Pressure

This week of Allison and Mike has been great. It is always good to see how the coaches at a higher level are teaching things. I absolutely love seeing the level of detail that they operate on when watching the game of basketball.

Whether it's a pull up jump shot or a team running 4 out motion, they have an intimate understanding of how to build up a skill from the very basics.

I think that is what is missing in all of the coaching education that I have ever received. When you watch people coach, a lot of the time you see them correcting the final product. In order to be able to correct the final product though, you need to know how to build it from the ground up. Books on sets and drills are absolutely everywhere, but what seems more important to me is the actual logical progression of a skill.

To me that is the reason that we can't build perfect basketball players in this world. Laying the foundations of movement and understanding at the right time in a kid's development just doesn't happen. If anyone knows how to teach basketball from start to finish, from 6 years old to 65 I'd love to meet them. Anyone who is close to even knowing that works with the highest level athletes, tweaking their game and performance to get a little bit better. The coaches working at the most important levels (our youngest players) are usually the ones that haven't had that background of breaking down skills and movements, and from what they've observed from the master coaches, the game is all about correcting performance.

Correcting is all well and good if you know how to put it together from scratch. The most effective coaches are the ones that are constantly trying to figure out better ways to teach things. More logical ways to describe how a skill works.

Anyways, I didn't mean to make that part so long.

The best thing that I have gotten out of Allison and Mike is that they have reminded us of how intense practice needs to be to improve. As time goes on, practice always falls into that rut known as "comfort". Your players get comfortable playing at one speed, you get comfortable with them going as hard as they are and the days start to go by. They are stil playing hard of course, but not playing as hard as they can. The only way to improve is to compete the hell out of every drill.

They brought that mentality to us and you could feel the "uncomfortableness" in the gym. Now people are pressuring the ball so hard that we can't make a pass by our own defender. The defense is working so hard that the offense turns in the old barnyard offense - 5 chickens running around with their heads cut off.

So now the offense has to play with mental intensity but not be physically out of control. That is exactly what happens when you play a better team. You have to contend with great defensive pressure and be poised (one of their favorite terms) enough to think abut what you are trying to do and how to do it. "Play fast but don't hurry" instantly comes to mind.

So if your team is better defensively than it is offensively (or more athletic then they are skilled, which we definitely are) you can really get after each other and improve your offense. Sure it will look ugly until you learn to play with some poise, but it's got to get ugly if it's ever going to get better.