Filing Cabinet

I received this article from Mano Watsa of PGC Basketball. I know that deciding upon and communicating about playing time is one of the most difficult aspects of the job of coaching. Everyone has different beliefs, but I hope that you might find something in this post that you can use to help your team either this year or that it can be filed to use next year.

I have also included links to two previous articles from PGC Basketall at the bottom of this post

My coach isn’t playing me much and I don’t understand why…

Below is an email correspondence from this past week between Dena Evans, owner of PGC Basketball, and a PGC grad who she corresponds with throughout the year.

As many players (and parents) have these types of concerns during a season, we thought Dena’s response will benefit everyone in our PGC community. Coaches, we recommend you share this with your entire team in order to pro-actively address this common issue.

Hey Dena,

Just getting home from my game and I didn’t play very much.

I don’t know why.

The last game I won the game for us and today I didn’t play much…kind of frustrating because I really feel like I could’ve helped us out tonight.

It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

A friend has been assisting me through this difficult season and has recommended I look into transferring in the next year or two.

I’m not the type of person who runs from challenges when times get tough.

But, this year just hasn’t been what I thought it would be. It’s still pretty early in the season, so I’m just doing my best to turn it around.

I feel like I’ve made an impact on my team, but my coach seems to think otherwise.

In my opinion, I’m doing everything I am supposed to do, and much more. So, it’s kind of like my coach is telling me one thing, but then doing another.

I know I’m going to go through unfair situations in my career, and I think this is probably one of them.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you Dena,

Mike

—————–

Mike,

It’s December 8th. Basketball season is a marathon, not a sprint.

Stay in the moment.

Stop thinking about next year or about transferring.

Focus only on the things you can control.

Know that every real athlete who is worth their salt has been through adversities, doubts, frustrations, and unfairness (often in their freshman or sophomore years, in particular).

It’s December 8th. Stop letting every thought and doubt on the surface of your mind lead you down a hole.

Stop analyzing every little decision your coach makes.

Remember why you play. Remember what you love about it. Remember the things you can control and let go of all the things you can’t.

Have a short memory. Let stuff go. Have as much fun as possible.

Touch as many people as possible in a positive way.

It’s December 8th. A whole lot of opportunities, disappointments, ups and downs will come your way before the season is over.

You’ll miss it all if you keep worrying about the little things.

Don’t major in minor things.

Focus on the stuff that matters…your attitude, effort, love of the game, your teammates, doing your best every day, learning every day, staying in the moment, making a fan’s day, being a positive influence on some little kid who looks up to you.

Did I mention that it’s only December 8th?

Stay focused on what matters and what you can control, or you’ll miss the best parts of the season — a season you’ll get only one chance to experience.

Next play, next game, next opportunity.

What matters is NOT what your coach does, but how you respond to it.

Keep in touch,

Dena

More articles from PGC Basketall:

5 Ways Players Can Improve Immediately

Dealing with Season Ending Disappointment

PGC Basketball Camp locations and enrollment are now open for the summer of 2015.

IS PGC FOR YOUR PLAYERS?

PGC offers intense 5-day, 4-night courses for junior high, high school, and college players.

Not just for point guards, PGC courses teach players of all positions to play smart basketball, to be playmakers, and to be coaches on the court.

Click here for information on this year’s camps.

PGC IS FOR COACHES TOO…

Over 500 coaches of all levels attend PGC each summer, as each course serves as an unparalleled, information-packed coaches clinic.

I found this list to share with your players on Mayville State University Women’s Basketball Coach Dennis Hutter’s site www.coachhutter.com.

My hope is that you can make some adaptations to the document that fit your basketball program’s standards and ideals and share it with your players.

The ABC’s of Comets Basketball

Attitude – An Attitude of Gratitude, writing thank you notes once a week to someone who has helped you.

Balance – The ability to be successful in life while dealing with your basketball, academic and personal life.

Commitment – What every player understands is necessary to become the player and team we want to be.

Discipline – Doing the right thing, at the right time, every time you do it, no matter who is watching.

Excellence – What we achieve every day through effort, energy, execution and emphasis on the little things.

Family – What we are, we are more than a team we are a Family.

Greatness –What we strive for everyday from on the floor to in the classroom to in our personal lives.

Honor – Understanding the opportunity they have to play College Basketball.

Integrity – Handling all situations with a positive mental, physical and emotional state of mind.

Journey – It is not the finish line, it is everything done in the time heading to the finish line.

Knowledge – Upperclassmen passing down the culture of our program to the new players.

Leadership – Every player on our team has a leadership responsibility, and that is your Example.

Motivation – What will make you the player that you want to be, intrinsic motivation cannot be taught.

N.B.A. – Next Best Action.

Opportunity – What every player gets being a part of our family, from Varsity to Junior Varsity.

Pride – Understanding what/who you are playing for, and giving everything you have for that cause.

Quality – The product produced by doing the right things.

Respect – The manner in which we treat all people. We care about people.

Servanthood – Giving back to the people who helped you get to where you are.

Tenacity – Our Attitude whenever we step on the floor.

Unselfishness – Being able to take the attention off of ourselves and put it on our teammates.

Victory – What we strive for every time we step on the floor. Not just on the scoreboard.

WIN – What’s Important Now?

Xample – It’s not the Main thing, it’s the ONLY thing!

Youth – Interacting with youth around the area through camps, helping at their school and games.

Zeal – The way in which we approach every basketball situation.

As coaches continually look for ways to improve their teams, I believe that analytics will be one of the next major trends that filters down from NBA and WNBA through college and eventually to high school.

To give you an idea of what is being measured, I have included some links to samples of an NBA teams stats pages at the end of this post. For shooting, they break down effective field goal percentage (link is to the previous post on effective field goal percentage) by catch and shoot, dribble pull-up shots, how many dribbles prior to the shot, how close the nearest defender was, and how far into the shot clock the shot was taken. The NBA pages also have examples of metrics of Dean Oliver’s four factors that correlate to winning.

Not all of those will have significance for you, but I have had experience with different players and teams where presenting statistical data about our performance has made a difference to our success. At different times and with different teams, I have measured factors such as how long we had the ball before shooting, a specific individual post player’s shooting percentage on the right block compared to the left block, a specific perimeter player’s shooting percentage for catch and shoot compared to one or two dribble pull ups made a difference in our performance and our number of victories.

The important data points vary with each new season and new player combinations, but determining what metrics make an impact each year is a part of the art of coaching.

Having been at a couple of small schools, I realize that you can’t measure everything but I truly feel that by investing the time to focus on a few key analytics and applying them not to both evaluate your players and team’s performance, and to determine and teach the most effective style of play. Mining Key analytics is a project that an assistant coach or a capable manager can have delegated to them.

“Touch Time”

Here is one stat that you might be able to use with your players as you practice or play summer league games to help convince them that the best teams pass and move the basketball and don’t hold it. Touch Time may not be the analytic that you are looking for, but I have always been a believer that “anything that is measured and watched improves” because you and the players will place more of an emphasis on it. Find something that you can improve in your program by measuring it.

Touch time is defined as the amount of time a player has the basketball prior to shooting. Stephen Shea (PHd Mathematics, Wesleyan University) wrote an article on his site regarding touch time and its correlation to effective field goal percentage. I have also included a link to that article below.

The findings were that, on average, NBA players who shoot in less than 2 seconds after getting the ball have an Effective Field Goal Percentage of .54. The Effective Field Goal Percentage of players who shot with a Touch Time of between 2 and 6 seconds dropped to .44. If the player had the ball for more than 6 seconds before shooting, the EFG% is slightly less than .44.

According to Shea, during the 2014-15 NBA regular season, the Atlanta Hawks had the highest percentage of shots taken with less than two seconds of touch time. Atlanta’s Head Coach, Mike Budenholzer, spent 18 years on the San Antonio Spurs staff, and know the type of ball movement that the Spurs play with.

Shea also points out that this data includes all clock situations and transition shots. I believe that it would be more helpful for high school and college coaches to know the numbers for half court offense, the breakdown for man to man defense and zone defense, and probably other scenarios that I am leaving out. I do definitely think it is something to think about for how your team players and team score most effectively. It is also worth considering having a manger use his or her phone as a timer and your game or practice video to collect some hard data.

I am not suggesting that you can use all of the ideas from the NBA you don’t have the time for that. I am also not suggesting that every statistic is relevant for every team . What I am suggesting is that it is at least worth taking some time to be aware of where basketball data is trending and will continue to trend over the next few years. I also believe that if you can find data and hard numbers for when your players are and are not effective, you can use it as one additional piece of evidence as you teach your players how you want them to play.

To see an entire article written by Stephen Shea regarding touch time, click here: Touch Time

For more ideas on how the NBA uses analtyics, here are some links as to what they track (Hope it gives you some thoughts on a stat or two that can help your team):

If you look at the links on the top navigation bar, you can find links to other data that they track.

Field Goal Percenetage on 1 Dribble. You can change the filter at the top of the page where it says “Dribble Range” to select different numbers of dribbles.

Field Goal Percentage Early in the Shot Clock (18-22 Seconds)

Field Goal Percentage with Touch Time 2-6 Seconds

Team Stats “Hustle Plays”

Again, if you are interested in seeing more, just check out the nav bars at the top of those pages. I know you can’t do even close to all of them, but you might find one idea that will help your players focus on being more effective at playing the way you need to play to win.

If you have been on the Coaching Toolbox for any length of time, you know that Mike Neighbors from the University of Arkansas is one of my absolute favorite coaches to learn from. This post is a portion of an article he is working on to detail his move from assistant coach to head coach. The article is entitled “418 Mistakes Later” and is still a work in progress. My guess is that he is much harder on himself than he should be, but I do think that as always, he brings up some really good lessons for us to consider whether we are a head coach or an assistant.

On day 366 of the job, I spent the entire day with the list. By the end of the day, I was able to categorize them into a dozen areas of similar reasons that I felt I had made them. I will list those 12 areas below and then once every now and then, update this document and go more in depth on each area.

1. I assumed being an assistant coach would prepare you to be a head coach
2. I told people the TRUTH before I had earned their TRUST
3. I got out of shape
4. I got out of alignment between Process and Results
5. I tried to do too many “things”
6. I was afraid to do “what I thought best”
7. I exhausted my daily decision energy on stuff that didn’t effect winning
8. I stopped confronting things that needed to be confronted
9. I let the Urgent overcome the Important
10. I forgot to keep myself “charged”
11. I didn’t realize how tight my friend circle would become
12. I had no idea how to manage a staff or how to “manage up”

I ASSUMED BEING AN ASSISTANT COACH WOULD PREPARE YOU TO BE A HEAD COACH

We all know the saying about assuming (ASS-U-ME)… if you haven’t, asked one of your kids to explain. Well, it was never more true than in the case of me assuming that my 14 years of being an assistant coach would have me fully prepared to be a head coach. While those years certainly helped and probably kept me from making 936 mistakes, it just isn’t that simple.

The job description of a Head Coach is completely different from being as assistant.

So many of my actual mistakes fell in this category and some will overlap with later topics we discuss. I believe simply knowing that would have saved me from the first mistake I made that fall under this header. Over the course of 14 years I had accumulated resources that allowed me to be productive in my day. I had forms for this and that. I had a routine that led to an efficient day. So on Day 1 as a head coach, I expected that to be the same. But it wasn’t. Not even close.

I didn’t have a form for keeping up with people contacting me for jobs.
I didn’t have a form for what to do when a recruit didn’t want to come to Washington.
I didn’t have a plan for delegating assignments to my staff.
I didn’t have a plan for what do to when one of my “recommendations” didn’t work.

For my entire professional career, I had been making suggestions. Some were used. Some weren’t. Some that were used worked. Some didn’t. None of them however ever came back across my desk to explain to the media or administration. Now my decisions had consequences. We will cover Decision Making much more in detail in a later piece.

For the last 14 years my decisions pretty much just directly effected me and maybe my immediate family. Now my decisions affected the lives of every player, coach, aide, manager, strength coach, athletic trainer, etc.

My biggest mistake was just ASS-u-ming again that “things would slow down” or “you’ll get adjusted to the new demands”… I wish I would have gone in knowing that it was okay to be overwhelmed. That is wasn’t going to slow down. That it wasn’t going to just adjust. I needed a better plan. I needed support. I needed help. I wasted valuable time waiting for things to slow down or adjust.

What would I do differently: I would have spent “free” time as an assistant reading up on the area. I would have paid more attention to the job my head coach was doing. I would have picked their brains about how they manage their time. I would have asked to sit in on meetings with marketing, facilities, administration. I would have not kept expecting what I knew in the past to be good enough.

I TOLD PEOPLE THE TRUTH BEFORE I HAD EARNED THEIR TRUST

Again ‘assuming’ got the best of me. I had assumed the trust I had earned with the players as their assistant coach would directly carry over to the new office and the new title. Not true.

So, when I began from Day 1 with TRUST as one of our three core values, I told players the truth. The truth about their situation at UW. The truth about how I saw them fitting in with the change of staff. The truth about my expectations for them moving forward in their career.

Mistake category #2 was born!!!

Have you ever noticed in your life you don’t listen to people you don’t trust? Think about it for a second. Friends. People you are in relationships with. Strangers. Enemies. You listen to people you trust. As always this comes back to a Papa Neighbors quote:

“Don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t have a dog in the fight.”

I am betting after you thought about it, you realized your life long learning advice came from someone who had earned your trust.

Look at it from another perspective. Do you tell people the 100%, truth and nothing but the truth, nothing held back TRUTH to people you don’t TRUST? Betting that’s a no again.

Read in a book that if you want to find out if someone trusts/likes/respects/gives a crap about you, simply ask them for feedback on something. If you get ALL positives…they don’t!!! So true. We have all given a presentation or a talk in which everyone tells you what a great job you did. But you know you fumbled some words. Or you had a ton of “verbal graffiti” like, you know, um, um, um, um. Only people that love you will tell you your fly was open. Only people that care about you will tell you that you have something in your teeth.

Not saying you don’t listen to others. Not saying you don’t consider their input. Saying that when it comes down to it, you only tell the truth to people you trust and you only listen to truth from people you trust.

As my first year was unfolding, my desire to be transparent, to be an open book, to be 100% honest was well intended, but not so well executed.

Will share will you the best example…

My team was struggling with shot selection early in the year. We had a strong returning group of players who had been our leading scorers for two years with an incoming McDonald’s All-American who could also really score. I wanted it to be very clear what we viewed was an acceptable shot and what wasn’t. We showed film. We pointed in out in practice. We charted every shot take in our pre-season and posted for everyone to see.

My intention: That our team driven, high basketball IQ kids could see the results and realize who needed the most shots and why.

Result: Through first 30 practices, a scrimmage game, an exhibition game, and our first two regular season games, we still didn’t know.

My solution: Get everyone in the film room in front of a whiteboard. Break down for them that we get on average 70 FG attempts per game. Some games a few more. Some games a few less. But 70 on average. With that in mind, Player A needed between 12-17 of those. Player B needed 10-15 of those. Player C need 8-12 of those. The remaining shots would be available to those other players based on each game and need in each game.

All based on evidence from shooting in practice, in games, and extra shooting each of them put in. Evidence mind you. It was crystal clear to me that our team would want our best shooters taking the most shots therefore we would have a chance to win more games.

It was pretty much straight from the Don Meyer clinic on shot selection. How could it fail.

Well it failed. And it failed miserably. It completely backfired. It separated the team more. The players I said needed the shots even hated it. They felt extra pressure. They felt their teammates were counting their shots. For the next month, we were in recovery mode from my brilliant idea.

But you know what happened about ten games? My exact shot distribution began to happen. And everyone was completely fine with it. In fact, they could be heard during timeouts saying Player A needs a couple touches. Or Player A saying to player B, you’re hot tonight I am looking for you!!

Conclusion: Once I had earned their trust and had earned each other’s trust, it was easier to accept. They believe in before they buyin (as Kevin Eastman told me at a recent clinic.) That could be restated… The Believe in after they Trust In…

I TRIED TO DO TOO MANY THINGS

This mistake shares a lot of crossover with the previous one we just talked about. It stemmed from years of observing and collecting ideas. I wanted to start this. And implement that. Wanted to have this and that. Wanted to promote our program in this way and that. I wanted us to travel this way and that. I wanted our locker room to have this and that. You get the picture.

What I quickly found was that even if you implement them all, you can’t keep track of them all.

A few examples… At Xavier, Sean Miller gave a special colored practice jersey to the practice player of the week. Those guys fought like warriors to earn that jersey. It was amazing to watch them compete for it. Tried it. Complete and utter failure. Our girls didn’t want to be different. They would actively avoid it. What worked for Sean Miller didn’t work for me.

At Tulsa we had great success sitting our team down and explaining our shot selection process. We had adopted the Don Meyer method of evaluating our shot efficiency. It led us to unprecedented success with the program. Complete and utter failure with my first team. It, in fact, hurt us. It caused more problems than it did good.

We had team goals, game goals, position goals, four minute war goals, etc… The result was that no one knew what to really focus on. Didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t.

It carried over to our X’s and O’s too. We had too many actions. Too many defensive thoughts. Too many “what ifs”… again creating confusion with our team.

It was the same with my staff and support staff. We had so many things we were trying to do that we weren’t very good at any one thing. It was difficult to even keep up with the projects we constantly had on-going. I lost track of who was doing what, when I had expected them to be done, and ultimately even what the purpose of the project was.

The solution was to SIMPLIFY…Once we started to strip away and get to what WAS important, we improved. Our theme of ONE was born and from that point on, we all focused on ONE thing at a time… and now the second that we begin to look ahead, someone in our basketball family is quick to point out that we are getting ahead of ourselves.

You have to try things for sure. You have to make mistakes to learn from them. But don’t be stubborn and don’t be afraid to change or be different…

Click here to read Part II of the Article

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.

TEACHING OFFENSE AND SHOT SELECTION

It is important to approach teaching offensive execution and proper shot selection as an “indoctrination” process. You are not just teaching concepts and skills, you are trying to instill a value system and philosophy in your team and program.

The Goal:

You want your team and all your players to understand exactly what proper offensive execution is and what it is not, also you want your team to understand which shots are “good shots” and what shots are not.

Taking these goals one important step further; you want your team to understand how proper offensive execution and good shot selection leads to playing “winning basketball.”

The fact is that most teams do not execute very well offensively and almost every basketball team takes a lot of bad shots each game. So, if your team executes well on offense and takes good shots; their chances of winning improves tremendously – And if your team can do this consistently and understand what they are doing; you are able to build a “culture of winning” on your team and in your program.

Logical reasoning:

When asked about offensive execution and shot selection, each player on your team should have something like this to say:

“Proper offensive execution and good shot selection greatly increases our chances of winning. We really want to win. So we are going to embrace the concepts of proper offensive execution and good shot selection. We want to know as much as we can about it and implement it into the way we play so we can win as many games as we possibly can”.

Before we continue our discussion on teaching offense and shot selection any further; we should examine the teaching process and the establishment of execution standards.

Five powerful teaching ideas to consider:

1. COGNITIVE TEACHING:

• Thoroughly explain and demonstrate each offensive and shot selection concept carefully, both to the team and to each individual player. Comprehensively and meticulously go over every appropriate situation and scenario.

• Ask questions and answer questions to make sure your players understand every concept, use examples and ask for examples.

• From drill and scrimmage situations, frequently stop the action to evaluate and explain examples of correct and incorrect execution. Explain why for every example and involve your players in the conversation as much as possible. Your players must know what is correct and what is incorrect and why. They must be able to explain and defend every action they engage in on the court.

2. BEHAVIORAL TEACHING (Rewards and consequences)

• Reward positive behavior (good shots and good execution).
  Variable Ratio; tailored to each individual

• Apply appropriate consequences to negative behavior (bad shots and bad execution).
  Fixed ratio, 1:1

3. CORRECTION TEACHING:

• In the mind of a child; “Everything that is not corrected…. is accepted”. Therefore we must correct every thing that is not acceptable and reinforce, recognize, reward or praise every thing that is acceptable. (This is the only way I have found to effectively teach what is and what is not acceptable).

• “Kids do two things; what you make them do and what you let them do”. So; make them do the right things and don’t let them do the wrong things.

• The way your team plays in games is a direct reflection of the standards you require in practice; whatever you allow in practice will show up in games.

4. REPETITION TEACHING:

• Relentless scoring practice is necessary for scoring proficiency and relentless offensive execution practice is necessary if you want your team to be good at offensive execution.

• “Practice does not make perfect; “practice” makes permanent. Only “perfect practice” makes perfect.

• Get good at what you work at by working at it relentlessly and working at it correctly.

5. REMINDERS AND ACCOUNTABILITY TEACHING:

• It is essential that every player understands how proper execution of concepts and standards affects success and winning. It is also essential that each player possess an obsessive desire for the team to be successful.

• Once concepts and standards are established; effective teams create an atmosphere where players respectfully remind, correct and reinforce each other’s execution and hold each other accountable.

OFFENSIVE BASKETBALL AND SHOT SELECTION

Coaches must know their team’s strengths and weaknesses each season then develop offensive systems and a style of play that enables their teams to have a chance to have as much success as they are capable of each season. They need to have offensive strategies and tactics that enable their teams to have success against any kind of full, extended and half court defenses they will encounter.

In my opinion, coaches should teach offensive schemes that put the right players in the right places on the court in order to maximize their team’s offensive and scoring potential. Offensive systems should be easy for players to understand and execute.

All Players must understand their team’s offensive systems and understand the style of play they are being taught. They need to understand that if they execute their offense properly, it will result in their team having a chance to achieve their maximum potential (provided that they play good defense and rebound effectively, of course).

It is in the aforementioned context that offensive basketball and shot selection will most effectively be taught.

PRIORITIES:

1. Proficient execution against defensive pressure; full, extended and half court pressure and presses.

2. Proficient execution against any kind of half-court defense.

3. Develop the mentality that “We finish every offensive possession with points; we score every time we get the ball”, and “We do not commit fouls while we are on offense”. Teams that establish this value system are extremely difficult to beat.

4. Proper shot selection is essential. Each player must be taught and understand his personal scoring role. The team must know under what circumstances scoring opportunities occur.

All players must know who should shoot, when the shot should be taken and from what spot the shot should come from; EVERY POSSESSION.

• Players must only be allowed to attempt shots during games they have the ability to convert.
  “If he can’t make that shot it in practice, he doesn’t get to take it in the game”.

Coaches must stress the concepts of:

• “Right time, right spot, right player”………for every shot.
  
• “Take shots the other team can’t fast break on”……this is a critical concept.

5. Players must understand game situations at all times and adjust their offensive decision making appropriately.

• Execution of offensive play calls from the bench.
• How time and score should affect each possession.
• “Bonus philosophy”; players need to know how many fouls the opposing team has each half and know how to use the bonus while on offense to gain an advantage.
• Possession discretion; players need to know when to push the ball up the court into early offense and when to pull it back and run their half court possession offense.
• “Fresh clock” kick outs v. offensive put-backs from offensive rebounds. (sometimes possession of the ball is more valuable than quick points)

6. Coaches must be able to use their “remote control” from the sideline effectively

Many coaches shy away from delving into teaching and discussing shot selection with their players because it is not easy to teach and it can lead to confusion stimulating comments like “……afraid to shoot”, “got my kid all screwed up”, “doesn’t understand his role”, “he’ll take me out if I take that shot”, etc. However, I believe that studying the topic and learning how to approach the subject is very worthwhile for coaches who really want to learn how improve their coaching and win more games.

Teams that shoot high percentages from the field are normally very successful. Opposing coaches and people in the know frequently say things about them like; “those guys really know what they’re doing”, “they play with great discipline”, “I wish my guys had that kind of shot selection”, “they are fundamentally sound”, “what an unselfish group” and “they never beat themselves”. Make no mistake, it is very challenging for coaches to become good at teaching solid offensive execution and great shot selection, but to me, the rewards make it a tremendously worthwhile endeavor.

© Dave Millhollin

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 20 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.

This video sample from Kevin Eastman’s CoachingU Live came from his clinic entitled “A Champion’s DNA.” He served as an Assistant Coach for the Celtics from 2004 to 2013. At that time he made the move to Los Angeles with Doc Rivers and was on the Clippers Coaching Staff. Kevin was promoted to Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Clippers. He is now retired from the NBA and serves as a speaker and consultant.

At the bottom of this post, there are more links to other short videos with Coach Eastman on various topics.

Each sample video is a part of his 8 DVD 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.

If you are interested in finding out more about the DVD set, you can click this link:

Kevin Eastman 8 DVD Set

You can also see another 5 minute video on Skill Development from Coach Eastman by clicking on this link below:

Click here for detailed information about purchasing the DVDs at a special price If you need any assistance, email me at [email protected] or call or text (317) 721-1527.

Make sure your sound is on and you click the play arrow to see the video.

The 5 minute video shares some of the core values of his Champion’s DNA and how he defines them