Yesterday was GL’s big match up against the defending league champions, WK. We played a valiant game, but in the end came up short. The problem with the game has less to do with any players playing and more to do with my coaching.
I had written down my planned subs for the first 3 quarters in advance. With my having placed a lot of self pressure to be more competitive than we were when we scrimmaged them last year (and got killed), I wanted to make sure that I got every player the quality playing time they deserved. I then would ad-lib the 4th quarter depending on where we were at.
The first half goes remarkably well. We are up by2 at half, 19-17, in large part thanks to good free throw shooting. This has been a real emphasis with the team this year, since most of them are strong enough to shoot a set free throw without having to jump, so it’s nice to see that practice and instruction paying off.
Bad coaching part 1 comes at the start of the 3rd. The way I did subs was sub at 7:00, 4:00, and 1:00 minutes each quarter. With the exception of a couple of odd 1 minute shifts players were basically playing 3 or 4 minutes at a stretch. Well to start off the 3rd quarter I put in a group of Jack M, Andrew, and Cameron at the same time and WK just ate them alive. I knew I was potentially asking for trouble with that grouping, and sure enough there just wasn’t enough talent on the court. I thought about calling a time out, but frankly didn’t know what I could say to stop the momentum. When their shift was up we were down by 9.
However, going into the 4th we had managed to narrow the lead to 2. Bad coaching part 2 now comes into effect. I send out my best 5, which that day was David, Justin, Scott, Lucas, and Brian to start the quarter. Except, and knowing that they’re going to press, I don’t really define what role each player would play. After two quick baskets, I call a time-out and explain their roles.
Basically the 4th quarter is a see saw. However, with Jack P not at the game, I don’t make any subs for too long (bad coaching part 3). I do get Dante in there for Lucas, who just had nothing left (he’d already played a house league game). Problem is that based on how long he’d played I knew I’d have to sub for Justin at some point. Did I? Nope. And so basically I have four kids who sit on the bench for most of the 4th quarter. Tom and Cameron don’t care and start some spirited chants while we’re on defense. Andrew and Jack M? They are both clearly unhappy after the game and my guess it’s about not having played in the 4th, and since they’ve both been on the bench a lot during 4th quarters I guess I don’t blame them too much.
We ended up losing by 6, but it was really closer than that as with about a minute left we were down by only 2. WK scored a basket, using their considerable height advantage to full effect, something they’d done all day.
So I coached to win, something I don’t regret too much. However, I did a poor job of doing even that while also not spreading around the playing time, and when giving playing time not giving the players a chance to be successful.
Next week we have a HP practice Saturday morning followed by a game that afternoon. Sunday GL has a noon and 2:30 double header, so fatigue will likely be an issue once again. Hopefully I will do a better job of coaching though.
Showing posts with label Jack M. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack M. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Readers Respond about Jack M
Izulde writes
path adds on
Jack really surprised me last year. Entering our first game I'd have said he was the 8th or 9th best player on the team. He proved me wrong last year about his talent and I hope that he proves me wrong about his attitude this year. Though I will admit, that heading into practices, depending on how I shake out the team in terms of positions, he could be battling again for his guard spot.
I'm really glad you went with Jack M. I liked him over Dante and Noah from your initial descriptions though after I saw someone post in the thread on FOFC that athleticism bursts can happen at that age, I was also reminded of one of the goalies on the U-14 team I coached. Very tall but very awkward and unsure of herself at the start of the season. By the end of the year, she was our top goalie and showed some serious potential.
So I'm glad you took Dante too.
I really have this hunch that Jack M will surprise you.
path adds on
I hope so because I also really like BK's description of him. I worry about Jack M's morale though.
Jack really surprised me last year. Entering our first game I'd have said he was the 8th or 9th best player on the team. He proved me wrong last year about his talent and I hope that he proves me wrong about his attitude this year. Though I will admit, that heading into practices, depending on how I shake out the team in terms of positions, he could be battling again for his guard spot.
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.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Playoffs: NF1
We have our first playoff game against NF1. This team finished in 7th place, despite, I learn, being made up of 3rd graders. I had told the team at our last practice that we would be doing hockey subs for the last time. After that game I told them that I would be making no promises about playing time. We would be having 8 players for the game as Jack M had to play for his AAU team. Brian, who I was convinced was out for the rest of the season? He had been at practice the night before and I could observe no ill effects. His did had told me he would be able to play but I’d been skeptical. Turns out that his dad was very much correct.
The other team got into early foul trouble, but we couldn’t hit any of our shots either at the free throw line or in the field and so the game was pretty close in the first quarter. A great example of this was on our very first possession we took off a minute fifteen from the clock, with multiple shots, passes, rebounds, but not a basket to be found. It was a great offensive possession, with good defense, but shots just weren’t falling.
Going into the second quarter, up by just 1, I hoped we could open up the game some. We do extend our lead to 5 or 6 points, but despite even throwing some presses at them we just can’t seem to get anything going. They’re playing very well.
The third quarter is more of the same. They’re throwing a pretty good trapping 2-1-2 against us that does produce some turnovers. Our biggest problem is at point guard. We simply don’t have anyone who can really make things happen. Brian and Jack P are the ones playing point and both have their pluses and minuses. Brian is simply not as explosive and fast as we’re used to at point and so he can often get snared by their trap. Jack, on the other hand, is certainly fast enough, but his court vision isn’t so great and so he’ll often miss open passes or become too determined to shoot. Having neither David or Jack M, our two main point guards, was quite detrimental to our efforts and prevented us from ever gaining control of the game.
In the fourth quarter we blow the game open. Their best player fouls out about half way into the quarter and we finally hunker down and our shots start to fall. Scott also basically took control of the game, getting the rebound and dribbling down the court, beating everyone, for a lay-up a couple of times. It was just as David used to do. We end up winning by 15. However, despite the fact that we were basically in the lead the whole game, it was quite nerve racking for me as a coach. The kids on the other hand were never too concerned which might explain why it was so close for so long. I can’t really be upset with them for not being too concerned since:
1. I had stressed so much that we were a much better team than they were
2. Their unflappable nature is why we are so good in close games.
The other reason why it was so close was of course the fact that they were playing their best players as much as possible, where as I was playing all of my kids equally. After the game one of their parents commented to me, “You guys really miss [David]” as I’d told them before the game how he’d quit the team. It was quite clear from his tone that he felt like we wouldn’t be able to win it with-out David. While based on what he saw I couldn’t blame him for his assessment, I knew we were a better team than what we’d shown that day.
I also felt much better when I went home and did the numbers. I found out that we shot nearly a season low from the field. This meant that if our shots had dropped at a more typical rate we’d have won this game far before the fourth quarter.
Going into Sunday we were going to play MP2 and then (hopefully) the winner of the MP1-LS game. I felt very good about our chances and knew that it would be two tough games, but felt that the championship was in reach.
My day was not done, however. The coach of the 5th and 6th grade teams had games which conflicted and so I had been drafted to coach the 6th grade team until he could get to the game. I was actually more nervous about this game than my own as I’d only known this team from one practice of an hour and a half. I’m proud to report that when I turned over the game in the 3rd quarter the team was up by 5 to a team that previously defeated them by 30. They would later go on to lose by 4, and while it’d have happened no matter who was coaching it sure did make me look good :).
The other team got into early foul trouble, but we couldn’t hit any of our shots either at the free throw line or in the field and so the game was pretty close in the first quarter. A great example of this was on our very first possession we took off a minute fifteen from the clock, with multiple shots, passes, rebounds, but not a basket to be found. It was a great offensive possession, with good defense, but shots just weren’t falling.
Going into the second quarter, up by just 1, I hoped we could open up the game some. We do extend our lead to 5 or 6 points, but despite even throwing some presses at them we just can’t seem to get anything going. They’re playing very well.
The third quarter is more of the same. They’re throwing a pretty good trapping 2-1-2 against us that does produce some turnovers. Our biggest problem is at point guard. We simply don’t have anyone who can really make things happen. Brian and Jack P are the ones playing point and both have their pluses and minuses. Brian is simply not as explosive and fast as we’re used to at point and so he can often get snared by their trap. Jack, on the other hand, is certainly fast enough, but his court vision isn’t so great and so he’ll often miss open passes or become too determined to shoot. Having neither David or Jack M, our two main point guards, was quite detrimental to our efforts and prevented us from ever gaining control of the game.
In the fourth quarter we blow the game open. Their best player fouls out about half way into the quarter and we finally hunker down and our shots start to fall. Scott also basically took control of the game, getting the rebound and dribbling down the court, beating everyone, for a lay-up a couple of times. It was just as David used to do. We end up winning by 15. However, despite the fact that we were basically in the lead the whole game, it was quite nerve racking for me as a coach. The kids on the other hand were never too concerned which might explain why it was so close for so long. I can’t really be upset with them for not being too concerned since:
1. I had stressed so much that we were a much better team than they were
2. Their unflappable nature is why we are so good in close games.
The other reason why it was so close was of course the fact that they were playing their best players as much as possible, where as I was playing all of my kids equally. After the game one of their parents commented to me, “You guys really miss [David]” as I’d told them before the game how he’d quit the team. It was quite clear from his tone that he felt like we wouldn’t be able to win it with-out David. While based on what he saw I couldn’t blame him for his assessment, I knew we were a better team than what we’d shown that day.
I also felt much better when I went home and did the numbers. I found out that we shot nearly a season low from the field. This meant that if our shots had dropped at a more typical rate we’d have won this game far before the fourth quarter.
Going into Sunday we were going to play MP2 and then (hopefully) the winner of the MP1-LS game. I felt very good about our chances and knew that it would be two tough games, but felt that the championship was in reach.
My day was not done, however. The coach of the 5th and 6th grade teams had games which conflicted and so I had been drafted to coach the 6th grade team until he could get to the game. I was actually more nervous about this game than my own as I’d only known this team from one practice of an hour and a half. I’m proud to report that when I turned over the game in the 3rd quarter the team was up by 5 to a team that previously defeated them by 30. They would later go on to lose by 4, and while it’d have happened no matter who was coaching it sure did make me look good :).
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Tourney Report: Championship Game
We had just won a game now a few minutes later we had to be ready to play for the championship. The JCC team had come over and watched at one point. A couple of parents did the same and actively rooted for us. It was clear they wanted their re-match and they were going to have it. As the Karzen game wound down I asked Brian how much time we’d have to warm up. He replied 5 minutes. In reality it was closer to 10, maybe even a bit more.
Since we’d already played two games of basketball, I didn’t bother having us do any sort of special warm-up and instead I just let them shoot. At one point I had to chase away Luke’s brother who had the audacity to shoot around with us. After it became clear we were going to have more than 5 minutes, I let them shoot around for a minute or two more than sat them down. My big focus for this game was on our help defense doing a good job of picking Luke up. We knew we were going to force him to our left, so defenders on that side had to be ready to step in for the double team if he got close to the basket.
JCC got off to a quick start. At that point I believed the game could easily turn into a blow-out. We were tired. I knew that they’d be playing their best ball and they were. Most of their points came-off of a couple plays. One was a clear-out for Luke. Now the good thing about this was that it wasn’t Luke who was scoring. Instead it was either their center scoring a put back, or someone left a little open from our double team making a shot. Still we were tired. After being down by as much as 7, we’d closed the gap to with-in three.
At half time I complemented the team on their great defense. I said we were playing a good game and that we were a second half team and we’d get this game done. We’d beaten this team once and there was no reason we couldn’t beat them again. I did also make a remark that no matter what happened in the game that we should be proud of how’d we played. Where as for the first two parts, and even into the third part, of the first half I really believed that we’d lose, and it could even be a blow-out, by the end of the first half we were playing better basketball.
Right out of half we came out and cut the game to with-in a basket. As the second half played on I was finding it harder and harder to find time to play guys like Tom, Noah, and Gordie. They all got their time in, but it was a hard thing for me to do. During the start of the third part of the second half, Luke went on his only tear of the game. In rapid succession he stole a few balls and created some exciting points to give his team a 5 point lead, after being down by 1 when his tear started. The good news out of this all, was that’s basically his whole contribution, offensively and defensively for the whole game. We had so shut down the inside game that Luke was constantly settling for three point shots. His shooting percentage was better outside the arc this game than the last game, but still nowhere near as good as what he can do inside. We had also made the proper adjustments to their two set plays and so they’d often have to run the play two or three times before they could get a shot off of it. What I was more proud of than how well we were playing him on defense as how we’d neutralized him when HE was on defense. His coaches made it clear that they expected him to stay in his zone, since when he’d wondered we’d made them pay for it.
As Luke went on this run, I was forced to call a time-out to try and stop the momentum. I pointed out that we could make up this score. We had PLENTY of time so we had to play our offense. And during the next five minutes we played some excellent basketball. All half long Scott had done an excellent job of getting rebounds, with 7 second half rebounds. However, he was tired so I put in Jack P as a post player. Jack M decided that maybe he could drive to the basket and he did so, creating all sorts of nice opportunities both in terms of baskets he made, fouls, and creating shots for others, notably Jack P. It was clear that they came out of the time-out with the philosophy that they weren’t going to let David beat them. This was fine for us. Slowly we came back. Dante all year long would shoot 6 or 7 good shots each game and often miss all of them. However, all of a sudden he was getting open in the mid-post and he drained a couple of beautiful shots. The game became a nail biter, but we continued to be down.
Finally with about 25 seconds they went up by 3. I called our final time-out. Basically it was just a “relax out there”. We needed a 3 and everyone knew it. I said that we would tie the game, have momentum and win in over time. I really believed that we’d either lose it in regulation or win it in over time. They had begun earlier in the half wasting time, with Luke bringing the ball just over half court and sitting there. I kept yelling at David that he had to go and guard Luke so they couldn’t keep waste time. However, it was this attitude of that we’d score, while they were just trying to hang-on that gave me such confidence. So we came down on offense and worked it around for a bit, before getting it back to David who pulls up for the jumper and drains it. We’ve tied the game. Our bench explodes. They call a time out with 8 seconds and change on the clock. By this point we were rocking the gym. The atmosphere was unbelievable coming out of the time-out they’d called.
We all knew what they were going to do. They were going to get the ball to Luke and with plenty of time. However, as they went down they were never able to find a good a shot. They ended up launching a bad shot which missed. And we headed into OT.
It really was cliché. Here we had the championship game, with a team that had made a comeback only to make a crucial late shot to tie the game and send it into overtime. That first overtime period was just a bundle of nerves. The period only lasted 2 minutes. I think each team scored 1 basket. We once again had the ball late in the period. There entire focus was so on stepping David that they left Jack M with a good shot, but it missed. We got the ball back and David took and missed a jumper. What upset me was that we all just stood around looking at it, instead of trying for the rebound. The ball actually hit the floor and bounced, meaning that JCC was doing the same thing. Still if we’d done what we should have we might have been able to heave up one last shot. But momentum was on our side. When Jack started to drive in, the coaches were clearly pained. We’d just come out of a time-out and it was clear that the message had been so strong on stop David, that the team left itself open to being beaten by one of our other players.
So now we were in the second overtime. We come out quickly and make a basket and another. They come back and make a basket of their own. On this next possession down they foul Jack M on the ground for a 1 and 1. Jack makes both of the shots and we now have a 4 point lead with about 45 seconds left. Noah asks “Can we storm the court when we win?” I say “Of course” which I don’t think they were expecting. Luke comes down and lofts up a 3, and misses, but gets fouled. Luke’s now at the line for 3 shots. He drains the first two, but misses the 3rd. I don’t know if the play was intentional or not, but they do get the rebound. The put up a shot and miss. Dante comes down with the rebound and is immediately fouled. Another 1 and 1. Dante drains both shots and that’s the game. There is a desperation 3 launched, we get the rebound, and the game is over.
There’s chest bumping and thumping. The team is absolutely stoked. We go through and shake their hands. My opinion of Luke’s father mellowed this game. He was very nice after the game. I think as the game went on he realized that we weren’t some team that had no right competing with his team, but instead was a legitimate competitor. On the other hand, his co-coach was insane and did enough yelling for the two of them. Regardless, I really felt like the better team won this game. At different points we had several players step up when needed, it wasn’t just the David show, like JCC was the Luke show.
There was a real nice ceremony where they were presented with t-shirts for second place and we were presented with our championship t-shirts. We went over to the side, I complemented them on how I often talk about what great teams do, and in this tournament we played like a great team. They posed for a couple of team pictures. It was just great. Here we were champions of an A tourney, having played two games which were as good as basketball games get. What a feeling.
Next time: tournament summary/overview and a recap of Monday’s practice.
Since we’d already played two games of basketball, I didn’t bother having us do any sort of special warm-up and instead I just let them shoot. At one point I had to chase away Luke’s brother who had the audacity to shoot around with us. After it became clear we were going to have more than 5 minutes, I let them shoot around for a minute or two more than sat them down. My big focus for this game was on our help defense doing a good job of picking Luke up. We knew we were going to force him to our left, so defenders on that side had to be ready to step in for the double team if he got close to the basket.
JCC got off to a quick start. At that point I believed the game could easily turn into a blow-out. We were tired. I knew that they’d be playing their best ball and they were. Most of their points came-off of a couple plays. One was a clear-out for Luke. Now the good thing about this was that it wasn’t Luke who was scoring. Instead it was either their center scoring a put back, or someone left a little open from our double team making a shot. Still we were tired. After being down by as much as 7, we’d closed the gap to with-in three.
At half time I complemented the team on their great defense. I said we were playing a good game and that we were a second half team and we’d get this game done. We’d beaten this team once and there was no reason we couldn’t beat them again. I did also make a remark that no matter what happened in the game that we should be proud of how’d we played. Where as for the first two parts, and even into the third part, of the first half I really believed that we’d lose, and it could even be a blow-out, by the end of the first half we were playing better basketball.
Right out of half we came out and cut the game to with-in a basket. As the second half played on I was finding it harder and harder to find time to play guys like Tom, Noah, and Gordie. They all got their time in, but it was a hard thing for me to do. During the start of the third part of the second half, Luke went on his only tear of the game. In rapid succession he stole a few balls and created some exciting points to give his team a 5 point lead, after being down by 1 when his tear started. The good news out of this all, was that’s basically his whole contribution, offensively and defensively for the whole game. We had so shut down the inside game that Luke was constantly settling for three point shots. His shooting percentage was better outside the arc this game than the last game, but still nowhere near as good as what he can do inside. We had also made the proper adjustments to their two set plays and so they’d often have to run the play two or three times before they could get a shot off of it. What I was more proud of than how well we were playing him on defense as how we’d neutralized him when HE was on defense. His coaches made it clear that they expected him to stay in his zone, since when he’d wondered we’d made them pay for it.
As Luke went on this run, I was forced to call a time-out to try and stop the momentum. I pointed out that we could make up this score. We had PLENTY of time so we had to play our offense. And during the next five minutes we played some excellent basketball. All half long Scott had done an excellent job of getting rebounds, with 7 second half rebounds. However, he was tired so I put in Jack P as a post player. Jack M decided that maybe he could drive to the basket and he did so, creating all sorts of nice opportunities both in terms of baskets he made, fouls, and creating shots for others, notably Jack P. It was clear that they came out of the time-out with the philosophy that they weren’t going to let David beat them. This was fine for us. Slowly we came back. Dante all year long would shoot 6 or 7 good shots each game and often miss all of them. However, all of a sudden he was getting open in the mid-post and he drained a couple of beautiful shots. The game became a nail biter, but we continued to be down.
Finally with about 25 seconds they went up by 3. I called our final time-out. Basically it was just a “relax out there”. We needed a 3 and everyone knew it. I said that we would tie the game, have momentum and win in over time. I really believed that we’d either lose it in regulation or win it in over time. They had begun earlier in the half wasting time, with Luke bringing the ball just over half court and sitting there. I kept yelling at David that he had to go and guard Luke so they couldn’t keep waste time. However, it was this attitude of that we’d score, while they were just trying to hang-on that gave me such confidence. So we came down on offense and worked it around for a bit, before getting it back to David who pulls up for the jumper and drains it. We’ve tied the game. Our bench explodes. They call a time out with 8 seconds and change on the clock. By this point we were rocking the gym. The atmosphere was unbelievable coming out of the time-out they’d called.
We all knew what they were going to do. They were going to get the ball to Luke and with plenty of time. However, as they went down they were never able to find a good a shot. They ended up launching a bad shot which missed. And we headed into OT.
It really was cliché. Here we had the championship game, with a team that had made a comeback only to make a crucial late shot to tie the game and send it into overtime. That first overtime period was just a bundle of nerves. The period only lasted 2 minutes. I think each team scored 1 basket. We once again had the ball late in the period. There entire focus was so on stepping David that they left Jack M with a good shot, but it missed. We got the ball back and David took and missed a jumper. What upset me was that we all just stood around looking at it, instead of trying for the rebound. The ball actually hit the floor and bounced, meaning that JCC was doing the same thing. Still if we’d done what we should have we might have been able to heave up one last shot. But momentum was on our side. When Jack started to drive in, the coaches were clearly pained. We’d just come out of a time-out and it was clear that the message had been so strong on stop David, that the team left itself open to being beaten by one of our other players.
So now we were in the second overtime. We come out quickly and make a basket and another. They come back and make a basket of their own. On this next possession down they foul Jack M on the ground for a 1 and 1. Jack makes both of the shots and we now have a 4 point lead with about 45 seconds left. Noah asks “Can we storm the court when we win?” I say “Of course” which I don’t think they were expecting. Luke comes down and lofts up a 3, and misses, but gets fouled. Luke’s now at the line for 3 shots. He drains the first two, but misses the 3rd. I don’t know if the play was intentional or not, but they do get the rebound. The put up a shot and miss. Dante comes down with the rebound and is immediately fouled. Another 1 and 1. Dante drains both shots and that’s the game. There is a desperation 3 launched, we get the rebound, and the game is over.
There’s chest bumping and thumping. The team is absolutely stoked. We go through and shake their hands. My opinion of Luke’s father mellowed this game. He was very nice after the game. I think as the game went on he realized that we weren’t some team that had no right competing with his team, but instead was a legitimate competitor. On the other hand, his co-coach was insane and did enough yelling for the two of them. Regardless, I really felt like the better team won this game. At different points we had several players step up when needed, it wasn’t just the David show, like JCC was the Luke show.
There was a real nice ceremony where they were presented with t-shirts for second place and we were presented with our championship t-shirts. We went over to the side, I complemented them on how I often talk about what great teams do, and in this tournament we played like a great team. They posed for a couple of team pictures. It was just great. Here we were champions of an A tourney, having played two games which were as good as basketball games get. What a feeling.
Next time: tournament summary/overview and a recap of Monday’s practice.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Tourney Report: Spartans vs. WM
Following our dramatic last second victory over the JCC we looked at the following as our “road to the championship”:
12 game versus WM – The team is in the A division and was winless when we played them.
If we won that we’d have a 4 o’clock game against the winner of the other pool, which was a team called Karzen. Basically they were a group of players recruited by this guy named Karzen from a tennis academy in a nearby suburb (this was the A team of the same group that had played and defeated HP in overtime).
If we won both of those games we would be in a 5 o’clock championship. JCC had a similar path to the finals.
Now our 12 game against WM was not going to start on time since WM had a game at 11 (owing to the fact that on the original schedule the earliest Sunday game was to be 2 and so they’d rescheduled a league game). The Park District thought we’d start at 12:15, but I always found that to be an optimistic outlook. Still I had the team get there a little before noon in anticipation of an “on-time” start.
Of course this was not to be. We ended up playing a couple of games of lightening with a ref (I even knocked him out of one game, which we joked wasn’t likely my best move). There was a lot of random waiting. The best thing to come out of the waiting was that the team agreed we’d go to lunch following the game.
Finally just after 12:30 they got their fifth player there. We started the game moments later, when they had six or seven of their players there. I had been warned by several players on my team that they had a kid who was HUGE. They weren’t exaggerating. This kid was likely 5”5’ and 190 pounds and, as someone on our team (I think it was Noah) later said, “I didn’t realize a kid so big could also be so fast”. For whatever reason, my guess being he’d played a lot earlier, he didn’t start.
With the exception of this player at center we were pretty much stronger than them top to bottom. By the third part of the first half we had the game solidly in hand, though certainly not out of reach of WM. After half, with a lineup that did not include David nor Scott (who had the thankless job of guarding the huge guy most of the time and consequently had worked himself into foul trouble) we came out and went on a role. We increased, in 5 minutes, or lead from 5 to 15. This would not have been a lineup I’d have expected to go on such a run, but several people seemed to get hot at once including Jack M, who did a nice job of playing point and on defense after having had a couple of lackluster games at point, and Lucas, who finally seemed willing to take shots in the game and not just on put backs. After that it was never really a game. We won the game by 18.
Of note was that the ref who played lightening with us was a real jerk towards the opposing coach. At one point in the first half the coach was unhappy with a travel call (based on the kid carrying the ball). The ref said something to the effect of “Coach if you taught your players how to play I wouldn’t have had to call that travel”. Which was like WHOA. Then at the start of the second half, WM was EXCEEDINGLY slow at coming out of their huddle. In order to make-up for lost time, half time had been shortened to 1 minute, so basically just a time-out. Finally WM comes out of the huddle. There is then some confusion over which way they were going and the ref called over and back on the kid. His argument was that he’d stated several times which way they were going, he had. But c’mon they’re 9 years old. He didn’t favor us, in the sense that calls were called the same going both ways, but I was still glad to know that we wouldn’t be seeing him again (he’d mentioned that this was his only game of the day officiating).
It was really interesting because this was the first game where we were clearly out rebounded. When he was in there their center grabbed a HUGE amount of the boards, offensively and defensively. He also displayed a pretty soft touch on farther out shots. This kid needs a little help on his inside offensive game, and assuming puberty doesn’t completely wreck his coordination, could be a dominating force, but it was not to be on Sunday. In a gam
I had entered the tournament figuring us to be a middle of the road A team in terms of quality of play. The game against HP did nothing to change that estimate. When I crunched the stats of the JCC game I discovered we’d played nearly perfectly. Turnovers were WAY down compared to our normal games, even ones against inferior teams like NF. This took some of the wind out of my sails. I was VERY confident that we would see JCC again entering the day, as I thought we matched up well against the teams we’d have to play today. Knowing that we had managed to just squeak out a 1 point victory when we played our best game, statistically, of the season? Not encouraging. The only redeeming factor was that while most players were at their best, David’s shooting percentage was terrible. It was actually bad in both of the games Saturday, so that was a ray of hope. Of course that could also mean we had fallen into the trap of “David feels like he has to do everything to help us win”, which wasn’t so far from the truth in the JCC game.
On the other hand, where we might have won the JCC game because of one player, this was our best team game yet. Every player on the team, except Tom, had 2 or more shots. The most anyone shot was 10 shots and most players had multiple good looks. Several parents remarked how well we spread around the ball. It was certainly a good TEAM game. This gave me some hope about our future chances should we meet the JCC in the finals.
I had expected to win this game easily, and it was nice that we did so and it was then off to lunch we went.
12 game versus WM – The team is in the A division and was winless when we played them.
If we won that we’d have a 4 o’clock game against the winner of the other pool, which was a team called Karzen. Basically they were a group of players recruited by this guy named Karzen from a tennis academy in a nearby suburb (this was the A team of the same group that had played and defeated HP in overtime).
If we won both of those games we would be in a 5 o’clock championship. JCC had a similar path to the finals.
Now our 12 game against WM was not going to start on time since WM had a game at 11 (owing to the fact that on the original schedule the earliest Sunday game was to be 2 and so they’d rescheduled a league game). The Park District thought we’d start at 12:15, but I always found that to be an optimistic outlook. Still I had the team get there a little before noon in anticipation of an “on-time” start.
Of course this was not to be. We ended up playing a couple of games of lightening with a ref (I even knocked him out of one game, which we joked wasn’t likely my best move). There was a lot of random waiting. The best thing to come out of the waiting was that the team agreed we’d go to lunch following the game.
Finally just after 12:30 they got their fifth player there. We started the game moments later, when they had six or seven of their players there. I had been warned by several players on my team that they had a kid who was HUGE. They weren’t exaggerating. This kid was likely 5”5’ and 190 pounds and, as someone on our team (I think it was Noah) later said, “I didn’t realize a kid so big could also be so fast”. For whatever reason, my guess being he’d played a lot earlier, he didn’t start.
With the exception of this player at center we were pretty much stronger than them top to bottom. By the third part of the first half we had the game solidly in hand, though certainly not out of reach of WM. After half, with a lineup that did not include David nor Scott (who had the thankless job of guarding the huge guy most of the time and consequently had worked himself into foul trouble) we came out and went on a role. We increased, in 5 minutes, or lead from 5 to 15. This would not have been a lineup I’d have expected to go on such a run, but several people seemed to get hot at once including Jack M, who did a nice job of playing point and on defense after having had a couple of lackluster games at point, and Lucas, who finally seemed willing to take shots in the game and not just on put backs. After that it was never really a game. We won the game by 18.
Of note was that the ref who played lightening with us was a real jerk towards the opposing coach. At one point in the first half the coach was unhappy with a travel call (based on the kid carrying the ball). The ref said something to the effect of “Coach if you taught your players how to play I wouldn’t have had to call that travel”. Which was like WHOA. Then at the start of the second half, WM was EXCEEDINGLY slow at coming out of their huddle. In order to make-up for lost time, half time had been shortened to 1 minute, so basically just a time-out. Finally WM comes out of the huddle. There is then some confusion over which way they were going and the ref called over and back on the kid. His argument was that he’d stated several times which way they were going, he had. But c’mon they’re 9 years old. He didn’t favor us, in the sense that calls were called the same going both ways, but I was still glad to know that we wouldn’t be seeing him again (he’d mentioned that this was his only game of the day officiating).
It was really interesting because this was the first game where we were clearly out rebounded. When he was in there their center grabbed a HUGE amount of the boards, offensively and defensively. He also displayed a pretty soft touch on farther out shots. This kid needs a little help on his inside offensive game, and assuming puberty doesn’t completely wreck his coordination, could be a dominating force, but it was not to be on Sunday. In a gam
I had entered the tournament figuring us to be a middle of the road A team in terms of quality of play. The game against HP did nothing to change that estimate. When I crunched the stats of the JCC game I discovered we’d played nearly perfectly. Turnovers were WAY down compared to our normal games, even ones against inferior teams like NF. This took some of the wind out of my sails. I was VERY confident that we would see JCC again entering the day, as I thought we matched up well against the teams we’d have to play today. Knowing that we had managed to just squeak out a 1 point victory when we played our best game, statistically, of the season? Not encouraging. The only redeeming factor was that while most players were at their best, David’s shooting percentage was terrible. It was actually bad in both of the games Saturday, so that was a ray of hope. Of course that could also mean we had fallen into the trap of “David feels like he has to do everything to help us win”, which wasn’t so far from the truth in the JCC game.
On the other hand, where we might have won the JCC game because of one player, this was our best team game yet. Every player on the team, except Tom, had 2 or more shots. The most anyone shot was 10 shots and most players had multiple good looks. Several parents remarked how well we spread around the ball. It was certainly a good TEAM game. This gave me some hope about our future chances should we meet the JCC in the finals.
I had expected to win this game easily, and it was nice that we did so and it was then off to lunch we went.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Friday January 12 Practice Report
For Monday’s practice I seriously over prepared. Making yesterday’s practice the “what we didn’t get to on Monday” practice to a large extent. Of course one of the more important things I wanted to do, practice our in bounds play, I completely forgot to put on the practice plan and so we didn’t end up doing it.
As usual we started practice a few minutes a few minutes late since I had to raise the baskets from 8 to 10 feet. I arrived particularly early as I wanted to make sure I could grab Brian and Jack M to talk to them before we started. As I was watching the house league team practice, I liked a lot of what the coach was doing with the team. Skills that I assume my team has (well cause they do) this team most definitely did not have. Watching the practice it made me sorta want to coach a house league team next year as it would force me to think about the fundamentals more, which would only benefit my travel coaching. I had to bite my tongue at one point. They were working on a movement drill trying to get open. It was a pretty good drill. Only problem was that when one of their players got stuck at the top of the arc by the sideline the coach was encouraging everyone to come to the ball. While I understood what he was saying what he was really encouraging them to do was converge on the ball. That’s bad basketball. Our ability to space the floor is actually one of the things that’s made us so successful. Anyhow it was fun to watch their practice.
The triplets were the first to arrive. I pulled Brian aside. It was clear that he feels I disrespect the team at times. I had a two pronged message: first I think we’re a good team. Second, my stating things such as certain players shouldn’t be shooting three pointers isn’t disrespect, but instead is trying to put us in the best position to win by giving players a shot at winning. I also particularly emphasized what a good player I thought he was. He seemed very receptive to the message.
When it is time to start, after raising the basket, we had 7 players. Dante I wasn’t expecting to be there. However, I had no idea where Jack or Gordie were. I later checked and Gordie’s mom had told me that he was going to be gone at his grandmother’s birthday and I’d forgotten to mark that down. I talk for a few moments about our upcoming games and who should arrive but Dante just as we’re about to start our continuous motion. And evidently he’ll be at the game tomorrow as well. I don’t quite understand what happened with soccer, but I’m not complaining.
We did our continuous motion. I really need a new drill besides the dribbling and Princeton for continuous motion. Anyhow that went on. I then had a decision to make. We really needed to practice our zone buster, but only had 8 players. Despite it not being optimal I decided to just run it with the groups I’d made out and whoever was playing a particular position where there should have been a missing player. If I’d known we were going to have 8 players I’d have planned something for the three who weren’t in at any given time, but I couldn’t think of anything good at this particular moment (things are complicated since there is only one 10 foot basket in our Friday practice gym and so I couldn’t even send each of them to a basket to shoot lay-ups). Good news was that our play was a lot sharper today than it had been on Monday overall. Even better was that Jack arrived just as we were about to start out third rotation. As I had Gordie playing the clueless 4 (simply because I need to give Scott and Jack some reps at 3 and David needs reps at all the positions so I need to put a guard at the 4/5 once in a while to make sure that everyone gets some looks at spots they might play in the game) in the last drill, his not being there made it possible to run it with 9 players. Brian who had run things so well in the 2 on Monday actually didn’t do so hot. Jack M continued to struggle to play the two position as well. Tom actually did the best job of it. This changes my plans slightly for how I am going to handle starters for the game, which I’ll talk about more below. Anyway, we look better overall in our Zone Buster. I talked a fair amount last night about how if it breaks down we just have to reset it. Resetting is easier said than done, but I feel a lot better about them being able to run 3 or 4 iterations of the play in a game.
I then decided it was time for the Animal Rebounding drill. This time I didn’t quite do the shorties and tallies. Instead in group 2 was David, Tom, Lucas, Scott, and Brian and group 1 was Jack M, Jack P, Dante, and Noah. I honestly don’t really remember how the drill went except that Brian finished in 4th and Tom in 5th in Group 2. After they had finished their round I had them shoot two free throws. Except that Brian was having trouble doing his push-up and David felt the need to point this out. This set-off Brian. I reminded David that his job as a player was to be supportive of his teammates. Brian had been having a pretty good practice until this point however after his brother’s taunt he got very frustrated and tried to turn that determination into finishing his pushups. And then when he couldn’t do those he changed into running suicides. He was doing this while everyone else was at a water break. As people filtered back in I tried to release him from his obligation, but he wasn’t having it. I finally got him to shoot his two free throws however his temper was still raised.
I then partnered people up and we did a speed shooting drill where they shot from two feet away, but had to move around the free throw line before shooting from the other side. The team did a really great job of being supportive of their teammates as this was going on which was great to see. Brian, however, was in a world to himself. The team made between 5 and 9 of these shots in 30 seconds. I told them they were competing against themselves and didn’t even record their scores. This was the by product of a discussion Jack M had started. He was stating how he doesn’t like it when we’re competing, even if it’s just for a permission. This was quite interesting to hear. Jack had really toughened up in the Animal Rebounding drill between Monday and today, despite playing with bigger people, but it’s always good to be reminded about that with Jack.
Anyhow after we did the speed shooting drill, which we’ll do again, we did a drill we had done a long time ago, where it was 3 on 3 with the goal of the defense forcing offensive turn-overs. Things went OK, despite Brian moaning and moaning and moaning about his team until it was time for Brian’s team (on defense) to face David’s team on offense. And Brian went into full tilt meltdown. He was playing recklessly and could have easily hurt someone. He was just off the wall. We ran our suicides with Brian not fully participating.
We gathered around for our post-practice talk. I was a little more rah rah than normal. But Jack M wasn’t buying it. I asked to speak to Jack and Brian after practice. Unfortunately Brian had to leave quickly so I only got to speak to Jack. Jack actually did a great job of giving the “you have to be a more positive player” speech and used reasons I don’t normally use so clearly he’s heard this before and not just from me. I told him that I sincerely believe us to be a very good team and part of being a very good team is acting like it and that he should try acting like it, even if he doesn’t fully believe it since it makes a difference in how you play.
At some point I had decided that our starting five would be David, Tom, Brian, Scott, and Lucas (in # order). Despite Brian’s completely unacceptable behavior at practice I’m still going to start him. I will be talking with him before hand and telling him there will be serious consequences if he puts up a performance like he did at our last practice again. We’ll talk about how he can calm down if he starts to get frustrated, but going off and doing his own thing will not be OK. I’m going to use the “complement sandwich” strategy with him and hopefully it’ll go well.
My initial plan had been to announce our starting five, but state that if they come out in a strong zone that I would be using the line up of Jack M, Brian, David, Jack P, and Lucas (again in # order). Except that with Brian not showing as much ability to run the play as the 2, and Tom showing great ability, that would likely be the switch I’d want to make. The idea of announcing this switch was to give Jack and Jack some feeling of recognition. However, I don’t want to take away Brian’s sense, I think. So, Jack M will start tomorrow against WK and we’ll simply have David and Brian switch roles if we run Indiana.
If we’re going to win today, and going forward, we need David to play a great game. However, he seems to have been lacking in much of his normal confidence ever since the JCC game. A lot of it seems to be the fact that he’s been having trouble making free throws. I haven’t had a chance to work with him to see if there’s a flaw in his mechanics but I’m going to tell him that despite what may happen in practice with free throws that he’s a great player and he shouldn’t stress about it, and instead should just play good basketball.
It’s a big game today and I think we’re ready for it. Hopefully I’m right.
As usual we started practice a few minutes a few minutes late since I had to raise the baskets from 8 to 10 feet. I arrived particularly early as I wanted to make sure I could grab Brian and Jack M to talk to them before we started. As I was watching the house league team practice, I liked a lot of what the coach was doing with the team. Skills that I assume my team has (well cause they do) this team most definitely did not have. Watching the practice it made me sorta want to coach a house league team next year as it would force me to think about the fundamentals more, which would only benefit my travel coaching. I had to bite my tongue at one point. They were working on a movement drill trying to get open. It was a pretty good drill. Only problem was that when one of their players got stuck at the top of the arc by the sideline the coach was encouraging everyone to come to the ball. While I understood what he was saying what he was really encouraging them to do was converge on the ball. That’s bad basketball. Our ability to space the floor is actually one of the things that’s made us so successful. Anyhow it was fun to watch their practice.
The triplets were the first to arrive. I pulled Brian aside. It was clear that he feels I disrespect the team at times. I had a two pronged message: first I think we’re a good team. Second, my stating things such as certain players shouldn’t be shooting three pointers isn’t disrespect, but instead is trying to put us in the best position to win by giving players a shot at winning. I also particularly emphasized what a good player I thought he was. He seemed very receptive to the message.
When it is time to start, after raising the basket, we had 7 players. Dante I wasn’t expecting to be there. However, I had no idea where Jack or Gordie were. I later checked and Gordie’s mom had told me that he was going to be gone at his grandmother’s birthday and I’d forgotten to mark that down. I talk for a few moments about our upcoming games and who should arrive but Dante just as we’re about to start our continuous motion. And evidently he’ll be at the game tomorrow as well. I don’t quite understand what happened with soccer, but I’m not complaining.
We did our continuous motion. I really need a new drill besides the dribbling and Princeton for continuous motion. Anyhow that went on. I then had a decision to make. We really needed to practice our zone buster, but only had 8 players. Despite it not being optimal I decided to just run it with the groups I’d made out and whoever was playing a particular position where there should have been a missing player. If I’d known we were going to have 8 players I’d have planned something for the three who weren’t in at any given time, but I couldn’t think of anything good at this particular moment (things are complicated since there is only one 10 foot basket in our Friday practice gym and so I couldn’t even send each of them to a basket to shoot lay-ups). Good news was that our play was a lot sharper today than it had been on Monday overall. Even better was that Jack arrived just as we were about to start out third rotation. As I had Gordie playing the clueless 4 (simply because I need to give Scott and Jack some reps at 3 and David needs reps at all the positions so I need to put a guard at the 4/5 once in a while to make sure that everyone gets some looks at spots they might play in the game) in the last drill, his not being there made it possible to run it with 9 players. Brian who had run things so well in the 2 on Monday actually didn’t do so hot. Jack M continued to struggle to play the two position as well. Tom actually did the best job of it. This changes my plans slightly for how I am going to handle starters for the game, which I’ll talk about more below. Anyway, we look better overall in our Zone Buster. I talked a fair amount last night about how if it breaks down we just have to reset it. Resetting is easier said than done, but I feel a lot better about them being able to run 3 or 4 iterations of the play in a game.
I then decided it was time for the Animal Rebounding drill. This time I didn’t quite do the shorties and tallies. Instead in group 2 was David, Tom, Lucas, Scott, and Brian and group 1 was Jack M, Jack P, Dante, and Noah. I honestly don’t really remember how the drill went except that Brian finished in 4th and Tom in 5th in Group 2. After they had finished their round I had them shoot two free throws. Except that Brian was having trouble doing his push-up and David felt the need to point this out. This set-off Brian. I reminded David that his job as a player was to be supportive of his teammates. Brian had been having a pretty good practice until this point however after his brother’s taunt he got very frustrated and tried to turn that determination into finishing his pushups. And then when he couldn’t do those he changed into running suicides. He was doing this while everyone else was at a water break. As people filtered back in I tried to release him from his obligation, but he wasn’t having it. I finally got him to shoot his two free throws however his temper was still raised.
I then partnered people up and we did a speed shooting drill where they shot from two feet away, but had to move around the free throw line before shooting from the other side. The team did a really great job of being supportive of their teammates as this was going on which was great to see. Brian, however, was in a world to himself. The team made between 5 and 9 of these shots in 30 seconds. I told them they were competing against themselves and didn’t even record their scores. This was the by product of a discussion Jack M had started. He was stating how he doesn’t like it when we’re competing, even if it’s just for a permission. This was quite interesting to hear. Jack had really toughened up in the Animal Rebounding drill between Monday and today, despite playing with bigger people, but it’s always good to be reminded about that with Jack.
Anyhow after we did the speed shooting drill, which we’ll do again, we did a drill we had done a long time ago, where it was 3 on 3 with the goal of the defense forcing offensive turn-overs. Things went OK, despite Brian moaning and moaning and moaning about his team until it was time for Brian’s team (on defense) to face David’s team on offense. And Brian went into full tilt meltdown. He was playing recklessly and could have easily hurt someone. He was just off the wall. We ran our suicides with Brian not fully participating.
We gathered around for our post-practice talk. I was a little more rah rah than normal. But Jack M wasn’t buying it. I asked to speak to Jack and Brian after practice. Unfortunately Brian had to leave quickly so I only got to speak to Jack. Jack actually did a great job of giving the “you have to be a more positive player” speech and used reasons I don’t normally use so clearly he’s heard this before and not just from me. I told him that I sincerely believe us to be a very good team and part of being a very good team is acting like it and that he should try acting like it, even if he doesn’t fully believe it since it makes a difference in how you play.
At some point I had decided that our starting five would be David, Tom, Brian, Scott, and Lucas (in # order). Despite Brian’s completely unacceptable behavior at practice I’m still going to start him. I will be talking with him before hand and telling him there will be serious consequences if he puts up a performance like he did at our last practice again. We’ll talk about how he can calm down if he starts to get frustrated, but going off and doing his own thing will not be OK. I’m going to use the “complement sandwich” strategy with him and hopefully it’ll go well.
My initial plan had been to announce our starting five, but state that if they come out in a strong zone that I would be using the line up of Jack M, Brian, David, Jack P, and Lucas (again in # order). Except that with Brian not showing as much ability to run the play as the 2, and Tom showing great ability, that would likely be the switch I’d want to make. The idea of announcing this switch was to give Jack and Jack some feeling of recognition. However, I don’t want to take away Brian’s sense, I think. So, Jack M will start tomorrow against WK and we’ll simply have David and Brian switch roles if we run Indiana.
If we’re going to win today, and going forward, we need David to play a great game. However, he seems to have been lacking in much of his normal confidence ever since the JCC game. A lot of it seems to be the fact that he’s been having trouble making free throws. I haven’t had a chance to work with him to see if there’s a flaw in his mechanics but I’m going to tell him that despite what may happen in practice with free throws that he’s a great player and he shouldn’t stress about it, and instead should just play good basketball.
It’s a big game today and I think we’re ready for it. Hopefully I’m right.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Looking Back and Ahead
As I setup this blog it was interesting to see how my impressions have stayed the same or changed since the tryouts.
For instance, I successfully nailed Brian (who I had spelled Bryan) as a kid with a bit of an attitude after the first tryouts. So far this seems accurate. I also predicted I would need to use Tom as a guard/forward simultaneously and this too has proven correct, however I proved to be overly pessimistic about how successful this would be . I thought more highly of Noah during tryouts than I do now. I also foresaw some of the problems with Gordie that have cropped up (as I’d completely forgotten how borderline he was in making the team). Fortunately, I made the right call there as Gordie has not really been a problem even if there have been problems (if that makes any sense).
I so foresaw the idea we’d only have 7 players at some game. Of course I thought it would be in February. Does that mean in February we’re going to end up with 5 or 6? Please let that not be true.
I had an opinion of Jack M that more closely resembles how I feel he plays during games than how he practices. Seems like he’s a kid who really needs stress to play as well as he can.
I did not work on zone busting as early as I had originally planned to.
I completely conflated Gordie and Noah in my mind at the time, though reading back on it I was able to put the right name to the right kid.
I haven’t done as good of a job of reinforcing some of the skills we did that first week through-out the season. Working on the proper grip, for instance, or doing the jumps, or wrist flexes, are all activities I should do for 30 seconds here or there. That’s one reason for the scavenger hunt, which was a successful solution to this problem.
I also now know the results of all of the weekend’s games. First, HP won two games on Sunday, including one against a team that had won the previous week. I thought they were a fairly good team, and they showed it, as playing two games on one day is not an easy feat. MP1 defeated MP2. MP2 is our next opponent and has scored more points then our previous two opponents. I really anticipate it should be a good game. If we can win that by a decisive margin of victory I am going to start to believe we have something special. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing how our defense does. It was “easy” to defend against NF2 and HP, neither of whom have shown that they score points (HP won its game 19-18 and 19-13, while NF2 had only scored 8 points the previous game). If we can limit MP2’s points, as they have scored 40 and 24 in their first two games, I will grow very encouraged about our prospects.
For instance, I successfully nailed Brian (who I had spelled Bryan) as a kid with a bit of an attitude after the first tryouts. So far this seems accurate. I also predicted I would need to use Tom as a guard/forward simultaneously and this too has proven correct, however I proved to be overly pessimistic about how successful this would be . I thought more highly of Noah during tryouts than I do now. I also foresaw some of the problems with Gordie that have cropped up (as I’d completely forgotten how borderline he was in making the team). Fortunately, I made the right call there as Gordie has not really been a problem even if there have been problems (if that makes any sense).
I so foresaw the idea we’d only have 7 players at some game. Of course I thought it would be in February. Does that mean in February we’re going to end up with 5 or 6? Please let that not be true.
I had an opinion of Jack M that more closely resembles how I feel he plays during games than how he practices. Seems like he’s a kid who really needs stress to play as well as he can.
I did not work on zone busting as early as I had originally planned to.
I completely conflated Gordie and Noah in my mind at the time, though reading back on it I was able to put the right name to the right kid.
I haven’t done as good of a job of reinforcing some of the skills we did that first week through-out the season. Working on the proper grip, for instance, or doing the jumps, or wrist flexes, are all activities I should do for 30 seconds here or there. That’s one reason for the scavenger hunt, which was a successful solution to this problem.
I also now know the results of all of the weekend’s games. First, HP won two games on Sunday, including one against a team that had won the previous week. I thought they were a fairly good team, and they showed it, as playing two games on one day is not an easy feat. MP1 defeated MP2. MP2 is our next opponent and has scored more points then our previous two opponents. I really anticipate it should be a good game. If we can win that by a decisive margin of victory I am going to start to believe we have something special. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing how our defense does. It was “easy” to defend against NF2 and HP, neither of whom have shown that they score points (HP won its game 19-18 and 19-13, while NF2 had only scored 8 points the previous game). If we can limit MP2’s points, as they have scored 40 and 24 in their first two games, I will grow very encouraged about our prospects.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
December 4th Practice Report
Before practice started yesterday, I call Tom over. He had expressed some unhappiness over how he played yesterday. I ask him what he felt frustrated with, so we could “problem solve”. He assures me he was just joking. OK, fine.
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
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.
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.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Snow Day
Well it’s a snow day here and that means no practice tonight. Love it as a teacher, hate it as a coach. So this means we are once again losing practice time. It really is adding up at this point and I grow very concerned about our longer term prospects.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
11-17 Practice Report
Welcome back to the further travails of my efforts to coach a successful youth basketball team.
As you recall, we had no practice last Friday because of a school event. And practice on Monday was rescheduled for Wednesday. The problem arises with the rescheduling when I get an email Tuesday. Lucas’s mother is asking about our practice on Wednesday since her six year old is scheduled to practice at the same time. I email Emily at the Park District. Turns out I asked to reschedule on Wednesday and she had no gym on Wednesday so gave me Tuesday’s date. I didn’t pay close attention to this and so I blew it. By the time I’ve figured out what has happened it’s 5:00 Tuesday. So there goes that practice.
So that brings us to Friday’s practice. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. But that’s going to have to be OK. We do a short stretching session and then go into our offense. I show them a few things that they can do with the offense. And well, it goes OK. I think with a another practice worth of trying it, it would go more than OK. However, I think that in many ways they’re going to play an ugly game of basketball come Sunday.
After our offensive practice, which we do for about a half hour, we practice our inbounds play. There is a lot of teaching involved, but people seem to pick it up well enough. It’s a simple stack. We line up and then on the signal from the in bounder the players all do something different. All in all the play seems to work well enough, especially considering that the defenders knew what the offensive players were going to do. So that is good. Now the problem is that this play won’t likely work as well against a zone.
In fact that’s my big fear is that they will be playing a zone. If so it’s going to be an early time out. I know they’ll be able to adjust to playing against a zone, but we haven’t really practiced it. Hopefully the HP coach feels the way I do about man-to-man, and I think he will, and so we will see that kind of defense.
Lastly we practiced our tip-offs. Overall that worked fine too. We concluded practice with my reminding them about some of the nuts and bolts of the games. Things like checking in at the scorer’s table and telling who you were guarding when subbing in.
The thing is that overall we’re still not playing well as a team. I feel good about where their individual skills are at. However, we’re not really playing as a basketball team and that concerns me. I am hoping that our opponents will be just as lost as we are.
One other note from practice. Gordie and Jack M were seriously not getting along. There was pushing, grabbing, etc. I took them aside after practice. It seems that there has been ill feelings before, then things had gotten better, and now things are not going as well again. We talked about how we’re on the same team and that this sort of behavior wouldn’t be accepted. They both got the message, in theory, but we’ll see how this translates to reality.
My original plan for Sunday had been to start Noah, Gordie, Dante, Jack P, and Tom. However, in my talk with Gordie and Jack I talked about how on Sunday there would be times when they’d have to play together and if we were going to do well as a team they’d have to play well together. I am thinking, to reinforce this point, have Jack start in the place of Noah. It would certainly get the message across, I think. Dante, Jack P, and Tom are regular starters for the time being, though I will be mixing things up from time to time to get everybody their promised start, with Scott and David, who are off on a jaunt to LA being our other two starters.
I don’t see that I’ve done a complete run down of the team in a while so it seems like before our first game would be a good time to do that.
Brian –
Good: Remember him? Well word through the grapevine is that he could be rejoining our team as early as December 4th from his ankle injury. I had originally heard more like January, or even February so this is good.
Bad: Who knows how quickly he’ll be able to catch up. The one good point of our being behind where I want to be team wise is that it should be easier for him to catch up. However, he’ll have missed out on some of the conditioning. So he likely won’t return at the same caliber as when he left us. I think we’ve had better chemistry without him. Hopefully we’ll be solid here when he comes back.
Dante –
Good: Good endurance. He gets how to rebound. He has a nice shot so some of the kids have taken to calling him Yao since he is our tallest player and can shoot from the outside.
Bad: He is S L O W. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I honestly don’t know how well his slow will play out. There’s not too much I can do it about it, all things considered, but hope for the best.
David –
Good: Good basketball intelligence and ability. For instance when we were running our in bounds play and his defender was guarding the play more than him, he did something slightly different and broke free for an easy inbounds pass and basket. I’ve talked about his ability before. He’s the only player I really feel good about taking long distance shots.
Bad: As one of the taller members of the team he’s going to have play against bigger guys and in the post more than he’s used to.
Gordie:
Good – A fun kid and helps keep things light. A fairly good defender.
Bad – Takes shots he shouldn’t take. Can get trapped fairly easily on defense.
Jack M –
Good: Has good court vision, he rarely makes a bad pass. Also has a quick first step on his dribble. He will likely bring the ball up for us often.
Bad: He doesn’t seem to like the fact that I don’t want him shooting long distance shots. He’s not the most likable kid which has already had an effect with one player and meant that during our inbounds drill complained about what the 1 and 2 players do, despite the fact that the 1 player is one of the most important as he does two different things to get open.
Jack P –
Good: This kid is a tenacious defender and one of the better shots on the team. He is so quiet it is easy to forget how good he is, but he could easily be the second best player on the team. He was our best in bounder of the five I tried (Lucas, Tom, David, Jack P, and Scott).
Bad: Not a whole lot to say except that since he’s a new kid some of the players on the team haven’t figured out how good he is yet and so he doesn’t get the passes he deserves on offense, despite my prodding, that he deserves.
Lucas –
Good: He’s a nice kid who never complains about anything and will always attempt to do what is asked of him.
Bad: He’s not the sharpest kid on the team. I had to walk through the inbounds play with him several times at each of the positions he did before he got it. He clearly doesn’t like the fact that he has to play post/center positions, but, well, tough. He could likely see a pickup in his minutes once he masters some of the things, like always screening away from the ball, but until then his action will likely be more limited as he kind of plays confused.
Noah –
Good: He picks up things quickly. He is solid all around on offense.
Bad: His defense could stand some improvement. He gets beat off the dribble too much.
Scott –
Good: Solid player who works hard. In particular I like how he seems to have a good sense of where to be on the court.
Bad: His skills are better suited to a forward position, but he’s not really big enough to be a forward. Not as big of a deal on offense, where we play a motion, but does matter on defense.
Tom –
Good: He is the heart of our team. He does most things well and is one of our better shots.
Bad: He hasn’t seemed happy at the last couple of practices, so I don’t know what’s going on there. He has a slow first step on defense.
So there you have it. I am just petrified that we are going to get blown out. I haven’t done as good of a job as I should have in getting them ready for this date. The first game is important and so despite the fact that I stress it’s a long season having a blowout first game is NOT what I want.
Hopefully when I write you tomorrow, my fears will have been misplaced and I will be writing to you about the 1 and 0 Spartans.
As you recall, we had no practice last Friday because of a school event. And practice on Monday was rescheduled for Wednesday. The problem arises with the rescheduling when I get an email Tuesday. Lucas’s mother is asking about our practice on Wednesday since her six year old is scheduled to practice at the same time. I email Emily at the Park District. Turns out I asked to reschedule on Wednesday and she had no gym on Wednesday so gave me Tuesday’s date. I didn’t pay close attention to this and so I blew it. By the time I’ve figured out what has happened it’s 5:00 Tuesday. So there goes that practice.
So that brings us to Friday’s practice. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. But that’s going to have to be OK. We do a short stretching session and then go into our offense. I show them a few things that they can do with the offense. And well, it goes OK. I think with a another practice worth of trying it, it would go more than OK. However, I think that in many ways they’re going to play an ugly game of basketball come Sunday.
After our offensive practice, which we do for about a half hour, we practice our inbounds play. There is a lot of teaching involved, but people seem to pick it up well enough. It’s a simple stack. We line up and then on the signal from the in bounder the players all do something different. All in all the play seems to work well enough, especially considering that the defenders knew what the offensive players were going to do. So that is good. Now the problem is that this play won’t likely work as well against a zone.
In fact that’s my big fear is that they will be playing a zone. If so it’s going to be an early time out. I know they’ll be able to adjust to playing against a zone, but we haven’t really practiced it. Hopefully the HP coach feels the way I do about man-to-man, and I think he will, and so we will see that kind of defense.
Lastly we practiced our tip-offs. Overall that worked fine too. We concluded practice with my reminding them about some of the nuts and bolts of the games. Things like checking in at the scorer’s table and telling who you were guarding when subbing in.
The thing is that overall we’re still not playing well as a team. I feel good about where their individual skills are at. However, we’re not really playing as a basketball team and that concerns me. I am hoping that our opponents will be just as lost as we are.
One other note from practice. Gordie and Jack M were seriously not getting along. There was pushing, grabbing, etc. I took them aside after practice. It seems that there has been ill feelings before, then things had gotten better, and now things are not going as well again. We talked about how we’re on the same team and that this sort of behavior wouldn’t be accepted. They both got the message, in theory, but we’ll see how this translates to reality.
My original plan for Sunday had been to start Noah, Gordie, Dante, Jack P, and Tom. However, in my talk with Gordie and Jack I talked about how on Sunday there would be times when they’d have to play together and if we were going to do well as a team they’d have to play well together. I am thinking, to reinforce this point, have Jack start in the place of Noah. It would certainly get the message across, I think. Dante, Jack P, and Tom are regular starters for the time being, though I will be mixing things up from time to time to get everybody their promised start, with Scott and David, who are off on a jaunt to LA being our other two starters.
I don’t see that I’ve done a complete run down of the team in a while so it seems like before our first game would be a good time to do that.
Brian –
Good: Remember him? Well word through the grapevine is that he could be rejoining our team as early as December 4th from his ankle injury. I had originally heard more like January, or even February so this is good.
Bad: Who knows how quickly he’ll be able to catch up. The one good point of our being behind where I want to be team wise is that it should be easier for him to catch up. However, he’ll have missed out on some of the conditioning. So he likely won’t return at the same caliber as when he left us. I think we’ve had better chemistry without him. Hopefully we’ll be solid here when he comes back.
Dante –
Good: Good endurance. He gets how to rebound. He has a nice shot so some of the kids have taken to calling him Yao since he is our tallest player and can shoot from the outside.
Bad: He is S L O W. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I honestly don’t know how well his slow will play out. There’s not too much I can do it about it, all things considered, but hope for the best.
David –
Good: Good basketball intelligence and ability. For instance when we were running our in bounds play and his defender was guarding the play more than him, he did something slightly different and broke free for an easy inbounds pass and basket. I’ve talked about his ability before. He’s the only player I really feel good about taking long distance shots.
Bad: As one of the taller members of the team he’s going to have play against bigger guys and in the post more than he’s used to.
Gordie:
Good – A fun kid and helps keep things light. A fairly good defender.
Bad – Takes shots he shouldn’t take. Can get trapped fairly easily on defense.
Jack M –
Good: Has good court vision, he rarely makes a bad pass. Also has a quick first step on his dribble. He will likely bring the ball up for us often.
Bad: He doesn’t seem to like the fact that I don’t want him shooting long distance shots. He’s not the most likable kid which has already had an effect with one player and meant that during our inbounds drill complained about what the 1 and 2 players do, despite the fact that the 1 player is one of the most important as he does two different things to get open.
Jack P –
Good: This kid is a tenacious defender and one of the better shots on the team. He is so quiet it is easy to forget how good he is, but he could easily be the second best player on the team. He was our best in bounder of the five I tried (Lucas, Tom, David, Jack P, and Scott).
Bad: Not a whole lot to say except that since he’s a new kid some of the players on the team haven’t figured out how good he is yet and so he doesn’t get the passes he deserves on offense, despite my prodding, that he deserves.
Lucas –
Good: He’s a nice kid who never complains about anything and will always attempt to do what is asked of him.
Bad: He’s not the sharpest kid on the team. I had to walk through the inbounds play with him several times at each of the positions he did before he got it. He clearly doesn’t like the fact that he has to play post/center positions, but, well, tough. He could likely see a pickup in his minutes once he masters some of the things, like always screening away from the ball, but until then his action will likely be more limited as he kind of plays confused.
Noah –
Good: He picks up things quickly. He is solid all around on offense.
Bad: His defense could stand some improvement. He gets beat off the dribble too much.
Scott –
Good: Solid player who works hard. In particular I like how he seems to have a good sense of where to be on the court.
Bad: His skills are better suited to a forward position, but he’s not really big enough to be a forward. Not as big of a deal on offense, where we play a motion, but does matter on defense.
Tom –
Good: He is the heart of our team. He does most things well and is one of our better shots.
Bad: He hasn’t seemed happy at the last couple of practices, so I don’t know what’s going on there. He has a slow first step on defense.
So there you have it. I am just petrified that we are going to get blown out. I haven’t done as good of a job as I should have in getting them ready for this date. The first game is important and so despite the fact that I stress it’s a long season having a blowout first game is NOT what I want.
Hopefully when I write you tomorrow, my fears will have been misplaced and I will be writing to you about the 1 and 0 Spartans.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
I get to practice on Monday, 10 minutes early like I want to be, and already 2/3 of the team is there. The gym is all setup correctly and so, for the first time, we don’t have a space issue of any type. It was wonderful.
As I get the doggie bags back, I see that everyone, except for Dante, is claiming to have learned all 5 of the first rules of the offense. I am skeptical. I had made this doggie bag a little different in that I had given them a way to rate themselves and list any of the rules that they didn’t understand or were having trouble remembering.
Without much introduction we go right into our continuous motion drill. Several of the players commented, and I agreed, that the 10 minutes seemed shorter than on Friday. I’m pretty sure I did 10 minutes both days, but perhaps I messed up on one of them. If I did I likely went too short on Monday. Tonight, for the partner parts of the run, my partner was David. When I had done this with my other partners I let them set the pace. With David, I set the pace. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, but I do treat David differently than the other players. It’s not that I am harder or easier on him, but I have found ways to express different expectations for him, higher expectations, than for others. There’s really no one there that can tire him out running except for me (Dante might be able to out endure him but since Dante is S L O W that is only so useful) so it was good to really push him there. About half way through, I asked if he was tired, he said no, so I really picked up the pace for the last half. David might have thought the time was shorter but he was more tired than he’d been before. Yes, it’s good that a healthy guy in his 20s can outrun a 9 year old. Anyhow, I will continue to look for ways to push David as I want him to grow as much as others, but since he’s starting at a higher mark, that can be hard at times. Just as a further example, he was shooting 3s before practice, something I don’t normally allow (they should be practicing shots they can make) but David made 6 out of 10. In the long run his shooting percentage would be lower, but still…
Defense was the focus of our practice. I randomly had paired them up during continuous motion. We then went into a “help defense” drill. I stood at the top of the three point arc, with a player on each wing. We had two defenders who guarded the two players on offense. As the ball was swung to a side the players needed to shift accordingly. This was a fairly simple drill, though it was made harder when we added a skip pass (meaning the two players could pass it directly to each other without passing it to me first, giving less time to recover and get into position). Lucas and Jack M struggled the most. Let’s do a quick tangent here about Jack M. I had noted previously that I wanted to really focus on the positives with Jack. And for the most part I have been doing this. At the same time I don’t fake achievement, so when he was out of place in the help drill, I’m going to, in a respectful way, remind him of where he should be and then give him a chance to demonstrate success. But overall I’ve been trying to find reasons to say good things. But Jack is the sort of kid who dwells on the negative. So despite having heard 10 complements it’s the one criticism that’ll stick with him. And then there’s the sulking. I am glad, however, that we have a long season as it does give more opportunity to really show him that I’m on his side. Hopefully, I will see better things as he realizes that basketball is a supportive place.
Then we did a couple of one on one drills. A reason for this was to give me time to divide them into groups of three for our last major drill, though we did end up spending a fair amount of time on them.
In this last drill teams of three are playing basketball. Except the offense can’t score. The goal is for the defense to force three turnovers. I turned it into a competition, as the offense needed to hold onto the ball the longest, while the defense was trying to force the mistakes as quickly as possible. I called fouls (which added or subtracted 10 seconds depending on which side you were on). However, I let a lot of ticky-tacky fouls go as I really want to encourage an in your face defense. I explained to the team that it’s easier in a game to back off then to suddenly get aggressive. I did the best I could in balancing the teams, and ended up with these groupings:
A – Dante, Jack M, Tom
B – David, Gordie, Jack P
C – Scott, Noah, and Lucas
The drill worked out even better than I had been hoping. First it forced the players to play some help defense. Forced them to take some risks with double teams, but then also learn how to react. And while I was doing it as a defensive drill it might have been even more helpful on offense. In order to do well on offense you had to really use many of the offensive rules I laid out. For instance the teams that did well kept the floor spaced, making it harder for the defense to cover. Players were forced to move with-out the ball. Teams that had players moving without the ball for a purpose did the best. Dribbling for no reason was a sure fire way to get in trouble, but dribbling for a reason was successful. And on and on. In the end if Scott hadn’t completely blown the first run through for his team (he stepped out of bounds twice) it’d have been fairly even. Team A actually won on offense. And since, as I was about to learn, Tom had really nailed the offensive rules, and Dante had given it real thought, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Team B came close on offensive, and absolutely dominated on defense, though part of that was helped by Scott’s mental mistakes. The players seemed to enjoy this drill as well, so we’ll likely be making a repeat of it. One thing I was SO happy about: All of our pivoting practice paid off. Almost all the players were pivoting out of problems in order to get free to make the pass. While we had practiced that some before, I had not given the offense any instructions, limiting myself to defensive reminders. So to see so many of the players do this was just wonderful. It really did help me feel justified for spending the time we have on “the basics” as I doubt pivoting like this had really been widely taught before now.
After all the teams had gone three times on offensive and defense I sat everyone down. And I talked about how the teams that did well on offense used many of the offensive rules. Tom was all over this. Dante also saw the connection (despite having admittedly not learned all the rules). Others? Well not quite as much. The Jacks were completely clueless, as were the H’s and Gordie. Lucas had a foggy notion, as did Noah. At this point I complemented them on a great practice. I said if we can have an equally good practice for the first hour on Friday we’ll scrimmage for about 20 minutes. Many seemed excited about this.
We ran our suicides next. Only a few players owed a suicide. I gave them 35 seconds (which was really 40, but shhh) to complete it. Last Friday I had given Dante a break on the time requirement. He was concerned about the fact, thinking that I thought poorly of him. After thinking over the interaction, I realized I hadn’t really addressed his concerns so I made sure to do so at the start of practice. I told him I knew he was slower, but that he didn’t tire, which was a good thing and so not to worry as much about the slow. Honestly, the slow will be a problem somewhat, as if a team is good at getting down the court I won’t be able to play Dante as he’d never make it down the court in time, but I think it will be workable. Anyway, so Dante decided to run the suicide, despite not having to. And he was SO proud when he did it under the allotted time. It was a great moment as it was entirely a self motivated thing, even a little bit of “I’ll show Coach that I can do it” and it was a genuine accomplishment. I loved it.
We ended practice with everyone giving a positive about someone from their 3 on 3 team. In this way far more kids got a positive stated about them. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: this is a nice group. The supportive atmosphere Steve and I had to work so hard at creating on our baseball team is almost completely there already with this group. I claim very little for this good vibe, considering it was there to begin with. Hopefully as we start to play games, and a pecking order is established, as who I think the better players are becomes apparent, the good vibrations and supportive atmosphere will continue. If that happens I will take some credit for making sure a good foundation was there. I handed out the doggie bag, which had the rest of our 9 offensive rules. They are:
• You move every time you make a pass
• You move to get open for a shot, to receive a pass, set a screen to get a teammate open
• Be patient and make simple passes
• Dribble should be used to: advance the ball out of the backcourt, make a drive to the basket, or open a passing lane
• All players are responsible for rebounding and defense.
• The ball should be swung quickly to make the defense shift
• One in every three passes should go to the post
• All players are responsible for keeping spacing and floor balance
• At least four passes before a shot (unless a player is open in the post)
I don’t actually expect them to know the rules yet, but by our first game they better, especially as they will have seen how we’re putting the rules together. It’s nice to know, though, that a couple of kids, such as Tom, will likely come with all 9 rules down pat like the back of their hands.
All in all, it was perhaps our best practice which after a couple of downers, was good all around.
As I get the doggie bags back, I see that everyone, except for Dante, is claiming to have learned all 5 of the first rules of the offense. I am skeptical. I had made this doggie bag a little different in that I had given them a way to rate themselves and list any of the rules that they didn’t understand or were having trouble remembering.
Without much introduction we go right into our continuous motion drill. Several of the players commented, and I agreed, that the 10 minutes seemed shorter than on Friday. I’m pretty sure I did 10 minutes both days, but perhaps I messed up on one of them. If I did I likely went too short on Monday. Tonight, for the partner parts of the run, my partner was David. When I had done this with my other partners I let them set the pace. With David, I set the pace. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, but I do treat David differently than the other players. It’s not that I am harder or easier on him, but I have found ways to express different expectations for him, higher expectations, than for others. There’s really no one there that can tire him out running except for me (Dante might be able to out endure him but since Dante is S L O W that is only so useful) so it was good to really push him there. About half way through, I asked if he was tired, he said no, so I really picked up the pace for the last half. David might have thought the time was shorter but he was more tired than he’d been before. Yes, it’s good that a healthy guy in his 20s can outrun a 9 year old. Anyhow, I will continue to look for ways to push David as I want him to grow as much as others, but since he’s starting at a higher mark, that can be hard at times. Just as a further example, he was shooting 3s before practice, something I don’t normally allow (they should be practicing shots they can make) but David made 6 out of 10. In the long run his shooting percentage would be lower, but still…
Defense was the focus of our practice. I randomly had paired them up during continuous motion. We then went into a “help defense” drill. I stood at the top of the three point arc, with a player on each wing. We had two defenders who guarded the two players on offense. As the ball was swung to a side the players needed to shift accordingly. This was a fairly simple drill, though it was made harder when we added a skip pass (meaning the two players could pass it directly to each other without passing it to me first, giving less time to recover and get into position). Lucas and Jack M struggled the most. Let’s do a quick tangent here about Jack M. I had noted previously that I wanted to really focus on the positives with Jack. And for the most part I have been doing this. At the same time I don’t fake achievement, so when he was out of place in the help drill, I’m going to, in a respectful way, remind him of where he should be and then give him a chance to demonstrate success. But overall I’ve been trying to find reasons to say good things. But Jack is the sort of kid who dwells on the negative. So despite having heard 10 complements it’s the one criticism that’ll stick with him. And then there’s the sulking. I am glad, however, that we have a long season as it does give more opportunity to really show him that I’m on his side. Hopefully, I will see better things as he realizes that basketball is a supportive place.
Then we did a couple of one on one drills. A reason for this was to give me time to divide them into groups of three for our last major drill, though we did end up spending a fair amount of time on them.
In this last drill teams of three are playing basketball. Except the offense can’t score. The goal is for the defense to force three turnovers. I turned it into a competition, as the offense needed to hold onto the ball the longest, while the defense was trying to force the mistakes as quickly as possible. I called fouls (which added or subtracted 10 seconds depending on which side you were on). However, I let a lot of ticky-tacky fouls go as I really want to encourage an in your face defense. I explained to the team that it’s easier in a game to back off then to suddenly get aggressive. I did the best I could in balancing the teams, and ended up with these groupings:
A – Dante, Jack M, Tom
B – David, Gordie, Jack P
C – Scott, Noah, and Lucas
The drill worked out even better than I had been hoping. First it forced the players to play some help defense. Forced them to take some risks with double teams, but then also learn how to react. And while I was doing it as a defensive drill it might have been even more helpful on offense. In order to do well on offense you had to really use many of the offensive rules I laid out. For instance the teams that did well kept the floor spaced, making it harder for the defense to cover. Players were forced to move with-out the ball. Teams that had players moving without the ball for a purpose did the best. Dribbling for no reason was a sure fire way to get in trouble, but dribbling for a reason was successful. And on and on. In the end if Scott hadn’t completely blown the first run through for his team (he stepped out of bounds twice) it’d have been fairly even. Team A actually won on offense. And since, as I was about to learn, Tom had really nailed the offensive rules, and Dante had given it real thought, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Team B came close on offensive, and absolutely dominated on defense, though part of that was helped by Scott’s mental mistakes. The players seemed to enjoy this drill as well, so we’ll likely be making a repeat of it. One thing I was SO happy about: All of our pivoting practice paid off. Almost all the players were pivoting out of problems in order to get free to make the pass. While we had practiced that some before, I had not given the offense any instructions, limiting myself to defensive reminders. So to see so many of the players do this was just wonderful. It really did help me feel justified for spending the time we have on “the basics” as I doubt pivoting like this had really been widely taught before now.
After all the teams had gone three times on offensive and defense I sat everyone down. And I talked about how the teams that did well on offense used many of the offensive rules. Tom was all over this. Dante also saw the connection (despite having admittedly not learned all the rules). Others? Well not quite as much. The Jacks were completely clueless, as were the H’s and Gordie. Lucas had a foggy notion, as did Noah. At this point I complemented them on a great practice. I said if we can have an equally good practice for the first hour on Friday we’ll scrimmage for about 20 minutes. Many seemed excited about this.
We ran our suicides next. Only a few players owed a suicide. I gave them 35 seconds (which was really 40, but shhh) to complete it. Last Friday I had given Dante a break on the time requirement. He was concerned about the fact, thinking that I thought poorly of him. After thinking over the interaction, I realized I hadn’t really addressed his concerns so I made sure to do so at the start of practice. I told him I knew he was slower, but that he didn’t tire, which was a good thing and so not to worry as much about the slow. Honestly, the slow will be a problem somewhat, as if a team is good at getting down the court I won’t be able to play Dante as he’d never make it down the court in time, but I think it will be workable. Anyway, so Dante decided to run the suicide, despite not having to. And he was SO proud when he did it under the allotted time. It was a great moment as it was entirely a self motivated thing, even a little bit of “I’ll show Coach that I can do it” and it was a genuine accomplishment. I loved it.
We ended practice with everyone giving a positive about someone from their 3 on 3 team. In this way far more kids got a positive stated about them. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: this is a nice group. The supportive atmosphere Steve and I had to work so hard at creating on our baseball team is almost completely there already with this group. I claim very little for this good vibe, considering it was there to begin with. Hopefully as we start to play games, and a pecking order is established, as who I think the better players are becomes apparent, the good vibrations and supportive atmosphere will continue. If that happens I will take some credit for making sure a good foundation was there. I handed out the doggie bag, which had the rest of our 9 offensive rules. They are:
• You move every time you make a pass
• You move to get open for a shot, to receive a pass, set a screen to get a teammate open
• Be patient and make simple passes
• Dribble should be used to: advance the ball out of the backcourt, make a drive to the basket, or open a passing lane
• All players are responsible for rebounding and defense.
• The ball should be swung quickly to make the defense shift
• One in every three passes should go to the post
• All players are responsible for keeping spacing and floor balance
• At least four passes before a shot (unless a player is open in the post)
I don’t actually expect them to know the rules yet, but by our first game they better, especially as they will have seen how we’re putting the rules together. It’s nice to know, though, that a couple of kids, such as Tom, will likely come with all 9 rules down pat like the back of their hands.
All in all, it was perhaps our best practice which after a couple of downers, was good all around.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
10/16 Practice Report
So last night was our first practice (editor’s note: I got through most of this post on Tuesday. Then the bell rang for class and I put this aside where it has languished until now) with the parents meeting having followed. I remain encouraged and upbeat.
When 6:00 rolled around only half the team was there. Gordie, Jack P, Jack M, Noah, and Lucas were the ones there on time. I waited two minutes extra, something I don’t believe in doing, and then started practice. Normally, I start practice with a sit down and overview of the practice, but I postponed this until later. I had been expecting Dante at 6:15, but didn’t know where the H’s or Tom were. Just as I had gotten the team on the line, Tom showed up, which was good.
We started off with doing our animal claws. I said I knew it was simple, but some people always had problems with it. The idea behind the animal claws is to show the correct position on how to hold the ball, something I wasn’t really taught until 8th grade. Several of them got into it (as I told them that they could of course make appropriate animal sounds). Right off the bat, I found that Jack P is one sharp kid. I would give an instruction and he would manage to honor the exact wording of the instruction while still doing something goofy. For now, I find it endearing and fun as it keeps me on my toes. When we did some more serious and challenging activities later, he didn’t do it either which tells me he likely knows how to judge the right situation for such antics.
After we practiced our animal claws we moved onto doing it with a ball. This whole thing took me a little longer than I would have liked because as I went around to each kid to see that they were doing it correctly. It is here that having another person would have helped tremendously, but oh well, what are you going to do?
We were wasting a lot of time at this point as well as they were not paying as much attention as I would have liked. Right as we finished doing the animal claws with the ball the H’s arrived. We then broke up into partners, with one group of three. They then practiced taking the ball from a another player. This is another way to work on grip and reinforces how to catch a pass or pull down a rebound.
I then asked them to form a horseshoe and no one was really paying attention. Gave them until a count of 10 to do it, which I counted out loud. Exactly 1 kid was sitting down. Couple others were mildly going towards it, a few others were trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, and about half the team was nearly oblivious, until we got to about 2, that they were supposed to be doing anything. And so it was time for the good ole wind sprint. Made them run to half court and back . The fastest two got to avoid doing it a second time. Didn’t have much of a problem the rest of practice with their paying attention.
After that we gathered around and I did my introduction. Talked about hustle. I asked the question “What is my job on the team?” Only a few players were willing to venture a guess. Clearly they were nervous, as it was a gimme question. We established that it was my role to coach them. I talked about what that meant. Talked about how as players their job was to be supportive of each other and to work on improving themselves. Introduced my system of permissions and suicides. If you hustle (or win certain team games) you earn a permission. If you aren’t paying attention, or aren’t hustling, you get a suicide. Every player starts off with a suicide so you have to end up in the positive for permissions to avoid running at least one. A couple of players had earned a permission already.
We then went into our “continuous motion” drill. Rather than just have the players run laps, I have them do something. For this continuous motion I basically had them do bounce and underhand passes, as well as doing the “steal the ball” while in motion. They started off sprinting, and despite my encouraging them to go at a jogging pace, flamed out after 7 minutes. I expect them to be able to do a lot more than that and soon. I’m hoping that they pace themselves better next time. We then had a water break.
We then did wrist flexes. There is the shooting wrist and the dribbling wrist. According to the Basketball Coach’s Bible, one of several books I’ve read, a few simple wrist drills can dramatically improve performance. As the drills are simple, I went for them.
We then talked about the importance of pivoting, before practicing that. Several of the players had problems, but improved as we practiced. I’m a strong believer in pivots (and cuts) and so they will get better if only through repetition.
Following this we did one inch shots. It forces players to square up correctly and puts the emphasis on the wrists and the legs. It is a hard drill at first and as expected the team struggled with it. However, it really does force players to develop better shooting form and so I will be staying with it. We divided up into three groups and went for into this.
We then went to one foot shots. This allows players to really focus on technique and so we went over proper shooting technique here. As the shot is incredibly shot, there should be a high percentage of shots made. The close shots let them focus on the technique. They take multiple shots from the left, center, and right. After we do this, we are at 7:15. I decide to run our game. Basically it is just a relay contest of the one foot shot. Fun was had. The winners (who I don’t remember) earned a permission.
We then did our suicides, with Brian, Jack P, Noah, Scott, and Tom not having to run any. Jack M ended up with 2 and Dante got a second when, for the millionth time it seems like, he did not touch the ground as he was running.
We then had our end of practice meeting. I complemented them on a good practice. And I gave them their “doggie bag”, which is basically just a homework assignment. For this assignment they were to practice one of three things each day between our Monday and Friday practice: pivoting, wrist flicks, and defensive stance taps. I had planned on getting to defensive taps, but it simply did not happen. Having them practice, however, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and so I didn’t worry too much about that being in there.
It was then time for the parents meeting which went well. I had 7 of the 10 show up. I knew 1 couldn’t make it. I have since talked to the other two so that’s good. The parents seemed to buy my philosophy well enough. So all-in-all a nice first practice.
When 6:00 rolled around only half the team was there. Gordie, Jack P, Jack M, Noah, and Lucas were the ones there on time. I waited two minutes extra, something I don’t believe in doing, and then started practice. Normally, I start practice with a sit down and overview of the practice, but I postponed this until later. I had been expecting Dante at 6:15, but didn’t know where the H’s or Tom were. Just as I had gotten the team on the line, Tom showed up, which was good.
We started off with doing our animal claws. I said I knew it was simple, but some people always had problems with it. The idea behind the animal claws is to show the correct position on how to hold the ball, something I wasn’t really taught until 8th grade. Several of them got into it (as I told them that they could of course make appropriate animal sounds). Right off the bat, I found that Jack P is one sharp kid. I would give an instruction and he would manage to honor the exact wording of the instruction while still doing something goofy. For now, I find it endearing and fun as it keeps me on my toes. When we did some more serious and challenging activities later, he didn’t do it either which tells me he likely knows how to judge the right situation for such antics.
After we practiced our animal claws we moved onto doing it with a ball. This whole thing took me a little longer than I would have liked because as I went around to each kid to see that they were doing it correctly. It is here that having another person would have helped tremendously, but oh well, what are you going to do?
We were wasting a lot of time at this point as well as they were not paying as much attention as I would have liked. Right as we finished doing the animal claws with the ball the H’s arrived. We then broke up into partners, with one group of three. They then practiced taking the ball from a another player. This is another way to work on grip and reinforces how to catch a pass or pull down a rebound.
I then asked them to form a horseshoe and no one was really paying attention. Gave them until a count of 10 to do it, which I counted out loud. Exactly 1 kid was sitting down. Couple others were mildly going towards it, a few others were trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, and about half the team was nearly oblivious, until we got to about 2, that they were supposed to be doing anything. And so it was time for the good ole wind sprint. Made them run to half court and back . The fastest two got to avoid doing it a second time. Didn’t have much of a problem the rest of practice with their paying attention.
After that we gathered around and I did my introduction. Talked about hustle. I asked the question “What is my job on the team?” Only a few players were willing to venture a guess. Clearly they were nervous, as it was a gimme question. We established that it was my role to coach them. I talked about what that meant. Talked about how as players their job was to be supportive of each other and to work on improving themselves. Introduced my system of permissions and suicides. If you hustle (or win certain team games) you earn a permission. If you aren’t paying attention, or aren’t hustling, you get a suicide. Every player starts off with a suicide so you have to end up in the positive for permissions to avoid running at least one. A couple of players had earned a permission already.
We then went into our “continuous motion” drill. Rather than just have the players run laps, I have them do something. For this continuous motion I basically had them do bounce and underhand passes, as well as doing the “steal the ball” while in motion. They started off sprinting, and despite my encouraging them to go at a jogging pace, flamed out after 7 minutes. I expect them to be able to do a lot more than that and soon. I’m hoping that they pace themselves better next time. We then had a water break.
We then did wrist flexes. There is the shooting wrist and the dribbling wrist. According to the Basketball Coach’s Bible, one of several books I’ve read, a few simple wrist drills can dramatically improve performance. As the drills are simple, I went for them.
We then talked about the importance of pivoting, before practicing that. Several of the players had problems, but improved as we practiced. I’m a strong believer in pivots (and cuts) and so they will get better if only through repetition.
Following this we did one inch shots. It forces players to square up correctly and puts the emphasis on the wrists and the legs. It is a hard drill at first and as expected the team struggled with it. However, it really does force players to develop better shooting form and so I will be staying with it. We divided up into three groups and went for into this.
We then went to one foot shots. This allows players to really focus on technique and so we went over proper shooting technique here. As the shot is incredibly shot, there should be a high percentage of shots made. The close shots let them focus on the technique. They take multiple shots from the left, center, and right. After we do this, we are at 7:15. I decide to run our game. Basically it is just a relay contest of the one foot shot. Fun was had. The winners (who I don’t remember) earned a permission.
We then did our suicides, with Brian, Jack P, Noah, Scott, and Tom not having to run any. Jack M ended up with 2 and Dante got a second when, for the millionth time it seems like, he did not touch the ground as he was running.
We then had our end of practice meeting. I complemented them on a good practice. And I gave them their “doggie bag”, which is basically just a homework assignment. For this assignment they were to practice one of three things each day between our Monday and Friday practice: pivoting, wrist flicks, and defensive stance taps. I had planned on getting to defensive taps, but it simply did not happen. Having them practice, however, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and so I didn’t worry too much about that being in there.
It was then time for the parents meeting which went well. I had 7 of the 10 show up. I knew 1 couldn’t make it. I have since talked to the other two so that’s good. The parents seemed to buy my philosophy well enough. So all-in-all a nice first practice.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Thursday morning I woke up and made the final cut, Cameron. When I was telling the story to a friend, explaining how I took Gordie he quipped “So your receiving corp in football would be TO and Randy Moss?” Have to admit that stung a little. I did retort that taking Cameron was the equivalent of putting in Kerry Collins in as your QB “nice enough, but do you really want Kerry Collins?”
So basically right now we’re in a month long hiatus. My first practice is scheduled for October 23. With the Monday/Wednesday combination being bad news for Dante, and my own having commitments on Wednesdays I looked for a different day of the week for practices and came up with… Friday. Can’t wait to spend 6-7:30 on Fridays in a gym. Fortunately, after 5 weeks we can switch to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, which runs through the middle of March, making the season about 5 months long all together (and making the 10 weeks of Baseball seem like a sprint).
With the dynasty going on hold, essentially, for a month, though I will post any updates as they might happen, I thought it would be good to try and introduce the players. I’ve talked about many of these players already but let’s look at the Kid Coach's 2005-2006 4th Grade Travel Team.
I’d debated a few different ways of organizing this list. I’ve decided that I’m going to go by offensive position and, with-in position, skill, as I see it now. All players will be expected to learn 2 positions eventually as with only 10 players I need a good deal of flexibility in the players I can put on the court, especially for that game that’ll inevitably happen in February where one kid is sick, another has a twisted ankle, and a third is in Vail for the weekend.
Before I break it down by skill let me explain, roughly, what each of the responsibilities will be for each player in the offensive I am working on finalizing. This obviously could change as I work to break down what I want to run into a level that I know can be well taught to and learned by 4th graders.
1 Spot – Your traditional ball handler. He is going to be the player who’ll normally take the ball up the court. Will have primary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks, but depending on where in the offense we are, this could fall to the 2 or 3 player as well.
2 Spot – Stays primarily on the perimeter, though he will sometimes penetrate. Will often be the first look for the 1 player or else setup the first look (via screen). Has secondary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks.
3 Spot – In many ways the trickiest spot in the offense to play. Has both perimeter and post responsibilities, though because of the talent will be on the perimeter more than the post. Along with the 2 will be the first look for a pass from the 1.
4 Spot – Is primarily involved in post play, though not exclusively. He will come out of the post often either to help screen or in order to clear space for the 3 or 5. Is the least likely to shoot the ball.
5 Spot – Your traditional center. Primarily in the post. Is almost always responsible for rebounding.
You will notice that I've written about perimeter play. This is a tad misleading as while they often do their work there, I do not really want my team shooting, for the most part, beyond 10 feet. This means that we’re using the outside to create space/opportunities to work it inside. I expect to see a lot of zone so we’ll be working on zone busting skills such as quick (and skip) passes. Also important will be the concept of screening to get someone the ball not for someone with the ball.
And without further ado, this time for real, let me present my 2006-2007 4th Grade Travel Basketball Team. An asterisk means that if I fielded a basketball team tomorrow they would be starting.
½
*Noah (primary 2) Obviously positions are still fluid at this point. I have slotted Noah here tentatively because of his skills, but his size might find him in more of a 2/3 role before things are all said and done especially as we have, as expected, a surplus of guards. As mentioned before, I like his penetration skills, which shows his ability to dribble so he could even end up finding himself playing more of a 1. While his shooting form might not be the prettiest, he is accurate. During the scrimmage I said that the next time he drove in he should find a team mate to pass it to and he did exactly that suggesting he is willing to implement instruction. He did a few other things, such as mostly pay attention, that suggest he will be teachable (or in this case coachable).
Jack M (primary 1) First let me say there is a definite chance that I have the Jacks backwards. I think I have it straight, but am not sure. Anyhow, short Jack has a nice dribble and can do it with both hands. He is inconsistent, which is actually a complement at this age, at dribbling with his head up. He’s a pretty scrawny kid. Has an average attention span for a 4th grade boy, which is to say not a whole lot.
Gordie (primary 1) Gordie is a small kid. However, he’s got a good shot and better range than some of the kids taller than him. I’ve discussed him pretty indepth in my last post so not a whole lot to add here. I will just stress that the negatives that I talked about before could really impact his role on this team.
Tom (primary 2) It might seem weird that he is ranked below Gordie, who was the last player to make the team, but of course it wasn’t Gordie’s skills holding him back. I was really hoping Tom would have been be able to play a 3 for us, but he’s not there yet and I’m not sure that trying to make him into a forward, even a soft forward, is the best use of his practice time.
2/3
*Brian (primary 2) Brian is a very solid player all around. Not quite as solid is his personality. On more than one occasion he made a negative comment during tryouts. Something like that I am quite confident of my ability to stomp out. I simply don’t tolerate it. In fact, I will likely be opening our first practice with my saying something to the effect of “I’m the coach and I’m here to help you grow and to help you win. Your job as players are to listen to me and to support your teammates>” Or something like that. Anyhow, Brian is tentatively slotted as a 2/3, as I think we have some better dribblers than him, though he does have a good crossover.
3/4
*Jack P (primary 3) The more I see of him the more he impresses. He did well in our lightening game, I believe, and seems pretty solid all around. I also really liked his attitude which goes well with his, seemingly, easy going nature. I hesitate to comment too much about kid’s personalities as for the most part they’ll be different creatures in a tryout situation, what with the nerves, than during the course of a basketball season.
Scott (primary 3) The least talented of the triplets, though still pretty darn good, he seems like he’ll be well suited to these positions. Not a whole lot to comment here.
4/5
*Dante (primary 5): Again I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot. I will say that I was tempted to inquire about the soccer playing backgrounds of my players and feel particularly pleased to learn that someone I thought highly of is also a competitive soccer player as I feel good soccer players often can easily be turned into good basketball players.
Lucas (primary 5): Poor Lucas seemed somewhat surprised that I saw him as a forward/center. He seems like a real good kid. Here’s another kid who I see a fair amount of potential in and hope to see him really grow as the season progresses.
???
*David I’m not sure where to place him. I wished he had been at the 3rd day of tryouts since I think I’d have gotten a better grasp. And perhaps I am overstating his skills, but then again maybe I’m not. He’s likely going to be our point guard, because of his ball handling skills, but he could end up really at any of the positions 1-4, though realistically 4 is not likely going to be where he’d end up on offense.
I will try and post as I come up with firmer plans for things, but in all likelihood, as mentioned before, the dynasty is on a brief hiatus until practices start in October.
So basically right now we’re in a month long hiatus. My first practice is scheduled for October 23. With the Monday/Wednesday combination being bad news for Dante, and my own having commitments on Wednesdays I looked for a different day of the week for practices and came up with… Friday. Can’t wait to spend 6-7:30 on Fridays in a gym. Fortunately, after 5 weeks we can switch to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, which runs through the middle of March, making the season about 5 months long all together (and making the 10 weeks of Baseball seem like a sprint).
With the dynasty going on hold, essentially, for a month, though I will post any updates as they might happen, I thought it would be good to try and introduce the players. I’ve talked about many of these players already but let’s look at the Kid Coach's 2005-2006 4th Grade Travel Team.
I’d debated a few different ways of organizing this list. I’ve decided that I’m going to go by offensive position and, with-in position, skill, as I see it now. All players will be expected to learn 2 positions eventually as with only 10 players I need a good deal of flexibility in the players I can put on the court, especially for that game that’ll inevitably happen in February where one kid is sick, another has a twisted ankle, and a third is in Vail for the weekend.
Before I break it down by skill let me explain, roughly, what each of the responsibilities will be for each player in the offensive I am working on finalizing. This obviously could change as I work to break down what I want to run into a level that I know can be well taught to and learned by 4th graders.
1 Spot – Your traditional ball handler. He is going to be the player who’ll normally take the ball up the court. Will have primary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks, but depending on where in the offense we are, this could fall to the 2 or 3 player as well.
2 Spot – Stays primarily on the perimeter, though he will sometimes penetrate. Will often be the first look for the 1 player or else setup the first look (via screen). Has secondary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks.
3 Spot – In many ways the trickiest spot in the offense to play. Has both perimeter and post responsibilities, though because of the talent will be on the perimeter more than the post. Along with the 2 will be the first look for a pass from the 1.
4 Spot – Is primarily involved in post play, though not exclusively. He will come out of the post often either to help screen or in order to clear space for the 3 or 5. Is the least likely to shoot the ball.
5 Spot – Your traditional center. Primarily in the post. Is almost always responsible for rebounding.
You will notice that I've written about perimeter play. This is a tad misleading as while they often do their work there, I do not really want my team shooting, for the most part, beyond 10 feet. This means that we’re using the outside to create space/opportunities to work it inside. I expect to see a lot of zone so we’ll be working on zone busting skills such as quick (and skip) passes. Also important will be the concept of screening to get someone the ball not for someone with the ball.
And without further ado, this time for real, let me present my 2006-2007 4th Grade Travel Basketball Team. An asterisk means that if I fielded a basketball team tomorrow they would be starting.
½
*Noah (primary 2) Obviously positions are still fluid at this point. I have slotted Noah here tentatively because of his skills, but his size might find him in more of a 2/3 role before things are all said and done especially as we have, as expected, a surplus of guards. As mentioned before, I like his penetration skills, which shows his ability to dribble so he could even end up finding himself playing more of a 1. While his shooting form might not be the prettiest, he is accurate. During the scrimmage I said that the next time he drove in he should find a team mate to pass it to and he did exactly that suggesting he is willing to implement instruction. He did a few other things, such as mostly pay attention, that suggest he will be teachable (or in this case coachable).
Jack M (primary 1) First let me say there is a definite chance that I have the Jacks backwards. I think I have it straight, but am not sure. Anyhow, short Jack has a nice dribble and can do it with both hands. He is inconsistent, which is actually a complement at this age, at dribbling with his head up. He’s a pretty scrawny kid. Has an average attention span for a 4th grade boy, which is to say not a whole lot.
Gordie (primary 1) Gordie is a small kid. However, he’s got a good shot and better range than some of the kids taller than him. I’ve discussed him pretty indepth in my last post so not a whole lot to add here. I will just stress that the negatives that I talked about before could really impact his role on this team.
Tom (primary 2) It might seem weird that he is ranked below Gordie, who was the last player to make the team, but of course it wasn’t Gordie’s skills holding him back. I was really hoping Tom would have been be able to play a 3 for us, but he’s not there yet and I’m not sure that trying to make him into a forward, even a soft forward, is the best use of his practice time.
2/3
*Brian (primary 2) Brian is a very solid player all around. Not quite as solid is his personality. On more than one occasion he made a negative comment during tryouts. Something like that I am quite confident of my ability to stomp out. I simply don’t tolerate it. In fact, I will likely be opening our first practice with my saying something to the effect of “I’m the coach and I’m here to help you grow and to help you win. Your job as players are to listen to me and to support your teammates>” Or something like that. Anyhow, Brian is tentatively slotted as a 2/3, as I think we have some better dribblers than him, though he does have a good crossover.
3/4
*Jack P (primary 3) The more I see of him the more he impresses. He did well in our lightening game, I believe, and seems pretty solid all around. I also really liked his attitude which goes well with his, seemingly, easy going nature. I hesitate to comment too much about kid’s personalities as for the most part they’ll be different creatures in a tryout situation, what with the nerves, than during the course of a basketball season.
Scott (primary 3) The least talented of the triplets, though still pretty darn good, he seems like he’ll be well suited to these positions. Not a whole lot to comment here.
4/5
*Dante (primary 5): Again I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot. I will say that I was tempted to inquire about the soccer playing backgrounds of my players and feel particularly pleased to learn that someone I thought highly of is also a competitive soccer player as I feel good soccer players often can easily be turned into good basketball players.
Lucas (primary 5): Poor Lucas seemed somewhat surprised that I saw him as a forward/center. He seems like a real good kid. Here’s another kid who I see a fair amount of potential in and hope to see him really grow as the season progresses.
???
*David I’m not sure where to place him. I wished he had been at the 3rd day of tryouts since I think I’d have gotten a better grasp. And perhaps I am overstating his skills, but then again maybe I’m not. He’s likely going to be our point guard, because of his ball handling skills, but he could end up really at any of the positions 1-4, though realistically 4 is not likely going to be where he’d end up on offense.
I will try and post as I come up with firmer plans for things, but in all likelihood, as mentioned before, the dynasty is on a brief hiatus until practices start in October.
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