Coaching Toolblog

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. The Coaching Toolbox coaching staff started this post yesterday by writing about the poor handoff exchange that cost the Spurs a turnover and 2 points in Tuesday night's playoff game. You might want to check out yesterday's post to help put today's in a little better context. Your level of basketball might not play with a shot clock, but there are 3 shot clocks in high school basketball-the end of each quarter-where it is essential that your players execute in the manner you want them to. Then, there is the end of game clock management scenario to deal with. Regardless of which of those two scenarios you wish to apply it to, Kobe Bryant's rushed shot at the end of the game that ran no time off of the game clock was a huge mistake. In just a few seconds, he took a game that was almost impossible to lose and turned it into a game of chance for the Lakers. If Kobe even runs 2 more seconds off of the clock before taking his bad shot, the controversial no call at the end isn't even an issue. To me, the lesson is that we all must teach and drill and drill even the best and most experienced basketball players on clock management because it takes a great deal of talent to make up for poor clock management. As Coach Bob Knight says, "In basketball, the mental is to the physical as four is to one." Clock management is a huge part of the mental game. The third thing we took from the game is that you cannot put faith in the officials to make calls (even if they are obvious) in tight situations. We must coach our players to have a mindset to put the ball in the basket at the end of the game and not to rely on a foul call. As your players leave the huddle to line up for that last second play, they must be of the determined mindset that they are going to score even if the oncourt action resembles that old kids game of "scrubs and rummies" where there are no fouls. Our belief is that if the players expect a foul call, they are setting themselves up for failure. If they believe that they are going to be tough enough to score regardless of contact, they have no guarantee of succeeding, but they at least give themselves a chance. In closing, this is not a criticism of any players, coaches, or officials involved. They are all at the top of their professions and unless we have been there, we have no idea of what it is like. My purpose in writing yesterday and today's posts is to emphasize that we can be proactive and hopefully have a better mindset and purpose when we face the same situations at our levels of competition. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The coaches at the Coaching Toolbox feel that more basketball games are lost than won at every level. This is especially true when the competing teams talent level is close, as it is in the NBA playoffs. In those cases, our belief is that more teams make bad plays to lose then teams make good plays to win. We do not promote a "playing not to lose" mindset, but rather a "playing not to make plays that cause us to lose"--there is a huge difference.

This post is not meant to criticize the NBA players or NBA basketball coaches. They are the best in the world and compete on a level that most of us will never ascend to. The purpose is to show that even Gregg Popovich and Phil Jackson's players make mistakes at crucial times, so no matter how experienced the basketball players we work with are at our levels, they need constant teaching and coaching to perform at their best when the pressure is on.

I will admit that I was working as the game was being played and did not catch everything, but I did see a few mistakes that our players can learn from.

The handoff from Oberto to Ginobili was executed improperly. Again, they are going at an incredibly rapid pace and have Kobe Bryant defending them, but the fact is that the player handing the ball must not push it into the receivers hands (even if those hands belong to Manu Ginobili). The proper way for a handoff to be executed is for the player holding the ball to protect it and to allow the player receiving the ball to take it from his or her hands.

The resulting turnover was a dunk for Bryant that really buried the Spurs chances of winning. That is until Bryant handed them an opportunity to get back in the game by taking a shot that should not have been taken. We will touch on that in tomorrow's post.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Since we at the Coaching Toolbox have only been posting since March 1, we still have many many areas that we want to delve into. One of those things we want to add to over the summer is our defensive pages. As you might have guessed if you have spent any time going into our defensive postings on the site, we coached and prefer the pack line pressure defense. One of the basketball quotes that influenced our thinking was from Dick Bennett, when he stated "When you try to stop everything, you stop nothing." The second statement that greatly impacted our thinking was that "You can only do two of the three from the group of "denying, helping, and recovering." Coach Bennett states that he can document statistically (and we can too from our statistical experiences) that when you work hard and aim to deny perimeter passes that the three point percentage that you allow increases. It is due to the fact that when a defender is denying and then moves to help on a dribbler or a post entry pass, the momentum is going away from the player he or she is guarding and it is next to impossible to stop that momentum and then redirect it back to their defensive assignment. If you are "out athleticed" certainly playing a pack line pressure defense to shorten the game makes a great deal of sense. We believe that even if you are blessed with better athletes than your opponent, it still makes sense to play the pack line. Visit the Coaching Toolbox for more information that we have collected to implement a pack line pressure defense in your program. Our defensive beliefs might help you to begin thinking about what type of defense will make your program a success. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. We have summer written our "workout" plans and goals here at the Coaching Toolbox, just like we are encouraging basketball players and basketball coaches to have as well. We hope that we can all work together and help each other to reach our goals. We are busy completing writing our goals for the month of June and are looking forward to each of you being a part of those goals with us. Certainly, we are going to continue with everything that we have been doing, and are looking to add one more way for our visitors to contribute ideas. We have read and responded to all of the e-mails that you have sent with suggestions, have improved the quantity of our blog posts and appreciate the comments that you have left. One goal for June is to double the number of guest contributions that we are able to post, so if you have anything to contribute, it would be great to hear from you. We want to continue to work at building a community of basketball coaches and basketball players who are dedicated to sharing basketball ideas. We have had some requests for more information in the form of e-books and we are currently working on that project. We will have our first finished product, ideas for improving basketball practice, ready early in June. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. In my post earlier this week, I mentioned the article at the Coaching Toolbox dealing with Momentum Killers and Momentum Getters. Our feeling is that mental toughness plays a big part in dealing with the ebb and flow of the momentum of a basketball game. The work that Steve Siebold has assembled is one of the best resources for ideas on developing and coaching mental toughness. I believe that it is critical for any coach to study and work at improving mentally toughness in order to nurture it in his or her players. As one of my high school English teachers once stated; You be must be what you is Because if you be what you ain't You ain't what you is. We can only teach intangibles to the degree that we possess them. In a roundabout way, I am trying to say is that when you listen to the teleseminar interview with Steve Siebold, I hope that you get some good information that you feel will help you as a coach (and a person) to grow in your understanding and application of his mental toughness principles. I have learned a great deal from his books and blog and I am glad to be able to have the this blog and our website to share with all of you what I feel is a great resource for mental toughness. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Just a quick announcement before today's post, we now have a new basketball quotes feature with  different basketball quotes that are posted daily at the top of the home page at the Coaching Toolbox. At the end of the day, we place it in our filing cabinet so that it and several other great basketball quotes will be there for future reference. The NBA playoffs are inspiring with all kinds of food for thought about ideas that can be applied to all levels of basketball. The homecourt edge has been huge this year (as it is every year), yet the Spurs have been successful enough away from home to put away the Suns quickly and then to outlast the Hornets. It is our opinion that the Spurs understand what factors lead to and take away from momentum in a basketball game. Then to close the deal, you must have the basketball skills to make the plays that you know need to be made. You hear the term basketball IQ being thrown out by several of the announcers and we feel that factor combined with mental toughness (MT for the purposes of our equation). We feel that a part of basketball IQ is understanding what we have called Momentum Killers and Momentum Getters and that they are a major factor in winning on the road. Click the link to see our list and a brief explanation of each one. This coming Friday, Mental Toughness Coach and Author Steve Siebold will be our guest in teleseminar #4 and will provide some ideas on developing and applying mental toughness. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. Whether you are a player interested in improving at shooting a basketball, or a coach looking to improve your collection of basketball shooting drills, The Coaching Toolbox has a great resource for you. The third interview in our teleseminar series is with Jay Wolf, the inventor of the Star Shooter Strap. The interview is about 30 minutes long and Jay gives some basketball shooting tips such as holding your follow through, how to line up your entire body to get the ball straight, what you can do to correct a shot that misses left or right, and several other ideas that will help anyone to improve their shooting. One of the areas that Coach Wolf stresses during the interview is the concept of practicing at a game pace. The Coaching Toolbox has a series of basketball workouts that force you to go at a game pace. In our teleseminar archives, we have 10 minute interviews with Eddie Enriquez, a strength and agility trainer, and Ed Schilling, a former NBA assistant coach whose topic is basketball workouts for point guards. Our next interview will be posted this coming Friday, May 19 and is with Steve Siebold, a best selling author and mental toughness coach for many world class athletes and several fortune 500 executives. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

With the NBA playoffs going on, the coaches at the Coaching Toolbox think there are a lot of things that both basketball players and coaches can take from the games--in addition to the entertainment value. Yesterday we offered some ideas for players to benefit from watching the games. Today, we have the following ideas for basketball coaches to benefit from the playoffs.

1. Set basketball plays--granted many of them involve ball screens, but you can see a variety of other sets that might stimulate your thinking about basketball plays that you can run with your team.
2. Defend the ball screen--They have several ways that the two players involved defend the ball screens to study, not just how they do it on the ball, but how they rotate to cover the open players. It also can give you some insights as to how to design and adjust your ball screen basketball plays depending upon how your opponents might defend them.
3. Defensive rotations and help the helper--not just for the ball screen basketball plays, but on all plays where there is a trap or some help that takes place.
4. Examples of lack of poise to use as teaching points with all of your players, whether it is a high school varsity or a summer youth camp. We feel that attitude is something that must be stressed every day and the more ways to teach and examples you use, the better the chance of the message sticking.

We like to set our VCR in case there is something we see that we want to see again. Enjoy the games and if you can pick up an idea or two for your team, even better! The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. With schools letting out for the summer, we wanted to post our thoughts from The Coaching Toolbox as to the best use of the summer for basketball coaches and players. We realize that both coaches and players have a lot going on in the summer besides basketball, whether or not the coach is a teacher. Coaches have job and personal obligations and most importantly, more time for family time. Players may have other sports, jobs, and need a lot of time just to enjoy themselves with family and friends while having a break from school. In order to maximize the fleeting amount of time available, it is important for both groups to have a plan and some goals in all areas of life heading into the summer with specific time blocked off for the best way to improve as a player--doing individual skill development workouts. Twenty-five days during the summer with a forty minute basketball workout spent intensely working on improving individual skills is a reasonable goal and will make a huge difference in a player's performance next season. Forty minutes of hard and smart work is much more productive than hours of time spent hanging out in the gym. Depending on what your offseason rules allow, we would make skills work the number one priority for use of gym time over camps, leagues, and scrimmages. If you are a select team coach, spend the first 40 minutes of your practice working on drills that improve individual skills. It will help the performance of your team and will help the participants to improve more than anything else you can do. Five on five games are more fun, but the opportunity to improve comes from the hundreds of shots and dribbling repetitions that a player can get in an individual development workout. A player may touch the ball for a few minutes in a game or scrimmage and, if they are fortunate, get off between five and ten shot attempts. After the player spends ten to fifteen minutes on technique, the rest of the workout should be done at a game pace so that those extra shots are as valuable as shots taken in games. Players and coaches, make it a goal do 25 Individual development workouts (for everyone on your team if you are a coach) between the day school lets out and the day it starts next fall--at least it used to start in the fall! As the saying goes, plan your work, then work your plan, and you will see the benefits next basketball season! The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players. The Coaching Toolbox is very fortunate that Ed Schilling, former head mens' basketball coach at Wright State University, and an assistant at UMass, Memphis, and with the New Jersey Nets of the NBA did a 14 minute interview with us for our teleseminar series. The interview is live and you can access it here. Coach Schilling currently is the Executive Director for Champions Academy, which is dedicated to improving the individual skills of basketball players through individual development workouts. He trained four 2007 NBA first round draft choices and is currently working with several players who project to be first rounders in 2008! Coach Schillings topic is individual development for point guards. As a player, Ed set single game, season, and career assist records at Miami of Ohio. As a coach, he developed many outstanding point guards. One of his recent grads of Champions Academy is lottery pick and point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, Mike Conley. Coach also worked with Greg Oden and Carl Landry, so his expertise is not limited to perimeter players. Our interview is 14 minutes long. (By the way, we have decided that is not long enough, so we are expanding their length to be able to provide our visitors with more of the great information that our guests are providing us with.) During the short time that he has, Coach Schilling covers the topics of developing confidence and skills, creating space with the basketball, and how to utilize the moves that the point guard develops to help him or her "run the show." We also have some links to Instructional tapes and DVDs that Coach has produced. Click here to listen to the interview. Our next interview is scheduled to launch on May 19 and is with Jay Wolf who designed the Star Shooter and is a nationally recognized expert on shooting instruction. The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.