Program Blueprint

This article was written by Alan Stein.

I would add a couple of things to what Alan has written. Great teams have lots of glue guys and girls–on those teams everyone is a glue player. I posted a couple of lists that are some thoughts in alignment with Alan’s Glue Player article.

The first is a list of what playing hard means to me. The second is a list of what togetherness looks like. Intensity and Togetherness Look Like

Glue Guy or Girl

by Alan Stein

Glue is an adhesive, and according to Webster’s Dictionary, the physics definition of adhesive is “a force that exists in the area of contact between unlike bodies and that acts to unite them.”

That’s a tad too scientific for me. Let’s just say that glue holds stuff together!

Who is the glue on your team? Who holds your team together? Who keeps your team focused? Who does all of the little things in practice and in games to make your team successful?

That person is a Glue Guy (or Glue Girl)!

How do you spot a Glue Guy? They are often seen:

• Taking charges
• Diving for loose balls
• Hitting crucial free throws
• Playing tough defense
• Setting solid screens
• Boxing out on every shot
• Cheering for their teammates

A Glue Guy doesn’t care about how many points they score or how many minutes they play. All they care about is the team winning and knowing they did everything within their role to contribute to the team’s success (regardless of how large or small that role is).

Every team needs a Glue Guy. Every team needs a player who will make all of the sacrifices necessary to hold the team together. Glue Guys are even more important during the playoffs.

If your Glue Guy is also your most talented player… I am willing to bet your team will maximize their potential.

If you want your team to make a serious run at a conference or league or state championship; I suggest you either say a sincere thank you to your team’s Glue Guy; or you become one yourself.

And for those of you who have already completed your season… Glue Guys are equally important in the off-season. After all, who else will hold your team together before the first practice of next season?

Play hard. Have fun. Enjoy the jouney.

Alan Stein

This article was written and submitted by retired High School Coach Dave Millhollin. Coach Millhollin is known throughout the Sacramento area for his Boys Varsity teams’ fundamental soundness, discipline, unselfishness, team defense and overachievement. Dave Coached for 27 seasons and compiled 391 wins. I have included more information about his coaching career at the end of the article.

If you would like to contact Coach Millhollin, email me and I will put you in touch with him.

I am always looking for good information to share. If you have an article that you would like to have posted on the Coaching Toolbox, feel free to contact me.

After Season Observations and Upcoming Season Objectives

At the completion of each season, successful coaches go through a brief period of decompression and relaxation. This is followed by very important time of reflection and evaluation of how the season went.

During the reflection and evaluation period they take a look at the things they accomplished and the areas where their teams fell short. This is a very important process and the really good coaches take a close look at what went into both their successes and failures.

Understanding what goes into failure and what goes into success is critical for future success. Knowing this, they make a list of things to continue doing and things to avoid doing in the future.

The next step successful coaches do is to identify the things they want to accomplish for the next upcoming season and add to the list things they need to start doing.

They end up with four lists:

1. What they want to accomplish for the next season (their goals)
2. What they need to stop doing
3. What they need to continue doing (with any necessary adjustments)
4. What they need to start doing that they have not done yet.

At this point in the process, the principle is quite simple; Prepare in such a manner as to avoid the things that go into failure and work hard on getting good at doing the things that bring about success.

Some coaches take this principle even further – to the point of making sure that they can defend each and every one of their activities and practices against the list of things they want to accomplish. They want everything they do to be predicated on achieving their goals in order for their team and program to become what they want it to be.

These principles can be applied to individual players, coaches and to the collective group (team) as well. They are life skills that people can employ in their personal, as well as professional lives in both individual and group contexts.

Copyright Dave Millhollin

I posted a similar article to this one about daily improvement written by University of Washington women’s coach Mike Neighbors. It is a really good read as well. Here is the link: Stoplight Theory of Improvement

About the author of this article, Coach Dave Millhollin In fourteen years at Ponderosa High School, Coach Dave’s teams won 260 games (.665). From 2000 through 2009 Ponderosa won 207 games over a ten year stretch which included four SVC Conference Championships and two CIF Section final four appearances. Over his 27 year Boys Varsity Coaching career, Coach Dave posted 391 wins, produced 13 college basketball players and was named SVC Coach of the Year four times. At Ponderosa, Coach Dave’s teams were #1 in California in team defense five times and in 2008 Ponderosa was the top defensive team in the Nation among shot clock states. Over Coach Millhollin’s last five seasons (2005-6 through 2009-2010; 136 games) Ponderosa averaged a composite 50% total field goal percentage, 58% two point field goal percentage and 32% three point field goal percentage. Since retiring from High School coaching in 2010, Coach Dave has been actively involved in coaching Jr High level School and AAU teams as well as and running instructional basketball clinics from the primary grades through the College level.

I received this from Creighton Burns. It was written by Mike Dunlap, Colorado Mesa Men’s Head Coach.

The richness of coaching rests within the seemingly insurmountable frustration of watching as a player finds his way. The teachable moments are those that are frequently fraught with poor decisions. Yet that is exactly when an individual needs his coach. Those moments are priceless and a turning point for the athlete. Wonder not why you do what you do and KNOW that you make a difference!!!

10 Steps to Improve Your Coaching

The evolution of a master teacher takes years of skill development. The outstanding coach is an exceptional teacher. We believe that there are fundamental steps that should be considered when teaching your team:

1) Know the five laws of learning
• Explain what you want
• Demonstrate for the learner
• Player demonstrates
• Correct demonstration
• Repetition is lord and master

2) Know how players learn
• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinetic
• Writing/Drawing
• Player as coach
• Cooperative versus competitive technique
• Whole, part, whole versus part whole method
• Feedback system – negative versus positive

3) Teaching techniques
• Universal teaching technique (i.e. find the problem and fix it)
• Praise, prompt, and leave (i.e. find positive, correction, and next step, leave)
• Relay teach – the cooperative method
• Create your own language (e.g. anachronisms)
• Use your voice as a tool
• Speak in word pictures, analogies, and metaphors
• Overload to get conditioned response (i.e. consistently give the student the advantage when they are demonstrating as early success breeds confidence)
• Progression – teach in sequence and then reverse it (i.e. inductive & deductive)

4) Use the four steps of shaping
• Set the stage
• Modeling
• Prompt
• Forms of feedback (i.e. ask questions, make observations, reinforce the correct response)

5) Talk less, do more
• We need to reduce out verbal instruction

6) Recognize the power of observation, listening, and gathering information
• Behavior patterns
• Myers/ Briggs psychological exam, self-aggression evaluation, and the “I am sheet”

7) Role declaration is paramount to a coaches’ success

8) Know your audience, circumstance, and be ready to adapt or change course

9) Competition means time, score, and personal records (e.g. individual/group)

10) Apologize
• We will make mistakes. We humanize ourselves when we go public and our players will accept us more readily.

We are teachers. We are trying to create an environment of learning. Hence, mistakes must be encouraged as a form of discovery. Certainly, we want to correct the problem and move on in a timely fashion. The more teaching skills we have at our disposal – the better. If we are comfortable with our style, the player will adjust quickly. Effective communication is the instructor’s greatest tool. Learning is a step-by-step process. We keep it simple, as we know that the player responds best to precise instruction.

We believe that the coach should work off a blueprint of conceptual teaching. This means teaching cognitive ideas through a specific process (i.e. drills that are directly linked to the whole). Our shooting drills come directly from our offense and they may change from one season to the next, yet the ingredients of competition and effort level are never compromised.

The what, where, how, when, and why are always foremost in our minds when explaining our philosophy. The “when” and “why” are the most important to us. We want thinking players who can react quickly under pressure. Hence, we create that environment in our practices with consequences for actions.

We teach winning basketball. We are not interested in just playing. The enjoyment for the player comes from learning, interaction with others, and measurable improvement. We teach that perfection comes from an all-out effort.

The standards for winning must be defined. The coach should have measurements both offensively and defensively that represent a system. When pressure is applied confusion will reign unless there is structure. Moreover, that is when communication breaks down. We cannot have this. We see the first signs of a successful culture when the players start saying and teaching “Our Way” when times are tough. We like that.

In conclusion, we can only do one thing at a time. Simplicity is our guide. We constantly evaluate our system under the most severe circumstances. Teaching techniques define our system.

I received this article from Creighton Burns.

The article was written by Mike Dunlap, former Head Basketball Coach for the Charlotte Bobcats.  Coach Dunlap has also coached at several levels both internationally and at several colleges in the United States.

I frequently get asked about making players more aggressive.

SOME THOUGHTS:

1) Inch by inch.
Too much aggression from you, another player, assistant, or anyone else will drive him away from the very thing you are asking him to do.

2) 5 Two Minute Drills
a) Short drills that show the player how to be assertive.  Example given: you hold a ball out in front of you, squeezing it very tightly and the player must snap it out of your hands, front pivot and shoot.  This teaches him/her how, what, why, when, where, to be aggressive AND it doesn’t hurt……also when you make him shoot at the end of the action it takes some focus off what you are after and is like a reward.

b) Slowly roll the ball from under basket. The player must dive on the ground, grab the ball, get up, and shoot the ball….put a target of say 3 makes out of 5 tries,all done within 2 minutes.

c) Have the player get into a defensive stance…you or another player does the same as they face each other about 12 inches apart and have them push  or lightly hit one another on the chest or shoulders…yes they alternate doing this, perhaps 3 times.  Then hand each a ball and have them power dribble the ball one time and lay it in. WHY?  This teaches the player how to pop another player without hurting anyone, lets him feel what it is like to take a hit, and shows him that the FEAR he was experiencing  was a ghost with no soul.

*The point here isn’t the actual drill but more about the teaching methodology.

3) Self Evaluation
You can either do this with each drill  or at the end of practice.  Ask the player what he is going to give you today….scale of  1-10…. he says 8  then either hold him to that or ask him as the drills unfold to tell you how he thought he did in the last drill with his aggression level.  You may be amazed one way or the other how the player sees it.

4) Film
a) Get some clips of other players that show him an  “AGGRESSIVE ACT.”

b) Film him doing an aggressive act; this reinforces the very behavior you are after and is quite easy now with IPads.

5) Patience
a) All this takes time but is well worth the wait. One thing is for sure: he won’t become more aggressive because you yell at him or if he does it will be short term.

6) Model
a) Certainly one of your players has a salient predisposition for eating red meat.  It is a good idea to use this player as an example, but only if you do this in a skillful and thoughtful  way.  You don’t just want to throw your “tenderloin” in with the wolf.

7) Peer Support
a) Teach and encourage your players to bring along the less aggressive, while also making sure they don’t coddle them either: a balanced approach.

8) Game Ball-Practice Ball
a) Get a bag of Nerf balls and give them out occasionally as an acknowledgement to the player who demonstrates the very behavior you want. You can do this after practice or games….and it is quite cheap!

*My purpose here isn’t to say everything or write in a way that I am  all knowing.  I just want to stimulate thought and  share some ideas.

Shared by Mike Dunlap

These 3 end of game checklists were sent to me by Steve Smiley.

They were assembled by former long time NBA Assistant Gordon Chiesa.

He spent 16 seasons with the Jazz and also had a tenure with the Grizzlies.

He also served as a college assistant at Dartmouth and Providence. He was the head coach at both Manhattan and Providence.

He was an assistant with team that reached both the NBA Finals (1997 and 98 with the Jazz) and the NCAA Final Four (1987 with Providence)

OFFENSIVE QUESTIONS/CONCEPTS

• Best offensive team when our team is losing.
• Best foul shooting team when our team is winning.
• Best ball handling team when protecting a lead.
• Best three point shooting team when our team needs a “Three.”
• Best individual match-up to score a basket/create a foul.
• Which opposing player is in deep foul trouble, and our offense can go directly at him?
• Who is our best inbound passer? Who is our 2nd best inbound passer?
• What side of the floor, when inbounding from the sideline do we prefer?
• Know/Understand with how much time left on the game clock, and the score is tied, when should the offensive player take the shot?
• Know/Understand  that the defense is going to switch-out of any screening action regardless of size The sceener should look for a slip move as he starts setting the screen. The passer has to be ready to “Read and Pass.”
• Know/Understand that when the opponent has a foul to give and our team has used our last time out, the Head Coach, during that time out, has to give our team two offensive plays to execute.

DEFENSIVE QUESTIONS/CONCEPTS

• Best defensive team when our team needs one defensive stop (under 7 seconds on game clock)?
• Best defensive team to contain dribble penetration
• Best rebounding team when the opponent goes big?
• Best “Comeback” Defensive Team by trapping/presses creating havoc defensively?
• Best zone defensive team to take away the opposition set offensive plays?
• Be ready to match-up small to defend the opponent’s 4 or 5 man who can make three point shots,
• Know and understand the concept of staying home on 3-point shooters on dribble penetration.
• Know and understand how to foul on the catch before the shooter goes into his shooting motion
• Be ready to sub out a key offensive scoring player who has four fouls and ‘sub In” a “designated fouler.” Teach the designated fouler that he is making a positive contribution towards winning. We are not trying to embarrass him.
• Know/Understand that when the score is even or our team Is up one or two, we will early double team or create a running trap situation against the “star perimeter player” in the scoring area. Philosophically we are not going to let the star perimeter player beat us with a basket or create a foul. We are going to make him pass the bail to a lesser offensive threat. Also,as an alternative, we could play a zone defense on the last possession against the star player.
  

END OF GAME CHECKLIST

• Know the score of the game and the time left on the shot clock and game clock.
• Know the timeout situation for both teams
• The Head Coach will tell the players the team foul penalty situation from both an offensive and defensive standpoint. The players will always know if we have a foul to give.
• Know/Understand when to call timeout by a Player who is not involved with the ball when his teammate is in a bad disadvantage.
• Who are the worst foul shooters in the game?
• Who are the worst foul shooters not in the game in case of an injury situation. and the opposing team can choose the new shooter?

You can also download 13 of my 130 Situations eBook. Click this link to read a sample of the ebook.

This is the second part of this article. You can click here to read the first part.

• The best teams are the ones where the coach and the team leaders are united (requires some ego reduction on part of coach) and these players work the hardest and articulate the team message to others.
• It is hard for a general to win without support from within the ranks. Encourage and develop leaders and relationships with them
• Former Chuck Daly Assistant, Brendan Suhr: Fill up your players “emotional Bank Accounts”. Make 4 deposits to one
  withdrawal.
• Encourage your players to take responsibility. The best ones have often been allowed too much freedom from this at lower levels. “My Bad” is not sufficient.
• You can help, but players must know that they are in charge of their own attitudes, work ethic, enthusiasm, and mental/physical approaches.
• Many times I have been asked how a coach gets an NBA player to listen. The answer is that you must be willing and able to help them get better. If you can do that, they will listen because they do want to improve. Once you quit helping them, you can lose them. Keep improving and learning yourself, therefore.
• Learn to read body language to be able better to deal with a player that day.
• Watch your own body language in practice and especially during games. Do not slump over at the bench or go goofy when things go wrong or a player makes a mistake. Stay in control of your body language no matter what you are feeling inside.
• Why do coaches react so strongly to a player’s mistakes in many cases? Trust this. It is because the coach wants to divorce himself from that mistake and thus that player at that time. It is his way of telling the fans that it is not his fault. The same coach will give a body language reaction fist pump that says, “That is what I coached him to do” when the player scores.
• One of your main goals with each player is to coach him to become the best teammate he can be. When we interviewed a player pre-draft, we always asked him about his relationship to his coaches and to his teammates. When we talked to his coach we wanted to know what kind of teammate he was.
• When I coached college, I coined a term called “Teammanship” and in that concept we tried to inculcate things that would honor team membership and encourage team building. (On one occasion for each of my two top scorers I had to put them to the brink of elimination in order to get them to know I was serious. Thankfully, both stayed but one came in the day before he was to enroll at another college to tell me he wanted to come back and be a good team member. He led the team in scoring and we went 25-3, 6th in nation).
• When my first of two college teams that were inducted into their own Hall of Fame en masse, all 13 players came from as far as Europe to be there. I had started with that team nearly 40 years previously, but they were still a team.
• Other books of value—The Outliers, The Talent Code (maybe the best relative to teaching/coaching technique I have ever read), Training Camp by Jon Gordon,Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun (great quick read), Red and Me by Bill Russell, Talent is not Enough by John Maxwell (any of his leadership books such as the Servant Leader, etc.), the magazine entitled SUCCESS, and many more.
• Allow enough shooting time. Still the most singly important factor in the game. Bad plays look good when ball goes in and vice versa.
• Encourage your shooters to get in their 300 or so reps every day. Nowitzki and Jason Terry get in 500 every day—every day—and they are the best for obvious reasons.
• These players came into the NBA as poor shooters—Jordan, Dr. J., Clyde Drexler and they became Hall of Famers and good shooters. Most players become much better shooters in the NBA due to reps. Check any player’s career stats.
• Avoid trying to keep your team at half court too much so that you can stop them and do more teaching. The game is played full court.
• Too much time at half court will stifle a teams fast break game as the initial reaction to go to the other end is the difference in a successful break most often.
• A team that spends too much time at half court teaching will not be as good a transition defensive team as it needs to be in most cases.
• So more scrimmage-like situations but control the scrimmages and fulfill what you want as a teacher and what the team needs for transition offense and defense.
• Best scrimmage teaching drills are starting with a specific situation at half court and then letting there be that possession and two more. This three-possession game is called O-D-O for Offense-Defense-Offense. On the second and third possession the teams can do whatever comes up, as that is the way the game is played.
• Limiting the scrimmage to three possessions allows you to teach the pluses and minuses of the three possessions better because everyone can remember that short of a series.
• Drill also some 5-possession games and do the same way. You start with a controlled half court and then the players play out four more possessions, ending up on the end they started. The game is generally played in spurts of no more than 5 possessions before a whistle is blown and this allows game feel and coach control.
• Be inventive with these controlled sessions. Have each possession be only with 10 seconds, or have them run a particular set when they don’t have a fast break or have them go vs. man/man some and zone on other sets, and start the initial possession from out of bounds, etc.
• You can score these by giving a point for a score and a point for a stop. With 3 possessions (or 5) there will always be a winner since there are an uneven number of points available. The winner of each one can start the next set if you want. Or you can keep track of the number of sets each team wins to determine a winner. Award the winners.
• You never waste time when you do the defensive shell drills.
• Remember that you must emphasize defense, but offense is more involved because it involves ball skills and exact timing. Thus, offense takes more time.
• I always doubt coaches who say they spend far more time on defense than offense. Why would you do that when offense requires much more teaching and time?
• Hopefully, anyone should realize that you could teach both offense and defense at the same time, as you generally have players on both sides of the ball in drills unless they are just defensive slide drills. So teach both at the same time.
• Even in the most dedicated of offensive drills, if a player does well or poorly on defense, you cannot overlook that. More time on offense, more emphasis on defense.
• Your team will reflect what you emphasize.
• You are an offensive or defensive coach relative to what upsets you. If you say you are a defense coach but never sub for poor defense by your better players, you are not a defense coach. (If he is really good, you don’t have to leave him out for long—you made a point).
• If you are an execution coach but don’t get upset at the lack of execution, then you really are not what you say you are.

Summary Note

• Over the years your teams will be identified by about 3-5 things that they do well—not 10-15 things. Those are the things you teach well and that are important to you.
• With the great coaches you always know what their teams will do well. So decide how you want to be typified and stick with that as long as you are successful. Make subtle changes as you go, but stick with your winning core.