“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it.” ― Kobe Bryant
Duke ran a couple of good 'Floppy' variations. Butler had its chances to tie or take the lead, including a great look at the final 3 from Gordon Hayward, but Duke held on for the win and the National Championship.
You have to be able to take care of the ball, against pressure, to be able to run any kind of offense with success. Dick Bennett has a couple of drills that he call 'Soundness Drills' to improve his teams ability to take care of the ball and to improve their poise and decision making.
In the drill above, called 1 on 2, he has one ball handler trying to advance the ball against two defenders. Your ball handler has to have poise, know how to protect the ball with both hands, has to be able to retreat dribble away from pressure, and has to know how to attack when time.
We have expanded this drill to teach scoring at the end of it. We want our 1 offensive player to try to score. Then, make or miss, we have the 2 defenders come back on offense in a 2 on 1 situation to teach how to play 2 on 1 basketball on offense and defense. We also use this drill as an opportunity to teach how trap and take proper trapping angles.
In the video above here, the emphasis is on getting open one pass away and moving the ball. This team does a great job of making 10 passes, and you can see that they are well coached. As teams improve, I give them restrictions, such as 1 or 2 or no dribbles, or giving the defense extra defenders to make it tougher on them.
These 2 drills are really good for teaching and emphasizing taking care of the ball.
As Brad Stevens states here, the most effective leaders teach athletes how to persevere and to have more grit, and to do so, it is important to find the balance between being warm and demanding. These leaders are approachable, but on the court, there is a demand and an expectation that everyone is going to work and perform at a high level. Demand excellence, but remember, we are still dealing with human beings with human emotions, and we have to be receptive to that. via: positivecoach.org
Brad Stevens is a rising star in the NBA. His ability to draw up plays, especially in special situations late in game, are well talked about in coaching circles. Here is a good video showing the Celtics running a nice 2-3 defense in late game SLOB situations. One way I see to beat this is to flood the backside. Send a player to the backside block, one to the backside wing, one to the top of the key, and one to the high post. The middle and backside forward would have to make a decision on who to leave open, and I would think they would leave the back side wing open, giving you a long close out to attack. Thanks to Half Court Hoops for the video breakdown and pdf breakdown:https://www.dropbox.com/s/jf5n0ospn80...
Two biggest issues that Geno sees right now is 1) teams are playing too fast and 2) bad shot selection. Shot selection might be the most important thing that you can teach your team. Everybody thinks that they can make any shot. Shot selection is the biggest killer of offense because the wrong guy is taking the wrong shot, you can't rebound when you don't know when a shot is going up, and you are out of balance and can't get back on defense. Rule #1 When you are open, you have to shoot it if that's the shot you work on everyday. Everybody knows and expects it and is prepared to rebound. Rule #2 If you shoot when you aren't open and somebody is, that's the last shot you get that game. Thats where selfishness begins.
The following article comes from an article that I found on
Linked In from Brett Hagler.
You can see the original article here.
Kobe Bryant recently
shared an all-time great mindset, manifested into a subtle quote that not
many people noticed. It's been three weeks and I can't get it out of my head,
so I wanted to share. You can take it literally or (mostly) metaphorically
- both work and can be applied to the dream you're chasing.
The quote came from Kobe when
he was on stage accepting the 'Icon Award' at the ESPYS. He was
addressing fellow athletes:
“We’re not on this stage just because of talent or ability,”
Bryant said.
“We’re up here because of 4 a.m. We’re up here because of two-a-days or five-a-days.
We’re up here because we had a dream and let nothing stand in
our way. If anything tried to bring us down, we used it to make us stronger.”
There are thousands of
athletes that had similar or even better talent than Kobe. Just like there are
thousands of executives, leaders, sales managers, artists, musicians, writers,
etc. that have the same and more talent than you and me.
But at the end of the day, it
doesn't come down to who has the most talent or intelligence. It comes down to
who is willing to make the choices that others are not willing to make.
Who is willing to shoot
baskets in the dark when everyone else is sleeping? Who is willing to prepare
more for an interview? Who is willing to practice their speech 10X more than
anyone else? All are choices we make.
The Dream
If the dream is small,
there's no point to do things that others won't if your end goal is not
something "extra-ordinary." There's just no reason for the
"4AMs." Which is totally cool and fine!
But if the dream is big...
the game changes.
The 4AMs and two-a-days
become intentional choices. The hard things over the easy, comfortable things
become routine. The discipline to put off instant gratification is the standard
process. People will say "you're obsessed, you're not normal!"
and they're right because its not a normal journey. A big dream is
something extraordinary: very different from what is normal or customary.
And over time, as I'm
beginning to realize more and more, the choice to take this journey is
ultimately the reward.
What's your 4AM?
This quote is not saying
everyone should get up at 4AM or do five-a-days. It's metaphoric. The idea is
that if you have a big dream, then you have to fall in love with doing things that others won't
to accomplish what others can't.
US Men's Basketball u16 head coach Don Showalter gives some advice to those trying out for the national team on how to separate themselves from their competition. 4 Things That Separate
Talented Players 1 – Choices – Make
choices that will help you get where you want to go 2 – Comfort zone – How do you react when you are out of your comfort zone 3 – Communication – Being able to communicate effectively is a separator 4 – Compete -Don’t be afraid to compete
for your spot
O'Sullivan remembers when youth sports was about children competing with other children instead of adults competing with each other through their kids. Following nearly three decades as a soccer player and coach, O'Sullivan began working to reshape youth sports and inspire a major shift in culture. After serving as a youth coach for the Portland Timbers in Bend, he founded the Changing the Game Project and is now an international speaker and national best-selling author of Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports back to Our Kids. His writing has also been featured in the Huffington Post, Soccer America Magazine and The Soccer Wire.
We see it all the time - that one parent out there barking orders from the sidelines at their kid. Maybe you are that parent. Here is a great video from the kids themselves about what goes on in their minds when we yell at them as parents. Here is a link to a great article where a former major league baseball player answers this simple question: What is the point? His simple answer is: The heart of the child is the point. A coach can either be a stepping-stone to success or a stumbling block. It is important to build up a young athlete through relationships first and foremost. Teaching fundamentals and discipline through sports should be a by-product of a relationship. Do everything you can to help foster and grow the love and creative expression of your athletes. Don't over teach or coach so much that you lose their heart. Don't focus so much on winning that they lose their love of the game. Don't push them so hard so early that they get burned out before they are a teenager. Discipline and the fundamentals of the sport are important, very important. But when we over-demand the fundamentals at an early age, we sometimes do so at the peril of the love affair of the young athlete and the sport. A youth coach will find the joy of coaching when he/she asks the question: what's the point? And finds the answer to be: the heart of the child.
This is 10 of the best minutes you can spend on the internet today, as former Indiana and Marquette head basketball coach Tom Crean gives life advice through basketball. - To have success, you have to love to compete and love to get better. - Everything you do is going to impact your future, so work hard and eliminate what doesn't matter so you can spend your time focusing on what does matter for your goals. - Kids really do want to learn, but we have to figure out how to give it to them in a way that they will accept and buy-into. - Always show up and bring your best and don't let the distractions get you away from what's really important - making guys better, bringing value, and building life-lasting relationships.
DJ Sackmann is one of the rising basketball trainers in the world. He does a really good job of breaking down moves to the smallest parts and building them back up so that they are easier to learn and so that you can use them in games. This video is a great example of how he breaks down and teaches the 'Bradley Beal Hip Swivel.' Did such a good job that former Indiana head coach Tom Creane was taking notes.
Buzz Williams, the head men's basketball coach at Virginia
Tech, talks about icing the ball screen.At the end of the video, around the 5:30 mark, he talks about how
important it is to teach and coach toughness and playing hard everyday for
basketball and for life.
- Any time a rotation is forced you are at a disadvantage.So, they use ice so they don’t have to have
an extra defender to rotate over.You
have the handler and the screeners man to contain the ball so that the other 3
guys can stay on their other 3 guys.
- The more simple and precise you can make anything, the
better.You get slippage any time you
make stuff personnel specific, so having a set system or plan helps with consistency
and limits mistakes and game slippage.
- Make sure you spend time on other coverages that are
different than what you do.The % of
icing the ball screen, even in college, is still low.So he has to work on the other
coverages.The number 1 method of
covering ball screens in the ACC is the hedge and over and 2 is switching the
ball screen.
- Everything is a trickle down from the pros, to the
colleges, to the high schools.
-On high pick and roll, the 3 ‘others’ have to stay at home
and connected on the sides because the ball is in the middle of the court and
can go either way.Its easier to help on
side ball screens, but in the middle, you have to decide where the help is
coming from.They send the ball to the
right so that everybody knows the rotations.
- We coach toughness and playing hard more than we coach
anything else.Its for basketball and
for life, and our responsibility as coaches is to help grow our kids to be the
best that they can be in all facets of life, and to be the best, you have to go
really hard and you have to be really tough.
No matter what happens, come hell or high water, no matter
what obstacles you meet, or negativity you may face, or injury you receive, or
form of resistance that you encounter, you have an inner belief and an inner
confidence that you are going to figure it out and you are going to get this
done.It’s a never die attitude.
How Can You Apply The
Mamba Mentality?
It’s about wanting to be better, and in whatever you do, try to be the best at
it.It doesn’t matter what it is.If you are doing something, why not try to be
great at it.If you are preparing for a
test, or you want to be a great carpenter, or whatever it may be, study every
great carpenter that came before you and try to be great at it.
