This article was written by Steve Smiley when he was an assistant coach to Don Meyer at Northern State University.  Steve is currently the head coach at Sheridan College.

1. Don’t play hard: You can have the most talented team in the world, you can have the most intelligent team in the world, but if your team doesn’t play hard, there is no chance that they will be successful over the course of time. You must, before all else, establish and demand that your players play hard. It must be your identity.

2. Don’t play smart: After establishing that your team plays hard, you must then teach your players how to play smart. They must have a high “basketball I.Q.” Your players must learn and buy into the system that you teach and they must learn technique. At Northern, we say, “You can have all the intensity of a mad dog in a meat house, but without technique, you’ll end up with a bullet between the eyes.” Your players must learn to be students of the game. We stress the importance of player notebooks and taking notes.

3. Don’t play together: Finally, after teaching your players to play hard and smart, your players must then learn how to play together. Your team will have a very difficult time if there isn’t unity among the troops.

Key Phrase = “Play Hard, Play Smart, Play Together.”

4. Don’t have a delay game: If your team is fortunate enough to get a lead late in the game, you must have some type of delay game. While that doesn’t mean that you become passive and are afraid to shoot, that does mean that you may have restrictions such as; the only shot is a wide-open lay-up, minimum number of passes before shooting is 5, etc. Teams that don’t have a delay game have the tendency to lose big games.

5. Have no delay game defense: There will be times when you are losing and the opponent is running a delay game to milk the clock. If and when that is the case, you must have a secondary defense that will force the offense to speed up and hopefully take bad shots, so your team can preserve the clock. That might mean you have a press defense, or a trapping zone defense, but whatever the case, you must find ways to speed up the game and give yourself more possessions and opportunities to score.

6. No comeback game: Your team won’t always have a ten-point lead late in the game. There will undoubtedly be times when your team is going to be losing and your players have to know how to speed up the game to get more possessions and thus, more opportunities to come back. First of all, do you have “quick-hitters” in place; set plays that will result in a good look at the basket in a minimal amount of time? Also, do you have substitution patterns in place to best maximize your talent when you are losing? For example, subbing in the appropriate players on a defensive possession that will give you the best chance to stop the other team, and during dead balls, subbing in shooters on offensive possessions if you need to get 3-pointers to get back in the game. In addition, when your team is shooting a free throw, do you have players ready to check in if the player makes the second free throw, which will stop the clock and set up your defense (a timeout without using a timeout)? Being prepared for situations where your team is losing late in the game and having a plan of action ready is vital to a successful program.

7. Don’t simplify the game: There is a lot of power and truth in the saying, “Simplicity is Complicated.” You must keep the game simple for your players. If they have to think too much, they won’t be able to react. A good quote is “the more they think, the slower their feet get.” A great coach teaches his or her players a few simple principles from which the program is known by, and then, that coach lets the players play the game.

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A study of 10,000 games high school, college, NBA found that in 96% of the games in the study, you can tell when to start your catch up game–that is taking quicker shots and fouling by using this formula:

1. Round the time up to the next minute.
2. Double the number of minutes  and it turns to points rather than minutes.
3. Add one point.
4. The fourth factor is that the other team has the ball.

For example: 1:22 to go in the game.

1. Round up the time  (1:22 rounds up to 2 minutes).
2. Double 2 minutes, so it becomes 4 points).
3. Add one point makes 5 points.
4. If the other team has the ball and you are behind by five or more points, then you must play in your catch up mode.

The key to being able to execute catching up, or anything in a game, is to:

1. Teach the players exactly what you want them to do.
2. Rehearse it several times in your situations segment.

This idea came from Coach Ed Schilling during one of our Coaches Academy monthly webinars. The site is a partnership with Coach Ed Schilling (former NBA Assistant and men’s D1 Head Coach), April (McDivitt) Foster (Former WNBA Player and women’s D1 Assistant Coach), Josh Stinson (Seattle area High School Coach and author of www.perfectpractice.net), and myself.

We offer a 30 day risk-free trial and you can find out more at this link: http://coachesacademy.net/casales/

Find a way to chart and reward players for the things you emphasize in your system of play. There are kits available with signs and stickers for players lockers, but it is very easy to make your own as well.

As you watch the video of your games it is easy to chart block out percentage for each player, deflections, going to offensive rebound position, or anything else that is vital to winning but that often goes unnoticed and not rewarded. Come up with a system to give players who meet your standards a visible symbol on their locker or on a bulletin board in the locker room.

For example, anyone with 90% blockouts will receive a sticker on their board. It can be anything or several things that you feel are important and since you are emphasizing it, that area will improve.

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We use the traditional coach grabbing his arm at the end of a gameto signal that we want to take  an “intentional unintentional foul.” We verbally say “ball” to communicate to our players to get the ball (and a clean foul in the process of making a play on the ball is acceptable), rather than saying “foul” which is going to be called intentional when the official hears you.

We teach our players in practice that we are not fouling, but that we are going to make a clean and aggressive play to take the ball away from the ballhandler.  We either want them to take the basketball or an get called for an unintentional foul.  There have been times when we have come up with the ball and not been called for a foul.  The situations we practice doing this are at the end of the first half with “fouls to give” before entering the bonus, “fouls to give” at the end of the game, needing to stop the clock to catch up at the end of the game, and fouling with three point lead to keep the opponent from taking a three point shot.  I do not believe in fouling just to foul when we have fouls to give.  We use them to be more aggressive in going for rebounds or loose balls and if we are beaten and are not able to get help.

Here is the link to the blog entry on: Fouling at the End to Preserve a Three Point Lead.

We do our best to instill in our players this mindset that our mission is to take the ball and if we get a foul called in the process it is okay because that stops the clock and forces the opponent to shoot free throws.  Hopefully, this “get the ball” mindset rather than the “foul” mindset has saved us a couple of intentional fouls through the years.

We also have a signal to call off our “ball call” by raising an open hand. We use this if we have caught up and no longer need to foul because hopefully if that is the case, the gym is too load for verbal communication. We don’t take it for granted that the players know the situation or the score. Even if you are tied and you have been fouling, that is no reason to believe that the players know the situation and will react as you want them to.

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As you probably know, Coach Bob Knight ran motion offense, so he had some flexibility as to where to put his players on offense.  I once heard him speak at a clinic about his zone offense.

One of his principles was that in his scouting against a team that played a lot of zone defense, he would decide which of the defenders in their zone defense was the weakest.  He then played his best offensive players in the area where they were most likely to be guarded by the opponent’s weakest defender.

I believe that even if you run a set or pattern zone attack, it is helpful to have your best players learn a variety of spots within that system in order to be able to have some versatility as to where you play them and are then able to adjust their spots in a game to take advantage of the weaknesses in the opponent’s zone defense.

Another scenario to think about putting a good offensive player in a specific spot against a zone is if one of the zone defenders is in foul trouble.  Even if a team goes to a zone if it gets in foul trouble, you can still create matchups that you want by placing your offensive players where you want them.  I think it is important not to get away from what you do best in your offense, but looking to create matchups against a zone is something to think about as you implement whatever you do to attack a zone.

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One of our clock management rules at the end of a game where we are behind is that if we gain possession at the opponent’s end with under three seconds to go and the clock is running, we call timeout immediately.  That includes after an opponent’s basket where they tie the game or take the lead. We don’t want the player who gets the ball to look at the clock, so if the player is in doubt as to how much time remains, we want them to call timeout and are not concerned if there is more time than three seconds remaining.

For instance, if there is six seconds and an open court, some players can score in that amount of time, but it the player is in doubt as to whether or not we can get a good shot in transition, we want them to call the timeout immediately.  If the ball goes through the basket, we want all players on the floor (and the coach on the bench) yelling “timeout”, making the timeout sign and moving toward the officials.

We then like to throw to half court and call timeout to set up our last second play.  For this reason, we save our timeouts until the end of the game.  I will send out a link to our favorite half court inbound play tomorrow.

If we are inbounding the ball and have to go full court without a timeout and are tied or down one or two, we like to have a play to throw the ball inside our three point arc.  The play varies depending on our personnel year to year, but we feel that if you throw the ball inside the arc, good things will happen.  We feel that more good things are likely to happen if you can throw the ball closer to the basket as opposed to throwing it in and then taking a three-quarters or half-court heave.  If you do throw long and the ball is knocked loose, it is much more dangerous to your opponent if the ball is knocked loose at your basket than at half court.

Here is an example of how throwing the ball long give you a chance, even if the defense deflect the pass.  Brownsburg (Indiana) High School trailed by one with 2.1 seconds to go in the 4A state championship last March.  By throwing the ball long, the caught a break.  In my opinion, they made their own break by being smart enough to throw the ball long rather than settle for a heave.

End of Game Long Pass

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There are different ways of measuring possessions. Some coaches count each shot or turnover as the end of a possession, so if you get two offensive rebounds then that counts as two extra possessions. The system that has worked best for us is that a new possession only starts when the ball changes hands from one team to the other, so even if there are five consecutive offensive rebounds, it counts as the same possession because the same team has the ball.

Rebounding will be another discussion, but my belief is that it is very important to get the last shot of the first three quarters in high school and for middle school teams to learn the importance of that skill as well. If you can get the last shot of the first three quarters, then depending on who has the ball to start each quarter, at best you can get three more possessions than your opponent, and at worst, you each have the same number of possessions if they have the ball at the start of each quarter.

Potentially that is an 18 point swing for nine points you can get and nine points your opponent will not get. Even if the shots are twos, a 12 point swing is still huge.

It is not realistic to think that you are going to hit a three to end each quarter, but I have been involved in two varsity games where our one team did hit a three to end each quarter. Nine points made a huge difference in both games, as they will in most games. Since they were the last shots of each quarter, the other team did not have a chance to respond. My belief is that scoring runs, scoring droughts, and momentum play a big role in basketball. Taking the last shot and keeping the opponent from taking the last shot play huge roles in those three areas.

We practice the going for the last shot in practice every day by running the last 30 seconds of drill and scrimmage work like a game. 30 seconds is normally when we set as the automatic time that we begin to hold for the last shot. Our rule is that we will take an uncontested layup with less than 30 seconds, but nothing else. We have had years, depending on our talent relative to our opponents and our depth, where we have started to hold at 20 seconds, and have gone as much as starting at 45 seconds. For middle school, I think 15-20 seconds is the appropriate depending on what your players can do.

I believe it is better to just have an automatic time to hold for the last shot that your players have been drilled on rather than getting up and screaming “One shot!” You can continue to run your regular offense and just shot fake when there is a shot that you normally would take. Again, we will take a wide open layup under 30 seconds and then have confidence in our defense to get a stop . Other than that, we feel that the number of possessions is more important than shooting a 15 foot jump shot or even a wide open three point shot if it would allow the other team to have a chance to score.

The fourth quarter, we determine how we play the end depending on whether we are ahead or behind. If we are ahead, then we are going to hold to shoot free throws and will still take wide open, uncontested layups. If we are behind, we hope that we can get off at least three good shots in the last 30 seconds through using our banked timeouts and fouling to stop the clock.

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Coaching at the end of a tight basketball game is more of an art than a science. But, I feel better as a coach having gone through as many scenarios in my mind and come up with how I am going to handle them as I possibly can. I think teams will be more successful in tight games if your players have practiced various end of game situations and know how you, as their coach, will react to them. It is often difficult to communicate at the end of the game when the gym is loud and you are out of or rationing your timeouts, so it is essential that your players are sure about the strategy in advance.

Let’s take the case where a team is up eight points with two minutes to go in the game. Certainly, there are hundreds of time and score situations that we could examine. For the sake of brevity, I am going to use the up 8/2:00 to go in this article. The intentions of this article are: To motivate basketball coaches to consider as many similar scenarios as you can imagine and how you will handle them as they come up in a game, and to encourage you teach your philosophy to your players through repetition in practice.

I have heard, probably said it without realizing it, and disagree with telling a team, “We’re up eight points with two minutes remaining in the game; we don’t need to score.” My thought is that in the vast majority of end of game cases, you will still need to score to win. Your opponent will be more than capable of scoring eight or more points in two minutes, so you are going to need to score to win.

The rule I follow is this: If the regular rotation players are still in the game, then we still need to be prepared to score to win the game. If you have cleared the bench and are ahead, then you are making the statement, “We don’t need to score again to win,” without saying it.

What coaches really need to say at the end of the game when milking a lead and the clock is:

“We want to control the types of shots that we take to get the additional points we will need to win this game. We don’t want to take quick shots, unless they are free throws after a quick foul. We don’t want to take outside shots. The shots that have the best chance of going in are lay-ups and free throws, so let’s make sure that those are all that we shoot.”

Since that is often hard to communicate in a gym that is up for grabs in a tight game and uses too much time in a timeout, I learned one word (or gesture) that would communicate what I want to milk the clock late in a game. “Four.”

We use the Don Meyer shot rating system. 4 = lay-up or power shot, 3= great perimeter shot, 2 = okay perimeter shot, and 1= bad shot. So, at the end of the game, holding up four fingers means it is time to shoot only lay-ups (and free throws). Not contested lay-ups, but open lay-ups that will not be missed. You can apply it to an end of game spread or delay offense or to your regular half-court offense.

In a perfect world, you could spread the floor, milk the clock, and run off the last two minutes of the game without a change of possession. However, more than likely, the team that is behind is going to stretch out the game with timeouts after scoring, quick shots, attacking the basket quickly since you are not going to want to foul, fouling when you have the ball to stop the clock, and flooding the perimeter with defensive pressure so that often the basket is one of the more open areas on the floor. Frequently, the number of possessions of the last two minutes is equal to or greater than the number of possessions in the previous 4 minutes. A well coached team can create 10-12 or more possessions the last two minutes. It will be difficult to protect an 8 point lead without scoring for 10-12 consecutive possessions at the end of the game.

But, if your team: Has a plan to milk the lead that has been practiced frequently, can handle the ball well enough to make the defense foul you, shoots only uncontested lay-ups that go in, and can make your free throws—then you have a good chance of scoring enough points to maintain the lead and close out the game with a victory.

You can see several other articles similar to this one at HoopClinics: the home of online basketball coaching clinics.

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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.

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