On the Court For Old Time's Sake.. Basketball DNA

The new school that I work at had a fundraiser last night held by the student council; the undercard was a student vs. student basketball game and the main event was the winning student team vs. the staff squad. 

I haven't played "competitive" basketball in over a year and even then it's been awhile.  After high school, it was an alumni tournament and some pick-up games at the SHELL in Madison.  Now?  Even less... every once in awhile I'll hop in our 11-man fast break or Cardinal Pride drills with the middle schoolers but that certainly doesn't count.  Even less, I'll play open gym with some of the high school players.  And, it was at least a year since I did that last, so I wasn't sure what to expect last night.

The best part being, of course, just because I haven't played much in the last.. oh... 9 years doesn't mean that my mouth has slowed down or is rusty.  I'd compare myself to a Larry Bird when it comes down to it.  I hit the students with all sorts of trash before the game started.  Just basic stuff, "Really?  You're going to guard me?"  "There's a reason they call me Jimmer J back home."  Of course, the weather was overcast yesterday with a chance of rain, which played right into my game.  To one kid I said, "Hey, do you know why it's so cloudy?  Because tonight.. I'm going to make it rain." Then, ironically, the fire alarm went off to end the school day and I saw the same kid leaving and said, "You know why the alarm went off?  I was in the gym heating up for the game tonight."  Couldn't have worked out any better.. except that his team lost and he didn't even get to play our team.

Then, of course, the game started and here comes an important question, "Can you change a player's DNA?"  All week I had talked about scoring and shooting.  I told myself before the game, to set the tone, I was going to come down and get into the lane and score on one of the first possessions.  When I get in the gym now I work on my shot, pull-up, and finishing in the lane trying to work on finishing and putting up points. 

They got the opening tip, scored and we came back down.  I had the ball, got into the lane and... saw a flashing teammate.  What did I do?  Force up the shot or dish it off to the open teammate?  What do you think I did.. if you guessed forced up the shot.  You guessed wrong.  If you guessed dished it off for a better, open shot.. you were clearly right.  I turned ran back down after the assist and smiled.  Shooting isn't my game, scoring isn't why I play.  I'd rather get into the lane and throw a bounce pass to a backdoor cutter than to go behind the back through 2 guys and put up a bad shot that goes in. 

Don't get me wrong, I did shoot.. but barely as I  put up about 6 shots in the 24ish minutes I played.  Thankfully, I played with a guy that had the DNA to score.. and score he did.  But, what makes a player a scorer?  What makes a player a distributor?  Is it knowing your limitations and excelling at other aspects of your game?  In my case, I know it's something that I've always played with.. in middle school our team had a lot of size.  I played PG then and my job was to get the ball to our freak athlete or our post player; I didn't have to score.  This continued into high school where I played with guys that were built to score.. I played with 2 of our school's all time leading 3-pt shooters and our school's 2nd all time leading scorer, so my job was easy:  bring the ball down the floor, pass the ball to scorer, watch the shot go in and win.

Points are only as important as scoring enough total for the team to win.  Individual points?  Eh.. you need to have somebody that has the basketball DNA to score or to take the big shot.  That was never really my game, whether it was a lack of confidence or deferring to others that were more equipped.  You can't have 5 guys that have that DNA on the floor at the same time, you have to have guys that know and accept roles.  I think that's why I was able to defer so much last night and focus on crashing the boards and finding the open man.  I'd done it so long and so many times it was 2nd nature last night.  Could I have put up more shots and scored?  Yeah, I could have.. would that have been better for the team?  Doubtful.  My team had a player that had better scoring basketball DNA and was on last night.  Why interfere with that? 

That is something that players need to realize.  Their basketball DNA can change over time, in the right environment and with the confidence and needed skills, but if you play on a team with somebody that has a better ability to score and more of that mentality; it should be easy to focus on other things.  Who cares who gets the points?  Ball movement, passing, cutting and spacing are as important during the game as who gets the points (and therefore, the accolades).  I always say to my team, "Offense will take care of itself.  I don't care if you score 0 or 20, you'll contribute your time on the floor in other ways."  Thankfully, at middle school, players buy into that more easily than they do in high school.  I haven't had any battles of people putting up too many shots or hogging the ball too much; if I did, what would I do?  I'd have to make them find that role, make them understand their basketball skills and value what's more important.. the team or the points.  Easier said than done. 

In case you were wondering, I only hit 2 of those 6 shots.. one beautiful Rafer "Skip to My Lou" Alston floater and a reverse lay-up.  A double-double of the Jason Kidd and Magic Johnson variety according to my crowd statisticians with double digit boards and assists.  I was like Dennis Rodman on the glass.  And don't worry, the teachers won 50-32.  Beatdown city.

Reflection on My Season

My 7th grade season came to a crashing end as I've already discussed, but we had a solid season.  3rd place in our season opening tournament and county tournament.  We won our regional and section (which were the 1st we've won with me coaching) and we had a state appearance.  Short lived, however. 

Either way, our season is finished.. which means a time for reflection.  What did we do well?  Where did we struggle?  What can we change to improve our players?  It's a little bit more difficult for me to do this because I don't get these same kids again.  I will be able to assist them, but they won't be my team, which stinks.  It's not like I'm a varsity coach and can have the freshman, jv and my own soph/jr varsity players to work with.  Instead, I have to my reflect myself to see what drills worked and hammer away again even though my team might have a completely different feel to it. 

The first thing we did well surprised me; we boxed out very well.  We were slightly undersized and had moments where we got pushed under the hoop, but size factor included:  we were solid.  We did FT box-outs, 3, 4 and 5 man shell box-outs and a "game" called 4 corner box out.  2 guys to the elbows, 2 to lane/baseline to form a square.  The guys inside the square had to boxout the guy outside the square for 3 seconds; if no "offensive" player touched the ball then great.  If one did, whoever allowed him to touch it had to do 10 victory push-ups.  There was also one key rule:  no ticky-tack fouls. 

I think that really improved our boxing out and making contact.  I also think it helped our toughness because earlier in the year we whined.  A LOT.  We got a lot better in drills and games as the year went along; we weren't constantly looking for a whistle and hesitating.  We got a board and went back up, and back up and back up until we finished or they got the board.  No arms out looking for a call.

We were also very good at getting to the lane.  We worked a lot on individual drills, at least 5 minutes daily doing commandos.  We also added in 10+ minutes of positional split each day.  A lot of our guys got better at dropping the shoulder and getting to the lane where we worked on passing, floaters and other ways to shoot/finish.  We were really good at shooting the floater, okay at making them but brutal at jump stops in the lane where so many good things can happen.  The guards also improved at shooting off the dribble, including pull-ups which we hit a few pull up 3's in the playoffs.

We also ran some set plays very well, and I put in motion for the 1st time.  We kept ball handlers in front of us and got better with our weak side D (but a loooooooooong ways to go).  We also added in blitzing ball screens for the first time and that is something we will surely keep in our program.  That being said there are plenty of areas where I need to improve our team for 7th and 8th grade and into high school.  I'll be able to assist the guys I had this year and hopefully get them ready for high school.. and my new crop of 7th graders?  Back to square 1.  Here are some things I need to focus on getting better with:

1.  Break after makes/misses.  We always stress it early in the year, and then I get away from it when we get into games against teams that we see every year.  I want to force the tempo, and I need to get that into the team from Day 1.  It starts with the first drill and ends with the last drill.  I have to remember to build it into drills; it can even be in our 3 on 3 shell drills! 

2.  Shooting form, plays for shooters and shooting off screens:  Form is hit or miss, but we don't spend a lot of time on it because we don't have a ton of time!  We have to work on getting elbows tight and shooting in their range instead of hip bombing from 3, which makes me sick.  I also have to get better at finding plays for our shooters and making sure they can stroke it coming off a screen.

3.  Using their body on offense/defense.  Beating the offensive player to a spot and being physical.  There are certain plays we have that focus on patterns and movement, and it drives me insane when somebody is near where our offensive guy needs to be and he avoids the spot or goes elsewhere.  I cannot stand it; kids are afraid of contact.  We have to get them better at using their body to get that position on both ends of the floor.

4.  Utilize backdoor cuts.  I love them; we don't use them.  There is a reason I want to study some of the Princeton offense this summer!

5.  Post Work:  Offensively, we need more than a drop step to score.  Have to have a counter move.. at least one, preferably more.  Defensively, work on keeping the offense off the block and then full, 3/4 front with weakside help.  Our playoff game we got ate up playing behind and couldn't get around to front (didn't practice it).  That won't happen again.

6.  Recover off blitz and rotate:  I already said that we're going to stay with the blitz, so we have to get better at rotating out and finding somebody to defend.  The weakside guy has to get over and take away the cutter.

Princeton, "50" and "41" motion offense.  Such a thing of beauty.

8.  Rotate our defenses to slow hot teams.  Man, 1-3-1 in quarter or half.  1-2-1-1 in the full court.

9.  An effective sideline OOB play for the bucket.