Bob Knight on practice and other thoughts

 Have rules on how you’re going to practice
o Never let a kid step onto the court and shoot on their own
o They needed to have a coach, manager, or other player with them
o No free shooting on their own
 Have things in practice that are physically and mentally tough
o Drills where players will bang and bruise each other
o Drills that will challenge their mind
 Start practice with quick drills
o Drills that require hand/eye quickness, and get their mind thinking right away
 Don’t practice too long
o You get to a “point of no return” with practice time
o Start of season -> December = 2 hour, 15 min practice
o January -> End of the season = Never go longer than 1 hour 15min
 Drills that involve an individual skill – spend no more than 5 minutes
 Drills that involve the team as a whole – spend no more than 10 minutes

There are 3 phases to basketball
o Offense
o Defense
o Conversion
 Rule of defensive transition – no easy points, and don’t let them get to FT line
 Rules of offensive transition – get there without a turnover and get there with an opportunity to score
 Best coaches understand simplicity. With simplicity comes execution.
 A lot of this stuff I teach you is elementary, but most of this game is elementary
o How to prevent turnovers?
 Don’t throw the ball to the other color jersey
 Stress the importance of getting to the bonus before the opponent
o Game goal: make more FT’s than the other team attempts
 Spend more time on conversion of offense to defense and defense to offense
 Mental is to physical as 4 is to 1
 Make players responsible for knowing what they’re supposed to do
o Call a timeout in practice and describe the play you’re going to run
 Who’s going to get the ball and how
 Give players a notecard and have them take a quiz on what’s supposed to be run
 See if more than 50% of players get it right
 Shooters must be able to give a shot fake and drive right or left – both directions quickly
 Watch your players shoot FT’s
o Do their eyes follow the path of the ball? Good shooters do not
When you catch the ball, hold it for a 2 second count so you can see what’s going on

Bobby Knight Quotes

• "The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare."
• "As I've said, basketball has been, I think, a real cooperative venture. There have been a lot of people that have been involved in it: coaches, administrators - not recently - fans and nobody, nobody any more so than students over the years."
• "You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball."
• "I don't have to wait until the next morning to regret something I did that was kinda dumb."
• "Everyone wants to be on a winning team,but no one wants to come to practice."
• "Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one."