Monday, July 26, 2010

Thoughts From Del Harris & George Raveling

This post will have a group of ideas from a bunch of different coaches that spoke at the Florida Coaching Clinic last year.
Del Harris
  • Work Ethic
    • If it’s about the time you spend in the office, then I disagree
    • Efficient work is what you need to strive for.
    • You need to have time to grow as a person.
  • Read Books
    • If you dont take time to read, you wont develop as a person
    • If you dont like reading, then get books on tape.
    • Recommends "Talent Code"
  • Film
    • Overrated, but should be used for positive reinforcement, not as a hammer on your own players.
  • Offense
    • Have fewer sets with more complex Options and counters
    • When you get to the playoffs, everyone knows what you will run.

GEORGE RAVELING
  • Value of Sharing & Relationships
    • Nothing in life has any value, unless you share.
    • We learned Everything about relationships when we were 10
       from our mom.
      • Be Nice,make friends, tell the truth, play nice.
    • Relationships should be a priority worked on everyday.
    • Why are relationships so important
      • The only difference between where you are now and where you’re going to be are the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been and the books you’ve read.
    • Build and sustain a meaningful portfolio of relationships with core constituents which will ultimately assist in the enhancement of your basketball program and career.
    •  3 Types of relationships:
      • Type A: Partnerships (mutual vision and sharing).
      • Type B: Solid, meaningful, ongoing relationship.
      • Type C: Casual relationships (most relationships start off as Type C).
    • Characteristics of Good Relationships:
      Loyalty.
      Trustworthiness.
      Appreciation.
      Commitment.
      Sincerity.
      Openness.
      Compassion.
      Responsibility.
      Generosity.
      Flexibility.
      Dependability.
      Respectfulness.
  • 2 words that determine our success
    • VOICES & CHOICES
    •  If we listen to the right voices, we will make the right choices

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Defensive Thoughts--Thad Matta

11 Defensive Musts
  1. Transition D 
  2. Guarding the ball
  3. Awareness
  4. defending screens away from the ball
  5. defending Screen the screener actions
  6. Defending on ball screens
  7. defending the post up
  8. rebounding & Boxing out
  9. Defending shooters w/ Great Range
  10. Defending O.B. Actions
  11. Defending Late Game 3's
Tips:
  • Play the hands on a great shooter.  Break the plain between the ball and the shooting pocket.
  • Get your hands in the passing lanes of a passer
  • Use mixed pressure vs a driver.  Jab & Retreat
  • Always "Squeak the feet" on a close out.
  • Don't get screened.  Use an "armbar" and trail in the offenses pocket
  • Always front the post.

Random thoughtsFrom Pete Carril

These are some thoughts from Pete Carril and his book The Smart take from the Strong

  • -The essence of character is what I call mental and physical courage.  
    • Mental courage--You are a shooter and have missed your last 5 shots, you are down 2 points and wide open. Will you shoot or pass it?
    • Physical Courage--Where you are so exhausted you cannot move, yet you keep moving.
  • Everybody makes such a big deal today about team play because theres such a scarcity of it.  Greed is a reason.  A player has to be selfish in the pursuit of the development of his skills, but he cannot be selfish when it comes time to blend them in with what is good for his team.
  • I viewed playing sports as a privilege, not a right.
  • Repetition is the key to success-- doing what you have to do over and over and always doing it right.
  • The object of my defensive strategy is to contest every pass and shot.  To force the opponent to move the ball under continuous pressure.  I want the other team to play offense longer then they are used to.  
  • A good defense plays good defense almost all the time.  Shooting is a variable; 50% of the time you miss.  Contesting a jump shot is not a variable. Skill is a variable.  Work is not a variable, not a skill...ITS an attitude.
  • There is a technical part and a life part to defensive play.  The life part consists of 3 things that must be prominient in good defense.Courage, intelligence, and energy.  IF you have a good dose of heart, head, and legs working for you, you can become a good defensive player.  If your legs tire out, your heart surrenders, and you wont move your leg.  When you are tired, do you have the courage to fight through screens?
  • If you don't use your head, you're in trouble.  Defense starts by asking yourself how you guard the man with the ball.  Even if you're a little slower, you can be a good defensive player as long as you have these attributes to compensate.
  • There are 3 conditions that make for a good man to man defense. 
    • Contest and pressure the ball
    • Your guys cannot get picked off and must go over screens
    • all shots must be contested.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Accepting Roles--Jeff Janssen

I think one of the most overlooked aspect is the idea of assigning roles in a team setting.  You cannot have 5 guys that all think they are "THE GUY" and need to get shots.  Every successful team needs role players to be successful.  These are the guys that fill in the cracks: they rebound, screen, defend, etc... 
As a coach it can make or break a team if you do not define roles for your team.  I believe role definition can create buy in for your players, if rewarded properly. 

I found a great article by Jeff Janssen and really enjoyed it.
“Sometimes a player's greatest challenge is  coming to grips with his role on the team.”   
Scottie Pippen
.
Championship teams have players who not only accept these roles, but understand their significance and value to the team and they actually take pride in playing them. As Miami Heat Coach Pat Riley says, “The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept that role, and strive to become excellent playing it.”
Accepting Roles
Your goal as a coach is to have your players accept and embrace the role that they are given. When each player accepts his/her role and takes pride in playing it your team will have its best chance of being successful. How do you get your players to understand and accept their roles?
ACCEPTING ROLES = DEFINING ROLES + APPRECIATING ROLES

Defining Roles

"Molding a team begins with a clear definition of each player's role."
Coach Jack Ramsey

  • A key aspect of role acceptance is helping to clearly define roles for each of the players.  
  • Role definition means that each player knows what is expected of him/her both on the court and off the court. 
  • It includes the responsibilities that they are expected to handle and fulfill. 
  •   It's usually your superstars who have to take on additional roles (Jordan & Pippen). But the majority of the “role” players just need to play their role effectively and everything else takes care of itself. 
  • Each player should have one or two primary responsibilities that when executed successfully, propel the team toward its ultimate goal.

Two Ways To Define & Clarify Team Roles
1. Individual Meetings with Each Player
2. Teammates Clarifying Roles for Each Other
Role Appreciation
  • Perhaps the biggest key leading to your players accepting their role is through role appreciation. 
  • What you are trying to do is to create a sense of pride in playing a role. You want each player to understand the contribution that they make to the team and take pride in it, regardless of whether it is valued by the fans or media.

 Awards
  • Getting people to accept roles requires that you appreciate them. By appreciating them for playing roles, your players begin to understand that their role is valued and ultimately important to the team reaching its common goal. 
  • As Boston Celtics Coach Rick Pitino says, “Recognize the people who get less attention in the group because they're not in the glamorous positions. Thank them publicly for their unselfishness and do it in front of their peers.”  
  • While the fans and media may overlook some vital roles, you can appreciate them in a more effective way through team awards. 
  • One such award that I have developed with teams is called the "Nails" award and the "Glue" award. We created the Nails award to acknowledge and appreciate the mental toughness of the player(s) who is “mentally tough as nails.” The award is given on a weekly basis and is voted on by the team. The players are not allowed to vote for themselves. The Glue award focuses on team aspects and is symbolized by the “glue that binds the team together.” The players vote for the teammate who had the best team attitude demonstrated by encouraging his/her teammates and/or making individual sacrifices. 
  • You can create various awards for whatever roles you deem important to your team’s success - like recognizing the player with the most rebounds, assists, charges taken, or screens. 

Thursday, July 8, 2010

10 questions that keep your captains up at Night-- Jeff Janssen

We all preach the importance of leadership but very few of us take the time to teach it. Too often we assume that our captains know how to be good leaders - rather than investing the time to teach them how to be effective leaders.

Here are the 10 questions:
1. How do I get my teammates to respect me and listen to me?
2. What do I say when someone is slacking off in practices, conditioning, and/or weights?
3. How do I keep my teammates in line when I know some of them party too much?
4. How do I deal with a teammate who defies and undermines the coach behind the scenes?
5. What do I say to a teammate whose negative and selfish attitude is distracting and demoralizing to the rest of the team?
6. What should I do when two of my teammates are in a major conflict?
7. How do I inspire my teammates and get them to believe that we really could achieve our goals this season?
8. What should I do when one of my teammates is thinking of quitting or transferring?
9. How do I step up and be a Vocal Leader when I am more comfortable being a Leader by Example?
10. How do I support and be loyal to my coach in front of my teammates when I sometimes disagree with his/her decisions?

Unfortunately, you’ve coached long enough to know that odds are at least half of these 10 situations will likely occur to your team this season. If not handled effectively, these common situations have the potential to distract, disrupt, derail, and destroy your team and season. Have you proactively prepared your leaders to handle these situations in a positive and productive way?
Invest the time on the front end to discuss these possible situations with your captains and team leaders. Talk about how you would like them to step up and productively handle them for the good of the team and program. Answer their questions, show them your compassion and support before, during, and after these difficult challenges, and coach them on what to do and say to best diffuse these potentially destructive and demoralizing situations. Ben Franklin couldn’t have been more right when he said...
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Seven Keys to Coaching Today's Millennial Generation Athlete--Jeff Janssen

You might be familiar with Beloit College's annual Mindset List linked below. The list shows how this year's incoming class of freshmen, most of them born in 1990, have a vastly different world experience than that of their 30, 40, 50, and 60 year old coaches.
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

This article is designed to help you better understand what motivates today's Millennial generation of athletes (those born from roughly 1982 to the present), how they are different, and what you can do as a Gen Xer (born 1961 to 1981) or Boomer (born 1943-1960) coach to continually adapt and stay connected and relevant to your team.

Heres how this group differs from past groups:

1. Special 
-They have been taught they are special and vital to the success of the family, team, and community.
-They have recieved far more focus and attention from adults so they feel entitled.


2. Sheltered
-Most Millennials have been protected and sheltered from birth.
-They have always had laws and gadgets to protect them.
-This has prevented them from experiencing, learning from, adapting to, and overcoming the important and inevitable hard knocks of life.
-Because of this sheltering, many are crushed when they receive less than an "A" for a grade, get cut from teams, and receive negative feedback.

3. Confident
- Millennials tend to be a more confident generation when it comes to their ability to achieve the American dream.
-they sometimes forget that success is not going to come instantly but must be worked at consistently and is anything but a linear journey.

4. Team-oriented
-Millennials are the most interconnected generation yet.
-Between emailing, texting, and staying connected through Facebook, peer networks are a huge part of their daily experience.
-They have strong team instincts and like to stay connected with their social group on a regular basis.

5. Conventional
- Millennials tend to embrace the more traditional values of their parents.
-They are much less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana than the generations before them.
-"Millennials describe closer ties with their parents than in teens in the history of postwar polling." Many are in continual contact with their parents and share tastes in clothes, music, and other entertainment.


6. Pressured
- Millennials are feeling much more pressure to succeed than generations before them. They believe the stakes are high and the price of mistakes and missteps are more consequential than in the past.
-Many are overscheduled and overwhelmed (Private lessons, camps, tutors)

7. Achieving
-With higher standards, Millennials are highly focused on achievement
-They "are on track to becoming the smartest, best-educated adults in U.S. history"

- Millennials are much more influenced by their parents. And many Millennials have extremely short-attention spans if you not physically or mentally engaging them in some type of activity.

ADVICE FOR COACHING MILLENNIALS

1. Help your Millennials understand that adversity is inevitable, temporary, and helpful in the long-term.
2. Help your Millennials understand that getting better is a long-term process.
3. Understand that there are dozens of things that compete for your Millennials' attention and time.
4. Don't lecture - Edu-tain.
5. Provide opportunities for young Millenials to engage in free athletic play.
6. Develop your parents into allies, not adversaries.
7. Help kids fight their own battles.
8. Remember that people are people.

7Strategies for building an elite and enduring Program--Jeff Janssen

  1. Long term vision of Success
    1. Program builders have a clear vision of what they want to be and stand for.
    2. NO 1-Hit wonders
    3. What do you want your program to stand for?
  2. Committed to the long Run
    1. Focus on establishing and maintaining a solid foundation of success that endures.
    2. Avoid instant gratification through short cuts.
    3. There is no "Quick Fix"
  3. Dont judge success only by Wins/Losses.
    1. Be successful and respected on and off the field.
      1. How do you evaluate the success of your season?
  4. Selectively bring in recruits  and staff members that share their vision and values
    1. People are  the key to success
    2. Invest time to recruit and select talented people
    3. What criteria do you value when selecting and recruiting people?
  5. See thier work as a platform for teaching people how to succeed in life
    1. Be a teacher of life skills
  6. Build life long relationships with their people.
    1. Highly value your ongoing relationships
  7. Provide their people with perspective.
    1. See the big picture.
    2. How can you educate and broaden your athletes perspective on the world?