Yet another double header day of games for me, and once again GL has the first game. We will be facing PL, the first team of the season who we’re unfamiliar with. In an unusual move for me I ask for the team to be there a half hour in advance. Unfortunately the team isn’t all prompt so we do a bit of a shoot around. Finally, I have the team go into our meeting space and play for them the Zone Offense videos I’ve created on my laptop. Overall, attention is fair for this. The bad part comes when at the end of the game I forget my laptop at the school. So far it hasn’t been found, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.
In the pregame talk I stress how this is PL’s firt game of the season so I would like to come out and take them by surprise. And overall this is what we do. Or would have done if we could make a lay-up. We miss just an appalling amount of somewhat open inside shots. I start with a line-up of Tom at point, David, Brian, Jack P (playing post), and Justin. At about 4 minutes in, I rotate this group out in favor of Cameron, Andrew, Scott, Lucas, and Dante with Scott playing point. As I said both groups do fairly well but we can’t make our shots. We finish the first up 6-5.
Things improve in the second quarter. I give some reminders about how we want to play defense and we don’t allow as many easy drives. David is still trying to break the press single handedly but when that doesn’t happen we actually manage to get some good looks. Further, by their speeding up the tempo of the game they start to play sloppily and we create some turnovers which we convert into baskets. We’re up 17-12 heading into half. One thing I was particularly proud of is quality minutes everyone received in the first half. This gives me wiggle room for the second half to either give our weaker players more time, if we pull away, or our stronger players the bulk of the time, if it remains close.
At half I congratulate them on a well played half. We then have a poor 3rd, or rather they have a good 3rd which we helped them to achieve. They do a good job of really cutting off our first pass and convert a lot of those into some easy baskets. We enter the 4th quarter down 27-25. And it’s time for Justin to take over. He rattles off 6 quick points, with a couple of other scoring as well, to give us a 7 point lead. PL cuts it down to 4, with 40 seconds left, after a successful 3 point shot, but we end up with a 43-37 victory.
We did MUCH better in this game than in the last game. PL really struggled with the tight traveling calls our refs call and unlike last week we did a much better job of avoiding this. I had stressed this during continuous motion during our practices and the reminder clearly paid off. We also did much better on the boards this week, despite once again being the smaller team. While we struggled in the 3rd, we made the necessary adjustments for the 4th. I feel like we were the better team and deserved the victory, unlike last week.
Taking a look at our players:
Andrew – He did a great job of helping us to beat our press in the 2nd by being down court but close enough to receive the pass. He had a few open looks at the basket as a result but didn’t score. However, he did find a nice jumper in the second to give him some points.
Brian – Had a couple of nice assists by getting the ball into the post, but was otherwise unremarkable.
Cameron – You could have forgotten he was on the court for all that he or his man touched the ball. I didn’t notice on defense if this was due to skill on his part or lack of skill on the person who he was guarding part.
Dante – The drop-off in rebounds between him and Justin continues to be noticeable. Dante had 1 rebound in 12 minutes to Justin’s 8 in 16 minutes. Dante does play good man to man, which is nice, as his man was out on the wing quite a bit even and Dante played him perfectly. But when Dante’s in the game I need to count on others to get that board, which is also a bit disappointing from a center. He did have a nice shot in the 4th quarter from farther out, so it was nice to see him regain a little of his offensive touch.
David – David is still the best player on the court most days. But the difference isn’t as great as it once was, and he hasn’t realized that things he was once able to do don’t work for him anymore. For instance, despite my not playing him at point that much, his 11 turnovers were nearly as many as the 13 the rest of the team committed. He continues to be a weak link on press break. I’m confident that with some coaching David will be able to continue to maximize his talents in a positive way for the team.
Jack M – When I did the complete swap-out in the first quarter Jack said how it was embarrassing that he was the only one not going in. I said, that with 11 players that’s going to happen to one person, but I did feel for him. I gave him a little crunch time play as a salve though when it got to the very end of the game I pulled him in favor of Dante’s free throw ability, and Jack felt frustrated at this. I didn’t play Jack at point which I think was the right decision, and a reason why our overall turnovers were down. However, if he’s not playing point he’s suddenly having to compete with a bunch of other players for minutes and so finding him time is going to be something I’ll have to pay attention to.
Jack P – He looked really good. His real skill comes in driving the baseline, rather than from the top of the key. Where as last year he wouldn’t make those shots, this year he has been. I asked him to play post and he responded with a solid 4 rebounds. I played him the whole 4th quarter. If he continues to shoot as well as he has been he’s going to make a strong case for being just as indispensable as David or Justin come crunch time.
Justin – Speaking of Justin, he continues to be the biggest reason why we’ve won this year. His ability to dribble, and do so from the left side (being a lefty) just catches people off guard. PL had to take their biggest player, and best rebounder, off the floor in the 4th after Justin dribbled by a couple of times, so that mismatch He hasn’t shown an ability to score from the right (I can’t remember a basket of his on the right side), so that’ll be something we’ll want to work on to improve his overall game. He is, in his quite way, our best player by far at this point in the season.
Lucas – Lucas hasn’t shown that explosiveness and spark that had me ready to have him be the centerpiece of our offense were the triplets not to have returned. I wonder if this is because he’s not starting, not getting into a rhythm or what. I think I might let him play a consecutive quarter and see if he just needs time to get into the flow. Otherwise I’d have to think that with his continuing to be short, he’s going to have to change his game, and work with him on making that transition.
Scott – Scott’s been my biggest disappointment this year. In fact he’s been my only disappointment. He’s been unfocused and unmotivated. I asked him in the 3rd quarter to go in and play point. He whined about playing point. So I said, no problem and had Lucas go in and play point instead. However, having made my point I did sub him in a minute or so of game time later and not at point. I’m going to tell him pretty bluntly that he will be a regular starter again when I see him putting in the effort and giving the attention that I expect. I feel he’ll respond well to this direct approach. That said, he rebounded nicely (pun intended) from the poor post game he had against LS, with some tough defense and 8 boards, though his 0-5 from the floor, with many if not all of those being lay-ups, was a little discouraging.
Tom – I’ve really done a disservice to Tom. I started him and played him a little in the first 3 quarters. Then the 4th came around, and I knew I needed to play him some more, and I didn’t. Tom has, by far, the fewest minutes on the team right now. He doesn’t deserve that Granted he’s not doing a whole lot for the team when he’s out there, but he deserves the chance to play. We play WK next and I worry, given that he already has confidence problems, about giving him some substantial playing time against a team we’re going to struggle against. However, in either the WK or LV game I am going to find some substantial playing time for him and I’m going to make sure not to short change him going forward.
I like where we're at heading into our game against WK, who if you recalled absolutley demolished us when we played them in a scrimmage last spring. If we can play them tough, win or lose, it'll show our 3-0 start is no fluke and that we are a team to contend with.
HP update will come tomorrow.
Showing posts with label justin b. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justin b. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
GL vs MP1
Well yesterday started off the basketball season. I first had a game with GL and then a couple hours later one with HP. I will be writing them up in separate posts. Let’s start with GL because that was first chronologically.
A little background on how the games work. We play four 7 minute quarters. Each team gets 5 time outs (3 full and 2 30 second) per game. There is no press allowed in the 1st or 3rd quarter. A team may press in the 2nd and 4th quarter as long as they are not ahead by 10 or more in the 4th grade league and 15 or more in the 5th grade league. Otherwise the games are played according to “real” rules.
Saturday night I was getting the stats sheet ready for the next day and wanted to put players uniform numbers on the sheet. So I got the bag with the uniforms and started writing down the assigned numbers when I realized a problem: there was no uniform for Cameron. He wasn’t on the uniform master list I had either. After doing some matching, I discovered that Lucas had changed numbers, as had Jack M. I call Lucas’s house in the morning and he agrees to bring his uniform from last year which Cameron will use. Crisis adverted.
I arrive at MP’s place a good 45 minutes before the game. I had asked the team to arrive a half hour early, to hand out uniforms, and because MP is a half hour away, leaving some cushion in case there was a hold-up (like there was last game with the H’s and Lucas). As I pull into the parking lot (and having snagged the second best non-handicapped space) I see Dante and his father already walking in. When I arrive in the gym, I see Andrew is also present. Kid can’t show up to practice on time, but he gets there exceedingly early for a game.
The team arrives and we sort out the uniforms. The smallest short size we have is Youth Large, which proves to be several sizes too big for both Jack M and Cameron. Ahh the joys and challenges of having small players on your team.
We end up starting the game early because both teams are ready to go. I start a line-up of David, Dante, Justin, Scott, and Brian. After winning the tip, and David getting an easy lay-up (which he missed) our game goes downhill very quickly. On defense they’re killing us on screens, while their 1-3-1 offense is just tearing us apart. It doesn’t hurt that they’re making most of their shots either. At the end of the first quarter we’re down 10-2. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little concerned at this point. Mortified at the prospects of being blown out against a team we beat last year would more accurately describe my emotional state.
At the quarter break I stress being patient on offense and coming off the screens on defense, but do so in a low key sort of way. I also prepare them for a press which never comes. And we settle down pretty quickly and start to find our offensive groove. By half we’ve narrowed it to 16-12. At half I stress how we’ve closed the gap, we’re playing better defense and how we’ve always been a second half team. Then just to prove my point, we tear them apart in the third quarter. We do this despite the fact that my weaker players saw extended time on the court together during the quarter. We basically ran them ragged, pushing the ball hard up the court nearly every possession and MP just wore out. When the quarter ends we find ourselves up 30-24. I stress playing solid defense and we’re off for another quarter of play. In the 4th quarter its clear that MP1 is frustrated, though I didn’t realize until part way through the quarter. Two different kids during the quarter take a hard fall and start crying, more out of frustration, I believe than injury. I had put out a group of five of David, Brian, Justin, Jack M, and Scott to start the quarter, though I sub out Jack M a minute in to the quarter in favor of Lucas. This fivesome does a nice job of putting the game out of reach, allowing me to give some end of game minutes to a few players who hadn’t seen the court as much. We close out a very solid 44-31 victory.
Its nice that we struggled so much and then still proved we could win, and in a dominating fashion too. A few of the parents commented to me how they were a little concerned in the first quarter, but it was a fun game to watch. This matches my feelings pretty closely.
I really struggled this game in terms of substitutions. Having 11 players versus 10 makes every bit the difference I expected it to make. Overall, I’m real happy with how the playing time worked out, with most players right in the 11-13 minute range of playing time, giving them a good chance to really get some quality playing time.
Let’s do a player by player break down:
Andrew – Andrew looked a little lost in his time on the court. Which frankly didn’t surprise me. He isn’t used to playing at the level we’re playing at, but I think he’s got the skills to adjust. He saw only about 10 minutes of playing time but I really hope that goes up as the season goes on. He did have the one bad shot of the game. He was in at the end and I had told them to slow it down and take their time. So he gets a pass in the corner, is wide open and takes the shot, just inside the three point line. Two problems with this. One it was hardly slowing things down. But I generally don’t fault kids for taking open shots. More troubling, was that he was so wide open he’d have been better off taking a few dribbles in and shooting closer in.
Brian – He played quite well in a mostly unnoticeable way. He had 6 points, 1 assist, and 2 good rebounds. Rebounding (as I’ll talk about more in a second) was an area I was happy with overall, as we didn’t give up too many 3rd and 4th chances to MP. He also made another comment about David being the best player out there. I had forgotten to talk with him about this before the game, but am going to make sure to do so on Wednesday.
Cameron – Cameron’s first sport is soccer, and he’s got a lot of the accompanying skills there. Like Andrew, the pace and nature of the game seemed to take him by surprise. While Andrew has a wellspring of basketball talent to draw on, Cameron has more athletic talent to draw upon. Cameron has the problem of being a guard, and a guard who I don’t really trust to bring the ball up. This lack of role makes it harder for me to really find a time when I think “Oh it’ll be great to have Cameron out there”. I hope that he develops a strength as the season progresses. For our first game he was pretty much a non entity besides picking up a couple of quick fouls in the third. Cameron’s mom remarked to me after the game that she can see why Cameron enjoys basketball so much since I am a positive coach. It’s always nice to hear this, as it’s certainly my goal.
Dante – While Dante has been rough and really going at it in practice, that same level of intensity didn’t carry over to the game. He’s did an OK, though not great job of guarding some big men. He was fairly soft last year, and I’d grown optimistic that he’d toughened up some. I hope that he too was just finding his bearings in this game and will be more of a presence for us inside in the games to come.
David – Showed again what a remarkable talent he is. Where he was sullen about his playing on Thursday, he worked through a rough first quarter to really help us explode in the second. At one point MP’s star point guard was shouting out that David had no left hand, after David had gotten fouled. I called a 30 second time out before he went to the line, pointed that out to him, asked him if that was true. He smiled and said no, and showed the next possession his left hand. When he’s relaxed and having fun (which go hand in hand) he’s just pure joy to watch. What was especially nice was that, for only the second time, the triplet’s father was there to watch and so he got to see David perform well.
Jack M – Served as our point guard when David wasn’t in and even at times while David was in. I liked how he moved the ball overall, though his stats (0-2, with 3 turnovers and 1 foul) suggest he was more harm than good. However, I think that’s not totally representative of what he did for us. He saw lots of short bursts of playing time, which I have a feeling will be fairly typical for him this season, having subbed in at 5 different points. I will say that his attitude this year has been very positive and I will likely be remarking on it to him at our next practice.
Jack P – He scored points on fairly efficient shooting (2-5) along with drawing 2 fouls. He played point for us at a couple of different points. This kind of performance is a HUGE step up from last year when he would regularly go something like 1-8, or worse. He is, after David, the best player on our team at penetrating, but his missed shots were driving me batty. If he’s turned that around, a big if and one I’m not willing to commit to after one game, my job will have only gotten that much harder as he will deserve to play substantial playing time.
Justin – When talking about the team, I had talked about how we had a new enter. And boy do we ever. Justin, who along with David, played the most minutes at just under 21, came up huge with 12 rebounds and 8 points, with most of those points being on put backs from rebounds. Having a true inside presence, combined with our fabulous guard play really takes us to a whole new level.
Lucas – Lucas played a solid game, seeing playing time at every position but 2, something that’ll be happening with him a lot this season. And by solid I mean 2-5 shooting, 2-2 at the free throw line, along an assist and 4 rebounds against 2 fouls and 2 turnovers. We lack size to have a true #4, especially if Dante continues to play soft, and so as much as I would like to take advantage of his guard ability we’re going to need him inside and guarding those big kids.
Scott – Scott is pretty similar to Lucas. The kid is as tough as nails and while I think he’s got even more ability than Lucas to play point, I wonder how much I’ll actually be able to find him time there. He had 3-7 shooting 1-1 from the line, along with 4 rebounds, 2 steals, against 3 turnovers and 1 foul. His rebounding numbers are going to suffer this year because there are only so many rebounds to be had and Justin is gobbling them up. It’s a problem I like having.
Tom – Tom didn’t play a whole lot for us, but played real strong in the time he played. Tom is frequently not inclined to shoot open shots, but he had an open shot in the game and he made it which was great to see. He also had a steal. In other words in limited minutes he played real well for us. Tom’s a good basketball player, but he’s not someone who can make things happen, for the most part and this effects how I use him. I have to be careful with Tom, since he’ll never complain about his playing time, which sometimes makes it easier to pick someone else when it’s a choice between two players. My goal is to not fall in this trap this season.
So I’m feeling good about where we’re at heading into our LN game. Look for the write-up of the HP game to appear sometime tomorrow.
A little background on how the games work. We play four 7 minute quarters. Each team gets 5 time outs (3 full and 2 30 second) per game. There is no press allowed in the 1st or 3rd quarter. A team may press in the 2nd and 4th quarter as long as they are not ahead by 10 or more in the 4th grade league and 15 or more in the 5th grade league. Otherwise the games are played according to “real” rules.
Saturday night I was getting the stats sheet ready for the next day and wanted to put players uniform numbers on the sheet. So I got the bag with the uniforms and started writing down the assigned numbers when I realized a problem: there was no uniform for Cameron. He wasn’t on the uniform master list I had either. After doing some matching, I discovered that Lucas had changed numbers, as had Jack M. I call Lucas’s house in the morning and he agrees to bring his uniform from last year which Cameron will use. Crisis adverted.
I arrive at MP’s place a good 45 minutes before the game. I had asked the team to arrive a half hour early, to hand out uniforms, and because MP is a half hour away, leaving some cushion in case there was a hold-up (like there was last game with the H’s and Lucas). As I pull into the parking lot (and having snagged the second best non-handicapped space) I see Dante and his father already walking in. When I arrive in the gym, I see Andrew is also present. Kid can’t show up to practice on time, but he gets there exceedingly early for a game.
The team arrives and we sort out the uniforms. The smallest short size we have is Youth Large, which proves to be several sizes too big for both Jack M and Cameron. Ahh the joys and challenges of having small players on your team.
We end up starting the game early because both teams are ready to go. I start a line-up of David, Dante, Justin, Scott, and Brian. After winning the tip, and David getting an easy lay-up (which he missed) our game goes downhill very quickly. On defense they’re killing us on screens, while their 1-3-1 offense is just tearing us apart. It doesn’t hurt that they’re making most of their shots either. At the end of the first quarter we’re down 10-2. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little concerned at this point. Mortified at the prospects of being blown out against a team we beat last year would more accurately describe my emotional state.
At the quarter break I stress being patient on offense and coming off the screens on defense, but do so in a low key sort of way. I also prepare them for a press which never comes. And we settle down pretty quickly and start to find our offensive groove. By half we’ve narrowed it to 16-12. At half I stress how we’ve closed the gap, we’re playing better defense and how we’ve always been a second half team. Then just to prove my point, we tear them apart in the third quarter. We do this despite the fact that my weaker players saw extended time on the court together during the quarter. We basically ran them ragged, pushing the ball hard up the court nearly every possession and MP just wore out. When the quarter ends we find ourselves up 30-24. I stress playing solid defense and we’re off for another quarter of play. In the 4th quarter its clear that MP1 is frustrated, though I didn’t realize until part way through the quarter. Two different kids during the quarter take a hard fall and start crying, more out of frustration, I believe than injury. I had put out a group of five of David, Brian, Justin, Jack M, and Scott to start the quarter, though I sub out Jack M a minute in to the quarter in favor of Lucas. This fivesome does a nice job of putting the game out of reach, allowing me to give some end of game minutes to a few players who hadn’t seen the court as much. We close out a very solid 44-31 victory.
Its nice that we struggled so much and then still proved we could win, and in a dominating fashion too. A few of the parents commented to me how they were a little concerned in the first quarter, but it was a fun game to watch. This matches my feelings pretty closely.
I really struggled this game in terms of substitutions. Having 11 players versus 10 makes every bit the difference I expected it to make. Overall, I’m real happy with how the playing time worked out, with most players right in the 11-13 minute range of playing time, giving them a good chance to really get some quality playing time.
Let’s do a player by player break down:
Andrew – Andrew looked a little lost in his time on the court. Which frankly didn’t surprise me. He isn’t used to playing at the level we’re playing at, but I think he’s got the skills to adjust. He saw only about 10 minutes of playing time but I really hope that goes up as the season goes on. He did have the one bad shot of the game. He was in at the end and I had told them to slow it down and take their time. So he gets a pass in the corner, is wide open and takes the shot, just inside the three point line. Two problems with this. One it was hardly slowing things down. But I generally don’t fault kids for taking open shots. More troubling, was that he was so wide open he’d have been better off taking a few dribbles in and shooting closer in.
Brian – He played quite well in a mostly unnoticeable way. He had 6 points, 1 assist, and 2 good rebounds. Rebounding (as I’ll talk about more in a second) was an area I was happy with overall, as we didn’t give up too many 3rd and 4th chances to MP. He also made another comment about David being the best player out there. I had forgotten to talk with him about this before the game, but am going to make sure to do so on Wednesday.
Cameron – Cameron’s first sport is soccer, and he’s got a lot of the accompanying skills there. Like Andrew, the pace and nature of the game seemed to take him by surprise. While Andrew has a wellspring of basketball talent to draw on, Cameron has more athletic talent to draw upon. Cameron has the problem of being a guard, and a guard who I don’t really trust to bring the ball up. This lack of role makes it harder for me to really find a time when I think “Oh it’ll be great to have Cameron out there”. I hope that he develops a strength as the season progresses. For our first game he was pretty much a non entity besides picking up a couple of quick fouls in the third. Cameron’s mom remarked to me after the game that she can see why Cameron enjoys basketball so much since I am a positive coach. It’s always nice to hear this, as it’s certainly my goal.
Dante – While Dante has been rough and really going at it in practice, that same level of intensity didn’t carry over to the game. He’s did an OK, though not great job of guarding some big men. He was fairly soft last year, and I’d grown optimistic that he’d toughened up some. I hope that he too was just finding his bearings in this game and will be more of a presence for us inside in the games to come.
David – Showed again what a remarkable talent he is. Where he was sullen about his playing on Thursday, he worked through a rough first quarter to really help us explode in the second. At one point MP’s star point guard was shouting out that David had no left hand, after David had gotten fouled. I called a 30 second time out before he went to the line, pointed that out to him, asked him if that was true. He smiled and said no, and showed the next possession his left hand. When he’s relaxed and having fun (which go hand in hand) he’s just pure joy to watch. What was especially nice was that, for only the second time, the triplet’s father was there to watch and so he got to see David perform well.
Jack M – Served as our point guard when David wasn’t in and even at times while David was in. I liked how he moved the ball overall, though his stats (0-2, with 3 turnovers and 1 foul) suggest he was more harm than good. However, I think that’s not totally representative of what he did for us. He saw lots of short bursts of playing time, which I have a feeling will be fairly typical for him this season, having subbed in at 5 different points. I will say that his attitude this year has been very positive and I will likely be remarking on it to him at our next practice.
Jack P – He scored points on fairly efficient shooting (2-5) along with drawing 2 fouls. He played point for us at a couple of different points. This kind of performance is a HUGE step up from last year when he would regularly go something like 1-8, or worse. He is, after David, the best player on our team at penetrating, but his missed shots were driving me batty. If he’s turned that around, a big if and one I’m not willing to commit to after one game, my job will have only gotten that much harder as he will deserve to play substantial playing time.
Justin – When talking about the team, I had talked about how we had a new enter. And boy do we ever. Justin, who along with David, played the most minutes at just under 21, came up huge with 12 rebounds and 8 points, with most of those points being on put backs from rebounds. Having a true inside presence, combined with our fabulous guard play really takes us to a whole new level.
Lucas – Lucas played a solid game, seeing playing time at every position but 2, something that’ll be happening with him a lot this season. And by solid I mean 2-5 shooting, 2-2 at the free throw line, along an assist and 4 rebounds against 2 fouls and 2 turnovers. We lack size to have a true #4, especially if Dante continues to play soft, and so as much as I would like to take advantage of his guard ability we’re going to need him inside and guarding those big kids.
Scott – Scott is pretty similar to Lucas. The kid is as tough as nails and while I think he’s got even more ability than Lucas to play point, I wonder how much I’ll actually be able to find him time there. He had 3-7 shooting 1-1 from the line, along with 4 rebounds, 2 steals, against 3 turnovers and 1 foul. His rebounding numbers are going to suffer this year because there are only so many rebounds to be had and Justin is gobbling them up. It’s a problem I like having.
Tom – Tom didn’t play a whole lot for us, but played real strong in the time he played. Tom is frequently not inclined to shoot open shots, but he had an open shot in the game and he made it which was great to see. He also had a steal. In other words in limited minutes he played real well for us. Tom’s a good basketball player, but he’s not someone who can make things happen, for the most part and this effects how I use him. I have to be careful with Tom, since he’ll never complain about his playing time, which sometimes makes it easier to pick someone else when it’s a choice between two players. My goal is to not fall in this trap this season.
So I’m feeling good about where we’re at heading into our LN game. Look for the write-up of the HP game to appear sometime tomorrow.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
GL Tryouts Night 3: We Have a Team
Well it was the night to really see who had what. As I started tryouts, promptly at 8:15, all were there except Dante. We immediately kicked off into our 5 on 5 games. First with the fair teams. Andrew showed that he indeed deserved to make the team, as did Cameron. Jon also felt strongly positive about Dante. Tom, by virtue of his have shown up, made the team. Even better is that during one of the second set of games, Tom actually took a shot. He air balled it, but I was just so happy he actually shot the ball, as he’d become loath to do that by the end of last season.
The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.
More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.
I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.
I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.
When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.
Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.
Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.
Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.
Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.
Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.
Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.
Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.
Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.
Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts
Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.
Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.
David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.
Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.
Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.
Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.
Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.
Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.
Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.
So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.
The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.
More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.
I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.
I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.
When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.
Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.
Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.
Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.
Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.
Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.
Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.
Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.
Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.
Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts
Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either.
Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.
Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.
David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.
Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.
Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.
Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.
Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.
Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.
Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.
So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.
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