One teaching term that I've been thinking about alot lately as it pertains to coaching is "authenticity". Specifically, I've been reflecting about the drills that I use and how effective they are at in teaching skills in game-like situations.

Take for example, transition offense. We all have our favorite drills that we use, 3-on-2 to 2-on-1, or 3-on-2 continuous, or team fast break, etc... the list goes on. I use them as well, but when I look back at those drills, I think to myself that somehow these drills lack "authenticity". I think these drills are good at teaching players how to make very specific reads in a highly controlled environment, but when was the last time you've seen in an actual game where you had a 3-on-2 situation that played out like you would see in a Blood 33 drill (for those that run DDM or R&R). That's the problem I'm having, coming up with situations "drills" where I can simulate as much as possible what happens in the game.

I was watching a Bobby Knight teaching toughness DVD recently, and Coach Knight was talking about repping transition defense (conversion he calls it) by having the team go 5v5 without the ball and then coach throws the ball to the defense (which becomes the new offense) and the new defensive players have to get back on D. Then the idea came to me that I could do the same thing except for transition offense.

When you go to your team offensive period, how many of you go 5v5 starting at halfcourt with the ball in the PG's hands, coach calls the play, the PG echos, they run it, you yell 'freeze', do some teaching, then run it again? Yes, we all do that. But how authentic is that? If the ball is inbounded at halfline after a timeout or a foul for example, but we all know that 80% of the game is played in transition. Question becomes, how do we incorporate the transition and half-court phases together so that they are game-like?

So what we do now in team offense, is we always start on defense. The first part of offense, is securing the rebound. That's where we start, on defense and I throw the ball up to rim. They secure the rebound, outlet, look to push the ball up the floor with numbers. We don't have a secondary break, so once we have the ball across half without a numbers advantage, we're into half-court offense (motion, flex, or set play). It's more game-like, and since we are a running team, I always want our players thinking to push the ball up the floor first before running any kind of set offense. We also run it out of a FT setup, and also after a made basket. So all 3 different transition situations.

So in team, we're trying to work those phases together and to help the players understand how to transition from one phase to the other more seamlessly. It's a work in progress, but players need to recognize when to push the ball in transition, and when to slow down and run the set offense. As a coach, it always seems easy, we have all the right answers, but it's a hard concept for players to get, when does the break end, and when are we into half-court offense.

Authenticity is important. One of the things I hate is repping things in practice that never happen in the game. I always look back and find a few things that we did in practice and I tell myself, "why the heck did we spend all that time practice xyz when we didn't even use it in the game, what a waste of time." I certainly would like to hear what you all think.

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Most of you are probably getting ready or have already started your practices/tryouts for the upcoming season like we are here as well.


It's one of those things that no matter how well you seem to plan your practices, there are always times where practice seems to get bogged down, or the the tempo grinds to a halt. Players are doggin' it, and it just isn't moving as quickly and smoothly as it should.

I was re-watching a Don Meyer DVD yesterday on practice planning and he had 3 great ideas to help speed up practices:

1. Countdown
2. Change ends
3. Echo yells

Players respond to a clock. If you just tell them to get to the baseline, they always seem to take their sweet ass time doing it, even if you yell at them. Give them a countdown, 5-4-3-2-1. If they don't get there before 1, then they all run. Stimulus-response.

If you're doing a shooting drill and the players are just going through the motions, make them change ends and give them a countdown. By forcing players to switch and hustle to the other side of the floor, it makes them refocus their attention.

Finally, instead of you yelling at the players, have a policy of echo yells. You tell 1 player, 'free-throws'. That player yells 'free-throws', everyone yells 'free-throws', and you're off to doing free-throws.

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I've been teaching a pre-season strength and conditioning class every morning at 7am. All of the basketball players freshman to seniors are in the class and I've been progressively making the workouts harder and harder each week. I use motivational quotes every day and I'm always looking for ways to push them. There are some great quotes to use from the clips below. The one I'm using on Monday:

"All men are created equal, some just work harder in the preseason." -- Emmitt Smith

If you haven't seen the original Eric Thomas, the hip hop preacher, secret to success motivational speech then take a look here,

Most recently, some people have put together a video montage of NBA players working out with Eric Thomas' words in the background,

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I know that it has been forever since my last post. It's been crazy since I was officially hired several weeks ago. Our football season has been in full swing and so far we are undefeated, picked to finish dead last in the entire province/state and we just went toe to toe with the number 4 ranked team and we came from behind to win the game.

Our basketball teams have been running open gyms the past several weeks and the topic of open gyms came up on the X's and O's forum the other day. Like many of you, open gyms are necessary to get players into the gym playing basketball. The first hour or so is generally pretty good, but then the second hour typically goes downhill and guys are mostly goofing off taking NBA 3-pointers and trying ridiculous circus shots.

Here is a summary of some of the ideas to add some more competitiveness to your open gyms and to make them more effective and relevant:

- play doubles, double the points for offensive board putbacks to emphasize rebounding (off and def).
- add points for taking charges, minus points for turnovers, etc...
- play to 3, but must win by 2 to emphasize defensive stops
- have a round-robin tournament, or king of the hill
- "validate" wins by having the player who scored the winning shot make a FT. Made FT winning team stays, missed FT and its live to next threshold. FTs again to validate, a made FT then winning team stays, a missed FT then both teams off.

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Coaches, just a quick update for you all. I haven't had a chance to put anything together this past week as I've been gearing up for my new teaching job at the school that I am coaching at. I just got the job earlier in the week and it has been quite the whirlwind of preparing our football team for our first game, helping organize open gyms with the basketball teams, and planing and preparing for 7 classes I have never taught before.

I had no idea after I left my previous teaching job in June when or if I would find myself a teaching job aligned to a coaching position at the same school, and 3 months later I am there. Coaches, I am here to tell you that if you are patient, and that if you put your head down and just take care of the things that are in your control, good things will happen.

So, the good news is, I can't imagine being anywhere else in the world, doing exactly what I love to do. The not so good news is, I'll be working harder than I could ever imagine over the next 8 months with football, school, then basketball, school. But I wouldn't have it any other way...

School is about to begin in a few days, cherish the last few days of summer, and I'll be sure to post something basketball related as I breakaway from the madness. I've watched a ton of videos over the summer that I've backlogged and been waiting to see, and I have a ton of fresh ideas in my head I'd like to hash out. Also, I will be going to the Basketball BC Superconference, where Alan Stein, the guru of basketball S+C will be one of the keynote speakers. I will be looking forward to meeting Coach Stein in person after following his stuff online for many years now.

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Watched a few more videos the last day or so with coaches Bob Knight, Bo Ryan, and Sherri Coale. One of the things they said was the most important thing they look for in a scouting report was to identify the player on the opposing team that was the worst percentage outside shooter. That is the player that they want to cheat on for help defense.

Seems pretty obvious, but it's a crucial point. You don't want to spend a whole game trying to figure out which players are the ones that can hurt you from beyond the arc. Not to mention the fact that in High School, most teams will have 2, maybe 3, really good shooters. Find the worst shooter out of the starting lineup, and you will know where your help defense should be coming from.

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It's the calm before the storm, football training camp begins on Monday for us, and my girlfriend is going away to Europe for 2 weeks. So I decided with my last day of nothing really to do, I went downtown and caught some live 3-on-3 action at the annual NBA Jam Session 3-on-3 tourney. It is a cross country tournament held every year for players of all ages and skill. I was watching this one team in particular and there was a post player who being guarded by a guy with long arms. Every time he tried to call for the ball inside, it was getting poked away or even stolen. He looked pretty frustrated both with himself and with his teammates whom he thought were late in seeing him open.

Being the coach that I am, when he subbed out, I decided to approach him and I asked him if I could give him a quick coaching point. He said sure why not. I told him one of the reasons why he was having problems with Mr. long arms defender was that his teammates were either bouncing passing the ball towards him where it was getting poked away, or they were passing it to his body where his hands were.

I advised him instead to use an arm bar with his inside arm, and extend his outside arm out in an L with fingers pointed towards the sky (also known as a Pro Stance). In other words, give your teammates an outside hand as a target. They will most likely throw it a little outside, so you'll have to hop to receive the pass with the outside hand, chin it, then get into your on-ball post moves. He said alright, he would try it when he got back on the flor.

In the next series he subbed in, he tried it against Mr. long arms. He caught the ball successfully with the outside arm, chinned it, reverse pivoted, swept the ball low, blew by Mr. long arms underneath and finished with a reverse layup on the other side of the hoop, away from Mr. long arms attempted block. Needless to say, that just about made my day.

It's a great tip not just for post players though. It's also something you can use for perimeter players. As they come off a downscreen, exploding up past the 3-point line, make sure they are calling for the ball with their outside hand. Cutting towards the basket, the opposite is true, they need to call for the ball with their inside hand.

I got this tip from watching Mark Few's Flex for Success DVD. In it, he keeps telling his guards to call for the ball with the outside hand coming off the downscreen. Off the flex screen, he keeps telling his guards to call for the ball with the inside hand cutting to the basket. Seems so simple a concept, but players don't know these things instinctively, it has to be taught, and reinforced. Anyways, the season is approaching fast, the question you have to ask yourself coaches is, what are you doing this offseason to best prepare yourself for the upcoming season?

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