Season Wrapup

General Reflections
So the season was a success by almost any measure one would use. We won the tournament championship. The evaluations by both players and parents were overwhelmingly positive. And I’m proud of what was accomplished. Now in fairness the coach always looks better when the team is winning, but I still think overall I did fairly well.

The highlight of the season for me was, without a doubt, winning the HP tourney. It felt so good to beat that JCC team, again. And even better was the fact that we did it without David being the sole star makes it just that much sweeter.

In comparison our conference tourney victory just didn’t feel as good. Even without David, I think I just sort of expected to win it all. I was amazed at my relative level of apathy during the championship game. I think this had some positive effects on the team, since I was so calm, they were so calm.

I will say that after observing the other coach’s practices, that my practices are superior. I think I did not do an adequate job of teaching fundamentals and that was as much an indictment of my own weakness as it was anything else. Other the other hand, I think that many of the things we did focus were improved just as much, if not more, through my use of the “game method” as through a traditional method and practices were more fun. Doing a better job of teaching the fundamentals will be a bigger focus for me next year.

Next Year

When I went to give our trophy to Emily, my Park District contact, we talked about the season and how well it went. She commented that the parents she’d talked to informally had given positive feedback. Essentially I was offered to come back next year, which I’m excited about.

My goal would be to move up with the team which I know would be met with a good reaction. The biggest question would be whether we would enter the A division or the B division. I know the league commissioner wants us to move up and I would absolutely agree with him except for the uncertainty over the triplets. I can’t imagine David coming out for the team again next year given what had happened this year. I would be pleasantly surprised if he did, as it would be clear that he wasn’t going to try and play on three teams again. My fear is that with David not coming out again I would lose Brian and Scott as well. I know that both of them would love to play for me again and would like playing with their friends so that’s in my favor. With Brian and Scott I think we’d be a lower half A league team, with David, I think we’d be a mid to upper half A league team. If Brian and Scott come back I think the move would likely be a good one as I know the team would learn more and I grow as a coach due to the tougher competition (a point that Brian made, as though it was his own, at our team dinner). If we lost all three, we’d really struggle even in the B, I think. Hopefully, Brian and Scott will come out again.

While that makes me very nervous, I am very excited about the idea of coaching with Jon, the guy who coached the 5th and 6th grade teams this year. I think having that second pair of eyes, not to mention another person at practice once a week, would just be terrific for our team. Not to mention it would give me somebody to commiserate with and learn from. Emily was also very excited about this idea. I hope it’s a winning formula all around.

I also decided that I want to sit down with every player at the last tryout and let him know whether or not he’s made the team. I think they deserve this personal feedback. However, I’m not sure I would have the heart to do this if I have to cut a player who made it last year. That would be real rough. At the same time, I’ve told the team all along that my job is to put together the best team possible and I will do that. I can’t envision going above 10 players either as playing time gets real hard above that amount and really is ideal with about 8 players. While I dread the idea of having to cut a player, I hope it’s a problem I have as it means our talent pool is stronger.

One thing I want to do better is keeping us in better shape than our opponents. At the beginning of the season we had a real advantage there, but we kind of forfeited it as the season went on. I blame myself and we’re going to do more conditioning next year as a result. Conditioning isn’t fun and so the kids moaned and would slack off and I listened to their moans and I didn’t push them as hard when they slacked off at the end of the season. We’re not going to get any taller relative to our opponents and so if we move up being in as good, or better shape, so we can play in transition becomes all the more important.

The Players

Sunday night after the championship game we had our team dinner and awards ceremony. Overall it was a great success with a good time had by all. All of the kids got a chance to hold the trophy and there was a lot of laughter and smiles. Just like I did in baseball I gave each of the kids an award. Here are what the awards were and some general reflections on them.

(One reminder: My main statistical tool I use is called Win Score. It prizes efficient shooting, and gives credit for the good things players do, such as rebounds, while taking away for negative things, such as turnovers. I then divide out this score by the minutes they play to get WS/M.)

Dante: “Dirk Nowitzski Award” Dante, despite being the tallest player on our team, was never the inside presence I would have liked. He did get better playing against big guys, but remained somewhat soft. Despite that, his favorite thing we did at practice was “Animal Rebounding”, our most physical drill. He did, however, develop a pretty nice jumper from short to medium distances. This contributed to having perhaps his best game of the season in our semi-final when he really helped to open up the floor by his jumpers. While he was in our top tier of players he was at the bottom of that their. The biggest negative is that while he was tall, he was as thin as a rail, but also slow, as in the slowest player on the team. Tall, skinny, and fast? No problem. Tall, with bulk, and slow? That works too. While I wouldn’t likely see any sort of noticeable improvement next year, I hope that puberty will give him a little bulk. He did improve as the season went on, and gained some confidence. His WS went from being mostly negative to being mostly positive.

Brian – “Sharpshooter Award” Brian just loved his award. The rest of the night after he received his award he clutched his award to his chest. It was incredibly cute. I’m not really surprised since he was so concerned about how many points he scored (5.4 per game) but since I never stressed how many points a player scored this was held in check. The only stat I ever mentioned on any sort of consistent basis was rebounding. Being a team player is not something which came easily for Brian, but he did a pretty good job of trying to be a good teammate this year. His short temper, almost always with himself, was a problem and I think it’ll only be more of a problem as he gets older, since that’s part of getting older. There’s all that on the one hand and then on the other hand there is the fact that he was also perhaps the most thoughtful member of the team, always remembering little details (in a positive way) about everyone on the team. He absolutely loves me, which is a big plus for me if I coach this team again next year (more on this later).

David – “Coast to Coast Award”. Yes I still gave him an award even though he quit the team, unfortunately he wasn’t able to come to the dinner as he got sick. He’s an incredible player and a really good kid. I felt genuinely bad for him being pulled in so many different directions with basketball. This kid is 9 years old and being on three competitive teams seems just like a recipe for burning this kid out by the time he would get to high school. His last few games with us, he honestly wasn’t playing nearly as well as he had at the beginning of the season. I think the HP tourney was a real turning point as he really did take over the game for us to win to a large extent against the JCC. After that I think he felt like he had to do that every game and he just wasn’t able to do it and frankly we didn’t need him to do it. I was sad he wasn’t able to finish the season with us, but am glad that they made the choice to cut back on his basketball.

Scott – “Glass Cleaner Award” Scott is the reason we wont he championship. Hands down. Out of the 48 minutes on Saturday and Sunday Scott played 43 of them. Scott is not a big kid in any sense of the word, but he plays HUGE and just loves playing inside. Our game against the WK a team showed that there are limitations here in that there are people who are just so big that despite how he plays he can’t compensate. Each year I feel like this is going to catch up to him more and more and he’ll have to learn how to play guard, whether he likes it or not, by the time he reaches 8th grade, if not before, unless he grows (and his parents suggest that there’s only so much growing to be done). All that said he was just a monster inside and on the boards (hence the award for all of his rebounding) and after David left the team really picked up his scoring to become our leading scorer. He wasn’t nearly as flashy about the scoring as David, but was very good. He was our team MVP and did it in as about an unassuming way as could be. I gave the awards in seemingly “random” order though really it was in the order that I liked the kids (yeah I’m an awful person) and Scott was the last one I gave. I think having David quit the team was a fantastic thing for both Brian and Scott, but particularly Scott since he got a chance to not be overshadowed by his brother and frankly I think he surprised himself at how well he did.

Tom – “Heart of the Team” Poor Tom doesn’t like to hear how great he is as it just embarrasses him. Tom scored, BY FAR, the least number of points, scoring only 6 the whole season. And while he didn’t do particularly well in any category, he’s a kid who as long as he’s not completely outclassed by others will always have a place on my team. He’s the kid who makes the team better by his presence and effort. As I said at the speech for him, when we needed a joke he’d tell a joke. When we needed to be serious he was a leader by example. I know we all missed him during the time he was gone. The biggest thing he could do to improve is to gain some confidence on the court. I’ve learned that he’s a truly gifted soccer player and pianist but doesn’t really enjoy either of those nearly as much as basketball, which was a nice thing to hear.

Noah – “Human Mop” Noah was a tough kid to come up with an award for. In reality he deserved the “most improved” award. If you recall I sat down with all of the players during the middle of the season to talk about what was going well and what wasn’t going so well. And at that time, I gave Noah a couple of comments. He really took them to heart and improved. His biggest problem had always been being in the wrong place on the court, especially on offense. He completely turned this around and this enabled him to start scoring some baskets. His best game was against the WK a team, which was just great to see. I didn’t give him the most improved award for a simple reason: he very well might not make the 5th grade team. Noah actually was, I think, by the end of the season a better player than Tom. However, Tom brings those intangibles to the table. And so there’s the real possibility that Noah just might not be good enough to make the team. Then there is the personality thing. On the one hand, he’d drive me NUTS at practice. Everyone would be sitting quietly paying attention, Noah would be standing staring off into space. Essentially he was your typical ADD kid (though his mom told me he doesn’t have ADD) and it could be truly aggravating at times. Brian’s fits didn’t phase me as much as Noah just being Noah. The biggest thing in his favor? He was thankful for every minute of playing time he got. I think he knew that he wasn’t as good as most of the other players and appreciated the fact that he got so many playing opportunities. A perfect example of this is when he commented at half of the championship game that he’d already played about 7 minutes. I thought he was saying this as a negative and started to remind him how that was a full quarter of play, when he said, “Yeah I know. I know how you said that we weren’t promised any time and was just real glad to get that time.” And he meant it. He would always ask if there was a chance he’d go back in at the end of games, which let me know how much he wanted to play, but it was never overboard. Every kid says at tryouts that they’d be willing to just make the team even if it meant sitting on the bench, but the difference is that with Noah he really means it. Noah is a good kid and it would break my heart to cut him.

Jack M – A great point guard. The fact that he’s a left helps him since most teams expect a player to drive to his right. He is very good at penetrating, not quite as good at finishing. He had his best game of the year in terms of points against MP2, making far more of his lay-ups than normal. I never commented to him about his shooting as he would almost always take smart shots, but his low shooting percentage is a definite negative for me. That said his ability to dribble, play tough defense, and do so much else well more than makes up for that negative. However, he is another one of the short kids. He and Gordie were neck and neck for being the shortest player on the team. While his skills allowed him to make up for that disadvantage, it’s only going to get worse for him if he doesn’t grow. Hopefully he’ll grow. The biggest problem with Jack is that he is a negative person who doesn’t have a lot of patience for his teammates. Where as Brian would lost patience either with himself or me, Jack would lost patience with the other players. This is, in many ways, a worse thing. Jack was the only player to really not want to move up to the a division and this is completely in keeping with his character. If we did move up, there would be far more problems with him I think because losing would be hard on him and I think cause his negativity to not quite be as well kept in check. That said, the season was a good one. While Jack had a conflict with an AAU game on the day of the championship he choose our team, which was great. Besides Brian, he was the one most interested in his individual stats, which again was in keeping with his personality.

Jack P – “Igniter Award”. To compensate for our short stature I wanted to play an uptempo game. Jack was the only one who could be counted to do this every moment he was out there. Scott did a good job, but Jack did a great job. His shooting percentage was 27% which just killed me. More than anything this is what he needs to do to take his game to the next level. If he could do that he could become a really good player. He’s grown a lot, and his parents are fairly tall, so he could continue to grow. If this happens he’ll see more and more time at 4 and 5, which is not something he likes. We’re a team of 9 people who think of themselves as guards and Jack P, if trends continue (and there’s no guarantee that they will), will likely see the short end of that stick more. I think that Jack has the most unrealized potential on the team, an example being his ability to create shots and then not make them, which is exciting as well.

Gordie – “Love of the Game”. I think a hidden strength of this team is that they all loved to play basketball. I think basketball is a really fun sport and this team top to bottom felt the same way. Gordie, even on this team of kids who loved it, was among those who loved it the most. It killed him to sit on the bench as much as he did. The problem with Gordie going forward was summed up well by his step dad, “Gordie will player harder than anyone else, but if he doesn’t grow, his basketball career is going to be limited”. The sad part is that we could be talking about this by 5th grade. He would too often get trapped with the ball and then turn it over. Jack M was just as short, and only a bit quicker, but Jack would get rid of the ball a second before he was trapped, rather than two seconds after he’d been trapped. He wanted to play point for us, but it was, I think, more for the chance for him to score than anything else. Gordie has a good first step, which helps him penetrate, but he’s not really fast, so his second and third steps aren’t as fast as they should be. Gordie, along with Noah, would be the two who I’d nominate as least likely to make the team next year.

Lucas – “Do it for the team award”. Lucas did whatever was asked of him without complaint. He’s a quiet kid by nature but with a smile which could light up a room and never a frown. He didn’t belong inside, but it’s where I played him nearly all season and he did well getting 5.4 rebounds per game, second best on the team. Learning how to score from inside was a process that was slow going but he certainly improved there. That said I think that I really am doing him and the team a disservice by having him play so much inside. Next to David, Lucas did the best job of simply taking over a game. He could easily have been our second best point guard at the end of the season (next to Jack M) and I only played him there for a few minutes. During the playoffs I had him playing our “wing” and he did extremely well there. The kid is a natural athlete and a really good kid on top of it.

So that’s it for our basketball team this year. Thanks so much for reading along and I hop you enjoyed it. My baseball adventures will likely be starting up a week from Saturday, so look for that then.