Keep track of your turnovers: How many? What percentage of your possessions are turnovers (we think this is a more important stat than the actual total as the percentage gives you a truer number based on the pace of the game). What kind of turnover (post feed; forced pass, etc)? Who made the turnover? The main point here is that you must break down your turnovers so that your team knows how and why they are turning it over — rather than just hearing us yell at them for having too many. Yelling will alert them that there is a problem but yelling very seldom gives your team the solutions!Use film: I suggest that you categorize the film, putting all of the post feed turnovers back-to-back, the forced passes back-to-back, etc. I strongly believe that film has a much greater impact if the players see the same mistake over and over and over again, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. When they see it in this format (by category and multiple examples) it becomes even more obvious!
Determine the value of the turnover: We are one of the more efficient offensive teams in the NBA, so when we turn the ball over, we lose more potential points than many other teams. Our team needs to know this. You must also determine how many points per turnover you give the other team. The NBA keeps a stat on points off turnovers, and we have really used these two stats with our team because they provide real numbers in terms of how valuable each turnover is; we feel our team needs to know how many points each turnover is truly worth.
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Constant emphasis: We are constantly emphasizing in practice “NO TURNOVERS” or “SIMPLE PASSES” or “CREATE A BETTER PASSING ANGLE” — anything that will remind them how to eliminate turnovers.
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Perfect passes: We are big on hitting guys with “simple passes on time and on target” — a simple yet powerful teaching point that has helped us.
Evaluate your system: Some coaches don’t allow skip passes and some don’t allow post feeds from the free throw line to the block on the same side of the floor. Some coaches won’t allow a post feed unless the passer can “see the numbers” of the post man. The point here is to evaluate your system to see if your system may be causing some of the turnovers. I believe coaches should evaluate themselves first, and the team second.
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Be aware of subtle turnovers: We think there are some possessions that are not treated as a turnover but to us they are. For example, the one we stress the most is forced shots. Even though we get a shot at the basket it is a low percentage shot, so in our minds this is a shooting turnover. There are other instances where a player catches the ball and takes a shot, when with one more pass, the shot could have been taken by one of our best shooters – say Ray Allen. In this case we got a shot but we didn’t get the best shot; for us this is a “one more” turnover.
