YBCA

On TV last weekend, the cameras went into a coach’s huddle and captured his comments. He was frustrated with his team, as he had called the timeout to stop the opponent’s run. He said:

“When WE move the ball from side to side, WE get great shots. However, when YOU hold the ball on one side, YOU take bad shots.”

That might not be verbatim. I was not listening until I heard the difference between the WE and YOU. When there was a positive result, the coach was involved; when there was a negative result, the coach absolved himself of responsibility.

Few people notice the difference between the WE and the YOU, but the difference says a lot about a coach’s attitude. Whether or not the coach approves of the offensive stagnation, the team is the team, and the players and coaches need to stick together for the good and the bad possessions. When bad possessions turn into YOUs, dissension builds between teammates and coaches, as YOUs start the blame game. A team needs to work together and accept responsibility as one, and that starts with the coach, his attitude and his language.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Originally published by Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, January/February 2009.

My first organized sport was soccer. In kindergarten, I joined a soccer club sponsored by my church. My teammates were mostly 1st graders. With a late September birthday, I started school late, so I was older for my class. However, youth soccer had a January 1 cut-off date, so I played with the children in the grade ahead of me.

I felt that I had an advantage playing with the older kids. I played on a good team and was an average player. Initially, I played the midfield, usually on the right side, but I fought to play as a central midfielder. I liked to control the action and cover the whole field as I could run all day.

Ken, a friend in my class, played competitive/club soccer. He tried out and made the big club team in our area and traveled to tournaments throughout the west coast. At school, our soccer skills and athleticism were even. However, he had a February birthday, so while I played in the u-12s, he made an under-10 team. We were even at recess, but our competition away from school differed because of our birthdays.

When Ken joined the competitive team, we were basically equal. However, after several years of competitive soccer, he was a better player. While I played soccer from August – November, he played year-round, and he played against better competition. He had soccer coaches, while we had parent volunteers coaching our team.

When we got to high school, Ken made the high school team while I did not try-out – the best player from my team did not make the high school team during the previous year, so I did not think that I had a chance. Every player who made the high school team played competitive youth soccer, except the back-up goalie who looked around on the first day of try-outs, decided he was not good enough as a field player and tried out as the only goalie in the freshmen class.

As one of the oldest kids in my class, I had the advantage of age and physical maturity during elementary school. In basketball, a sport which I played with school teams, I was one of the taller players, so I had an advantage. However, in soccer, I was on the wrong side, as I played on teams with kids who were eight or nine months older, so I was an average player, not a candidate for a club/competitive team.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites a study by a Canadian psychologist which found that “in any elite group of Canadian hockey players, 40 percent of the players will have been born in January, February and March.” Canada uses a January 1 cut-off date for junior hockey. Coaches identify talent at young ages and shepherd the talented players onto the elite teams.

When coaches looked at me playing with my soccer team, I did not stand out. My friend, however, was bigger, faster and stronger than most of the kids that he played against. Even though our recess games were even, his size and speed helped him make a competitive team. The coach did not identify talent, but the advantages of birth. With a February birth date, he was older than most of the other players who tried out, and at 10-years-old, a five to six month age advantage can be a big deal. When coaches choose the select or all-star teams, “they are more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players who have the benefit of critical extra months of maturity,” (Gladwell).

Even on my recreation team, the best players had birthdays in January and February. The better players also played forward, goalie and sweeper. The worst players played outside fullback or outside midfield. This happens in every sport: the best baseball players pitch and play shortstop, while the worst plays right field; in basketball, the best player plays point guard and the worst player plays post. Unfortunately, when coaches distinguish the best and the worst, they distinguish the older and the more coordinated, not the most talented or those with the most potential.

In the beginning, the differences are small. Ken and I were similar as 10 and 11-year-olds. On my team, the forwards were basically the same as the midfielders and fullbacks; they were a little faster and a little bigger. However, as the inherent age advantages decreased, the differences on the pitch were more pronounced. Barnsley [the Canadian psychologist] argues that these kinds of skewed age distributions exist whenever three things happen: selection, streaming and differentiated experience.

If you make a decision about who is good and who is not good at an early age; if you separate the “talented” from the “untalented;” and if you provide the “talented” with superior experience, then you’re going to end up giving a huge advantage to the small group of people born closest to the cut-off date (Gladwell).

Because Ken made the competitive team, he had access to better coaching, more practice and better competition. Over several years, these advantages helped him develop his skills far more than I did with my recreational team. Even though I was older,  his competitive experience gave him a greater advantage.

We have a poor understanding of the road to success or excellence, and without a better understanding, our ability to evaluate and identify talent diminishes. When ranking players, choosing teams or identifying prospects, we need to look deeper than size, speed and strength, as those characteristics tend to balance as players continue to develop and all the players go through puberty. What we see as talent at an early age is often not talent, but age. Rather than choose and develop the older players, we need a system by which we identify true talents or we need to wait to identify “talent” and differentiate training until the advantages of maturity disappear.

When we identify talent at an early age and then provide the talented with a better training experience, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which sociologist Robert Merton defines as a situation where “a false definition, in the beginning…evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true.” At 10-years-old, Ken was not more talented. By making the team and going through years of better training, he became a better player. Rather than credit the different experience which developed him into a better player, we credit his natural talent.

Because I was an average soccer player, but a pretty good basketball player, I spent more time playing and practicing my basketball skills, while Ken trained for soccer. I chose the sport where I had an age advantage, while he chose the sport where he had the age advantage. Neither of us made a conscious choice to pursue an activity where we were given a slight advantage; instead, we gravitated to the sports where we found early success, even though we played both sports until high school.

As a society, we believe that if you have ability, the vast network of scouts and talent spotters will find you, and if you are willing to work to develop that ability, the system will reward you (Gladwell). However, as Barnsley’s study illustrates, those born in the last half of the year have all been discouraged, or overlooked, or pushed out of the sport. The talent of essentially half of the athletic population has been squandered (Gladwell).

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

This season, I coached in a program that believed every player deserves to play in every game. I never coached this way. I usually stuck with an 8 or 9-player rotation.

From the outset, I told the players that they were not guaranteed playing time; they earned their playing time through practice. However, I played every player in every half of every game with the exception of two times when I benched a player for a half for a failure to communicate about missing a bus and missing practice.

Upon reflection, I believe in playing every player for several reasons:

1. Development. I had 12 players on the team. If I used a nine-man rotation, three players would have seen little to no playing time. During the season, the gap between the nine and the three would widen. Instead, one player who likely would have been outside the rotation hit a game-winning shot in a win that preserved a tie for the league championship and another player who would have been outside the rotation played a pivotal role in a 15-point fourth quarter comeback in the semi-finals of a tournament.

2. Inconsistency. At this level, you never know who will perform well in any given game. Players are inconsistent which is one reason they play junior varsity and not varsity. With 12 players ready to play, we had a good chance that someone would be on their game. We won a tough game without our two best players scoring a point because their back-ups stepped up and had great games. The players who played the majority of the minutes at the end of the season were not the same as those who played at the beginning of the season.

3. Practice Intensity. Because every player received meaningful minutes, every player was engaged in practice. Because every player played, every player continued to improve throughout the season, meaning more balance in scrimmages. In the past, as the season progressed, the starters improved more than the bench and the disparity between the two grew. This season, it did not matter how I split up the teams.

4. Team Morale. I did not see any of the usual petty jealousy that happens when some players sit on the bench and others play all the time and the bench players feel they deserve more time. Instead, players supported each other. Before our last game, one player suggested a new starting line-up so she would have a chance to start. One girl who this change would benefit was the loudest to disagree even though it would have been her first start of the season. Instead, she favored the regular line-up, the player who earned the starting line-up, because, a she said, “the game is important:” a win meant a tie for 1st place and a loss meant a tie for 2nd place.

During the season, we almost always out-played teams in the fourth quarter. We had a 15-point comeback in the 4th quarter against a good team; out-scored a team by 9 points in our one overtime game; came from 8 points down with 6:00 left against the co-league champions; and came back from 5 points down with 4:00 to play against the 3rd place team. Much of our 4th quarter success, I believe, was due to our lack of fatigue. We pressed and worn down other teams who refused to play their bench.

During league, we had several 40 and 50 point wins because our level of play did not drop off when we substituted five non-starters into the game. Our non-starters were accustomed to playing major minutes against good teams, so by league play, they were superior to some teams’ starters.

I do not play that every player should feel entitled to playing time regardless of their effort. I am not a fan of mandatory play leagues. However, I do believe that at the developmental level, every player who puts forth the effort and shows up to the practices deserves an opportunity to play.

In Little League, teams often put the worst player in right field for his mandatory two innings and hope that he draws a walk in his one mandatory at-bat, while the top players play shortstop, first base, pitcher and catcher and bat 3-4 times each game. How is the worst player supposed to have a chance if everything is slanted to favor the best players? The coach creates the self-fulfilling prophesy: he expects more and more from the favored players and less and less from the benchwarmer. Often, the difference between best and worst is a small gap at the beginning of the season, but widens through the season because of the opportunities afforded the chosen players. Also, the difference at the beginning of the season often has as much to do with age as anything else.

If development is the coach’s goal, every player should receive an opportunity to play meaningful minutes, provided that the player earns the minutes during practice through his effort and concentration. There is no reason to punish a player for not being good enough; that’s why he is playing: to improve!

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development presents a gradual four-stage progression for player development over a period of years. The book outlines an alternative to the early specialization, game-heavy model used by most youth leagues and programs.

In Massachusetts, youth hockey organizations are making changes similar to those outlined in Cross Over. The typical approach to youth hockey is similar to the common approach to youth basketball:

In some hockey programs, these young skaters would already be playing on the full length of ice, 200 feet long, the same as TD Garden, home to the NHL’s Boston Bruins. The littlest players might have dozens of games each season – stretching through much of the year – and spend hours traveling to their opponents’ rinks. In warmer months, their parents might spend hundreds of dollars for hockey camps.

The youngest basketball players play full-court 5v5 games, just like professional players, and many play on 10′ rims, just like the NBA. Players play in tournaments throughout the year.

The change in Massachusetts has come, in part, because all the games and early specialization are leading to less competitive success when the players reach their teens and beyond.

At Boston University this winter, only three players come from Massachusetts; a decade ago, the number would have been about 15, said coach Jack Parker.

“There are more recruitable players from the state of Texas and the state of California than from the state of Massachusetts,’’ Parker said. “That is unbelievable.’’

He is among the coaches and enthusiasts who say the dwindling numbers of homegrown hockey stars can be blamed in part on rigorous team schedules, with too many games and too little practice.

“I know kids who are 12 years old and are playing 100 games a year,’’ Parker said. “It’s absolutely insane.’’

Additionally, the over-competition at young ages is leading to reduced participation.

Many players, especially the youngest, are dropping out of hockey programs. Over the last five years in Massachusetts, about 16,000 youngsters quit before they turned 8, according to Roger Grillo, regional manager for USA Hockey’s developmental program.

“The research shows that it’s burnout,’’ Grillo, a former hockey coach at Brown University, said of the declining participation. “It’s too serious too soon.’’

Personally, I think eight-years-old is too young to play on a youth basketball team. I advise parents to start their child in martial arts, swim lessons, gymnastics and soccer at early ages and allow them to explore other activities as they get older. Players should play a sport recreationally before committing to a competitive team environment.

I know basketball skill trainers who work with four and five-year-olds because there is money to be made. Parents believe these children will have a head start by starting early. Instead, like the hockey players, this early start is more likely to lead to an early drop-out.

I have not seen many studies of basketball programs and participation rates, as USA Basketball does not focus on developmental programs to the extent that USA Hockey is involved. However, I know many youth coaches who believe that girls, especially, are leaving basketball to play softball, soccer or volleyball. While the migration may be due to many things, the impact of the over-competition and the emotional and physical burnout from the constant year-round play is certainly one reason.

USA Hockey distributed age-appropriate guidelines (much like Cross Over) to coaches and organizations (the impetus behind this site). The emphasis is on more training and learning and less competition.

During a hockey game, Grillo said, even the best player might only touch the puck for a total of about 90 seconds. During practice, however, players spend much more time handling the puck and, therefore, learning to play, he said.

Basketball is the same. Several years ago, I tried to convince a player to spend the off-season training, rather than playing on multiple teams. After one weekend where the player injured her hamstring during her seventh game of the weekend, I questioned her.

She said that she had to play on the teams to improve. She said that she needed to improve her ball handling and her shooting. I probed further. She never once played as the primary ball handler in the seven games and she took about 10 shots per game. In a weekend spent entirely in the gym, she took 70 shots (+ warm-ups) and never practiced her ball handling. How is that going to help her improve?

To improve youth sports, we need to remember the reasons that children play the sport and acknowledge the differences between athletes at different ages. With a more age-appropriate progression of skills and development, players gradually improve and grow more competitive.

The organizations in Massachusetts diagnosed a problem and developed guidelines to improve its product and better meet the needs of the young athletes. Hopefully youth basketball organizations transition to more age-appropriate guidelines before a big problem (reduced participation) develops. Basketball programs needs to learn from programs in other sports and be proactive rather than relying on the game’s popularity to provide new participants from year to year. The goal should be to provide the best possible programs and not rely on the NBA’s heavy marketing or the ubiquitousness of basketball on television to maintain participation numbers.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

On Slam, Clay Kallam wrote about C. Vivian Stringer and the struggles of the Rutgers University’s Women’s Basketball team this season. While I do not follow Rutgers closely, I have followed the stories because of two popular and well-publicized Southern California players, Jasmine Dixon (now at UCLA) and Nikki Speed.

Kallam criticizes Stringer (and by extension other coaches as well) for several things:

1. Lack of offensive development.
2. Over-training
3. Lack of fun.

Recently, Stringer called out Speed for her play, questioning her decision-making:

“You don’t pass the ball and just move it around the outside,” Stringer said. “You (penetrate), you get into the gaps and you find people … and deliver the pass that they need. That’s what point guards do.”

This is nothing new for Stringer. Last year, she publicly called out Kia Vaughn and suggested that she needed a sports psychologist because she fumbled some passes.

While Kallam points out three valid concerns, I see a major issue which faces all coaches: communication and instruction. From the comments, Speed seems like a shell of her former self:

“They ask why I’m not as aggressive,” Speed said of the questions posed by those who know her game best. “My father has told me that to be passive can also be seen as a way of being selfish. Right now, I have no idea how to answer that. I’m just trying to get comfortable, and at the same time I’m trying to please Coach Stringer. But I think that’s hurting our team.”

In Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 4.9, I write about the two types of perfectionism: maladaptive and adaptive. Being scared to make a mistake and worrying about pleasing the coach is an example of maladaptive perfectionism, and this hurts one’s performance, as is clearly evident in Speed’s play.

Speed did not forget how to play basketball when she matriculated to Rutgers. She was, after all, a McDonald’s All-American and part of the #1 ranked recruiting class in the country. However, there is a breakdown in communication between Stringer and Speed, as Speed appears lost and without confidence after nearly two years under Stringer’s tutelage.

On different web sites, forum posters have suggested that Speed’s inability to handle Stringer’s coaching style is an indictment of Speed as a player and the club system that developed her skills through her formative years. More than one poster has pointed to Stringer’s 800 wins as evidence of her superlative coaching while suggesting that today’s players are soft.

I disagree. I see many coaches (not Stringer specifically) who ask more and more of their players, but do not demand the same development from themselves. I see coaches who ask players to change their style of play or change their learning styles, but they fail to examine their own coaching style.

Speed is not the only formerly top-ranked player struggling at Rutgers and two players from the heralded recruiting class have transferred. Is it Speed’s lack of toughness and maturity or is there a deeper problem that stems from the coach and effects all the players?

I am not there every day, so I am just inferring based on comments and the part of the story that has been reported and discussed frequently. However, I see similar situations on smaller levels at the high school and college levels.

As Kallam writes:

There are a lot of justified criticisms of the way girls’ basketball players are developed, but one positive that comes from the emphasis on tournaments and games is young players are exposed to a lot more athleticism at a younger age than ever before. That means they learn, at an earlier age, how to deal with pressure, what kinds of ballhandling skills they need to have to overcome an athletic defender, and getting through a doubleteam is much more mental than physical.

As an extension, players have been exposed to more coaches and trainers. They have more opinions about coaching styles because they have seen many different approaches. While players may or may not be more intelligent on the court in decisive moments, they have deeper experiences than many of a previous generation. When their coach fails to evolve or make adjustments, many players lose respect for their coach.

Adults are quick to blame problems on this generation of spoiled, lazy children, but that is such a lazy response. If a coach has a trying year or struggles to reach a player (and not every player responds the same way to every coach, which is why players need to do more research before choosing a team), we blame the players for whatever we perceive they are lacking.

However, what about a critical introspection? Has the coach adjusted his or her style to meet the learning style of her players? Has he or she precisely communicated his or her goals to the players? Has the coach set high expectations and held the players’ accountable? Is the coach instructing the skills or just criticizing a lack of skills?

Last year, I responded to Stringer’s outburst. She criticized Kadijah Rushdan, saying:

“(When) things get anxious, she’s going to shoot it or she’s going to just turn it over. So it teaches me to not put her in a crucial situation. It’s not going to happen.”

I responded:

Rather than punishing her, why not examine the mistakes? I have never watched Rushdan play, but can infer several things from Stringer’s comment:

1. Rushdan lacks confidence with the ball in her hands.
2. Her lack of confidence in her technical ability narrows her vision.
3. When she feels pressure, she takes the first available option rather than having the confidence to search for the best option.

What is the answer? Well, it is not bashing the player in the media. Her problem is confidence: how is questioning her publicly going to make her a more confident player?

She likely needs a better understanding of her role and her team’s offensive philosophy, and she needs to develop her technical skills under pressure so the pressure does not affect her during games, and she can maintain a broad-external attention and see the whole court and make the best decision.

By giving her opportunities to develop her ball handling (1v2 drill,for instance) and passing under presure (drills like Volleyball Passing, 2v2 Gael Passing and others from Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development), her confidence with the ball should improve.

If not, maybe she plays with a fear of failure because she gets taken out of the game every time she makes a mistake. Or, maybe she is not aggressive with her pivot foot and cannot withstand pressure to keep her head up and see the floor. These are common problems, which coaches need to address through practice, and the actual problem dictates the response. However, bashing an unconfident player publicly is not going to increase her confidence and motivate the player to improve.

I see this with a player that I know. Her coach blames every loss and every mistake on her even though she is the best player in the conference and significantly better than her teammates. The coach thinks that because the player is a physically talented player that she can handle the harsh criticism. However, the criticism is unfair and leaves the player questioning her talent. When she questions herself, she underperforms, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy with more mistakes leading to worse performance and results.

The player does not need punishment or more harsh words. She needs to have her confidence re-stored so she can perform optimally. She needs to feel that her coach trusts her to make plays. In a word, she needs her coach to communicate with her rather than yelling at her.

It is so easy to blame the players. However, players generally want to improve and play better. Nobody intentionally plays poorly. Nobody intentionally misses shots or throws the ball out of bounds.

These players need more instruction so they can meet their coaches’ high expectations and they need better communication from their coaches to inspire their efforts rather than hindering their confidence.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer wrote an article titled “Why your Employees are losing Motivation” for Harvard Business School. They open with a powerful statement:

Most companies have it all wrong. They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them.

Coaches make the same mistake. Many coaches worry about motivating their players. However, in most cases, players choose to play basketball. It is not homework or Algebra. Basketball is an inherently fun activity. Unfortunately, many coaches intentionally eliminate the fun from basketball in an attempt to meet some higher goal.

Sirota, et al. suggest that workers bring three goals to work and players’ goals differ very little:

• Equity: To be respected and to be treated fairly in areas such as pay, benefits, and job security.
• Achievement: To be proud of one’s job, accomplishments, and employer.
• Camaraderie: To have good, productive relationships with fellow employees.

When players lose motivation, often one of these three things is the issue. Often, when a player receives less playing time, he may lose motivation. Coaches think the player is sulking because he does not play and believe that the player should think about the team first.

However, the issue often is not the playing time. Instead, some players feel that they did not have a fair chance to earn playing time, which affects their motivation. I coached two de-motivated players several years ago. I spoke to them at the beginning of the year and explained that I was a new coach and they had a new opportunity. I set the expectations for them to meet in order to earn playing time and stayed true to my promise when they met the expectations. The de-motivated players became the hardest workers on the team because they felt like they controlled their own destiny, rather than feeling like they were in a hopeless situation where it never mattered what they did.

Some players lose motivation because they equate a lack of playing time with a lack of accomplishment. With a player in this situation, create small goals for the player and give them an important role on the team. To keep younger players interested on the bench, I have had players watch for certain things. At a timeout, they tell the starters that one player is left-handed or during the action, they call out screens from the sideline. They contribute to the success of the team even though they do not play as much.

Finally, some players feel like they are less a part of the team if they do not play. In these situations, the coach needs to include the player and point out their contributions to the team, even if those contributions consist solely of working hard in practice to prepare the starters for the game.

Sirota, et al. provide eight ideas to use to maintain your players’ motivation:

1. Instill an inspiring purpose.
2. Provide recognition.
3. Be an expediter for your employees.
4. Coach your employees for improvement.
5. Communicate fully.
6. Face up to poor performance.
7. Promote teamwork.
8. Listen and involve.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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

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.

Oklahoma City is 3rd in team defense at the All-Star break, and assistant coach Ron Adams gets much of the credit.

“We don’t really change what we do,” explained Nick Collison. “I’ve been on a lot of teams where game to game we try to change how we’re going to guard the pick-and-roll, whether we’re going to rotate to a certain guy. We do the same thing, but we really work at it. I think a lot of teams try to win with Xs and Os instead getting good at what they do. We do fundamentals all the time - closeouts, for example. It’s almost like basketball camp. I think with a young team that’s a good way to go. We’ve been real solid.”

During my season, I tried to get my team to do a couple things well. We did not adjust to our opponents, scout or change things. We played teams who could not dribble with their eyes up, yet their coach was calling out multiple plays and switching defenses several times. We would beat these teams by 40 points while playing 12 players fairly even minutes. We did not try to win through X’s and O’s, but by being smart and improving each day on basics like passing and catching, lay-ups and containing the dribble. I was amazed that teams would spend 25 minutes in the locker room before games and 10 minutes at half time talking. We never went to the locker room the entire season, and only once did I talk for more than five minutes at half-time. For me, pre-game and half-time was more practice time to work on shooting, passing and lay-ups.

For OKC, Adams runs the defensive portion for head coach Scott Brooks.

“His segment in practice is defense,” added Kevin Durant. “We go over the same things over and over again. It might get boring to us sometimes as players, wanting to do something new, but I think it’s helping us. We want to be perfect at it, even though that’s not possible, and have it become second nature.”

Sometimes the process of improvement becomes repetitive. For players who want to be players and want to improve, they maintain concentration toward the ultimate goal. For more recreational players who simply want to play, the repetitiveness gets frustrating because they do not value the improvement as much as the fun.

On my team, I had a mix of the two. I probably did no more than 12-15 different drills all season. I am not big into variety, and I do not want to waste time explaining the drill’s proper execution.  I eliminate most of the typical drills like three-man weaves and zig-zag drills, and nearly every drill is competitive, some form of small-sided scrimmage. This maintains the concentration of the recreational players, as the game is fun, and the more developmental players, as they improve. However, during those times when I felt compelled to concentrate on one specific thing with a block practice drill, the attention of the recreational players quickly waned. I had to switch groups some times to put a more serious player with a less serious player to keep the recreational player’s concentration. On other occasions, I did not switch the groups and allowed the developmental players to work together and work hard and the recreational players to work together and be more social at a basket away from the harder working players so they were not a distraction.

In this way, it is a matter of adjusting to the varying interests of your team’s players. However, even at the NBA level, successful teams keep the system simple and focus on fundamentals first to raise their level of performance. Before concentrating on your strategy, make sure the players have the basic tools and fundamentals to make use of the X’s and O’s.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

This article originally appeared in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 4.5.

Zones stymie many teams and players. Generally, teams and players who attack man2man defenses stand around and play passively against zone defenses. There is no real reason to explain the passivity. Zones require a different strategy than man2man, but good defenses combine man-defense and zone defense on each possession.

I thrived against zones because I was a good shooter. However, more than spot-up shooting ability, I found holes in the zone. I visualized the open space or how I could create open space for myself or a teammate. Now, when I play pick-up games, I am frustrated that players rarely see the game or the developing play as I do.

My team struggles with zones because we do not visualize how a cut, pass or pass fake will move the defense. Playing against a zone requires some basic tactical skill and understanding. We use three general skills: dribble and replace; flare screen and skip pass; and a long diagonal cut followed by a short cut into the space. More importantly, I focus on understanding the defense  to create a 2v1 somewhere on the court.

As a player, if I know the defenders’ zones, and I can move one away from his area, I know that there is an open area if a teammate fills that space. When all five offensive players have the same understanding, zones are easier to play against.

If we have the ball in the corner with a player in the short corner, the ball handler dribbles toward the wing. Usually, the defender stays with the ball, meaning the baseline defender in the 2-3 zone is now on the wing. The girl in the short corner fills the corner. On the pass back to the corner, we have an open shot or an open lane – we forced the baseline defender to defend two players in one zone.

If the player penetrates baseline, the middle player in the zone has to rotate to stop the ball. We flash a cutter from the high post on a dive to the rim. Again, we have forced one defender to defend two people. If he stops the ball, a short pass to the cutter should result in a lay-up. If he does not stop the ball, the ball handler has a shot.

The key is understanding the spatial relationships. I have a very analytical team – nearly every player excels in mathematics. We are very left-brained. Consequently, we struggle to visualize space. We lack a creative element. The least mathematically inclined – the two players who lean most heavily toward kinesthetic learners – see space and attack the gaps better than the others.

My players crave more structure, as they are used to plays that occur in a specific sequential order: Pass A leads to Cut B which leads to Pass C which leads to Shot D.

I want them to see space and attack gaps. My approach costs us in some games, but junior varsity is a developmental level and I want them to learn to adapt to different situations. I want them to see the openings in the zone without having to run a play for them to see the openings.

I see the openings and gaps from the sideline; however, rather than design play after play to exploit these gaps, my goal is to get these left-brain thinkers to move beyond their comfort zones and use their creativity and some right-brain thinking to visualize the play developing.

Our biggest problem, ironically, is a poor understanding of angles and relationships between teammates and defenders. For instance, we run an on-ball screen against the zone; our primary purpose is to create a 2v1 in the high post or on one side. However, often the screener is open rolling to the basket if we pass before she reaches the middle defender. Tonight, rather than rolling across the front of the defender, we rolled down the lane-line, which allowed the middle defender to steal a pass. We do not understand the angle that we need as a passer and a cutter. We see open space, but we do not account for the defenders. If there is a line between the two nearest defenders, the pass receiver needs to get to the ball side of the line; by rolling down the lane-line, our player moved behind this line, and the middle defender had a better angle to the pass than our player. If she rolled across the face of the defender, it would be like playing against a man defense when the defense switches.

A similar mistake is in the corner. On a quick reversal, we caught the baseline defender running at the wing with a player in the corner. If the wing drew the defender and passed to the corner, the corner player would have an open lane to the basket. Instead, our player in the corner would take off on backdoor cuts, moving behind the defender closing out to the wing and eliminating any passing angle.

These mistakes are a combination of problems. First, we need more confidence with the ball, especially under pressure. We work on no-dribble passing drills every day to work on pivoting and passing to moving targets while under pressure. Second, we need a greater tactical understanding of where the open spot is and how to get the ball to that player. We need to understand how to exploit open space.

This is a challenge because we are unaccustomed to this process. Against man defense, we excel – we know exactly where to go and how to react. Zone defenses provide more grey areas. At this level, the ball handler generally has an A or B decision against man: (A) use the screen and go to the basket or (B) if they switch, pass to the roller. Zones complicate decision-making. Coaches cannot teach in absolutes, which is why many struggle to coach against zone defenses. Players have to be able to think and find space.

As coaches, we need to prepare players to play against zones. I start with transition, as any transition situation uses the same principles as a zone, offensively and defensively. In 3v2 and 4v3 situations, it is easier to see the openings, the space and the angles. Now as the season nears a conclusion, I want the players to see and feel the space and angles in 5v5 play just as they do in a 3v2 break. However, this takes patience and practice to develop.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League