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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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By Deron Sorrell

Poise is an emotional peace which is seemingly inconsistent with the challenge at hand. Poise is developed rather than learned. Poise permits practice to render expected results.  Poise is nearly invisible at its strongest, but obvious to all when absent.

Poise does not improve our physical skill, but rather is the state of mind with which a performance is offered. Poise is understood by few. Poise is leased by many but owned by none. Poise is relative. Everybody has a little, but few have enough. Poise is not always passive. Poise is ready to fight, but always within the rules. Poise provides us with the ability to remain focused on our objective rather than aimlessly gazing at distractions. As our temptation to become distracted intensifies, our needed amount of poise increases. It is impossible to have too much poise.

Poise is readiness. Poise is not a fancy word for composure. Poise may choose to avoid conflict, but does not equate with passive play. Poise is more concerned with winning a game than with merely avoiding a fight. Poise is capable of an aggressive box out. Poise does not conflict with a foul that prevents a basket. Poise is capable of a crushing screen. Poise does not preclude crashing the offensive boards. Poise allows us to execute the demands of the game while maintaining an awareness of the rules and a genuine respect for the competition.

Poise lessens the impact of pressure. Poise is the buffer which prevents pressure from damaging our performance.  Poise removes all competition except the other team. Our preparation and strategy will prepare us for a particular opponent. Poise can either be a key component to winning or a major cause of defeat.

Poise is always needed. There is not a good time to be without poise. Everybody is aware that poise is needed on occasion, but few realize that it is called upon constantly.  Poise must be a great strength in order for teams to achieve greatness.

There is little, if any, correlation between talent and poise. We all can develop poise if it is perceived as important and worthwhile to do so.

Poise provides us with the opportunity to do our best.  Without poise, distractions will serve to detract from our performance. You and your teammates must develop poise in order to make any sincere effort toward achieving meaningful objectives. Anything other than our best is not acceptable. Poise is a necessary component to any pursuit within a competitive environment.

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This drill simulates pressure free throws at the end of a game and emphasizes the damage done by missing free throws late in a close game.

Run the drill at the end of practice to more closely simulate the mental and physical fatigue form the end of a game.

Line up the team in the lane spaces and behind the arc as they would for a free throw attempt. The shooter gets a 1-1 opportunity. Put a realistic score on the scoreboard that you would have in the final minutes of a close tournament game, whatever fits your level.

We put the score on the scoreboard at 45-44 for high school varsity with our team leading by one. If the shooter makes the shot, your team gets one point added. If the shooter misses, the opponent gets two points added. That emphasizes the importance of each miss. After one shooter is done, rotate until each player has had a chance to shoot.

If you win the game, practice ends on a positive note. If you lose, there needs to be a penalty such as running, frozen push ups, or whatever you want to use. Or, you can do the drill again until you win it’

If the game ends in a tie, then have an overtime where only the players who missed the first time shoot.

Some adjustments you can make to make the game more challenging are:

If the first shot of the one and one is missed, count it as two misses since the player does not even get to attempt the second shot. That would be 4 points for the imaginary opponent.

Start off with the score tied rather than you being ahead. That takes away from the protecting the lead theme, but if you obviously are going to get fouled with a tie game at times, especially if you attack the basket.

Start out behind by a few points to emphasize attacking the basket late in the game to get fouled and catch up with the clock stopped.

Run sprints prior to or between the free throw attempts to increase fatigue.

Some adjustments you can make to adapt this drill to make it competitive but realistic for younger level teams:

Start out with a bigger lead.

Shoot one shot rather than a one and one each time.

Each miss is only one point for the imaginary opponent.

Here is a slightly different version of the drill run by Matthew Driscoll, Head Coach at the University of North Florida. You can find out more about and see another sample from the DVD that this drill came from at this link: Competitive Shooting Drills

The drill is a You Tube video, so to be able to watch them, you will need to be able to access You Tube on the server that you are on.

Make sure your sound is on as you watch.

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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I used to look at a player’s scoring effectiveness as being ineffective if they did not score at least one point for each field goal attempted.  So, if you took 6 shots, you need to score at least 6 points or you were hurting the team.  Defensively, we felt that if we held the other team’s top scorers to less than a point a shot, we had a great chance to win.  But, I didn’t like it to measure our leading scorers because if our leading scorer took 18 shots and scored 17 points, that met the criteria, but wasn’t going to help us win games.

Here are a couple of stats that I find much more useful.  It is easy to set up a spreadsheet, or have your statisticians or managers if you have them, to set one up to calculate the following:

EFFECTIVE FIELD GOAL PERCENTAGE

In my opinion, when looking at statistics, overall field goal percentage is not a useful statistic to judge your player’s shooting efficiency since it combines both two and three point shots to calculate the percentage.  Two point percentage alone and Three point percentage will tell you how a player does at both ranges, but to get a comparison of how effective a player is who shoots mainly twos compared to a player who shoots mainly threes is the old apples to oranges comparison.

Effective Field Goal Percentage is calculated by counting each three point attempt as one and a half shots attempted since each three point shot scores one and a half times the number of points that a two point shot does.  It provides for a more level comparison.

The formula for effective field goal percentage is:

eFG% = (FGM + .5*3PM)/FGA

FGM and FGA include all shots, both two point shots and three point shots.

You could also use the formula

(2FGM + 1.5 * 3FGM)/FGA, where FGA is total field goals attempted, including 2 point field goal attempts as well as 3 point field goal attempts.

TRUE SHOOTING PERCENTAGE

True Shooting Percentage is a statistic takes into account being able to get to the line and make free throws in addition to being efficient in making two and three point shots.

The formula is:

TS% = (Points/2) / [FGA + (0.44 * FTA)]

The rationale in dividing the points by two is by doing so, it effectively makes each three point shot made worth 1.5 points.  This also makes each two free throws made equal to one two point basket made.

One free throw attempted is basically half a field goal attempt, so multiplying the FTA by .5 seems to make sense.  The reason that .44 is used is that statistical research by the NBA has taken into account the old fashioned three point play of a basket and a foul.  So, in those cases, the field goal attempt made is responsible for both the FGM and the FTA.

The first few times I looked at these, they were a little confusing (and my teaching area is math), but after looking at them and researching them, they made more sense as a measure than the traditional overall field goal percentage.

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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.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching including basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!