The following article is one of the legendary coach Pete Newell. It is an old Sports Illustrated article that covers so much information about teaching the game and the life (and stresses) of being a coach. You can read the article in its entirety here. Below I have posted some of the key points that I took away.
A
GAME OF MISTAKES"Basketball," says Newell, explaining the reason for his malaise,
"is a game of mistakes, and the team making the fewer mistakes generally
wins."
Despite his worry, or perhaps because of it, California rarely
makes more mistakes than an opponent. In fact, California on the average makes
only six ball-control errors a game compared with an opponent's 15, and since
Newell figures control of the ball is worth about 1.5 points, that gives Cal a
14-point head start before the teams even take to the court.
ON CONDITIONING
At all three
schools, Newell has used the same approach. Basically, he has a "for want
of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost"
philosophy. To begin with, he demands that his players be in peak physical
condition. For the first two weeks, they do nothing but exercise in the gym and
run the fatiguing hills behind Berkeley. "Sometimes we have to wear an
opponent down," he says. "A player should be conditioned to play the
last five minutes of a game, not just the first five."
ON DEFENSE
In the gym Newell
has ideas about everything, ranging from the position of the feet to the use of
vision. "Practice habits are game habits," he says. "If
individual habits are sound, team habits will be sound. We're constantly trying
to minimize mistakes." In practice, for example, a player must shuffle
with his knees flexed, one hand up, the other down, for 20 minutes at a time.
This is the correct defensive posture. Any other way is wrong. The player
shuffles because that allows him to slide with the man he's guarding. If he
crossed his feet instead of shuffling, he might lose his balance. Knees are
flexed because, as Rene Herrerias, Newell's astute assistant, explains,
"You have to bend your knees anyway before you react. So be in that
position. Why wait to get to it?"
USING BOTH HANDS AND FEET
The player must
learn to dribble and pass with either hand. He must also be ambidextrous with
his feet. "We do not," says Newell, "subscribe to the theory
that because a boy is naturally right-footed, he should always have his right
foot forward. When he is playing the ball, his inside foot, the foot closest to
an imaginary line drawn between the baskets, should be extended. This permits
him to better defend vulnerable areas where he cannot depend on defensive
assistance from teammates. These vulnerable areas are the sidelines and the
backline." In addition, the inside hand should be raised. "The hand
should be in the shooter's face to disconcert him," Newell says. "The
other arm should be extended almost parallel to the floor to deflect passes. We
condition arm muscles so the arms can be held up over protracted lengths of
time. In boxing, it is fatal to drop your hands, and the same is true in
basketball."
TWO-SPEED
PRACTICE
Practice games are
run at fast and slow speeds. "We practice like this so we can accelerate
or decelerate in a game," Newell says. "We want to use tempo as a
weapon. We want to make the other team play the game we think we can play
better than they can, and this we can do by making them play at a speed they're
not used to. When we play a ball-control team, we try to force them into a
faster tempo of play. They're like a guy who takes a certain amount of time
each day to shave a certain way. One day he's five minutes late, so he has to
hurry up, and he cuts himself. When we play a fast-breaking team, we try to
slow down the tempo with ball control. The fast break itself we stop by
pressure on the rebounder. If he has pressure on him, he can't throw. We also
choke the outlet pass to the guard out to get the pass. And we don't retreat. A
man-to-man aggressiveness is very important. We don't concede."
AT
THEIR BEST DEFENSIVELY
Newell's teams are
at their best defensively. "There are certain nights when you are off
offensively," he says. "You'll have nights when you are off
defensively, too, but your offensive performance varies more. Also, the good
defensive team seems to come up with an above-par performance defensively when
its shooting is off. The players seem to realize that through increased
defensive play they can offset a poor shooting performance and still win the
game.
"Man-to-man responsibilities are the dominant aspects of our
basic defense. Along with this, we incorporate the press defense in various
forms. We're usually in one form of a press throughout the game because it is
important always to have pressure on the ball. Through our pressure, we are
trying to increase an opponent's mistakes."
ONE
STEAL WORTH ABOUT 1.5 POINTS
According to
Newell's calculations, each lost ball is worth approximately 1.5 points.
"The average college team scores on about 40% of its shots," he says.
"For every 10 times they have the ball, they get 15 shots, and out of
those 15, they get six baskets or 12 points. That puts the value of possession
of the ball at 1.2. Adding the foul shots which the offensive team is more
likely to get, that boosts the value of the ball maybe 3/10 of a point. So when
we steal the ball or force an opponent into losing it, we have gained close to
a point and a half toward the final outcome."
THE
MID-RANGE SHOT
Newell also has
theories for holding down errors on the offense. "We want to get the shot
opportunity in a good-percentage shooting zone," he says. "We're not
concerned with driving all the way to the basket for the lay-up or cripple
shot. We're content with a 10-foot shot. The more you drive into the basket,
the more you risk losing the ball." To get to that 10-foot striking
distance, Cal will play cat to the opponent's mouse. "We rely on execution,"
Newell says, harkening back to the practice drills. "If we feel that we
can get the execution, we can get the shot, regardless of the defense."
The team will vary its offensive weaves and patterns to work the ball in, but
the bread-and-butter move has been reverse action. The players move the ball
from side to side to unmass the defense in the basket area, and once the
defense is drawn out, Cal strikes. "It's a tough move to defense,"
Newell says. "I know we have trouble defensing it."
THE
BLEAK SIDE OF COACHING
But for all the jokes and all the fine points and all the success, there is the
temptation for Newell to quit. "A coach is never really secure in his
profession," he said recently. "You're not like a doctor. You're not
like a lawyer. You can't let your 'practice' sustain itself. You're never any
better than your last season or your last game, and any time you get smug,
you'll go down quicker than you came up. You climb up one rung at a time, but
you can go down all the way and not touch any. The team feels the way I do
about a game, and if I ever took a game lightly the team would do the same
thing. So, you prepare yourself mentally that each game you play is a real
tough game. And each season you play is a real tough season. You can't allow
yourself to relax. Every 15 minutes before a game, I wonder why I ever went
into coaching. Eventually I'll have to get out. I don't want to be coaching
when I'm 60. I don't feel that I could go through 16 more years of the tension
that goes with each season." Newell took a breath and looked around the
living room at his family. "Still I feel I have coaching years ahead of
me," he said. "I still feel a number of years ahead of me."
Posts
I’m reading
the book, ‘The One Thing,’ by Gary Keller, and there is a chapter titled Willpower is Always on Will-Call. There is a common saying that goes – where there’s a will, there’s a way, and
in this chapter, Keller talks about how misleading that saying is and how
misleading common perception of will-power is as well. 
