Is Zone Defense Bad for Youth Basketball?

June 30th, 2010

Today I watched a video that vilified zone defenses and presses in youth basketball. Now, I am a man-to-man coach and played in man-to-man defense only leagues when I was young. However, as long as zone defenses are legal, I do not see why youth leagues should prohibit them or why coaches should be discouraged from employing them.

Before getting too deep into the argument, I suppose that I should frame the age groups. The video mentioned that zones should not be used before high school. Therefore, our conversation centers on u14s. Now, I do not even believe that players need to play organized basketball until they are 8 or 9. When players begin organized basketball, I believe that they should play 3v3 games, not 5v5 (more on this below), which is why I created the Playmakers Basketball Development Leagues. I do not see a need for 5v5 games until players are 10 years old or older, so the argument of zones or no zones has to do with the 10-14 year-old age group.

What is the argument against zones and presses?

Generally, coaches feel that zones and presses are lazy. Coaches imagine other coaches stationing five players in the key to force jump shots and protect the basket. Of course, this happens. I have heard of coaches who play a 2-3 zone defense and literally tell the bottom three defenders to stand on the block, in the middle of the key and on the block, respectively, and not to move. To prevent this type of lazy coaching, coaches vilify all zone defenses.

Of course, I also know coaches who play man-to-man defense and tell 1-2 players not to worry about their players (the weaker players) and concentrate solely on help defense. However, nobody suggests outlawing man defense because of this type of over-competitiveness.

Coaches believe that teams who play zone defense force young, unskilled players into outside shots which they cannot make consistently. They believe that presses benefit the biggest, strongest players who overwhelm young players who lack the strength to exploit the entire court.

To me, the answer is not to outlaw zone defenses. How does ignoring the problem (inconsistent shooting, lack of strength, lack of passing under pressure) help anyone?

The problem is one of spacing, which is easily fixed by reducing the number of players on the court. In top European soccer academies, players do not play full 11v11 games until they are 11 or 12-years-old. They start with small-sided games using a smaller field to encourage more touches for each player and to make the game more manageable.

In basketball, when a team employs a zone defense and packs in the defense against a youth team, it condenses the space. The offense cannot use the entire width of the court; well, it can use the entire width, but due to a lack of skill, the defense does not play the entire width. Of course, a team can do the same with man-to-man defense as well: if the coach knows that nobody on the opposition can shoot a three-pointer, his defender can back off several feet and play the passing lanes.

The answer is not strategy, but structure. Fewer players on the court opens more space for players to practice their skills. Fewer players on the court means more touches for each player.

The same is true for a press. Presses work against younger teams because players lack the strength to throw over top of the press. Therefore, the defense can shrink the court and put all five defenders in the back court. Of course, a team can do the same thing with a man defense too, especially with the press breaks that most teams employ. If using fewer players, there is plenty of space for offensive players, and the press cannot condense to space or overwhelm the offensive players.

Why is the argument against zones just semantics?

One cannot play good man-to-man team defense with understanding zone principles and one cannot play good zone defense without understanding man-to-man principles. For this reason, no youth teams play really good team defense.

Let’s look at a generic 2-3 zone defense (played well) versus a good man-to-man defense:

2-3 Zone

This is a very generic defense and a very generic play. However, in a basic 1-3-1 set against a 2-3 zone, the point passes to the wing and cuts to the corner. One of the top defenders (O1) takes the ball and the other (O2) takes the high post. The bottom outside defender (O3) takes the corner, the middle defender (O5) fronts the low post and the weak-side baseline defender (o4) helps in the middle of the key.

Man Defense

In the man-to-man example, the offense starts in the same 1-3-1 set and runs the point to the corner to create a strong-side triangle. The defense defends in the same manner as above, except different defenders defend different positions. O2 takes the wing; O1 follows the point to the corner; O4 fronts the low post; O5 takes the high post; and O3 helps in the middle of the key.

The basic difference between man-to-man and zone defenses is the way that the defense defends cutters (with or without screens). In man-to-man defense, defenders deny and follow cutters to a point and then deny or play help-side defense; in zone defenses, defenders follow and release the cutter to the next defender and then recover to their zone.

However, strong-side defense and weak-side defense remain largely the same. On the strong-side, someone defends the ball and a defender is responsible for a quick closeout to any perimeter players, while a defender typically denies any penetrating pass into the post (low or high), though some zones at the college level are designed to force mid-range jump shots, so they do not cover the high post too closely and concentrate more on the three-point line and low post, like many college man-to-man defenses.  On the weak-side, the defenders play with one foot in the key, two feet in the key or on the mid-line, depending on the amount of help defense.

Therefore, when the ball is passed to the wing, a player has essentially the same amount of time and space to execute a move against a good man-to-man defense as against a good zone defense.

Obviously, man and zone defenses and offenses can be far more complicated. However, if the argument is that the players are young, unskilled and inexperienced, would they be doing anything more than the most rudimentary cuts and rotations in man or zone? If a team has a sophisticated man or zone defense or offense with an u11 team, the coach probably is spending far too much time on strategy and not enough time developing general individual and team skills. Therefore, again, the problem is not zone vs. man, but strategy vs. skill development.

If man-to-man and zone defenses are so similar, what is the argument?

When coaches argue against zone defenses and presses at young ages, they make two arguments:

1) They argue against poorly taught or lazy defense, and they blame zones for this.

2) They argue against exploiting unskilled players.

Prohibiting zone defenses does not fix either of these problems. In fact, prohibiting zones could exacerbate the second problem. If zones are prohibited, it is tough to play good help defense. My team when I was young was often called for violations because we played help defense with a foot in the key, as most high school coaches teach. But, if outlawing zone defense, how do you differentiate between good help defense and zone defense?

Therefore, if you prohibit good help defense in the name of outlawing zone defense, the biggest, strongest player has a better opportunity to dominate single-handedly. The best player dribbles the ball up the court, beats his own defender and other help defenders are hamstrung or late because they are a step too far out of position because of the anti-zone defense rule. Therefore, he gets to the basket with ease and scores. On defense, it is easy to put the biggest, strongest player on the ball, teach the wings to deny everything hard and easily exploit weaker, unskilled players with man-to-man pressure.

As for the first problem, their issue is not with zones but poor teaching. I am also against poor teaching. However, I think that man defense can be as overwhelming and poorly taught as zones.

To fix these issues, we need to do two things:

1) Employ more age-appropriate games for young players;

2) Examine teaching methods of zone and man defenses without viewing zones as a four-letter word.

In the first case, if players are unskilled or lack the strength to play against a zone defense, they probably lack the skill and strength to play against man defense as well. The problem is not the defense, but the space. Young, inexperienced and unskilled players need more space and time to execute their skills. Therefore, these players should not play 5v5 leagues, regardless of the defense. Criticizing zones does not get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is a need to create more space and time for players and to get each player more touches so that every player can develop his skills so he has confidence when he moves to a 5v5 game, regardless of defense.

In the second case, we need those who oversee leagues to act more in a role of “coaching the coaches” than just administrating. League directors should assist coaches and encourage good teaching techniques. Zone defense is not the enemy – poor teaching is the enemy. We need to remember the difference. It is possible to play great zone defense and teach players many useful skills that they can transfer from season to season regardless of the defense that their next coach employs.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League<

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Scrimmages and Offensive Instruction in Practice

May 14th, 2010

A coach emailed a question regarding Blitz Basketball and my use of scrimmages to teach my basic offensive sets and defensive strategy.

I do not spend practice working 5v0 or walking through defensive rotations in a typical shell drill. I scrimmage, and after a player is finished, I use the play to teach a concept if something needs to be corrected. I generally do not stop the action in the middle of the play.

As I answered his question, I realized the philosophy behind my coaching style. I do not expect perfect execution in a game. Many coaches do. Many coaches want their players to execute the play exactly as they draw it on the blackboard. I think the game is messy and unpredictable. I believe that my team’s success depends on the players’ ability to adjust and adapt during the play and to make the best decision.

If I stop the action in practice when a play becomes messy, how do the players learn to adjust and adapt? In a game, I can use a timeout here and there when the play gets messy, but I do not have enough timeouts to use to control every possession or prevent every mistake. Therefore, at some point, the players have to fend for themselves. However, if they never get the opportunity to adjust to their mistakes and make decisions to adjust to the new reality, how can I expect them to make good decisions in a game?

An old adage is that you have to practice perfectly because there will be game slippage. If you practice perfectly, the adage goes, you will perform at 70-80% in the game due to the slippage. However, if you practice at 70-80% at practice, the game slippage will result in a performance closer to 50%.

What if the adage is only half-true? What if the game slippage occurs because the players do not learn to adjust and adapt to new situations during their perfect practice? What if there is little to no game slippage when practice is imperfect and players have to make decisions constantly and then receive feedback after the play about other options or better possibilities?

My practices often looked disorganized this season, and our game performance was sloppy at times because we looked so disorganized. However, we honestly had very little to no game slippage. We generally performed better against our opponents than we did against each other. Skills that we rarely executed correctly in practice scrimmages (traps on the press, pick-and-rolls on offense) suddenly happened over and over in games.

Some of our success was a talent differential, as we played teams whose starters were not as good as our players off the bench. However, we played teams with equal or more talent, size and speed, and executed as well against them as we did in practice. Our performances were not perfect, but I do not expect perfection. I have yet to see a team play perfectly.

Therefore, to maximize performance, do we strive for perfection in practice so we perform close to perfection after the normal game slippage or do we practice at something less than perfect, but eliminate most of the normal game slippage?

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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What comes first: lack of footwork or lack of calls?

April 28th, 2010

In my volleyball game last week, the opposing setter used a “deep dish” set for the entire first set. Between sets, I asked the lead official is this was now legal. He replied that the setter did the same thing every time. I asked if that meant that my setter could catch the ball and toss it underhanded to our hitters if he did the same thing every time. He told me not to ask stupid questions. I told him that stupid answers beget stupid follow-ups.

The same conversation could occur in basketball. A coach asks the official about a traveling violation, and the official replies that the players travel every time, so he cannot call every one.

This line of thinking begs the question: which comes first, the lack of footwork or the lack of calls?

I watched a college basketball game this season where one player traveled more than 20 times without being whistled for a violation. Officials at every level appear to have adopted the more liberal NBA rules rather than enforcing NCAA or NFHS rules.

Players catching a pass on the run are allowed 3-4 steps to stop; players regularly switch pivot feet on the catch, catching the pass right-left, but then using the left foot as the pivot foot; they make a two-count jump stop but then use a pivot foot; they take off of one foot and land 1-2 rather than with two feet at the same time, etc.

These players are ignored by officials. However, are they taught by coaches? Do we teach proper footwork in practice?

Officials argue that players travel every time down the court, and parents and coaches argue when they call repeated violations. My friend was docked on his evaluation because he whistled seven consecutive traveling violations. His evaluator did not dock him for missing calls; he was docked for making the right call too many times!

Unfortunately, how do we teach proper footwork to players if it is not enforced in a game? If opposing setter is never called for a lift or a double, why should he learn to set the ball correctly? If a player is not whistled for traveling, why not switch pivot feet when it is advantageous?

I think officials have to be more rigid in their interpretation of the rules. This will make for some ugly games, as when my friend whistled 7 straight travels. However, if officials do not enforce the rules more consistently, footwork will deteriorate further. We are at the point where people celebrate Kobe Bryant – the best player in the world – for the ability to do a simple step-through that I learned when I was in 5th grade because such examples of proper footwork are so rare.

To improve the level of play at all levels, coaches must spend more time teaching the proper footwork and ensuring that their players understand the difference between a legal move and a traveling violation, and officials need to be more strict in their interpretation of the rules, even when it means an ugly game or angry parents. At some point, players have to learn the right way to play, and the more that we allow the rules to degrade, the harder it will be to maintain any sense of order on the court.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Basketball Practice, Mindful Learning and Player Development

April 2nd, 2010

2169383315_b9d4d33219I played at a big sports complex last night, and an elite club team practiced on the next court. The club regularly features high Division I recruits, and a trainer took the current players through a workout. For the first 45 minutes, they did conditioning drills.

The high school season ended last weekend. Assuming these players did not play for the state championship, their season has been over for 2-3 weeks. Their big summer recruiting events are not until July. Is this the time to stress conditioning above everything else? Is this how to develop a player?

After the conditioning drills, the players practiced their ball handling. Several players had terrible posture during the drills, and few did the drills any better than an average high school freshman. Therefore, I imagine the players were learning something new, or relatively new, as opposed to training an already learned skill.

Is learning a new skill in a fatigued state the best way to learn?

The player with the poor posture was your typical skinny, 6’6 player who probably cannot eat enough to add weight because of all the playing, workouts and growth spurts. The postural issues are nothing new: coaches see them all the time, especially with taller players or players in the midst of a growth spurt. However, just because it is common, should it be ignored?

What would enhance this player’s performance more right now: 45 minutes of conditioning or 45 minutes of balance and stability work to train the right posture and activate the right muscles to enable him to move more efficiently?

Sure, mobility and stability work is not as “hard” or “demanding” as running up and down the court for 45 minutes, and the players may not even break a sweat, but what is going to help the player improve the most right now?

If the player practices with poor posture, the poor posture is going to lead to less effective movement and poor habits. At some point, to get past a plateau in his performance, the player will have to correct his posture and learn new movement habits. Simple cues like “hips down” rather than “lower” or “chest and eyes up” rather than “eyes up” during the specific drills focus the player on the correct posture. Why not train this posture from the beginning at the start of the off-season? More to the point, why not train the player properly rather than putting the cart (intensity) before the horse (movement efficiency)?

If we want to enhance our players’ development at practice and increase mindful learning, we need to teach new skills when players are fresh and ready to learn, and we need to correct their weaknesses at the most basic level. If a building was crumbling, you would not start by fixing the walls; you would fix the foundation because any problems with walls likely starts with the foundation.

With a player, fixing or improving his basketball-specific technique without first addressing his athletic deficiencies is the same as patching the walls without addressing the foundation. Eventually, the walls will collapse again, and you will spend all your time returning to fix the walls without ever really fixing the problem.

If we have better awareness of movement and the body, we can develop better players by fixing the root of the mistake and starting from the foundation, not just the basketball-specific corrections.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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7 Sport Memory Techniques to Accelerate Skill Learning

March 25th, 2010

Author: Denise K. Wood, Ed.D.

Sport skill memory is developed when athletes learn and remember motor skills. Motor memory techniques can accelerate the skill acquisition process so athletes can progress to higher levels of sport performance more quickly.

Motor learning principles are drawn from psychology and applied to sports training. Coaches can use the following sport memory techniques to speed up skill learning and retention for athletes of any age:

1. Help athletes learn skills correctly the first time. Initial learning is most impressionable. A skill learned incorrectly is often difficult to re-pattern. Coaches should monitor and guide athletes to learn proper technique when athletes are still in the early stages of learning.

2. Teach skill rhythms first, then refine the movements. Athletes can learn and recall rhythmic movements more quickly than isolated movements, just as rhymes are more readily remembered in verbal learning.

3. Chunk movements. Movements can be learned and processed if they are “chunked”, or grouped, into larger movements. This grouping technique increases an athlete’s capacity to learn and perform sport skills. Break skills down only as much as necessary. Overanalysis causes paralysis.

4. Make new skills meaningful. Explain and demonstrate new skills so that the athlete understands what the skill requires and why it is executed that way. Also make clear how a skill, movement, or strategy will help the athlete improve sport performance.

5. Associate new skills and concepts with well learned skills. Athletes learn new skills more quickly if key movements make sense to them. A coach can capitalize on an athlete’s previous experience and maturity level by suggesting mental images that associate new skill concepts and features with familiar ones.

6. Point out specific cues that require the athlete’s attention. Intention to remember alerts an athlete to important aspects of a skill or game situation. An athlete’s ability to focus and remember key cues distinguishes beginners from skilled performers.

7. Overlearn skills to correct errors. Overlearning means practicing skills beyond what is necessary to perform them properly. It is effective for correcting previously learned errors and for reinforcing properly coordinated movements.

Sport memory techniques such as these can streamline training, saving valuable time and effort. These are just a few of the many tools used for how to effectively convey what skills and strategies athletes need to know.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/sports-and-fitness-articles/7-sport-memory-techniques-to-accelerate-skill-learning-835770.html

About the Author

Dr. Denise K. Wood is an educator and sport and fitness training consultant from Knoxville, TN and creator of www.sports-training-adviser.com She is an inspirational motivator with an extensive toolbox of training techniques based in science and delivered to accelerate the learning curve. Dr. Wood is a former USA Track and Field champion and member of more than 20 USA National Teams. She has trained a wide range of clients from beginners with special needs to Olympians. She has been recognized as an outstanding professor in exercise science and research/statistics.

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Four Stages of Skill Acquisition

February 18th, 2010

The following article originally appeared in Hard 2 Guard 2009 Player Development Newsletter Volume 3, Issue 37 and is included in Brian McCormick’s Player Development Newsletters, Volume 3.

While running a clinic for an organization last weekend, the head coach reminded the group (and me) of the four stages of skill acquisition:

* Unskilled, Unconscious
* Unskilled, Conscious
* Skilled, Conscious
* Skilled, Unconscious

The beginner player is unaware of his mistake and the proper execution. Next, he learns the proper execution, but he cannot consistently repeat the skill. For instance, many young players understand the basics of shooting – they can recite BEEF and show you where to start your shot, where to place your hand on the ball, etc. – but they cannot execute the skill perfectly and consistently.

Eventually, they execute with correct technique. However, they consciously control their shooting technique. When they step to the free throw line, they tell themselves to bend their knees. A lot of players get stuck in this stage where they mentally control their skill execution.

The final stage is to forget: the player masters the skill and forgets the technical instructions. He does not need to think about his foot placement, hand placement, etc. – he simply catches and shoots.

Many players waffle in-between the 3rd and final step. When things are good and they are thinking positively, they catch and shoot without any conscious control. However, when they miss a shot, feel fatigued, feel pressure, etc., their mind attempts to wrest control of the physical process. Once a player reaches the Skilled-Unconscious Stage, thinking interferes with skill execution.

Is there a way to go from Unskilled-Unconscious to Skilled-Unconscious? After all, if the goal is to return to unconscious skill execution, why add the conscious element? That is the basis for the school of thought which favors implicit learning:

Considerable evidence now exists in the scientific literature to show that excessive conscious control of one’s skills (reinvestment) is avoidable if the skills are learned implicitly, without recourse to hypothesis testing (e.g. bent knees = more power) or accumulation of explicit knowledge,” (Farrow, et. al).

How can a coach teach the required skills without explicit instructions? Many coaches already use many implicit learning techniques: (1) analogies; (2) errorless learning; (3) subliminal learning; and discovery learning/play.

Analogies can be used to present the key coaching points of a to-be learned skill as a simple biomechanical metaphor that can be reproduced by the learner without reference to, or manipulation of, large amounts of explicit knowledge (Farrow, et. al).

In 180 Shooter, I list several cues that I use with shooters that are similar to analogies. The most common basketball analogy is the “hand in the cookie jar.” This type of analogy allows “many bits of information about a skill to be presented to the learner in one manageable chunk,” (Farrow, et. al).

When I learned to swim last winter, I thought about one instruction – reaching on each stroke like I was reaching to touch the wall – and one image – the hull of a boat. In the Total Immersion philosophy, the goal is to be more efficient with each stroke, not to work harder. By reaching for the wall, you lengthen each stroke (made sense based on my rowing experience and the difference between stroke rate and stroke length), and by picturing the hull of the boat, I forced my head and chest down to create a more streamlined position. There were no details to remember about exact hand position or precise stroke length.

Errorless Learning
When I begin a shooting session, I start with form shooting close to the basket. This is a form of errorless learning. Rather than instruct step-by-step, the player shoots in an area where it is easy for him to make shots. He grooves his technique or gets a rhythm. Through the successful execution, he learns the right way to shoot with minimal instruction. The longer that I coach, the less that I say, especially in individual workouts because I want to minimize the thinking.

If the player starts in the right position and finishes in the right position, everything in between takes care of itself. While there are many details that one can teach, every detail gives the player another thing to analyze or another reason to think too much.

I show the right starting position and emphasize shooting the ball high: start small and finish tall. If there are mistakes that consistently result in missed shots, I tweak the technique and instruct as needed. However, when starting with the errorless learning and a basic picture of the goal, the need for detailed instructions lessens.

Subliminal Learning
In Developing Sport Expertise, Neil Craig, Head Coach of the Adelaide Crows Football Club, cites a study published in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink as provoking subliminal implicit learning. In the study, people memorized groups of words and then walked down a hallway. Those who memorized words subtly referencing old age – gray, Florida, old – walked with a stooped, slow fashion like an older person.

Craig puts posters on the wall which emphasize the importance of precise skill execution like focus, attention, concentration, etc. He figures that reading these words in the locker room on a daily basis contributes to subliminal learning.

Discovery Learning/Play
When I work with a new team, I present situations and allow the players to devise solutions rather than telling players exactly what to do. As I conducted several clinics last weekend, I realized that coaches skip over generalities and move straight to specifics – in a sense, they skip the perceptual and conceptual elements and move straight to movement.

I worked with a junior college coach once who moved straight into out of bounds plays – she never taught or challenged players to get open, use space appropriately or anything pertaining to spacing and getting open. Instead, it was straight to set plays. She wanted Skilled-Conscious players because she wanted to control their actions through her verbal instructions.

For instance, last night, my directions centered on this: Basketball is a game of time and space – the offense aims to create time and space and the defense attempts to take away time and space or to protect space. I did not tell the players how to play, where to go, what to do. I want to see how they learn and develop within general ideas.

Last night, we concentrated on 1v2 and 2v2 because most teams at this level press. Therefore, I want players who can handle the ball under pressure. We have no press break; there is no “right” way to get open. There is no rigid way to attack 2v1.

Instead, I aim to create challenges that give players an opportunity to discover the right play or the right decision. My job as a coach is to create the challenges and then offer occasional instruction based on the execution.

For instance, after watching several missed lay-ups, and remembering a study conducted by my friend Lindell, I stopped the game and taught a two-foot lay-up rather than the one-foot take-off which resulted in many missed lay-ups and off-balance shots.

The goal, then, is to move to a Skilled-Unconscious performer as quickly as possible. In a sense, coaches use set plays because it is quicker to memorize an A-B-C plan (set play) than to teach and develop players into Skilled-Unconscious players.

The goal is unconscious execution where players react immediately to defensive cues. My practices and clinics often look ugly because the players are not there yet. However, the ugliness precedes the Skilled-Unconscious level because too much instruction or structure inhibits the players’ learning.

Therefore, to move to the Skilled-Unconscious performer, coaches either need to give players more time and repetitions so they think about the right decisions and learn in the traditional four-step method, or they need to focus on implicit learning and developing players who move from Unskilled-Unconscious to Skilled-Unconscious.

Players need the time and opportunity to learn the game through exploration and discovery with minimal interference, as opposed to the constant structure and explicit instructions in today’s game.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Skill Acquisition and Drill Design

February 14th, 2010

Each week, I write a free weekly newsletter which I send to thousands of subscribers. During the year, I interview experts with my own questions and share the interviews in the newsletters. In 2009, I interviewed a sports medicine specialist at one of the leading hospitals for ACL injury research; a popular strength & conditioning coach and a sports nutritionist. However, my favorite interview was with Adam Gorman, a Skill Acquisition Specialist at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra, Australia.

Gorman’s role at the AIS is diverse and includes drill design and implementation, as well as the development of research initiatives and interventions including video-based training and perceptual skill development.

Here is one of the questions that I asked Gorman:

BM: How does your presence change the way that a basketball coach approaches skill development? What do you add or do differently?

Gorman: Basically, I think I provide a different way of viewing skill acquisition and the ways in which a training session or drill can be structured. My approach is often a little different to the “traditional” methods that have been applied in the past. I try to create a learning environment where players are able to explore their own, unique movement solutions to problems.

That is, I don’t overly constrain players in the ways in which they attempt to achieve success in a drill or activity. Instead, I simply manipulate the environmental demands (number of defenders, aim of the task, etc.) and allow the players to explore what works and what doesn’t work. Through questioning and drill design, the players learn the broad principles of play so that they can apply those same principles to new situations.

Wherever possible, I include the normal perception-action coupling of the skills and link the solutions to the problems. For example, a player who learns how to perform a certain defensive movement, without also learning how that movement is linked to the movements of an offensive player or other defenders, is really learning a solution that is isolated from the problem. In a constrained situation, the solution may be performed extremely accurately but when that same solution is then applied to a situation that is more representative of the game, the solution can decompose because it was never performed and mapped to the relevant information in the environment.

Brian McCormick writes the free weekly newsletter, Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters. To subscribe, go here. To read the compilation of newsletters from 2009, including the rest of the interview with Adam Gorman, purchase Brian McCormick’s Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 3.

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Pressing and Skill Development in Youth Basketball

January 23rd, 2010

On another site, coaches discussed the merit of a no-press rule for pre-high school players with many different suggestions. The argument against pressing was the lack of skill development to handle the press (something that continues to the high school level).

This is true. But, I do not understand how it is true.

Now, at younger ages, when players cannot throw the ball the length of the court, teams can cheat and put five defenders in the back court to take away space and make it more difficult to break the press. For this reason, when I coached u9 boys and u10 girls, we used our bigger players to break the press because the smaller guards lacked the strength to throw over the top and relieve the pressure.

At younger ages, I understand the struggles to break the press to a certain degree. However, the discussion centered largely around 6th – 8th graders.

When I played, our league only allowed man2man defense. However, teams could use a zone press in the back court, so many teams pressed. We ran two different presses. I played point guard and I never felt overwhelmed by pressure. We had players who could dribble with both hands with their eyes up and players who could pass the ball, and we generally had no more trouble with a press than with half-court defense (incidentally, in our recent blowout victories, we’ve given up more points with our press than our half-court defense, as most teams cannot get off a good shot against half-court man defense).

I never played organized basketball until 5th grade, and we played only 20-24 games per season from 5th – 8th grade. However, we were able to handle a press. Today, children start organized basketball at 6-years-old and cannot handle a press by 8th grade. What is wrong with this picture? Why the rush to organized basketball if skill development appears to be receding, not improving?

There are reasons to explain this: defenses are  more sophisticated, children are more athletic, etc. However, at the high school level, we run one press and teams struggle against it. When I was in 6th grade, we ran two different presses plus played full-court man, so my high school team is less sophisticated than my 6th grade team.

I am not a huge proponent of pressing at early ages because the defense is ahead of the offense, and it does hurt some players’ confidence and make for some uneven contests. Of course, I also believe young players should play 3v3 and not 5v5 for the same reasons – younger less experienced players need more space to make moves and play the game and 3v3 offers the space and more touches for all players, not just the star.

Also, some teams that press spend all their time practicing their press, engaging in the Peak by Friday mentality rather than preparing their players, teaching them how to play and developing well-rounded skills.

However, the coaches who complain about the pressing teams need to focus more on developing their players’ skills. Now, in tournaments, sometimes there is a big discrepancy in ability levels. Playing half-court defense does little to solve these discrepancies. If competitive balance is the goal, tournament directors and coaches need to do a better job of creating more equitable competitive levels. Once within the same ability level, coaches need to teach skills so players can handle a press.

In our last game, our opponent called timeout and went to a 2-2-1 press, a press that we have not faced or practiced against all season. I had to get two players’ attention because they had set up in our half-court offense. Once I told them to look down court, they filled the right spots. We broke the press with four passes and two dribbles and finished with a lay-up and a 15-foot jump shot. Our opponent quickly took off the press.

We were not bigger and faster than the other team. We work on passing, cutting and pivoting every day in practice in general drills so that players can adapt to any defense. We talk about spacing and angles every day because most of the top teams rely on presses to win at this level. We are prepared for a press because we develop these fundamental skills in every single practice (in our first scrimmage in October, we could barely get the ball across half-court against a press because we had practiced only 4-5 times before we scrimmaged a top team).

I have mixed feeling about the no-press rule. However, if the argument is that we cannot press because it impedes fundamental development, as some argued, I disagree. With beginners and very young/small players (who should be playing 3v3 anyway), I would disallow a press. However, by 8th grade, players should have enough strength to handle a press if they have developed their fundamentals.

The argument should not be whether or not to press, but how to eliminate the Peak by Friday mentality in the league, whether a team presses or not.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Vision Training for Sports Performance

January 1st, 2010

In Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters, Volume 4, I write about a video that illustrates a basic eye-training exercise. This is the video:

H2G Vol.4 Front CoverOriginally published in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 4.

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High School Basketball, Periodization & Player Development

December 13th, 2009

hs game
The high school schedule is not designed to develop better basketball players. Intuitively, we have always known this: we lived by the adage, “Teams are made in the winter, players are made during the summer.” However, somewhere we lost sight of the difference between competition and training.

I coach some relatively inexperienced high school players. Since the Monday before Thanksgiving, we have had one scrimmage, eight games and four practices with four more games and two practices this week. We are in a stretch of five games in six days with no practices.

If player development was the goal, the schedule would be far different. We will have played 13 games and one scrimmage before we break for Christmas. When I coached in a professional league, our first game was the first weekend of October, and we played eight games before Christmas.

The high school schedule crams 13 games into one month for developing players while a professional league spaces eight games through three months. While we have had twice as many games as practices this month, when I coached in Europe, we had 4-6 practices per game (and we only practiced once per day because it was not one of the top leagues which often practice twice per day).

In which schedule will a player develop his or her skills?

We have adopted a mentality that believes that players only improve or develop during games. But, this is far from true.

In competitive situations, players play to their strengths: they do what they already can do. If I do not dribble well with my left hand, I dribble only with my right hand. If I cannot make a lay-up with my left hand, I shoot with my right hand. If I cannot guard a good player, I pick the player who looks like the worst player on the other team to guard.

How does this help a player improve or develop new skills?

In practice, players try new things. A practice lacks performance pressure, so a player can practice shooting left-hand lay-ups or dribbling the ball with his left hand without the fear of failure. A mistake in practice does not let down his or her teammates or cause the coach to take the player out of the game. By practicing new or undeveloped skills, a player expands his or her game and improves.

Unfortunately, off-season teams have adopted a similar schedule, often practicing once or twice per week and playing 3-5 games on the weekends. When do players improve if they spend the entire year engaged in a competitive environment? When is the time to develop new skills? When do players add strength or develop quickness?

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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