Blog GREAT PRACTICES
August 1st, 2008My favorite pre-season activity is to observe other coaches practice. As a younger head coach, I spent several days observing Billy Gillespie at Texas A&M. The intensity in his practices is unparalleled. In fact, upon my return to school I commented to a football coach on our staff that their football practices were not as physical as Coach Gillespie’s basketball practices. That is not an understatement. In fact, I learned the intensity in my practices had to improve if I was going to become a successful head coach. My problem, however, was when practice started I tried to act like Coach Gillespie and my players didn’t buy in. Although intense, I’m a completely different coach. I know this now.
I was fortunate to spend 4 days last year observing Tom Crean’s practices at Marquette. What I learned from Coach Crean was to make everything competitive. Coach has everyone in practice on their toes; the assistant coaches and managers’ work as hard as the players. Although completely organized as a staff, Coach Crean runs practices off the top of his head. He makes everyone in the gym react to him. If you get a chance, go see his practices at Indiana. His players compete, they communicate and they react to the constant curveballs he throws at them. They are genius, and reflect his personality.
I try to get better as a coach every day. Fundamental to my growth is taking from the best in the game and to mold their ideas into my values on basketball. Great practices have to adhere to your personality in order to get your players to buy in. I have taken all the things I have observed from great coaches and shaped them into my philosophy on the game of basketball. Components I feel are essential to great practices include:
• TOUGHNESS — This is the most important aspect to possess for a successful basketball team. It is a skill. We practice it every day. For example, unless the situation mandates we have boundaries, we practice with no “out of bounds”. All balls have to be run down and played. We do not call jump balls. We battle for every possession.
• COMPETITIVE — There is a time and score element to everything we do. Winners and losers every day. Consequences. My practices are broken into teams. I have a manager keep score each practice, both for the drill and for the entire practice. Losers have consequences each drill and just like a game, there is a winning team at the end of practice.
•CHAOS — Basketball is a game of constant change. Have players react to different situations. Make practices harder than games. Put them in situations, have them react, teach confusion. I do not use a whistle in practice; players have to react to my voice. The game of basketball is a game of change and reaction. How they react is critical. Control the environment as much as possible. For example, play 4 on 5; time and score situations; anything to get them off-balance. The idea is to make practices so difficult, games are easy. Also, and this is imperative, we coach on the fly. Coach on the court with the players. Try to stop practice as little as possible. Correct on the go. I truly believe in this.
•ACCOUNTABILITY — Not only to me, but more importantly to each other. Discipline comes from within. The best teams I have coached police themselves. From day one to make sure your players understand it is their team. The best team I have coached was last season, 2007/2008. We won 31 games. Despite losing 3 3-year starters, I knew we would be better. These guys played for each other and held each other accountable. It was a beautiful thing. I think it is more important they discipline themselves. So much so that it looks like I’m tolerating things most coaches would not tolerate. I see something that needs correcting. Instead of putting the kids on the line, I might whisper to a particular player, “Erik isn’t hustling” and see how the team responds to this situation. Discipline by motivating them to help each other. Try not to punish the act. Punish the team for not responding to the act.
•SKILL WORK WITHIN OUR OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE STRUCTURE — I’m not what you would consider a typical drill guy. I work skills within my offensive and defensive concepts. Basketball is played 5 on 5; therefore we need to practice as a team 5 on 5. Skill work is done within this framework. Try to be creative. This is a great time to get your assistants involved in the planning of practice.
•TRANSITION - TRANSITION - TRANSITION — We never work on one end of the floor. Everything is transition - offense into defense and defense into offense. If you have 40 possessions in a game, there are 80 transitions. For example, shell defense in my practice would be called “shell to fastbreak”. We work our defensive skills within our shell, but finish the drill transitioning to offense the other way. The team must get a stop and score in order to get a point.
Now for the hard part, melding your coaching philosophy into a great practice. This starts with a practice plan. I have seen many practice plans; some typed, some handwritten. Again, your philosophy has to come into play. I can tell you what I do. My first practice plans were typed and to the exact second. I thought that was how it was done. Most examples I have seen had been in this format. Now I’m more concerned about what I want to accomplish, than exact time. My practice plan is on cardstock, and is a full piece of paper folded down the middle. I write on it with pen. The front has what I want to accomplish, the back are the notes I make during and after practice. For example, lets say I want to work on competing, ball screen fundamentals, and defensive rebounding. Instead of a plan that says:
3:00-3:04 circle rebounding
3:04-3:08 ball screen offense; working on getting below the level of the screen
3:08-3:15 scrimmage
My plan would say:
4on4on4 coaches stress ball screen fundamentals (make sure we get below the level of the screen); we keep score, losers run; manager’s chart rebounds (team at the end of the day with the most def rebs wins)
How long? I might play to a score, or play it by feel. I love it when my players say, “can we keep going!” If I play it by feel, I have a manager work the clock to count up so I can keep track of time. This works for me. I think this way allows me to get a feel of the big picture, and my kids are practicing in a situation that is much more game realistic. More importantly I get a feel for my team that day and I might immediately move to something else. This way I’m not a slave to the practice plan. It took me about 5 years to find my style. The key is to analyze your practices as a staff and see what works best for your team.
Before I go, I wholeheartedly buy into Coach Randy Brown’s philosophy of Top 3. I encourage you to read his article on this matter. Coach Brown preaches that you can only be great at 3 things. He says, “Reality tells us that no coach, regardless of level including the NBA, can properly teach all aspects while expecting his players to execute at an optimum level on game night. I challenge coaches to choose three main aspects of the game and make them representative of their coaching philosophy.”
If you observe my practices, hopefully you could tell what I value as a coach. If not, then as a staff we need to re-evaluate our practices.
John Harmatuk is the head coach at Cypress Springs high school in Houston, Texas. To reach Coach Harmatuk email him at coachtuk@earthlink.net or visit his website, an online coaching resource.