More basketball games are lost than won

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The coaches at the Coaching Toolbox feel that more basketball games are lost than won at every level. This is especially true when the competing teams talent level is close, as it is in the NBA playoffs. In those cases, our belief is that more teams make bad plays to lose then teams make good plays to win. We do not promote a “playing not to lose” mindset, but rather a “playing not to make plays that cause us to lose”–there is a huge difference.

This post is not meant to criticize the NBA players or NBA basketball coaches. They are the best in the world and compete on a level that most of us will never ascend to. The purpose is to show that even Gregg Popovich and Phil Jackson’s players make mistakes at crucial times, so no matter how experienced the basketball players we work with are at our levels, they need constant teaching and coaching to perform at their best when the pressure is on.

I will admit that I was working as the game was being played and did not catch everything, but I did see a few mistakes that our players can learn from.

The handoff from Oberto to Ginobili was executed improperly.Again, they are going at an incredibly rapid pace and have Kobe Bryant defending them, but the fact is that the player handing the ball must not push it into the receivers hands (even if those hands belong to Manu Ginobili). The proper way for a hand off to be executed is for the player holding the ball to protect it and to allow the player receiving the ball to take it from his or her hands.

The resulting turnover was a dunk for Bryant that really buried the Spurs chances of winning. That is until Bryant handed them an opportunity to get back in the game by taking a shot that should not have been taken. We will touch on that in tomorrow’s post.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching.

Since we at the Coaching Toolbox have only been posting since March 1, we still have many many areas that we want to delve into. One of those things we want to add to over the summer is our defensive pages.

As you might have guessed if you have spent any time going into our defensive postings on the site, we coached and prefer the pack line pressure defense. One of the basketball quotes that influenced our thinking was from Dick Bennett, when he stated “When you try to stop everything, you stop nothing.” The second statement that greatly impacted our thinking was that “You can only do two of the three from the group of “denying, helping, and recovering.”

Coach Bennett states that he can document statistically (and we can too from our statistical experiences) that when you work hard and aim to deny perimeter passes that the three point percentage that you allow increases. It is due to the fact that when a defender is denying and then moves to help on a dribbler or a post entry pass, the momentum is going away from the player he or she is guarding and it is next to impossible to stop that momentum and then redirect it back to their defensive assignment.

If you are “out athleticed” certainly playing a pack line pressure defense to shorten the game makes a great deal of sense. We believe that even if you are blessed with better athletes than your opponent, it still makes sense to play the pack line. Visit the Coaching Toolbox for more information that we have collected to implement a pack line pressure defense in your program. Our defensive beliefs might help you to begin thinking about what type of defense will make your program a success.

A coach should never criticize players publicly or in the media. Bear Bryant said: “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you. ” If you want to tell your AD behind closed doors that is one thing, but don’t say anything negative about the players publicly. Don’t tell everyone that the players did not do what you told them. Even if it is true that they did not do as they were taught, save that for the locker room and practice if it is not the last game of the season. As the coach give the players credit for the victories and accept the blame for the defeat as the head coach. To me, it is even more unforgivable in college to blame the athletes. D1 coaches make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the efforts of the players and the players are getting nothing in return. I don’t agree with the argument that they are getting a free education. Most of them could go to college for next to nothing just on aid and need alone, even if they didn’t have a basketball scholarship. I believe that If a coach works on game ending situations over and over in practice, the players will at least look as if they have a plan of attack and are not totally disorganized at the end of a game, then the people who matter can judge for themselves that the coach did his or her job in preparing them.

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One of our clock management rules at the end of the game is that if we gain possession with the clock running in the opponent’s half of the court at the end of a game where we are trailing with three seconds or less, we call timeout.  For this reason, we save our timeouts until the end of the game.  We like to throw to half court and call timeout if our opponent scores to tie the game at the end with under five or scores to take the lead.

If we can stop the clock immediatley after the score with a timeout, or if the opponent takes the lead a made free throw where the clock is already stopped.  If you don’t have any timeouts left and the clock is stopped, at least throw the ball long inside your own three point arc rather than throw up a shot from half court that has very little chance of going in. The defense is not going to foul in this situation. If the ball is knocked loose, it is better to have it loose under your own basket.

Brownsburg won the Indiana large class state boys championship in 2008 by having a coach smart enough to teach his players to throw the ball to their basket and for everyone to go to the ball when inbounding the ball at the end of a game. They were behind by one point with 2 seconds to go. Click here to see the play on youtube. I have seen long passes to the basket tie and win games before, even if they were originally fumbled, like the Brownsburg play. Throwing the ball long puts you in a similar position to putting back a missed last second shot, which is what most coaches fear more than the last second shot itself. Its easier to be lucky when you are smart enough to realize that a loose ball in the lane is more dangerous than one at half court.

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These are my thoughts (and my reasoning) as to why you should foul at the end of a game to preserve a three point lead.

Once the clock gets to seven seconds (so the clock will stop at 6 on a foul) and the ball is in the front court, you have to take the ball from the dribbler. A foul is probably going to be called, but if you teach your players to take the ball, then you will either have stolen the ball (not likely to be let go by the official) or you will have fouled and kept the opponent from shooting a potentially game tying three point shot. If you are not in the bonus yet, that is even better, you keep taking the ball when the opponent inbounds until they get to go to the free throw line. You must foul the dribbler at least 10 feet away from the three point arc.

There used to be some debate as to this strategy when the offense could put four rebounders on the free throw line, but now that the offense is only allowed two rebounders, the odds for an offensive rebound have dropped significantly.

Personal experience tells me that in the almost 30 years of playing/watching/coaching games since the rule was included for high school and college games, many more late three point shots go in and send games into overtime than I have seen the sequence of: making the first free throw, missing the second on purpose, getting the offensive rebound of the missed free throw, and then making a shot to tie (or win the game if the shot is a three point shot).

To me, the following statistical argument is even more convincing.

A good three point shooter, relative to the competition level, can hit 33%, even when guarded. Today, the players have incredible range and take more shots from several steps behind the arc, so there is also a bigger area to defend, not just the sector right on the arc.

Your opponent has to have five things happen successfully to tie the game under extreme pressure if you choose to foul:

#1 They have to make the first free throw. Let’s just assume you foul an 80% ft shooter.

#2 They have to miss the second free throw on purpose without accidentally making it or missing the rim entirely. Most players do not practice missing free throws. You can’t just shoot it to the right or the left, that would give a huge rebounding advantage to the defense because the ball will not come off the rim very hard. You have to shoot it hard to get a longer than normal rebound. I would say 90% success on not making the shot accidentally and not violating and missing the rim completely. That is not even taking into account the pressure factor of doing something you rarely if ever practice during the most pressure packed time of the game.

#3 The shooting team must get the offensive rebound. I would say that 40% of the time without fouling would be great success on that.

#4 The offensive rebounder has to score without traveling or committing an offensive foul. If he/she throws the rebound to a teammate, they cannot turn it over or make a pass that makes the receiver reach for the ball and throw off shooting rhythm and balance. That is tough to do under pressure. I would say 95% of the time that would happen without a turnover. That percentage is probably high, but I am estimating high to give the benefit to the offense to drive home the point that you have to foul.

#5 The player shooting has to hit the shot–let’s say 50% success on a 2 point shot to tie, 33% on a three to win (since we assume that the first free throw was made)

If you calculate the probability that all five of those things succeed on the same play (80% x 90% x 40% x 95% x 50%) it comes to a maximum of 14% of the time you would be tied by a missed free throw, an offensive rebound, and a 2 point shot. That is also with high estimates for each of the 5 parts to happen independently, so I believe that the true probability is actually less than 14%. Either way it is not close to the estimate of 33% of making a three to tie the game. Even if you believe the odds of your opponent making the three point shot to tie are as low as 1 in 6, the percentages say that you are still better off fouling the dribbler out by the 10 second line.

When a good team (and when you are playing for any championship, your opponent is usually at least a good team) is faced with a three point deficit and 10 seconds, they are going to tie you once in a while. I would just rather make it tougher on them to tie by fouling and not letting them take a shot they will make at least one out of three times.

To hit a 3 point shot after making a free throw to win the game (again, if my percentages assumptions are correct–and I have intentionally set them high) would be 80% x 90% x 40% x 95% x 33% = 9% I would add two thoughts that I believe dramatically lower that percentage. If you are throwing the ball out beyond the arc for a shot with tougher defense on the pass out and under extreme scoreboard and clock pressure, the chance of making a safe pass would diminish. Point number two, the rebounder is more than likely not going to look to throw out for a three, but is going to focus on scoring. Depending on how much time is left, there might not be time for a pass out and a three point shot. I believe the offense will go for the highest percentage shot they can get, which is a two not a three. Based on the numbers above. my estimate is that throwing out for the winning three after making the first free throw and missing the second is less than 4%.

Even if you don’t agree with my percentage estimates, put in your own percentages and do the math to make a judgment that is based on reason, not on the criticism you could receive if you do foul and then lose the game.

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Do not waste timeouts early in the game to save possession on a loose ball. The timeout is too valuable at the end of the game to waste in that way. When your team makes the second free throw and you have a 3 point lead, not when you make a basket with the clock running, but when you make a free throw and the clock is stopped call time out to set your defense. It has been my experience that a set half court defense is much tougher to score against than conversion defense. You are converting to defense on a made free throw. You can also put some slight full court pressure on the dribbler bringing it up to eat up more clock.