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1. A close coaching friend has been named head coach at a high school that has not had a winning season in eight years.  The school does have a winning tradition prior to that and does have some talent returning.  He asked me to say a few words at the end of their summer workouts.  I have taken out the specific references and hope you might be able to use part of it, even if your situation is not exactly like this one.

I believe that you can change from losing to winning quickly–that means this season.  What it takes is talent (which you have) and a change in mindset which your coaches will instill in you.   That change in mindset means that you are going to have to make major improvements in these six areas.

None of this stuff is easy, but you know what?  It is not supposed to be easy!!

In my opinion, winning is about six things.

1. 1. Toughness (Mental and Physical)
   2. Skills and schemes (Your individual Skills and Your coaches’ offenses and defenses)
   3. Your program’s culture
   4. Playing hard
   5. Playing smart
   6. Playing together

These things are things that your coaches are going to work with you on.  You Have two of the six–you have a good program culture and you play hard, so you aren’t starting at the beginning, but there is a long way to go.  The good news is that you can, and I believe that you will, get there!

I am going to tell you three things that I want you to take with you and I hope that they contribute to your progress.  I am going to give you those three things now, and then will expand on each of them:

1.  Your school has won in the past, can win again, and it can happen this year and with you guys.
2.  For it to happen, you must listen to your coaches and do more than they expect!  I will talk about what I mean by that in a few minutes.
3.   I believe that mental toughness is essential to being the best that you can be.  Anyone be as mentally tough as they want to be.  It is
a matter of making up your mind that you are going to be tough and then sticking with your decision, and not let others influence you or
keep you from being tough.

1. Now I would like to expand on those three points a little.
   1. You can win and you have the chance to make it happen and be a part of the team that caused the change.  You have a great opportunity to be remembered as the team that changed your basketball program for the better.  We won in the past and anything that has happened in the past can happen again.

Your average game was a 10 point loss last year–changing one play per quarter means an 8 point swing for the game–which gives you a chance.  It is certainly easier said than done.  Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, but the opportunity is there for you.  You have a great opportunity.  Are you willing to give the total effort every possession, 50 times a game, that is needed to Make an 8 point swing on defense?  Your coaches can help on offense by teaching you to play smarter and by improving your skills.

You don’t win without playing defense. Take the NBA and NCAA final games.

The score for the 7th game of the NBA finals would have been LA 55 Boston 53 for  a 32 minute high school game–and that is with a 24 second shot clock.

The Butler–Duke score would have been Duke 49 Butler 47 in 32 minutes.   Butler held every team but Duke under 60 (48 in high school) to get to the finals.  My point is that the best teams are great defensively in addition to being able to score.

What does it take to play together?  A lot, but one one thing is for sure, no team has ever been great without great role players.  Can you think of one?  Lakers?, Celtics?, Duke?, Butler?  The best teams on your schedule? They all have outstanding role players.

What is a role player?  Here is my definition:  A role player is a player who is more concerned with team success than with individual recognition because he knows that team success comes from doing what the coaches want him to do.  Even bad teams have leading scorers and all conference players.  No coach ever has a problem finding guys who want to shoot the ball.  All coaches are always looking for players to do the dirty job.

I coached a lot of great guys.  I am going to tell you one story about a role player my first year as a head coach.  He averaged 2 points a game and led the team in minutes played.  He guarded the other team’s best player, he was our primary ballhandler, he was a designated screener.  If he was in the game he took the ball out.  We were tied at the last game of the regular season.  He turned his ankle and was on the bench with his shoe off and ankle in a bucket off ice water.  We had the ball out of bounds with 2 seconds left and I wanted to put him in the game.  He stood on one foot without a shoe on the other and inbounded the ball.  We scored and won the game.  That is a team player.  I wanted him to throw the ball in because he gave us a far better chance to win with him inbounding the ball.

It is your job to get so good at something that the team isn’t as good if you aren’t in there for that role.  I guarantee that your coaches will know who the inbounds passer they want inbounding the ball is.  They will know who their best on ball defender, off ball defender, block out player, screener, and so on.  There is no reason that each of you can’t find a way to contribute.  We had guys who came in the last minute to foul.  We had guys who contributed by working extremely hard in practice.

Work as if everything depends on you performing your role–act as if nothing depends on you.

1. 1. The best advice that I always give players is to listen to your coach.  When it comes to basketball, you have to tune them in and tune everyone else out.  There is no doubt that the people who give you advice care about you, but they are not at practice every day and don’t have the information to know what they are talking about regarding your basketball team.  They don’t have to have a big picture view of everyone, they only focus on you because they want you to do well.  The bottom line is that someone who is at practice every day and does have the big picture in mind is going to be who you need to listen to.  Everyone on the team has to listen to one voice and be pulling in the same direction for team success. That voice is your coach’s voice.
   2. You can be as mentally tough as you want to be.  You don’t have to be big, you don’t have to be mean, you don’t have to be talented.  You can think anything you want to think in your mind.  Mental toughness is the ability to maintain a focus on your role and the coaches instructions even under pressure from the fans, the other team, the scoreboard, and yourself.

You saw an example of how to be tough and play as a team when you watched Butler.

As far as mental toughness.  Did you ever see a Butler player even look concerned, scared, or worried?  Even after they lost a big lead against Syracuse and when they were playing in the most pressure packed game of their lives–the national championship game–you could see it on their faces.  They never lost their faith in each other.

Developing Mental Toughness can happen in one minute.  You can make a determined decision to be tough.  It is up to you and you alone.  Then, the hard part is keeping your commitment to be mentally tough every day.  That is what separates the winners from the losers.

Here is what mental toughness is:  You keep your mind focused on your assignment and playing the game the right way.  You don’t get distracted by anything that ANYONE says or does that is keeping you from what you want.  You don’t lose an unshakeable faith in yourself and your teammates to come through even in the toughest circumstances.  You create your own attitude by what is inside you, and are not influenced by what is going on around you.

It doesn’t help to think about the worst that can happen in a tight game.  If you are shooting a free throw with the game still in doubt, how does it help to worry about missing?  It doesn’t.  It does help to envision yourself making the shots.  That is one part of mental toughness.

I have coached tough players whose families had a lot of money.  I have coached tough players whose families had nothing.  I have coached mentally tough players who were good students and those who were average students.  Talented players and “role” players.  All Conference and guys who played 2 minutes a game.  It doesn’t have to do with age.  I have coached mentally tough freshmen on the varsity.  None of that matters.

I plan on coming to see you guys play some this winter and I want to see you playing together as a team by fulfilling your roles, playing the way the coaches want you to play, playing hard and smart on defense, and being the most mentally tough team on your schedule.  Good luck!

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coachingincluding basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills,basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

As you probably know, John Maxwell is one of my personal favorites in the field of developing and improving yourself as a leader.  Here are some of my notes from reading his books and his newsletters over the years.

His concepts were written in a general format that applies to any area and I have adapted them to basketball coaching and basketball programs.  I use all of them to measure myself, but there are several thoughts that you can share with your assistants and your players.

1.  Most victories in life are achieved through small wins sustained over a long period of time.

2.  Set up a thinking schedule and put it on your calendar.  He suggests half a day every two weeks.  I think most of us would be better suited for 20-30 minutes a day. Think on paper, at your computer, or with a digital recorder.  The goal of thinking is to improve your actions and your results.

3.  Most people who are successful, find that their greatest success was achieved just beyond the point where they were convinced that their idea was not going to work.

4.  You measure a leader by influence, nothing more, nothing less.

5.  Regardless of how well you do your job and how smoothly your program runs, there will always be conflict and there will always be tough calls to make because you can’t please everyone.

6.  People have to buy into the leader first before they will buy into the vision.

7.  To add growth lead followers, to multiply growth, lead leaders.

8.  Your leadership ability determines your effectiveness.  Measuring leadership ability on a scale of 1-10, a leader will only attract others with lower levels of leadership ability.  So if a leader is a 7, she will only attract people to her organization who are 6s or less in terms of leadership ability.  The more we can improve ourselves as leaders, the better leaders we will attract to our organization.

9.  Your life today is a result of your thinking from yesterday.

10.  What you think leads to what you believe.  What you believe leads to what you expect.  What you expect changes your Attitude.  Your attitude changes your behavior.  Your behavior changes your performance.

11.  One major difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

12.  We should be talking to ourselves rather than listening to ourselves.  Listening is passive and talking is active.  When we are discourages, uninvited thoughts come into our minds and start talking to us and we listen to them rather than talking to them.

13.  Another difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people know that their behavior determines their feelings.  Unsuccessful people allow their feelings to determine their behavior.

14.  Believe in, serve, and add value to others before they do for you.  People tend to move toward others who increase them, and away from those who devalue them.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coachingincluding basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills,basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

One drill that I like to use to teach the value of each possession is the one possession game.  If we can get our teams to improve their concentration and execution on one possession each quarter of the game, that could be as much as an 8 to 12 point swing in the final score.  I also think that if you teach during practice and remind during the games that if there is under a minute to play in a tight game, that your players have been through that scenario often in practice.

Hopefully you might be able to find a way to makes some adaptations and use it with your team.

My rules for the one possession game is as follows:

If you have two 5 player squads that are equally split, start with a jump ball (give you a chance to go through your jump ball situation).  Team that gets the jump ball has one offensive possession that is played like a game.  At the end of that possession continue to play like a game.  The team that started on defense now has the ball whether they got a defensive rebound, had to inbound after a basket or a turnover, or got a steal.

The winner is whoever has more points after each team has had the ball once.  If it is a tie, continue to play live like a game until one team has a lead after both teams have had the same number of possessions.

If you have a team with your five starters superior to the second unit, let the second group have the ball to start, so that the first group must get a stop, score at least two points on their possession, and then get another shutout before they win.  So, they must get two stops and score at least two points to win.  If they fail on any of those three possessions, they lose.

Of course, you are going to want to set your own parameters, but here are a couple of rules that I think are good.  One is that on every foul, play it like the double bonus plus the ball back.  That way if the first team scores, they can’t foul the worst free throw shooter on the other team to preserver a win, or at worst get a tie.  You might want to wait until they figure that one out to make it a rule.  Depending on your philosophy and the situation, you might want to foul late to preserve a three point lead.   Decisions like those will be based on what you want to get out of the drill.

You might also want to consider awarding all jump balls to the defense.  You will want to limit the number of timeouts, but I think that it is important to allow timeouts if you like to use them late in the game to preserve possession.

I like competitive drills and you can decide what consequences the losers suffer or rewards the winners get.  I think that this drill teaches players to compete, to value every possession at both ends, and gives them some confidence when the game does come down at the end to getting a stop and then getting a score.

If you have a manager or an assistant write down the score of each one possession games and how many possessions each one lasted, you have a way at the end of the week to show what a quarter is like when you value every possession and at the end of the month to show how valuing every possession every quarter builds up for 4 quarters.  I truly believe that kind of teaching point helps players understand what you mean by the importance of each trip at both ends.  Then, once they understand the value of that mindset, it is a matter of building the toughness to play each possession as if the game depends on it, because it does.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coachingincluding basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

Some random thoughts from my Bob Knight file from over the years…

1.  The most effective offensive movement by far is the movement that takes place off a screen.

2.  Run your offense six to eight feet above the baseline.  That give you a chance to cut both toward the ball and toward the basket.

3.  The primary responsibility of a coach is to teach players to see the game.

4.  A seat on the bench is the best motivator.

5.  The seven important points of the game are: Shot selection, handling the ball without mistakes, moving without the ball, and helping each other get open on offense.  For defense–pressure on the ball, taking away what the offense wants to do, and keeping track of ball location.  He wanted to incorporate at least one of these seven points in every drill he did.

6.  Other daily areas to cover are pressure in the passing lanes, help and recover, blockout, and post defense.

7.  Work on individual fundamental drills for 2 to 5 minutes and then change the drill.

8.  Work on a team aspect for a maximum of 10 minutes at a time.  If a particular team aspect needs 30 minutes in one practice, break it into 3 10 minute segments and have other segments between those 3.

9.  Your hands are a defensive weapon only if your feet put them in a position to be used effectively.

10.  We think it is essential to have a man in the high post area agains man to man defense.

11.  Most players cut toward the basketball rather than away from the player guarding him.  The cutter must have his attention on getting away from the defender and not the basketball.

12.  The most important thing in attacking a zone is a shot fake.  The second most is the pass fake.

13.  In basketball, the mental is to the physical as four is to one.

14.  Everything we do involves two thoughts–simplicity and execution.

15.  We don’t expect just our post players to defend the post.  Everyone on the team must be able to defend the post.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coachingincluding basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

This post is a follow-up to one I made a couple weeks back with some notes from a clinic John Wooden gave.  Here is a link to that post if you didn’t see it:

Coach John Wooden on Leadership

Coach Wooden on basketball practice

I believe in insisting on punctuality and proper dress for practice. I want players to practice with their shirttails in, their socks pulled up and I want a neat, clean appearance. Some don’t think that will make them better basketball players, I do. If they can discipline themselves in this regard, they can do the same when we get down to the fundamentals of basketball.

When you stop to make corrections, insist on strict attention. When I blow the whistle at the beginning of practice, I want the balls rolled to a designated area and no more dribbling or shooting. I don’t want to have to yell at them. I want them ready to listen attentively. I want their strict attention. They shouldn’t have to be corrected for something that I just corrected for someone else. Have patience. Praise as well as censure. If I have to be critical of the player, I end with a compliment. Encourage teamwork and unselfishness at every opportunity.

Daily practice plans are very important. I could tell you what we have done at UCLA each day of practice in all the days I was there. I can look up any practice session and see what we did on that day and also see my notations. I learn from these plans; as a coach, I must change and grow if I expect my players to improve. I can improve with the help of these plans.

The coach should be on the floor early, before the players. Fans should not interrupt you or your players during practice. You are there to teach your players even during the individual practice segment.

Vary your drills from day to day to prevent monotony. Plan and organize your drills very carefully as to the number participating in the drill, in order to get the best results. Explain the purpose of each drill initially and then supply the little details. Don’t continue the drill too long.

I believe in more drills of shorter duration and being very careful on how we have them spaced. Follow physically or mentally difficult drills with easier ones and vice versa. Use many competitive drills, especially in shooting. Imitate game conditions as much as possible.

Give new material to the entire group on the board of one-day. Then, go through it on the next day. Never work on anything the first day; just show it to them.

Even though one drill is emphasizing a specific fundamental, do not neglect the other fundamentals. Stress offense and defense on alternate days, but they’ll forget that you must be working on both every day. Offense and defense are of equal importance, but because of the basketball, it takes more time to teach offense. This longer time doesn’t mean that offense is more important.

Close each day’s practice on an optimistic, good note. Never punish your players at the end of practice. I may run my players at the end of practice early in the season, but they know doing it for conditioning. Since you never run long distance in a game, we always work on short sprints.

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

These drills are from the July Arizona Newsletter.

There is a link at the end of this post if you are interested in downloading the complete newsletter.

I hope this gives you a thought or two to add a drill for the upcoming season, or to find a way to improve your versions of these drills.

Practice Drills of the Month

Wildcat Money Ball — 2 players 1 ball

• Goals are 11 in 1 minute, 22 in 2 minutes, 33 in 3 minutes
• Start with a drive and kick worth 3 pts
• Same shooter takes 4 shots in a row
• Shots 2-4 are worth 1 pt each
• Last shot is from 15 ft.
• Switch shooters and repeat

Close-out 3 man weave

• 2 passes with the 3 pass a skip across with
• a close-out coming from middle defender
• Man who skipped it becomes help side defender
• Live 1 on 2 after the skip pass
• Drill going live at both ends

Olympic Shooting — 4 min (5 balls)

• 3 players on court with two passers on each baseline
• Start with pass to wing, back to middle,opposite wing for lay-up
• No dribble before the lay-up
• Two players left shoot jump shots, receiving passes from baseline
• Wing Shooters become baseline passers and lay-up man continues in drill with the original baseline passers
• Drill counts 2’s and 3’s

Green Bay Transition

• 3 on 3 full court with two outlets out of bounds on each side
• Whoever gets the defensive rebound outlets and runs in transition with the two outlet guys
• Continuous drill with two teams
• Red vs. Blue (keep score)

3 on 2

• Wings run wide, point runs down middle (w/ball)
• Wings cut toward basket at hash mark
• Point passes to a cutter (best shooter)
• Shooter has 3 options
  Shoot off of 1,2 step
  Shot fake, 1 dribble pull up
  Pass back to cutting guard through the middle
• Wing who does not receive 1 pass boxes out top defender right away (slice)
• No wing to wing passes!

Here is a link to download the entire July Newsletter:  Arizona Newsletter

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