Teaching your team what constitutes a good shot is certainly important but only a small part of role development. However, as in shot selection, it is up to the coach to help each player understand their role on the team. Just as important, each team member must understand the roles of their teammates as well.There is rarely the team that dresses eight players that all have similar ability — that can dribble, pass, and shoot equally well. With each team there needs to be an understanding by each player as to what her strengths are as well as her weaknesses. They must understand the strengths and weaknesses of their teammates as well.
The absolute most important part of a coach developing roles in a positive way is to put value on all areas of the games — especially those that are critically important that may not be found on the typical stat sheet.
The first part of placing a value on specific elements of the game is by educating everyone to why something is so important when you don’t see it on the stat sheet. That education must first start with your players. A huge part of our teaching philosophy at LSU is to make sure the players know why they are doing something. Teaching them how, when and where is important but why takes it to another level.
As in shot selection (not your shot, it’s our shot), the basket scored is not owned by the person that shot it. There is complete team ownership in that basket. It is up to you as a coach to educate your team as to the reason that basket was scored. When Seimone Augustus comes off a down screen for a jumper, we want the team to know that there were a lot of reasons for that basket.
It was extremely important that Hanna Biernacka set a great screen to get her open. Temeka Johnson deserves her share of credit for delivering her the ball at the proper time. Sylvia Fowles deserves credit for posting hard to occupy her defender so she couldn’t help. Scholanda Hoston deserves credit for “seeing the action” and reversing the ball to Temeka so she could feed Seimone. On a deeper level, Tae-Tae LeBlanc, who is not on the floor at the time of the shot, deserves credit for defending Seimone well in practice yesterday to get her ready for that possession.
As coaches, we all know that those things are important in a successful possession — that all those players are deserving in credit. But it is one thing to deserve credit...it is another to receive it.
Our staff goes out of their way to make sure that those players get as much credit as we can give them for the unheralded elements of good offensive play. We’ll stop practice and ask a player who was responsible for her scoring. In some programs, including ours, teammates acknowledge each other when someone gives them a good pass. At LSU, we have players that acknowledge a teammate that set a good screen to free them. That shows our staff has done a good job of placing a value on screening.
We make sure that when we watch video with the team that we point out all of the elements of a good possession. We go into detail why the screen was so effective. We even go as far to give two players credit for cutting and screening on one side of the floor when the shot comes from the other side simply because they occupied the defense. It you think there is something important to the success of your offense you’d better make sure your players know it is important.
Our staff goes out of their way to make sure that those players get as much credit as we can give them for the unheralded elements of good offensive play. We’ll stop practice and ask a player who was responsible for her scoring. In some programs, including ours, teammates acknowledge each other when someone gives them a good pass. At LSU, we have players that acknowledge a teammate that set a good screen to free them. That shows our staff has done a good job of placing a value on screening.
We make sure that when we watch video with the team that we point out all of the elements of a good possession. We go into detail why the screen was so effective. We even go as far to give two players credit for cutting and screening on one side of the floor when the shot comes from the other side simply because they occupied the defense. It you think there is something important to the success of your offense you’d better make sure your players know it is important.
(to be continued)
