We start off practice discussing our last game. I let the team do the talking as much as possible. They hit all of the major points focusing more on offense, which is fine. They talk about what a good job we did spreading the ball around and finding good shots. Also, how we kept the floor well spaced. All true. As we start this post game ritual, Tom is once again playing the “I sucked” card. I was not so happy that when I tried to talk to him privately he claimed nothing was wrong and then with the whole team, it was understood that Tom was going to say this. I talked to him after practice about it and he once again denies that it was anything. My read of his body language and tone state that he really was upset with himself, but clearly he doesn’t want to talk to me about it.
When we get to the “things to improve on” part of our game discussion they come up blank, so I have to fill it in. We do a little demonstration of how not to foul someone when they’re shooting. The one area that they had talked about, and I completely agreed with, was that we didn’t do such a good job of playing help defense. We’ll practice that more on Friday as I think our defensive focus for Sunday’s game will be communication.
Last night, after practice, I even thought of a way to involve our bench more along with this theme. We’ll have a “contest”. Every time a player communicates on defense, they will get a point, when a player on the bench “hears” the communication. Players on the bench who hear the communication will get a “listen point”. Goal is to get as many listen and communication points as possible.
After we finished talking about the game, I go over a couple of administrative issues. First, I let them know that I’ve decided we won’t learn a full court press. I explain that running a good full court press is hard and since we’re having enough problems with our in bounds play, learning a full court press just isn’t worth the time. I point out that we’ll continue to do our trailer “loose press” and our full court man to man as both have been working. Basically we’ll have three set plays, for the time being: an inbounds, our “zone buster”, and a press break. I haven’t introduced the press break yet. I can’t decide if I should introduce it Friday, in case MP2 runs a good press, as that way they’d have some idea of what to do, or just concede that it’s unlikely any 4th grade team is going to run a good press and continue to wing it, while starting to teach it next week.
The last area I wanted to touch on was playing time. I start off by reminding the players that since this is a travel team they are promised zero minutes of playing time. Faces fall. Jack M pipes in, “It even said that in bold on the sheet” (it didn’t, but that’s ok). Jack was one of the prime reasons I was giving this speech. However, I think his attitude had changed quite a bit from yesterday’s game until last night. A big reason for this is that he had a cousin on the other team. When I has asked him, earlier during the game discussion, which one was his cousin he said, “The short one that was benched almost the whole time.” We all laughed, but I actually knew who he meant right away. I think that seeing how the grass isn’t greener on the side was a good reminder for him.
I quickly say that I do my best to get everyone at least seven minutes of game time, which is a full quarter. Dante, bless his upbeat heart, points out that is a lot of time. So, I continue, “If you’re on the bench and you ask me if you’re going back in, I will simply state, I don’t know. Ask me two or three times and the answer will be ‘no.’ “ I conclude the game time speech with a reminder that unless I tell you you’re coming out because of something you did on the court, just assume that it’s because I am keeping up our rotation. I point out how I sent a sub in for Jack P at one point right after he scored a great basket. Jack M, once again, said how he’d scored a basket and was taken out. So at least with Jack M it seems like my mission of reassuring him worked, though even if I hadn’t said anything it sounds like it would have worked.
While this was going on, which took about 5 minutes for the post game discussion, and 5 minutes for the foul discussion/press announcement/playing time comment, I was very strict about paying attention and talking as a team. Several of the players ended up doing push-ups when their attention wandered or they tried having a side conversation. We are facing what I expect to be a higher quality team than we’ve seen so far on Sunday and I had warned them yesterday practices this week would be no nonsense.
We then went into our Princeton continuous motion. We walked through it the first time since I knew they’d have forgotten how to do it. And sure enough they had. However, the whole thing was just a disaster whenever we tried to run it at game speed. The passes were errant people weren’t paying attention and it was bad news. So rather than continue with this, I decided we’d stop. I finally had remembered to write down on my practice plan to have them do free throws after our continuous motion, but no one was tired so I announced a quick game of golf, to tire them out. We then shot our free throws. And basically everyone committed a lane violation. I guess we’re going to have to practice that part on Friday. I had admittedly not practice free throws much, because the shot is outside the range of many of our players and really a free throw is more like a “free miss” at this point. However, whether or not they make the shot, shooter lane violations are stupid and so we can spend a little time on Friday working on that.
After a short water break we were ready to practice our in bounds play. Before we start, I announce that I’ve been very disappointed with how they’ve run the play. I tell them that in the first game we got lucky with the play, and last game the they didn’t even try and contest the in bounds (they just setup in their zone. I thought it was amazingly dumb, frankly and speaks to how that was not a well coached team. I am no coaching genius, but I’d like to think that if I’d had that group of players we’d have played a lot better than they played). I announce that starting with Friday’s game players who fail to properly execute the inbounds play WILL be removed from the game. I sincerely hope we don’t massively fail to run it, since having to sub out 4 or 5 players could lead to some combinations on the court I don’t really want. However, if they don’t run the play I will do it, since I feel we’ve practiced it enough that they should be able to somewhat run it.
Following the inbounds play we then practice our screens. I quickly setup the expectation that even when you weren’t running it you should be paying attention, so I didn’t have to keep correcting the same mistakes again and again. Of course, I did end up having to correct the same mistakes again and again, anyway, but when I would quiz the players who were out about what was going right and wrong they got much better about analyzing the play, which is good. They’re doing a better job of coming off the picks. However, we still have a lot of players leaving before the pick has been set, which is a no-no. Working on getting the timing down will continue to be a focus.
Following the screens, we did a new game, “Basketball Scavenger Hunt”. I gave them a list of 10 items which they needed to complete and divided them into two teams. The ten items on each list were
1. Each member of the team shows coach an animal claw
2. Dribble around the court once with your right hand (must be out of bounds THE WHOLE TIME)
3. Each member of the team makes 2 free throws (each player may only shoot 2 free throws before going to the end of the line)
4. Each player of the team does 10 “high grabs” with 2 different people on the team
5. Have coach time you for 30 seconds of bunny hops
6. The team makes 10 1 foot shots (the team may only form 2 lines). Count out loud each made shot
7. Dribble around the court once with your left hand (must be out of bounds THE WHOLE TIME)
8. Each player must make a right handed and left handed lay-up (may only have one person shooting at a time)
9. Each player of the team shows coach a correct pivot left and pivot right
10. Have coach time you for 15 seconds each of side wrist flick, shooting wrist flick, and dribbling wrist flick
This went well. I will definitely be doing this activity again, though I will likely vary up the order of the lists since, despite my telling them they didn’t have to, both teams did the lists in order.
Our last activity was going over our zone break offense. This went about as well as I would expect for our second time going through it. It’s certainly not really ready for serious use in a game yet, but we’ll get there.
We ended with suicides. I had been quite liberal in handing out both suicides and permissions. Several players were saved from serious running since their teams won either Golf or the Scavenger Hunt, which earned them a permission.
I felt like I had a good practice plan going into practice and that overall it was a productive practice. Hopefully we can keep the good work up.
Look for a post tomorrow or Thursday with an update on how the other teams in the league are doing. Not to spoil the surprise, or anything, but the news is good.
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