In sports, these words are used almost as synonyms. Coaching, teaching, and training are used without much thought to the differences between them. The video offers an interesting thought: education (teaching) and training are not synonymous. Training is a “reductionist goal; it’s aim is to refine an existing action.” Education is an “expansive goal; its aim is to increase the number of potential actions.”

The video asks: Which direction to take: get better at something that already exists or learn something new?

That is such an important point in coaching. What is a coach’s purpose? In some ways, there is the existing thought that “players are made in the summer, and teams are made in the winter.” With this line of thinking, coaching errs more toward training, as the goal is to refine the actions for performance. This makes the off-season the time for education, or increasing the number of potential actions.

Interestingly, we refer to coaches who do the training during the season as “teachers”, and refer to the trainers who do the educating in the off-season as “trainers”.

This offers another interesting point for trainers: are trainers or individual skill coaches training players – that is refining skills that are already there – or are they educating players by developing new skills or potential actions?

In the current basketball environment, where does the education occur? During the competitive season, the appropriate method probably is training, the reductionist approach where the goal is to sharpen the existing skills. However, if the competitive season runs year-round, as it seems to do now, when does the education occur?

From another perspective, rather than looking at periods in the season, one can look at periods in the overall development of a player, or the age groups. Younger age groups should be about education, as coaches increase the potential actions for players. Oftentimes, children’s growth is impeded because of a reductionist approach at a young age. How many coaches tell a 10-year-old post player not to dribble the ball? Is that a training or educative environment? At 10 years old, what should the environment be?

Winning and losing often turns a developmental or educative environment into a training environment, even with young players. The easiest way to win at a young age is to constrain players through external oversight. That’s why you hear a lot of youth coaches saying “don’t dribble,” “don’t shoot from there”, “pass to jimmy”, etc. Rather than create an expansive environment that likely leads to experimentation, mistakes and turnovers, in the process of growth, the coach creates a reductionist approach where he attempts to eliminate potential actions that could result in mistakes and turnovers, like the 10-year-old post player dribbling.

There is an interesting dichotomy. Are you training players or educating them? If you’re engaged in training, when does the education of the player occur?

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PES
Coach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

The epidemic boils down to two issues: (1) Lack of education and dissemination of information to coaches and (2) the Peak by Friday mentality.

The female body differs from the male body, especially after puberty. These differences, according to most experts, affect or even cause the disparity of injury rates between males and females. To suggest otherwise is foolish based on what is known currently.

However, researchers have amassed plenty of evidence to suggest that anatomy is not the sole reason for the disparity. I am uninterested in the arguments of the male vs. female body because there is little that I can do to change someone’s anatomy. The other issues, however, can be impacted by training and skill development and therefore interest me.

Are injuries a result of poor coaching? Yes. Are they a result of poor parenting? Often. However, in most cases, these coaches and parents are not malicious. There is no intent to harm. There is ignorance. There is a void in the education of coaches, especially in terms of movement-related skills. As I wrote recently, basketball coaches, even at the NCAA or WNBA (or should I say especially at the NCAA and WNBA levels), are not movement experts.

Youth coaches typically volunteer their time and are not Coaches, but parents who work, raise children and coach as a hobby or to spend time with their sons or daughters.  Rather than blaming these coaches, as a semi-recent New York Times article appeared to imply, we need to cherish these parents who volunteer, as there would be far less opportunity for children, especially females, to play sports without the volunteer coaches. Rather than chastising these coaches, we need to nurture and provide them with resources. If we are to place blame, the blame should fall on the organizations who sponsor and generate income from the leagues, camps and tournaments that fail to nurture coaches and provide coaching resources.

At the high school level, we also have part-time coaches. They teach or work another job and coach for a small stipend. Even if they had the interest, the stipend they receive would barely cover the cost of attending a great conference to learn more (and I am not talking about Nike Clinics).

These are our coaches at the developmental levels: volunteers, amateurs and part-time coaches. However, these are the years of growth and development. The developmental years are the time when athletes develop practice habits, techniques, skills and mechanics. If these are developed incorrectly or inefficiently, these athletes must re-learn their habits, techniques or skills at a later age or they simply fall out of the competitive stream because they can no longer compensate for their deficiencies.

In the United States, our professional coaches, for the most part, coach at in the NCAA and WNBA. We should place higher demands on these coaches, as they earn an income commiserate with high expectations. However, to my knowledge, not one women’s college basketball coach attended the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group conference despite it falling during a relatively dead period (first weekend of June). How many colleges are within a two-hour drive of Northeastern University? There were no fewer than three presentations directly related to ACL injury prevention, and several others that were relevant, yet nobody attended. Why? Because basketball coaches specialize in basketball. They are hired to win games, not to keep their players safe.

The second problem is that this mentality seeps into the lower levels, and our expectations for coaches at every level center on winning. Good coaches win; bad coaches lose. We cannot differentiate one’s coaching ability from their record.

Therefore, coaches take a Peak by Friday approach to their teams; they concentrate on the next game, not on their athletes’ development. If you ask most coaches to spend 10-15 per minutes at practice on movement skills – skills that enhance performance as well as reduce injury risk – they will say that they are too busy. No coach is fired because he or she has too many players suffer ACL injuries, but plenty are fired for losing too many games.

To make inroads into the ACL epidemic, and to improve the quality of coaching and play in general, we need to raise our expectations of our coaches. At the grassroots, recreation levels, this is difficult because most organizations are thankful to have anyone without a criminal record offer to coach. However, if this is our expectation when finding or recruiting new coaches, what should we expect? Finding coaches is often a difficult process, and volunteering for a youth team can be a thankless task as every parent in the stands suddenly knows more than the coach. However, what can leagues and organizations do to improve the coaching experience? When a league finds a great coach, how can it keep the coach rather than watching him or her leave when his or her daughter or son finish playing in the league? These are the questions that need to be asked.

When a league finds a great coach, why not offer him a position overseeing other coaches? As a volunteer position, he or she may not be able to invest many hours, but why not create a mentor system for experienced and novice coaches?

These questions do not address ACL injuries specifically. However, ACL injuries are a symptom of a larger problem. If we do not raise our expectations of leagues, and leagues fail to nurture and retain good coaches, how can we expect these leagues to implement the available neuromuscular training programs? If we do not address the Peak by Friday mentality first, how do we ensure the adherence to these programs once introduced?

Writing about ACL injuries is a hot-button topic now, so articles attract eyes, and eyes translate to dollars. Writing about coach education or the win-at-all-costs mentality lacks the same hotness. ACL injuries are the acute injury, but the coach education and preparedness is the chronic problem. When a player injures her ACL, the injury sparks new interest and articles. However, there is no event to spark the same interest in general coach training.

If we really want to make a difference, we need to start young. Sport coaches need to look beyond sport-specific skills to the general movement skills that form the foundation of all sports skills. With physical education cuts and a reduction in free, spontaneous play, sport coaches must fill the void and ensure the proper execution and training of these general skills.

Will this help win games? At 7 or 8 years-old, who cares?

These sport coaches need the tools to change their approach, and developing and disseminating these tools fall to the organizations and leagues. I am amazed that leagues do employ a Technical Director or some other position to oversee the quality of the coaching. In Europe, I was the Head Coach of a professional team, but in that capacity, I was also in charge of the underage coaches. We met about philosophy and drills and teaching concepts. I attended practices.

Of course, this was a professional position – I was doing my job. However, why is there no quality control? On TV, I hear advertisements for the Jr. Jazz and their 10,000 players. If you raise the cost of the league $3, you could pay a Technical Director $30,000/year to attend practices, lead clinics, mentor coaches, identify mentor coaches, etc. What if each league gave a Coach of the Year award based not on record, but a professional’s objective evaluation of the coach’s teaching style, feedback, learning environment, etc.?

These ideas appear impossible to implement. Why? The reason that leagues do not implement these ideas is because they derive no benefit. Parents are not choosing leagues based on the coach training that the coaches receive. Parents generally do not know what to look for or what questions to ask. Leagues thrive based on marketing like most businesses. If people thought critically about their beverage choices, would Coke be a thriving international company? No. Instead, we buy the easiest product to find, the one with which we are most familiar, regardless of its effect on our health.

We make the same choices when we choose leagues, teams, etc. Since familiarity trumps effectiveness in our choices, leagues derive no benefit from adding expenditures to improve the league.

Youth sports is a business. Ultimately, parents dictate the business through their choices. Business will chase the dollars. If parents insist on quality coaching, leagues that can demonstrate the quality of their coaching through certifications, mentorships, etc. will derive benefit from these efforts.

What if a league, rather than charging coaches to attend a Saturday clinic or asking them to volunteer more of their time to attend the clinic, paid the coaches to attend or gave the coaches free gear or products to assist with their coaching? Would more coaches be interested in coaching clinics if they were paid to attend or given gifts for attending? Rather than creating another impediment in finding coaches, use the clinics as a reward for volunteering. Change the narrative.

Eventually, when we see some of these changes implemented with recreation leagues, YMCAs, middle school leagues, AAU, NJB, BCI, etc., we will create the environment where the neuromuscular training programs which have been shown to be effective in reducing the incident rate of ACL injuries can have an effect. Before we shift the philosophy or mentality of the coaches and establish long term development and coach preparedness as the expectation not the exception, these neuromuscular training programs will remain sporadic and the injury rate will remain the same.

YBCA tentatively has scheduled a clinic on October 11 at the University of Utah. More information to follow.

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

Some youth academies worry about winning, we worry about education. You see a kid who lifts his head up, who plays the pass first time, pum, and you think, ‘Yep, he’ll do.’ Bring him in, coach him. Our model was imposed by [Johan] Cruyff; it’s an Ajax model. It’s all about rondos [piggy in the middle]. Rondo, rondo, rondo. Every. Single. Day. It’s the best exercise there is. You learn responsibility and not to lose the ball. If you lose the ball, you go in the middle. Pum-pum-pum-pum, always one touch. If you go in the middle, it’s humiliating, the rest applaud and laugh at you.

Unfortunately, many youth coaches seem to avoid these three things, which leads to a breakdown in the talent development process.

First, we have a Peak by Friday mentality where winning takes precedence over education (development). Rather than concentrate on developing skills, coaches focus on game preparation for the next game. Coaches and leagues use a short-term mentality.

Second, many coaches rely on constant or block practice. An example of block practice is doing one skill repeatedly with little to no variation. For instance, a team could run through its offense 5v0 for 20-25 straight repetitions to memorize the offense. Another example is sending players to the free throw line to shoot 10 straight free throws as shooting practice. Block practice leads to immediate practice performance improvement, but does not transfer well to games. Block practice appears organized and well-planned, which is how we imagine good practices. However, if the practice does not transfer to the games, is it a good practice?

Finally, we worry so much about children’s self-esteen that we have removed many traditional games and drills because we fear that a child will feel ostracized if he loses at a practice game. We have turned failure into such a negative that we must avoid it at all costs, which robs players and children of important learning opportunities.

To improve our developmental environment, we need to remember these three things: development before winning; contextual interference to improve learning and transfer; and more safe competition where players can fail and learn from mistakes.

Youth sports should emphasize fun, development and learning. If professional athletes have this much fun in training, why aren’t 10-year-olds?

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

In a recent youth football championship game, one team trailed 6-0 when the coach ordered a trick play that is now a youtube sensation. After a penalty, he called out loudly that the defense had been off-side, and the official forgot to walk off the five yards. He yelled at his center to move the ball forward. The center stood up and handed the ball over his shoulder to the quarterback, which is a legal maneuver. The quarterback started to walk off the five yards and then sprinted past the unassuming defenders for the game-tying touchdown.

The play is perfectly legal. Despite perceptions, a center does not have to hike the ball directly between his legs to the quarterback; however, we use that technique because it puts the center in the best position to block after hiking the ball. Essentially, the team hiked the ball for the quarterback to run a sneak up the middle, and the coach’s instructions confused the defense who relaxed until it was too late.

The Internet loves the video, and most people think the coach is a genius. For someone obviously concerned with winning, he is quite clever. He used his craftiness and knowledge of the rules to win the game. However, if a parent is looking for a youth football coach, does his cleverness and youth championship make him a good coach for developing athletes?

Players and parents generally want to play on the winning team. All things being equal, people prefer winning to losing. The result may not be the most important factor in the child’s enjoyment, but people tend to be in a better mood after a win than a loss. More importantly, we equate winning teams with good coaches. If a coach wins most of his games or a couple youth league championships, we deem him a good coach, and parents want their child to play for a good coach.

Is playing for a winning coach the right choice developmentally? Like many things, it depends. However, choosing a coach simply on previous success is a poor way to judge a youth coach.

Winning at the youth level often requires a Peak by Friday mentality, which the above football coach illustrated. With this approach, the coach concentrates on game preparation during his practices. He simplifies the game through his offensive and defensive systems, and players learn to follow directions. This coach obviously practiced his trick play to insure that the lineman did not false start, the receivers stayed on the line, the center knew what to do and so on. From a developmental standpoint, is that a good use of limited practice time? Would more time learning the proper tackling technique or training basic agility enhance the players’ development more than learning one clever trick play?

At the youth level, the Peak by Friday mentality generally proves effective because the adult’s sophistication overwhelms young players’ skills. Players adapt to their coach’s instructions fairly quickly, and they can implement the one or two things that their coach asks of them. The team substitutes the inexperienced decision-making skills of a child for the strategy of an adult coach.

However, these extensive and explicit instructions narrow the players’ attention. Players stop their efforts to try new things or create novel solutions to game situations and instead look to their coach for answers. I watched a high school girls’ basketball game where the point guard crossed half-court and passed to the right wing on four consecutive possessions. On the first possession, she completed the pass. On the next three passes, the defense stole the ball and scored a lay-up on the other end. After four possessions, the coach called timeout and changed the play.

On the first of the three turnovers, the defense switched; rather than following the post player who set a down-screen for the wing, the post’s defender stayed on the wing and intercepted the pass. The point guard passed the ball as if she never saw the defensive player standing between her and her teammate. On the second and third turnovers, the post’s defender switched, but the wing’s defender followed the wing. The defense had two girls between the point guard and her intended target, and she still passed the ball as if she did not see the defenders fighting each other to get the steal. Dr. Daniel Simons, author of The Invisible Gorilla and an expert in selective attention, calls this inattentional blindness. The defenders were clearly within the point guard’s view, but she was blinded to the defenders because she was not attending to the defense; she was searching solely for her teammate at a specific spot to make the pass.

While the point guard was passing to the wing, the post player who set the screen was wide open two feet from the basket. However, rather than waving her arms, calling for the ball or cutting toward the ball to make a shorter pass, she was cutting across the lane to screen for someone else. She did not realize that she was wide open. Instead, she was running the play and setting a screen to get someone else open.

This happens frequently in youth sports. A soccer coach instructs his fullbacks to boot the ball as far as possible rather than pick up their eyes to find a teammate and pass the ball to his feet. Baseball coaches walk top hitters rather than risk their pitcher pitching to them. Basketball coaches run plays so certain players take specific shots. From a strategic standpoint, when winning is the goal, these decisions make sense. The coaches are trying to win the game, and often they do. However, do those wins transfer to improvement and development?

If a coach intentionally walks an elite hitter every time one comes to bat, what happens when the pitcher has to face the league’s top hitter with the bases loaded and he cannot walk him? The pitcher has no experience pitching against top hitters because the coach intentionally walked them previously. The player never learned to battle against the hitters because the coach used his strategy to reduce the likelihood of a mistake. However, by negating the possibility for a mistake, the coach sacrificed the player’s learning, and ultimately, that sacrifice will catch up to the player in some form, whether in the same season or maybe the following season when he plays for a different coach who does not walk batters and now he has to pitch to all the top hitters, but he lacks the mental or physical tools.

When coaches make the decisions for the players, the players do not learn to make decisions. In the basketball situation, the players were so focused on running their offense that they did not realize that they had a wide open lay-up if they looked. Their coach’s instructions created rigid thinking – rather than explore the environment and make the best decision, the players were stuck with only one possible response: running the play. Their thinking was inflexible, so they were unable to adapt to new situations, even though the new situation presented a fairly easy play to execute: a pass to a wide open player for a wide open shot close to the basket. The coach’s instructions narrowed their attention and led to the inattentional blindness.

When the coach’s strategy works, and the team wins, the coach is praised as a good coach. The basketball coach actually wins his league nearly every year and is considered by many to be a good coach. However, is his style good for winning, good for development or both?

When choosing a youth coach, the primary concern should be to find one that makes the game fun and focuses more on developing players’ skills than winning games. Developing decision-making skills in youth players is a long process. It does not happen before the first game. Therefore, these teams often struggle early in the season as they develop. The Peak by Friday approach is a short-term approach, so teams are prepared for the first game and usually start well. However, which is more important: the early season wins or the long-term development?

When seeking a coach, look past the record. Sometimes, a winning coach may win because of his misplaced priorities, while a coach with a poor record may be the one developing players who have more success in the future when their more flexible and adaptable thinking leads to better decision-making skills and overall performance.

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

Essentially, if a player picks up a basketball, he seeks the immediate reward of making a basket. However, making a basket in the short-term may not develop a skill that is useful in the long term, and that is where the coach enters the picture. The coach understands what is necessary for the player’s long-term success, and he prevents the player from falling into the short-term bad habit. As the researchers write:

“A recent study supports the usefulness of coaching by showing that subjects do not necessarily choose the optimal long-term learning strategy when allowed to choose on their own (Yarrow et al., 2009).”

Therefore, the coach’s role is to promote long-term learning or the skills that lead to long-term development, not the short-term approach. When evaluating coaches, we must remember that the coach’s role is not short-term success, but long-term development, especially with coaches of youth players. If coaches fall into the trap of a short-term approach, and players tend to choose the immediate success over long-term learning, who will enhance the player’s learning or outline the strategy for long-term success? Who will set forth the optimal approach if the coach has a Peak by Friday mentality? What coach will maintain a LTAD philosophy when parents and random Internet posters evaluate coaches on a short-term outcome?

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

In the next scene, Jake walks into their house with slumped shoulders while his dad said, “Nobody got creamed. Nobody won or lost.” Jake retorted, “Except us, 12-2.”

This is the problem with not keeping score: everyone keeps score, whether there is an official scoreboard or not. Everyone knows the winner and loser, especially in a 12-2 soccer game. Children are not dumb; you cannot hide the result from them or their parents.

Not keeping score misses the point. The scoreboard is not the problem; the problem is the way that the scoreboard makes us act. If the coach plays with a win-at-all costs, peak-by-Friday approach, the scoreboard makes no difference. However, if a coach takes a long term, process-oriented approach, the presence of a scoreboard does not change his coaching.

If we want to help children enjoy their initial sports’ experiences, ignore the scoreboard. Its presence or lack thereof will not determine a child’s enjoyment of the activity. As I wrote earlier this week, children view competition differently. They are not absorbed by the score until parents and coaches make such a big deal out of it that they have to hide the score. In many cases, this brings more attention to the scoreboard.

Rather than focus on the scoreboard, leagues should spend more time creating equal teams, as children do when picking teams on the playground. Next, if a league worries about blowouts, play each game like a mini-tournament: re-start the score each quarter.

Other ideas that would change the league’s culture more than worrying about the scoreboard would be to encourage coaches to work together; to run one practice per week as a group workout focused on skill development; to change teams more often; to alternate coaches based on strengths and weaknesses, so each teams learns from the strengths of each coach, not just one coach; to teach coaches about the Peak by Friday concept and its negative effect on youth player development; and more.

The scoreboard is a superficial change that changes very little. To make an impact, the changes need to go to the league’s foundation, focus on the league’s philosophy and change the coaches’ approach to their teams, winning, development and players’ motivations.

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

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

1) What is the purpose of the team? At 12-years-old, learning and development should take precedence over winning games. Therefore, all players need a chance to develop. Rather than hiding the poorer players, we need to develop these players to eliminate the weaknesses. Rather than focus strictly on the result of the game, we should focus on the process of improvement and development. If a weaker players takes a bad shot or commits a turnover late in the game, it becomes a teaching point rather than a reason to substitute or not pass to the player again.

2) Isn’t learning to win part of the process? Yes, which makes this question tougher to answer. While we focus on the process, part of the process is learning about shot selection as well as finishing games. Handling late game situations is part of the process. Late game situations differ from the first quarter because of time and score. While we do not want to obsess over the score or the outcome, players do need to learn to be competitive and how to win. Sometimes, this means getting the the ball to the team’s best player or finding a way for the best player to create his own shot or an easy shot for a teammate.

When we concentrate on the process, not the result, it does not mean that the result has no importance. We play games to win. The difference is approach.

This season, I played all 12 players in every half of every game. However, in close games, my best five players on that day generally finished the game. We played to win, but that goal did not dictate my coaching: everyone played whether we were down five or up by 20. Players generally had freedom to shoot any open shot, but in close games, we tried to work a little harder to get better shots rather than shooting the first shot. This dod not mean that the outcome all of a sudden trumped the process; instead, part of the process was learning to finish close games – when to foul; who to foul; who do we want to get fouled; when to gamble for a steal; when to shoot the three-pointer vs. attacking the basket; how to manage the clock. Ultimately, learning these lessons are part of the process.

However, we do not want to create situations where we avoid players, like Little League coaches who stick their T-baller in right field for every inning and never allow him a chance to play a meaningful position because the coach fears that the player could blow the game.

When coaching young players, coaches must balance the line between developing all players and giving all players a chance to learn, develop and exhibit their skills, and teaching players how to execute at the end of the game. By nurturing confidence in each player, the coach can worry less about hiding weaker players and concentrate more on maximizing the involvement of the best players. In this way, an occasional set play to create a good shot is not moving away from the process, but when implemented correctly, is an extension of the learning process.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

But you can count Nick Bollettieri, the man who may have done more to bring about the demise of serve and volley than anyone, as a believer in its continued potential, provided a young player devotes himself to it very early. He coaches at least one young girl with a professional net-rushing future in mind, but he says that the roadblocks are often the parents, who don’t have the patience that it takes to allow this style to mature. “You have to lose for a while if you go that way,” Bollettieri says, “and who wants to do that?”

This happens with post players frequently. The tallest player is told to stay close to the basket and be tall, and he is prohibited from dribbling. How does this enhance the player’s development?

Similarly, eight and nine-year-olds shoot three pointers with poor form because they are trying to win the game. However, these shots develop bad habits.

In both cases, coaches, parents and players concentrate on the immediate results, not the process and the player’s long term athlete development.

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

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

Join the forum discussion on this post - (3) Posts