever worked before. So those are all the things you want him to learn. And I’m fine with that because his attitude’s been great, his work ethic has been great. Him accepting what we’re trying to teach him and working on it and bringing it to the practices and to the games has been great. So I look at those four things and I see all positive things. He’s got talent, he wants to be great but it takes time. So my whole thing with Andrea is as long as he’s in the right frame of mind and continues to get better, he’ll make shots eventually.”

A couple summers ago, I went to Thessaloniki, Greece to direct some basketball clinics. Unfortunately, my luggage took a couple extra days to make the trip, so I was stuck in the clothes I wore on the plane: jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops. I did the first two days of camp in barefeet. While not a huge deal, as I wear flip-flops everywhere except the basketball court normally, coaching in barefeet really is inconvenient when you are used to wearing shoes. Demonstrating ball handling moves is far more difficult in barefeet.

On Thursday, I am going to coach in barefeet again. I did not lose my luggage this time. Instead, I caught a quick interview with IUPUI (Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis) Men’s Head Basketball Coach, Ron Hunter. He spoke about honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory by coaching barefoot in his game on January 24th at home against Oakland in order to raise awareness, money and shoes for the millions of kids who walk to school, play sports and live without shoes.

When I visited South Africa in 2001 and 2002, I conducted clinics with kids in barefeet. I attended a tournament at a school with two girls’ teams, probably 12-years-old, and each team had two pair of flip-flops which they shared with each other. The tournament was outside, on asphalt on a fairly warm day.

Since my visits, I have sent shoes to Africa through Hoops 4 Hope (South Africa). On Thursday, while coaching barefoot, I hope to raise money for Samaritan’s Feet, an organization started by Emmanuel (Manny) Ohonme.

Manny is originally from Nigeria and grew up very poor. He received his first pair of shoes at the age of 9 from a missionary, who also taught him how to play basketball. These shoes allowed him to run and play without getting hurt and helped him get better at sports, specifically basketball.

He started playing travel basketball during his childhood and eventually played high school basketball in Nigeria. Manny was blessed with the ability to play basketball at a high level and eventually earned a scholarship to play at the University of North Dakota - Lake Region.

While in school, Manny earned his bachelors and masters degrees. He had a chance to play basketball overseas, but he turned it down to concentrate on his education. After graduation, he spent ten years in the logistics business prior to starting Samaritan’s Feet.

Samaritan’s Feet was formed in 2003 and four years later over 500,000 pairs of shoes have been donated.

If you would like to support Samaritan’s Feet,
go here to donate money to buy shoes for a child in Africa.

Join with other coaches around the country and choose one Friday in February to coach your game in your barefeet, as part of Samaritan Feet’s “Funky Feet Friday.”

Finally, donate used, but well-kept shoes to Hoops 4 Hope (Samaritan Feet does not accept used shoes) Go here and scroll down to see how Hoops 4 Hope is trying to fill a van full of shoes to send to Zimbabwe and here to find information on how to send your old shoes to Africa via Hoops 4 Hope.

In San Diego, I am trying to find a location for a shoe drive. If you would like more information in San Diego, email this site and we’ll make it happen.

If you coach barefoot or sponsor a shoe drive, post your school here. I will send the high school or youth coach who posts here and raises the most shoes or money by the end of February one Great Ball Handling Made Easy DVD, 180 Shooter and Brian McCormick’s Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 1.

If you click on the picture, you can see a couple of the kids in the back are barefoot. All the kids walked to the clinic. We had 100+ kids, 2 baskets and 5 basketballs at this particular clinic.

A friend sent me an article about Ryan Boatright, the player who gained national attention when he verballed to USC before he started high school.

While I am not critical of he individual, I am not in favor of the early scholarship offers and commitments. I understand why coaches and players make these decisions, but I also think the NCAA needs to examine its efforts to assist high school athletes in the recruiting process. Many parents want their son or daughter in the spotlight, as the spotlight centers on the successful. However, sometimes the glare can get too bright.

“There’s a big problem with giftedness, whether you’re athletically gifted or you’re intellectually gifted,” said Dr. Jeffrey Fishbein, a clinical and sports psychologist based in Deerfield. “The dynamic that occurs is that you experience things at a greater level than the years of life you have permit.”

While most gifted people work through this process in anonymity, Boatright’s national verbal eliminated his anonymity.

Anonymity does not exist when a child’s gift is athletic. His or her ability can be seen, and when discovered the young athlete is often tagged a “phenom.” It’s a label that sometimes is a precursor to greatness.

In a column for Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, I wrote that while many use Tiger Woods as an example of he right way to raise an athletic superstar, what if it turns out that he is the exception? We read about the precocious talents who make it; but, how many others follow the same path, but fail to register? The media rarely takes these stories into account as it lavishes praise on Tiger Woods and creates a perception as to how we should develop athletic talents.

“(People) are relating to him or her as an athlete who happens to be a kid rather than a kid who happens to be an athlete,” said Dr. Darrell Burnett, a clinical and sports psychologist based in California. “That’s where the danger lies.”

Or, as Fishbein says,

“There’s a lot more negatives than there are positives…I’m really struggling right now to think of a positive of getting that kind of attention at a very young age.”

Again, the expert comes back to the support structure and the parents:

The most important part in ensuring the gifted athlete is not beholden to expectation is the support structure surrounding them. Tiger Woods had it with his parents, Earl and Kultida. Former Naperville Central standout and current University of Tennessee All-American Candace Parker had parents Larry and Sara, as well as brothers Anthony and Marcus.

“If you have that, then you’ve got a good shot,” Fishbein said. “But if there are other motives and means, you might be barking up the wrong tree.”

In my email, I received a newsletter from Strength Coach Charles Staley which referred me to an article on Programming. To begin the article, he uses the example of different martial arts or fighting styles:

Most Japanese and Korean styles of martial arts utilize a “technique-based” approach to self-defense. In other words, if your opponent throws a punch to your face, you defend with “technique A.” If he throws a kick to your ribs, you respond with “technique B.” And if he tries to stab you with a knife, you counter with “technique C” and so forth. The problem with this type of approach is that you need as many counter-defenses are there are possible attacks, and that’s a lot of techniques to learn.

An alternative solution can be found in the Filipino martial arts, such as Kali and Escrima. In these fighting arts, all attacks (whether they be foot, hand, or weapon) are categorized into 12 different groups based on the angle of the incoming attack. For example, any straight thrust to your midsection is a “number 5.” Any sweeping attack from the side is a “number 4,” and so on. Using this system, the martial artist only needs 12 different defenses as opposed to the hundreds he’d need using another system.

His point is similar to the point I have made about teaching plays vs. principles. Some teams run plays for everything; they have a press break for a 2-2-1 press, 1-2-1-1 press, man press, half court trap, run and jump, etc. And, this same type of methodology follows for all different aspects. This is like the Japanese or Koream style, where coaches must anticipate all the possible attacks and teach different defenses for each one. This is very time consuming and requires a great deal of memorization and game preparation.

I favor teaching principles, more like the Filipino martial arts. Rather than teach a press break for every possible half court and full court press, I teach 2-3 simple skills which players use against any type of pressure defense. The basic skills and spacing is the same against any press; well the foundation is the same - the specific depends on the defense. If players know the foundation and understand the proper spacing, they can adjust and adapt to different presses.

Rather than spend hours memorizing attacks and against possible defense, we work on different skills used against pressure during our first phase of practice and players incorporate these skills in the games.

Oftentimes, the difference between good a great is discipline. Ray sent me an article about friend of the site Dave Hopla (who recommends the Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters) and the number of shots he makes. More importantly, the article talks about tracking his shots:

When he was 16, at the urging of a coach whose name is lost to history, Hopla began tracking every shot. He records makes and misses and other details, such as position on the floor and how many minutes it took to reach a certain number of baskets.

Why? Because he figures that if one’s attitude is, “Who’s counting?'’ then, well, what’s the point of doing anything, really? If you undertake a task, the thinking goes, you should want to be as good as possible at it. Perfect, in fact.

EDIT: Video Proof (via True Hoop).

My friend Ray sent me an interview with Paul Westhead talking about Kevin Durant which he attributed to 20 Second Timeout. About Durant, Westhead replies:

Westhead: “I think that the easy reason for that [poor FG%] is that teams in their scouting reports are saying that the Sonics need Kevin Durant to score to win. So, you’re our best defender—stick him. They not only put their best defender on him but any time that he gets close to another offensive player, on a pick and roll or something—trap him, double him, stunt him. He’s getting high quality defensive coverage as a 19 year old who just arrived in the league. That’s not the easiest thing to endure. In a season or two or three, the best defenders probably won’t pull his shooting percentage down. He’ll have arrived and be able to shoot through that. But I think that it is marvelous in 30-plus games that this 19 year old is performing how he is. I think he’s off to a terrific start. I’m amazed that even though he is young looking and 19 that he has a mature game, that he does not get overwhelmed by this league.”

As for coaching shooters or shooting:

Westhead: “You’re asking the wrong guy—and the reason I say that is, my players, from good teams or bad teams, will say to you that I never saw a bad shot by a player on my team. They can’t take a bad shot.”

I want to give them the freedom to create what they think are good shots and once you start stipulating that I want you to shoot from here but not there and I want you to shoot this but not that then you start putting things in their minds that they have to make hard decisions about at a moment when they should be focusing on the basket.”

If you let a player take 15 or 20 shots, he might take what the world might say are a couple bad shots but he doesn’t want to take bad shots. He’s not going to go from three bad shots to eight bad shots because you don’t say anything to him. He’ll eliminate those bad shots–or at least cut down on them–on his own.”

Last year, I dedicated two issues of the Hard 2 Guard Player Development Newsletters to athleticism. I argued that Roger Federer was the best athlete in sports right now, that Steve Nash was a phenomenal athlete and that too often, we limit our discussion of athleticism to how fast someone can run or how high they can jump, rather than taking a broader view and incorporating many different athletic skills.

On Vern Gambetta’s blog, he defines athleticism as:

the ability to execute athletic movements (run, jump, throw) at optimum speed with precision, style and grace while demonstrating technical competency in the context of your sport.

Is there a more athletic movement in sports today than Federer returning a backhand down the line? Is there a more athletic movement in basketball than Nash sprinting down court with the dribble and throwing a left-handed bounce pass cross court to a strekaing teammate and hitting him in perfect stride?

I saw an article about Rafer Alston linked on True Hoop. According to the article, “last season, Alston finished on 49 percent of his drives, about 12 percent off the NBA average. This season, he is at 59 percent, roughly the league average and well ahead of the average for guards. That doesn’t make him Steve Nash or Tony Parker in the lane, but it has led to a better Alston.”

I spend a lot of time working on finsing with the players I train. I never felt like the players enjoyed it, as most work with me to improve their ball handling or outside shooting. Players and coaches think lay-ups are easy. However, when I asked one senior the most helpful part of our workouts, he said the finishing drills because nobody ever practices finishing. And, this was a kid with a legit 37-inch vertical who could catch the ball off the glass, do a 360 and dunk.

I have written before in my newsletters about Nash and his finishing. I also remember an analyst once mentioning that Parker was the first player he had ever seen work on finishing in the lane before a game, while every other player focuses on jumpers. Apparently Alston has taken note and is working more on his finishing:

But he did take steps to improve. Alston went to work with Rockets director of player development Kenny Atkinson and vice president of player personnel Dean Cooper. They put Alston through the “daily dozen” drills held over from the Rudy Tomjanovich years that former assistant Jim Boylen brought from Michigan State.

“It’s a combination of things,” Cooper said. “We do a lot of drill work where you know the angles when attacking; you spin the ball to where you get it on the glass, and you learn how to get it in front of you so the bigs can’t catch up to you. Then it’s repetition to get it in a comfort zone.”

“We’ve worked since training camp, Coop, Kenny and I, on different finishes, different spins, putting more arc on the ball. They felt I could finish better around the rim and I’m doing so.”

Players and coaches are always looking for the magic answer. There it is. Practice. Get more comfortable executing the skill, gain confidence through repetition and take the lessons learned to the games.