Program Blueprint

Posted with permission from PGCBasketball

By Lyndsey (Medders) Fennelly, former director and clinician with PGC.

Our 75-minute presentation was titled, “A Coach’s Role in Impacting Team Culture”. We shared some key points about how the culture of your team can be established, reinforced, and even reinvented, through your team’s basketball practices.

The two main areas that support this belief come from Point Guard College’s brilliant founder, Dick DeVenzio, and also from watching some of the top basketball coaches in the country at the high school, college, and professional level. We have identified some of their championship-level habits in developing the top players and creating the best basketball teams.

A simple formula we’ve come up with is the following:

Successful Team Culture = Procedures + Progressions + Precision + Patience

Procedures are the actions which have to be executed in the same manner in order to obtain the same result. In a prior blog (‘What I Learned from Coach Krzyzewski’) (That excerpt is below), I shared the various procedures you can use with your basketball team to develop daily consistency and expectations throughout the program. Establishing procedures within your program allows you to maximize your time as a basketball coach. While this can create some temporary inconveniences, it will lead to permanent improvement.

Progressions are a series of activities or drills with a definite pattern of advancement. It’s important for coaches to progress through drills in a way that will ‘make sense’ to the athletes. During our summer basketball programs and year-round clinics, I find it especially helpful for basketball players to progress through teaching using this model:

Give instruction that describes the organization of the drill — Provide the rules for the drill — Give them the points of emphasis — Remind them of the intangibles (i.e. how to lead themselves, enhance the drill, and ignite their teammates)

In providing your athletes with the points of emphasis, stick to the ‘Rule of 3’ and explicitly state what you are looking for.

Precision means having a ridiculous attention to detail. As coaches, we have to understand: we teach what we emphasize. In my experience, it’s quite apparent that the best coaches in the world demand a high level of ‘exactness’ from their basketball players at all times.

Patience is required once the above three items are put into play. Be honest… What drives you crazy as a coach? What causes you to slam the clipboard or throw the whistle? Every good coach has a long list.  I think of Dick DeVenzio’s “Responsibility Principle” from Runnin’ the Show that places the responsibility on coaches to be bigger than shortsighted frustrations. Essentially, the thought is: don’t put yourself through a whole season being irritated by the things you failed to explain. Do you lose your patience because your players performed the drill wrong or because you failed to properly explain the basketball drill? It’s our job as coaches to teach with clarity and to ensure we communicate exactly what we want at all times. But, be patient. Have a persistence to your patience. Model the qualities that you want to see embodied in the culture of your team.

After watching both the Duke men’s basketball and Connecticut women’s basketball teams practice this year, it’s quite obvious why both basketball programs won NCAA national championships. In their practices, this formula held true. The daily procedures were run, the progressions made complete sense, the precision was phenomenal, and each coach was patient enough to explain something to their players that was not understood.

PROCEDURES ARE EFFECTIVE

In line with the great precision Coach K demands of not only his team and program, which includes managers, staff, and other personnel involved with the team, there were a definite set of procedures the team understood happened ‘every’ and ‘always’. Dick DeVenzio used to refer to this concept of creating procedures that your team should do every time they are in the gym and at an ‘always’ rate, not a sometimes thing. The shirts were tucked in, the players knew how to line up on the baseline, and even the obtaining of water was a set, routine procedure.

This allows for more coaching and teaching, and less telling. There is a difference between teaching and telling. High level coaches, like Coach K, are teachers, providing useful information in a variety of ways and creating engagement with the athletes. Coach K and his staff no longer had to tell their athletes repeatedly to do something. They understood the procedures, and as a result, time wasn’t wasted on mundane tasks.

I encourage you as either a coach or a basketball player to consider implementing some of these key thoughts above into your practices and basketball training. It will take time, it will take persistence, but most importantly it will take a commitment to be someone better than you already are. None of the prior three statements are easy. But hey, winning NCAA national championships isn’t a walk through the park either!

Oakland University Head Men’s Head Coach Greg Kampe discusses some of his views on the role of assistants in his program.

Coach Kampe has won 567 games in his coaching career.

Please make sure that your sound is on.

Click the play arrow to hear the talk.

This portion of Coach Kampe’s online presentation was taken from an online webinar that is available from the Glazier Clinics Vault.

You can get access to the vault by attending any Glazier Basketball Coaching Clinic, or by visiting this page: Glazier Vault.

Click the play arrow to hear the talk.

Coaching notes from Don Meyer:

How to Evaluate a Game: Tools that we use to determine how well or poorly our team actually played. Many times the scoreboard is a poor judge of your team’s performance.

1. Turnover Margin: Looks to see if your team has “sureness” with the ball on offense and whether your team can create turnovers on defense. As the coach, you might have a goal of having a +5 margin, for instance, or you might set a mandatory goal of, for example, always having less than 10 turnovers and having a goal of forcing at least 15 turnovers.

2. Rebound Margin: Using a rebounding margin is a good barometer of how well you competed on the glass, and is probably better than measuring your rebounding effort with absolute numbers. For example, having a goal of out-rebounding your opponent by +10 is probably more realistic than saying that your goal is to get 50 total rebounds every game. Each game will have a varying number of rebounding opportunities due to the pace of the game, referees, etc.

3. Field Goal Attempts: If everything is equal, the team that gets the most and the best shots will win. Newell’s Rule = “Get better shots than your opponent and get more of those better shots.”

4. Field Goal %: Two rules that your program could live by are; your best shooter should have the most shots (shooting isn’t equal opportunity) and your worst shooter should have your best FG% (only takes lay-ups, wide open shots).

NSU Shot Grading System:

4 = Wide open lay-up
3 = Wide open shot by good shooter
2 = Contested shot by good shooter
1 = Terrible shot
0 = Turnover

5. Free Throw Attempts: The golden rule is to make more free throws than your opponent attempts.

6. Free Throw %: It’s one thing to get to the free throw line; it’s another thing to make your free throws. Great teams make their free throws.

7. No opponents player scores more than 15 points: We like to use 15 points as a barometer to see if any one player really hurt our team. Most teams may have one or two stellar scorers that require special attention on defense and if our team can’t slow those players down, it will be a long night. Holding great scorers under 15 points is a great measure of how well your team is playing team defense, because it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to stop a great scorer with one defender; help-side, rotations, and an overall effort by all five players on the floor is required.

8. 3-Point Game: Refers to both on offense and on defense. On offense, it’s simple enough – your team must make open 3’s. The players that are great 3-point shooters need to be the ones taking those shots. On defense, we always stress the concepts of “No 3’s to a 3” and the concept of a “Dead 3” ? A player that has at least 50% of his / her attempts from the three-point line. A Dead 3 gets no standing looks; he / she must dribble to a shot. Thus, how well did your team defend the 3-pointer? Also, how well did your team get your 3-point shooters open?

9.Floor Game: The floor game encompasses a wide range of possibilities, including getting loose balls, taking charges, saving the ball from a turnover (saver-savee idea), etc. Your team could have a goal of taking a minimum of 2 charges, or getting 90% of all loose balls, etc.

10. Assist Game: The assist game can mean many things. As a coach, you can look at your team’s assist: turnover ratio, possibly with a goal of 2 assists to 1 turnover (2:1). In addition, you can look at the assist to made basket %. Another, less subjective way of tracking assists would be to track how many “screen assists” your team has in a game; the number of times that a team member’s screen (possibly a back or flare screen) led to a wide open shot or lay-up.

4 Types of Players:

1. Unconscious & Incompetent: These types of players “don’t know that they don’t know.” They aren’t even aware that they don’t have a feel for the game. These players aren’t going to contribute on a winning team.

2. Conscious & Incompetent: These players now realize that “they know they don’t have it.” These players still don’t have a feel for the game and are lacking in the skill department but they realize where their weaknesses are and can now begin to improve ? Awareness is the beginning of correction.

3. Conscious & Competent: At this level of development, the player is able to perform various skills (competent), but he / she must think about everything that he is doing before performing the skill; i.e. catch the ball, go into triple threat, direct drive, etc. ? You know, but you don’t flow. Very robotic.

4.Unconscious & Competent: The most difficult level to reach, this player can perform the skills without having to think about them. For this type of player, the game naturally “flows.”

“The Anal Coach”

The final topic that we shall discuss is the idea of the anal coach. There is always a discussion as to how much control the head coach should exert over his players. Should he (or she) dominate the players, attempting to control every aspect of their games, not to mention their lives? Or, should the coach be a “player’s coach” and cater more to the needs of the player? While there is no clear-cut answer, and while it can be argued that both ways work in certain situations, we would like to talk about the concept of the anal coach and what that coach will do to a team.

We argue that the anal coach will always have good teams, but never great teams because that coach can’t let the player’s play. An anal coach will make bad teams better because of the control, discipline and organization implemented into the program, but at the same time, an anal coach will also make good teams worse, because he will confine the players to a certain degree; he won’t be able to let them make plays because he has to control everything on the floor.

Key quotes:
•A weaker coach has to exert more control
• A stronger coach does not have to exert much force
• The strong can be kind, the weak must be cruel – Sun Tzu.

Kevin Eastman is a great coach to study.  He has really good thoughts on all aspects of building a basketball program.  Coach Eastman is retired from Coaching.  His career included Assistant Coach for Doc Rivers at both Boston and LA, Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Clippers, and Head Men’s Coach at UNC Wilmington and Washington State.

Here are some notes that I have put together from his teaching.  My resources for these notes: @kevineastman, www.pickandpop.net, kevineastmanbasketball.com and hoopthoughts.blogspot.com

Coach Eastman’s 8 Video Coach Development 8 Course Series set which includes High Intensity Skill Development, NBA Drills for All Levels, Stimulate Your Offensive Thinking, Defensive Strategies and Teaching Points, Strategies and Philosophy for Coaching Success, Stimulate Your Defensive Thinking, Defending the Pick and Roll the NBA Way, A Champion’s DNA is on sale as our Black Friday special. Normally, it is $112, but it is on special for $75 through Monday at midnight Eastern Time. After that time, the price will return to normal.

You can find out more about this special price at this link: Coach Development 8 Course Series

“The best defensive teams BUY TIME on defense.” by doing the following:  1) Ball Pressure- Intelligent, 2) Getting to early help spots 3) Stunts on flight of the ball not the catch 4) High and Active hands

“How hard are your cuts in the tempo of your offense?  This is what matters.  Cut with purpose and cut hard for the entire game.  How hard are your cuts the last seven or eight minutes?  You wear people down this way.” As a coach, you must demand that your players cut hard at all times.  The majority of players will cut hard when they think they are the primary receiver and a touch is possible.  But cutting hard all the time creates other advantages for an offensive team.  

If you pick your spots to cut hard then the defense can also pick their spots as well.  Be the type of player in practice that constantly cuts hard — so hard, so consistently, that your teammates will grumble when they are told to defend you. Hard, sharp cuts create opportunities for teammates.  We refer to this as “cutting to create help.”  Quite often when you make a hard, sharp cut, you will force another defender to leave his/her assignment to help on you and this will allow them to be open for a shot. 

Occupying the defense is a great advantage of hard cuts to occupy a defender (or two).  Often when you see a penetrating dribble to the basket, it is because of cutting away from the ball. As a coach, demand it of your players.  Even if you work on dummy offense — all cuts must be hard and sharp.

Be there before you get there (great thought in regard to a players mentality — especially defensively)

The great ones (Players/Coaches) have Master Ability …responsibility  …dependability  …accountability   …availability

Do you know what’s going on in your locker room?

Knowledge is quickness

Can’t win with “my turn shots” = shooting turnovers

They say the truth hurts? Re-frame your mindset to: the truth helps. In all reality it’s lies we must be concerned with: lies lose!

To “get to” you must “put in”. Simply stated: to get to where you want to go you have to put in the required effort, study, and preparation!

It’s not play “with” each other; its play “for” each other!

Trust: a very powerful ingredient to team success. It’s developed over time by what people see you do & hear you say. Do your words/actions match!

Leaders have bad days just like everyone else. But leaders must rise above this knowing they often determine the pulse each day for many!

To be the best as an individual or team you will have to overcome selfishness, embarrassment, & failure. It requires mental strength & belief!

Coaching & Leadership are positions of dealing with failure and criticism. The best combine intelligence, respect, and class in doing so!

Interesting thought hit me hard when I was with the Para Jumpers Rescue Squad: their effort philosophy of “we all have 40% more to give!”

Good players KNOW the plays… Great players EXECUTE  the plays.

In regards to your administration “budget your bitches.” -Murray Arnold

Demand in February what you did in October — core covenants

Are you best players getting enough shots/touches (this one sounds simple but its not — are you giving it constant thought)

Assistant Coach are there to “assist” the head coach — “weed the garden”

The greater respect the coach commands, the easier it is to ensure buy-­‐in from his or her players. And the more often you can get your team to buy in, the more you’re going to see them do what you want them to do. I’ve always tried to gain respect by outworking others in the business and trying to learn as much as I can at the place and position I’m in. Work ethic and this continuing search for knowledge have been keys to my ability to gain respect.

Relationships are the foundation for success in any field. As a coach, you need to get to know your team, get to know about your team, talk to your players in good times and bad, let your players know you care about them, and develop a trust with your players.

It seems to me that the most successful people in any business have an insatiable intellectual curiosity about their field. They talk to the best in the business, they read about others, they listen to CDs and DVDs, they want to know what the best are doing and how it can relate to them and their programs, and they are curious to know what you know and how it can fit in to enhance their program or business.

Ability to motivate -­‐ Motivation is an aspect of coaching that requires coaches to constantly “read” what’s needed for their team and any given player on a daily basis. It also requires a great deal of thought and study in order to find new ways to accomplish these tasks. Find out what makes a player tick and then create ways to motivate him to get the most out of him each day.

And be able to recognize when it’s a new day that needs a new motivator -­‐-­‐ even for the same player who responded yesterday!

Teams become stronger as sacrifices become greater. When it’s more about each other than it is about me; that’s when teams become special!

Something you can get out of your practice tape is slight offensive wrinkles/adjustments your first unit is making (sometimes unknowingly) to your offensive system due to the second team knowing what they’re running. Some of our best offensive wrinkles in Boston were born out of KG doing this or that in practice against the second unit.

Those who have the ability to bring a team together during rough times are maybe the most valuable players/coaches on the team.

Effort is important to winning games. Intelligent effort is essential to winning against the best.

Great organizations have people who come to work every day and build others up with their energy rather than tear them down with negativity!

Our future can belong to us if we are willing to craft it. That requires intentional daily investments toward where we want to go!

In NY–just saw a sign that said “Exhale”. We should all do this each day: exhale & just think! It doesn’t always have to be do, do, do!

Willingness to give “all you have” to your teammates & having the trust they will do the same; that is a powerful separator from other teams!

Great question to ask: “How good are my questions?” Quality of your questions determines quality of your information. Use the info to help you grow!

How far a team can go is directly proportional to its level of trust and respect it has “for” and “in” each other.

To get what you want you must first know what you need. You must know what you need to learn; what you need to do to. Need comes before get!

Leadership ingredients: head; heart; gut. All will come in to play at different times. Leadership is not just about the mouth and “orders”!

Defensive Communication Intimidates opponent, Gives defense a head start. Gives man on ball more confidence, Wakes up a disengaged defender, Catches a mistake before it happens, Energizes team.

There is a direct correlation between the number of ball reversals and defensive breakdowns. Players have to understand that the hardest thing to do defensively is to close out — to be running out at a player from the help position. Having said that, we need to understand that’s an advantage our offense must look to create, i.e., to get the defense to close out as often as possible.

We want the ball to be reversed from side to side. With our team I can tell you that our scoring proficiency goes up as the number of passes and ball reversals goes up. We like a minimum of 3 passes, as we then know the ball is getting reversed. When we only throw 1 or 2 passes, we find that it’s very easy for the defense to load up to the ball.

The faster the ball moves, the closer the defenders stay to their man. We have found that when we move the ball a little faster, the defensive players are more concerned with staying up with their man and tend to not jump to the ball and get in help position. We also feel that that leaves us with more room to drive it, as the defenders are out of position just enough to allow us to get a good driving angle on them.

I would say that if you don’t have a good scoring post man you should look to move the ball a little faster at times and create driving opportunities. If you do have a good post man, you would want to slow it down and give the post man a good look.

Coach Eastman rises each day at 5 AM to get his reading in. No matter how much we know on any subject, there’s always more to learn. Make the time to read, to study, and to think; each of these is important to your development.

We all need to keep up with what’s going on in our field, too. I’ve found that news and magazine articles can be as helpful as books in this regard. The key is to keep searching so that you gain knowledge, improve, and stay relevant!”

This video was filmed at a PGC/Glazier Basketball Clinic.

The Coach in the video is Arkansas Women’s Head Coach Mike Neighbors.

At the time this video was filmed, he was the Head Coach at Washington.

Coach Neighbors led the Huskies to the 2016 Final Four and has had them ranked in the top 10 for 2016-17 season.

He is absolutely one of the best coaches at any level to study and learn from if you want to become a better coach.

Coaching the iY Generation: Keeping Kids Accountable

Even though it looks like nothing is there, the video will play once you click on it.

It is a little over 10 minutes long and is very good.

These are a few of my takeaways from my latest reading on Texas A & M women’s assistant Bob Starkey’s HoopThoughts. If it is not on your regular reading list, I recommend to add it. There are great articles on all aspects of coaching basketball.

Bob received these notes from Steve Finamore.

Gregg Popovich Notes

• On what it means to play the right way: “It mostly means that everybody is going to play unselfishly, respect each other’s achievements, play hard enough every night to give yourself a chance to win, to fulfill your role.”
• “I don’t want to go to practice with a bunch of problem players.Life is short, I can’t imagine traveling around for 100 games with guys who are jerks. We do a lot of investigating and research before we draft a guy.These are adults; you’re not going to change anybody. You’re not going to take a jerk and turn him into someone who embraces the community.  That’s a waste of time.”
• “Sometimes being quiet and letting the player play is much more important than trying to be Mr. Coach and teach him this or teach him that. So I think as time evolves and you get older in the business you figure out what’s really important, and you don’t waste time trying to make people what they’re not going to be.”
• Following a loss: “If you lose, you were less aggressive, and you didn’t have the effort; that’s all baloney. That’s psycho-babble. You don’t think Patty Mills and those guys played hard? You don’t think Timmy tried to play hard? That’s silly. They played better than we did. It’s got nothing to do with effort.”
• Following a win: “I know we didn’t look pretty. I’m more interested in results than how we look. So I thought they performed well. [The Spurs] did a great job of finding the open man; hitting somebody with a little bit better shot. We only know how to play one way, and that’s what we do. We didn’t do anything different. We just ran what we always run, whether (Duncan) is there or not. If Tony was out or Manu was out, we run our same stuff.”
• “Each game is different, different people will play based on what’s going on in the game on that particular night
• “We’re always trying to move the ball from good to great (shots). Penetrate for a teammate, not necessarily for yourself.”
• On how the Spurs with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Many Ginobili have sustained greatness over the years: “I think that it’s a real simple answer. Nobody really likes it. They want me to say something different. It’s a total function of who those three guys are. What if they were jerks? What if they were selfish? What if one of them was, you know, unintelligent? If, if, if. But the way it works out, all three of them are highly intelligent. They all have great character. They appreciate their teammates’ success. They feel responsible to each other. They feel responsible to Patty Mills or to Danny Green. That’s who they are and how they’re built. I think when you have three guys like that; you’re able to build something over time.So I think it’s just a matter of being really, really fortunate to have three people who understand that and who commit to a system and a philosophy for that length of time. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s on them.”
• “Relationships with people are what it’s all about. You have to make players realize you care about them. And they have to care about each other and be interested in each other. Then they start to feel a responsibility toward each other. Then they want to do it for each other. We win or lose as a group.”

The remainder of the points were taken from the book “Forces of Character.” By Chad Hennings


• “Being able to enjoy someone else’s success is a huge thing. If I’m interviewing a young guy and he’s saying things like, “I should have been picked All-American but they picked Johnny instead of me,” or they say stuff like, “My coach should have played me more; he didn’t really help me,” I’m not taking that kid because he will be a problem one way or another. I know he will be a problem. At some point he’ll start to think he’s not playing enough minutes, or his parents are going to wonder why he’s not playing, or his agent’s going to call too much. I don’t need that stuff. I’ve got more important things to do. I’ll find somebody else, even if they have less ability, as long as they don’t have that character trait.”
• “Work ethic is obvious to all of us. We do that through our scouting. For potential draft picks, we go to high school practices and to college practices to see how a player reacts to coaches and teammates. The phrase that we use is seeing whether people have “gotten over themselves.”When there’s a guy who talks about himself all day long, you start to get the sense that he doesn’t listen real well. If you’re interviewing him and before you ever get anything out of your mouth he’s speaking, you know he hasn’t really evaluated what you’ve said. For those people, we think, Has this person gotten over himself? If he has then he’s going to accept parameters. He’s going to accept the role; he’s going to accept one night when he doesn’t play much. I think it tells me a lot.”
• I like to see if they participated in some function in the community, or if they’ve overcome something or had a tough injury and came back. That sort of thing tells me what kind of character they have. I think all those things together tell me about their inner fiber. When I think about character I want to know about the fiber of an individual. I want to know what, exactly, they’re made of; what’s attached to their bones and their hearts and their brains. It’s all those things that form their character to me.”
• The other thing I’ll do in practice on a regular basis when we run drills is I’ll purposely get on the big boys the most. Duncan, Parker, and Manu Ginobili will catch more hell from me than anybody else out there. You know the obvious effect of that. If you do that and they respond in the right way, everyone else follows suit. The worst thing you can do is let it go when someone has been egregious in some sort of way. The young kids see that and you lose respect and the fiber of your team gets frayed a bit. I think it has to be that way. They have to be willing to set that example and take that hit so everybody else will fall in line. It’s a big thing for us and that’s how we do it.
• “I’ve been doing this a long time, and one of my biggest joys is when somebody comes back to town with their kids, or one of my players becomes one of my coaches, and you have that relationship that you’ve had for the last ten years, fifteen years. It might be only three years in some guys’ cases, but the lessons they learned from you paid off – even if you traded them or you cut them. Years later they come back and say that you were right, that now they know what you were telling them.
• I think all of that relationship building helps them want to play for you, for the program, for their teammates. Beyond that, from a totally selfish point of view, I think I get most of my satisfaction from that. Sure, winning the championship is great, but it fades quickly. It’s always there and nobody can take it away. The satisfaction I get from Tony Parker bringing his child into the office, or some other player who came through the program and now I hired him as a coach and he’s back. That’s satisfying.  You can’t just get your satisfaction out of teaching somebody how to shoot or how to box out on a rebound. That’s not very important in the big picture of things. If you can have both I think you’ve got some satisfaction. It’s one of the motivations. That’s the selfish one I guess, but it’s real.”
• “No one is bigger than the team. If you can’t do things our way, you’re not getting time here and we don’t care who you are.”

You can find out more about the book and read a portion of it by clicking on the image of the book cover at the left.

To read the entire blog post from HoopThoughts, click here: QUOTES, THOUGHTS AND CONCEPTS FROM GREGG POPOVICH