Game & Practice Management

Before any team can exploit the rules, it must know the rules. To that end, I recommend that coaches serve as referees during scrimmages, which should be the primary activity at practices. In this way coaches will become intimately and practically familiar with what referees do during games. This will enable them to converse or dispute, as the case may be, with the officials during games. They should have personal copies of the current official rules and learn exactly how they are worded and what they mean and imply, including the ambiguities and uncertainties they contain. 

It is one thing for a coach to run "ladder drills," also called "suicides," and other various drills, and thereby exhaust the players, and something else entirely to run fast-paced scrimmages. What is the difference? The difference is that scrimmaging is playing basketball, and playing basketball is fun. Drills are not fun. And a player's style and stamina develop and are esteemed differently in the context of fun than in the context of drudgery. When a coach orders a time-out in a game, why must he always the proceed to use that time to lecture his players and diagram plays? Why doesn't he, at least occasionally, attend to other business, such as conversing with officials or other coaches, and simply allow his five to rest and contemplate and catch their breath? By lecturing them, isn't he implying that he knows better than they do what needs to be done to securate advantage, which a) sometimes may not be the case, and b) even if he does know better, he is making puppets of his players, demoralizing them, by taking away from them their own initiative -- devaluing their own immediate ideas and impulses that come to mind in the midst of the unforeseeable action on the court. Instruct the players at practices before and after games, but let them play according to their own lights in the actual games. 

Passing

The basketball regime for the developing player is such that he is made to seem to be incompetent if his first inclination is to pass the ball. Unfortunately, effective team play and proper interaction of team members on offense require a pass-first mentality among all team members. If one player among the five does not share this mentality, but instead chooses to attempt to dribble and shoot primarily, he spoils the fun for the team. 

Reader, do not think that you can contradict these words by reference to numerous experiences of your own in pickup games or by reference to common practice in televised basketball. I know full well that you invariably find the supposedly "better" players doing most of the dribbling and shooting while the made-to-seem-"lesser" players are reduced to supporting roles. All teams playing by that type of "star" system are in my view playing basketball according to a defective and mediocre paradigm. Any player who is seeking to outshine his teammates is suppressing the ideal of interaction and cooperation and mutual support and reinforcement that alone can produce the greatest effectiveness at winning games. Players who seek to "do it all by themselves" are stifling and destroying efforts by other players to give and receive the glory that can be so much greater when no single player is demoralizing his teammates. Passing is the sign and the mode of teamwork on offense. 

Passing II

NBA teams have hired employees who apparently rebound shots and pass the ball to a player who is practicing his shooting. I have at least 3 objectives or criticisms of this. 

It indicates or implies that to develop one's shooting is more important than to develop passing skill. To have another player doing the rebounding and returning would allow that other player to practice all sorts of passing techniques from all the varied places where the ball is rebounded to. 

By practicing to develop an identical, repeatable shooting form you are a) boring your intellect, which considers it has learned how to shoot at earlier developmental levels and b) reinforcing the familiarity whit missing shots, which is likely to prevent the development of unerring shooting -- that is to say, never missing a shot in game contexts, or especially in "clutch" contexts, which is the ideal. While the shooter may be said to be practicing jump shots, the prevailing norm that I observe is that these are actually set shots, by which I mean that the player's body is not moving at all in any lateral direction when he shoots. 

I have learned that the fun and joy and pleasure of shooting practice -- though no doubt readers will not get me yet on this point -- is taking shots on the move and making the rough calculation of how much the aim must be adjusted to compensate for the drift of the motion imparted to the ball. 

Passing III

Never call for the ball on offense.

• You don't know if you are in fact the best choice for your teammate to pass to.
• You disturb your teammate who is also insulted that you're implying your judgment is better than his.
• You alert the defense to where the ball is going.  You diminish the value of the pass to you if your teammate then decides to make it.

Never condescend or insult your teammate's passing ability by approaching him to make a pass to easy.  Passing loses its joy, its fun, its interest if you are approaching the ball instead of being in motion away from the ball to create challenging and valuable pass opportunities.  Especially if a teammate with the ball has not used his dribble, do not approach him to seek a pass.  He can easily dribble to the spot you are at, so nothing is gained by passing to you.

When I see short passes among players on the perimeter, I call it "rinky-dink passing."  Team members without the ball need to make intelligent cuts at viable angles away from the ball where creative and effective passes can be received.  After you make a pass, immediately break for an open avenue to make yourself an attractive potential target for an effective and valuable pass.  

A team that passes well ideally will constantly be giving the ball up and getting it back again in advantageous positions.  As it now prevails, players are reluctant to pass because so much credit attaches to one-on-one effort.  Team effort gives each team member good shot opportunities from time to time.  

In passing there is often only a very, very short window of opportunity to make the right pass.  If you miss that opportunity and then throw a similar pass moments later, it may no longer be an effective pass at all.  I often see a man forward in or near the corner as the ball comes upcourt.  He is wide open.  The man with the ball destroys the value of that pass if he first dribbles over that way, giving the defense lots of time to cover that man.

Good team passing depends a lot on goodwill and camaraderie among teammates.  Unfortunately, this allows some players to monopolize this ball because other players do not want to create antagonism by objecting to that player's selfishness.  This is why I say that in many, nay most cases, a team's "best player" is also their worst player. 

Rebounding

I like the idea of one-handed "tip" and "tap" rebounding rather than two-handed grasp-and-swing-elbows rebounding.  First, two-handed rebounding necessitates a lot of aggression for the purpose of boxing out, and this make the game more like football than it ought to be. 

If your coach encourages you to seek to top the loose rebound to your teammates, you are largely freed up from tangling with opposing players and you can use your creativity and range to get your fingers on that ball and deflect it as propitiously as possible.  It is often possible to tap the ball far upcourt to a teammate who is out front on a potential break-away.  But this won't happen for a team playing box-out and grasp-with-two-hands rebounding.

Loose Ball Technique

The diving-for-loose-balls mentality or ethos is widely acknowledged to be ideal basketball technique.

I have an entirely different series of thoughts on this subject.  It was re-inforced when I read Larry Bird's autobiography recently.  Diving for loose balls was very much in line with Bird's general style of play.  And, as a result, he was plagued with injuries for much of his career.

Thus, reason number one, or shall we say, at least counter-argument number one for why not diving for loose balls may be advisable, is, your career may last longer while also the time you spend on the sidelines recovering from injury may also be reduced.

But a second reason is this: if you commit to aggressively pursuing a loose ball, you may in fact not gain control of that ball, in which case you will be out of position to play defense.  You may look like an aggressive "court warrior" by going hard for that ball, but only a more refined estimation will take note if, because you have done so, the other team gets an easy basket. 

Frankly, I sometimes refrain from going for a loose ball, a rebound, or a steal simply because, at that particular moment, I feel it may behoove me to conserve that energy and wait for a more opportune occasion. 

This can look very improper and ineffectual in the prevailing wisdom.  I sometimes have players berating me - "what's the matter, that ball was right there, are you lazy, are you sleeping?"  I often find that there is an advantage in maintaining a kind of calm playing style rather than being "slap-happy".  That kind of aggression is contagious, it often results in fouls, and it can take the fun out of the game.