Shameless self-promotion

[ClayK]

High school hoops 101: The offseason - NewsBreak

The best athletic director I ever worked for, Bob Wilson, told me once “I want my kids to beat down the door to get into the gym, not beat down the door to get out.”. As a coach, of course, you want your players to get better, and to some extent, the best way to do that is have them working on...

newsbreakapp.onelink.me

 

[Norcal_Fan]

nice article.

The offseason should allow players to make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes, in an atmosphere that is more relaxed and forgiving.

Any coach who's as an asshat about expecting players to be perfect is a complete moron. Coaching is about growth mindset and how can you have one or want kids to grow if you're always chewing them out and not letting them learn from their mistakes?

"But if you’re running your motion, everyone knows where the next cut is, where the next pass is going, and the kids will, inevitably, get lazy."

Your motion offense should be reads not x goes to this spot, y goes to this spot. I like how your mentor Kelly teaches his read and react. kids make reads how defense and make the proper reads. They could go to a lot of open gyms and be somewhat successful. he's not a total authoritarian (or so it seems). Running motion offense is more benificial when the other team knows what you're doing. This is where the teaching takes place. If you're a good teacher of the game, you'll teach kids to counter the defense and get into open spaces for successful shots.

 

[ClayK]

Sadly, the reality is that high school players are seldom instinctive enough to really run the options.

If you think about it, taking advantage of an overplay (say) in a motion offense requires several different things to happen at almost the same time.

1) A defensive mistake -- in this case an overplay on a cut.

2) Recognition of that mistake by at least two offensive players. This is where it gets tricky because both the cutter and the ballhandler need to see and digest the mistake in a split second. (If the defense applies good ball pressure, then it takes a very good ballhandler to both deal with the pressure and see what's happening on a weakside cut.)

3) At least two offensive players know exactly what to do to take advantage of the mistake -- and sometimes a third has to do so as well. Let's say it's an overplay on a cut from the weakside corner to the top of the key. At what point precisely does the cutter transition into a backdoor cut? As soon as the overplay is apparent, maybe at the weakside elbow? Or at the top of the key? And the ballhandler must read this while being pressured.

And if a third player cuts to the strongside block as part of the motion, suddenly the back door isn't open.

4) Execution. The pass has to be delivered with time for the receiver to gather and shoot. The receiver has to do just that and finish. And hopefully there's no weakside help.

In reality, most of the time coaches will call certain options rather than rely on players to react. It's asking a lot of a 16-year-old who's never played pickup and has always been in a system to grasp the weaknesses and holes in a defense in real time. In girls' basketball especially, motions are run much, much more by rote than employing any options.

 

[Norcal_Fan]

that's my point. If a coach teaches and contiues to teach backdooring pressure, or making reads it becomes habit. Coaches are too impatient and want things to work NOW when in reality, it 2-3 years to make it happen. Look at Pinewood. They run the same things from Frosh to Varsity and teach the same things every day. When it comes to games, it's just normal reads that happens in games. Teaching the game is much different than just coaching to coach. the Why is just as important as the how you do it. Not all coaches posess those skills.

1) overplay on a cut is backdoor
2) through repetition ball handler and reciever can make the proper read to get open
3) backdoors always are open even if they aren't open. its about placing the ball in the right space at the right time and again, that takes practice.
4) which brings me to the fourth point. practice is the mother of success and if you do it enough times (correctly) you form good habits.

Im not suggesting that coaches go away from motion offense and run sets. motion should be run as a base with multiple options as counters. CLet runs read and react. I'm sure Kelly drills them on what to do if A, B, or C options are/are not available.

 

[kiddman32]

Just in general, both boys and girls, for any types of offense and defense, it's quite beneficial to run the same basic system for all levels at a school... Sorta basic level for the frosh, embellish some for the JV, and still more for the varsity, year after year.

I'm no expert, but I think that's pretty much what they do with the boys at Campo, and not just there... Most of the kids they get learn their basics on D thru local basketball academies, which I am told teach man-to-man exclusively.

I think that's a major reason why, even in years where their apparent talent level is down, they are still usually tough to beat.

 

[ClayK]

No question continuity is important. But if all you do in practice is run your motion against your defense, your defense gets locked into that motion. And yes, there are options, but the defense knows the options, and the kids naturally get lazy.

Now, I'm an anomaly -- I'm a defense-first coach. I'm not very good at drawing up plays in the huddle, and I focus more on fundamentals than complex offensive motions. And I've found that the best way to improve my defense is to let the offense freelance during open gyms and sometimes during practice. That way, defenders cannot anticipate what will happen next nor adjust to options.

Let me put it another way: Over the years, we see offensive systems come and go. Flex, the Triangle, Dribble-Drive Motion. What happens is that when they are first introduced, defenders are surprised by the cuts and options. But over time, defenders learn, even if not directly instructed in how to adjust, and the offensive system is replaced by another.

Which basically means no matter the options in a motion, defenders will adjust. And if your defenders in practice face the same motion over and over again, they will adjust -- they will cut corners, they will get lazy. Which then means the defense your motion faces in a game is considerably different than the defense your motion faces in practice.

Working on offense is much more fun than working on defense, because players like to score and handle the ball. But sooner or later, you have to be able to defend against systems and plays you never see in practice, or in previous games, and you have to be able to respond to the unknown.

 

[kiddman32]

"But sooner or later, you have to be able to defend against systems and plays you never see in practice, or in previous games, and you have to be able to respond to the unknown."

Yup, from what I understand, that's what Etiwanda did to Mitty last year; used a defense that they had nor used in a game all season, while having dedicated plenty of time to the scheme during practices so they could use it well.

The ploy worked, bigtime.