What's Your Calling Card?

Coaching basketball is my favorite thing to do. I love all the subtleties that the casual observe never pays attention to, notices, or just simply takes for granted. I love listening to casual fans talk or complain about how a team doesn't feed the post enough or how they settle for too many jump-shots. However, those fans rarely think about or realize that a lot of things are dictated by the other team that they are playing against. Those same fans also look at basketball below the high school levels and expect coaches and teams to solve all of those issues in a few practices, and oh yeah, increase my players skill set as well.

For those reasons and many others I had come to dread coaching my son's basketball team. For the past three seasons we have been around a .500 team with a lack of leadership, maturity, skill, and basketball IQ. Quite simply, I didn't know where to begin because every area needed work. When I'd sit down to write a practice plan I found myself trying to get about 2.5 hours of stuff into and an hour and a half practice. We were all over the place and nobody was really having fun or competing the way I wanted them to. The kids weren't getting much better and our results were about the same. Each week we'd make a little progress in some areas, but slip in others. I hated the idea of having to go to practice and try to piece together this mess with a number of kids that I thought would never just get it. In simple terms, I felt like I was trying to shingle the roof while the foundation was cracking and sinking. It's also like going to a restaurant while your starving and the menu has 5 pages, everything looks good and you can't decide what you want.

This season didn't start much differently. We were already behind the eight ball with only getting two practices in before our first games. Naturally, we didn't have a full team at either practice. On top of it, we would scrimmage one of the best coached teams in our area halfway through our second practice. Naturally, the kids were more focused on the scrimmage than the work we needed to put into the practice. We also had two new kids on our team who hadn't played organized basketball in a couple of years. As expected we got crushed in our scrimmage. The following day in our first live action we got handled easy in one game and were fortunate to win the next game.

That Sunday night I found myself in a familiar place. I was dreading going to practice this past week and focused on all of the things we needed to work on and how we wouldn't be able to get it all in. Quite honestly, I didn't like working with or being associated with this group because I didn't think we'd ever be able to consistently compete with the good teams. I pouted as I thought about how hard certain teams guarded, or how some teams played great gap defense, or how skilled some teams were, or how well some teams executed their sets. My team wasn't good at any of those things, which is when the light bulb went off. It was so bright and blinding that I became so frustrated I had not seen it sooner. I needed to pick one of those things to focus on and become really good at one of them before we could worry about another.

Once the light bulb went off I became hungry again to go to practice and really work. When you think about all of the great high school or college teams and programs, there is usually one great characteristic that you associate with that coach or program. When you prepare for a really good team or coach in practice, you know exactly what you're going to get and have to battle against. They have a calling card that you and your players know and respect. That's what I wanted to instill in our team. We may not have the best house on the block, but we were going to have one feature that was clearly better than everyone else. There is nothing better as a coach than when an opposing coach comes up and compliments you on how well your team does something or how good they are in one area of the game.

So when I thought about what our team calling card would be I thought about the one thing that every kid should be able to do, regardless of skill level on a basketball court, and that is give tremendous effort. The best place unskilled kids can give effort is on the defensive side of the game. No matter what, our team was going to play better defense than anyone in the league. This was going to be our calling card moving forward. I'd always done that with my middle school teams in the past and my daughter's teams, so I don't know why it took me so long to do it with this group. Over the years I have found it very frustrating to try and teach young kids an offense, but almost all kids have natural instincts on how to play defense. The right kind of guidance and simple terms can help even the kids who seem "clueless" pick up things on the defensive side. Defensive breakdowns can be covered up by alert teammates, while breakdowns on offense can bog down and limit the entire team. Inevitably there is always that kid or two that just cannot grasp offensive sets or patterns, which limits everything you can do as a coach when they're on the court, but they can typically learn to play defense and help the team on that side of the ball.

Speaking of offense, Youtube is an amazing invention. It can make any novice seem like a genius overnight. You can find any number of set plays out there, and with copious notes most coaches can go out and drill those plays into their players. I'd be willing to bet on average that most coaches below the varsity level spend 75% or more of their practice time on offense sets or offensive skills. Yet, I feel confident that most time spent on coaching defense is done while coaching against your own offensive sets. It shows in the games when the majority of youth coaches call out set after set or play after play, but on the defensive end most are clueless on how to make adjustments. Conversely, most sub-varsity coaches struggle to make adjustments when you take away their set plays.

For many years I've always believed that if you put 10 guys of equal skill in the gym and rolled out a basketball the team that played the best defense would win the majority of the time. Guys don't need to have set plays in order to figure out how to score. Spacing, movement, and shot selection are the basic offensive principles that every player begins to understand from a young age. However, some guys are never taught how to properly play defense, and if one team is constantly getting layups and open jumpers then they are likely going to win.. Therefore, my kids were going to learn how to play defense because while in open gym offense pays, but defense stays.

My team was going to become a team that nobody wanted to face because of how we play defense. We're going to pressure the ball everywhere. No more gap defense, which allows teams to move the ball on the perimeter at will, while some players relax and come out of a defensive stance. We're going to get up the line and above the offensive players top-side shoulder. We are going to be the best team at guarding ball screens and fronting cutters and block to block screens. Every practice is going to start with 25 minutes of defensive work. We might not run the most complicated stuff on offense, but nobody is going to want to play us because they won't be able to run their stuff against us. Other teams are going to hate playing against us.

Does this make my method the right method? Not necessarily, but when a guy I view as one of the best varsity coaches in the area compliments your team on something I think it's a good start. If I ask a basketball fan to think of a Bob Knight coached team they quickly think of a team that shares the ball and uses screens and movement better than anybody else. John Calipari teams are known for their dribble penetration offense. Jim Boeheim teams are famous for their long and active zone defense. When you face Tom Izzo you better be ready to battle for every rebound and get back in transition. Bottom line is that every great coach and program has a calling card or a foundation. You can't finish the roof before your foundation is set.

The same applies to any sport. In baseball our team has a clear identity compared to other local teams. In hockey or football, a team must form it's style of play and calling card and expand from there. As a coach you can't get discouraged by what your players cannot do. If you have a group that has a number of weaknesses, then try to find the simplest area where they can excel and find success.

This past weekend we played our two best games over the past 3+ years. We didn't do much differently in practice, except this time we simplified things. The kids had been taught these things in the past, but this time we focused on those things and ignored some of the smaller, finer points that might be a little too advanced at this stage in the season. We still have a long way to go, but I think we finally found our identity, and in my opinion that is the most important thing towards building a successful team and program.