OVERRIDING DEFENSIVE PRINCIPLE
A strong defensive system should have an overriding principle — a theme in which the defense is built around. While at LSU, that overriding principle was: “stop the basketball.” It is very simply stated, but within that concept is a challenging goal for any defensive team. By making this our primary principle it gives us a reference point for all other guidelines and rules in our defensive system. As we go through all of the areas of our base defense, you will see that the reason for much of what we do defensively will rely on putting our players in position to stop the basketball.
DEFENSIVE STANCE
All good defensive systems must start with the stance. This is relative regardless of how you play defensively, whether you are a man-to-man coach, a zone coach, or choose to play a multiple defensive system. If you are going to be solid defensively, you must first teach your players the proper stance and, more importantly, condition them to stay in that stance.
For us, the stance begins at the bottom where we want the feet a little wider than shoulders width. The body should be low, bent at the knees (not at the back) with the head up. We like our elbows tucked and tight to the body with hands extended and palms up.
BALL PRESSURE
If stopping the ball is the overriding principle to our defense, then ball pressure becomes one of the most critical elements. We want to be able to control the basketball and dictate where it will be dribbled. Our point of pick up on the basketball will start at half court at which time we want to influence the ball to one side of the floor. We believe it is advantageous to the offense to have the ball in the middle of the court as our defense is unable to distinguish ballside and helpside. Once the ball is on the side we want to influence the ball to the corner. The terminology we will use is “influence” rather than “force.” This is somewhat of an alteration of our past philosophy. In the past, our defense has gotten up on the top foot of the ball handler almost inviting her to drive baseline. Influencing to the corner will give us a better chance to take away the direct penetration to the block. This is a slight change in philosophy when in the past we have taught forcing the ball to the baseline. We believe by influencing to the corner, we are keeping the ball on the side with less allowance for baseline dribble penetration. Because we’re influencing and not forcing, there will be an occasion when the ball handler will bring the ball back to the middle. This is allowable as long as the ball is on an angle going away from the basket.
In terms of ball defense, we have adopted a very simple yet strongly felt phrase that we use with our team: HAND ON THE BALL.
►If the ball handler has the ball but has not used her dribble, we want to be down in our stance with one hand “mirroring” the basketball at all times.
►If the ball handler is dribbling, we want to be down in our stance with our outside hand pressuring the basketball.
►If the ball handler picks up her dribble, we want to get as close to her without fouling as possible and have both hands aggressively “mirroring” the basketball.
►If the ball handler is attempting to pass, we want to have our outside hand extended in the passing lane, attempting to alter the pass or deflect it.
►If the ball handler attempts to shoot, we want to get a hand up on the ball in an attempt to block or alter the shot. This is an aggressive maneuver, but we want to challenge every shot taken by an opponent. We do not believe that a hand in the face will effect a good shooter — we want to make her change her shot.
Pressuring the shot is something that many defenses do not talk about or work on enough. A great way to gauge the value of this is to take a couple of game videos and chart shots against a contesting hand and shots that were totally uncontested. The difference in shooting percentage will greatly differ the majority of the time.
The importance of your opponent’s field goal percentage can not be overstated. Roy Williams of North Carolina says: “The most important stat to us is what our opponents shoot from the field.” Echoing that thought is Rick Majerus: “The first and most important stat we look at after a game is our opponent’s field goal percentage.” Our goal is to make sure that our team is more attuned to what our opponents are shooting from the field. This will start in practice with our scrimmage sessions. Sometimes its not necessarily what you teach, but what you emphasize.
I would imagine that I've posted this before through the years but as I was taught by Skip Bertman, the Hall of Fame baseball coach at LSU -- "repetition is good." This is a list of traits that are important to good press offense that I got from Coach Sue Gunter. Regardless of the alignment or action of your press offense, I think these are a great set of guidelines to follo:
#1 Remember the biggest key is to always maintain good spacing. With good spacing, it leaves more room for the defense to cover, and longer distances for them to run before making a trap or steal attempt.
#2 Make all your cuts hard and sharp. If you are not cutting as quickly as possible, you are helping the defense to defend you. Cut to create help. The same holds true if you don’t cut properly, rounding off your cuts instead of cutting in straight lines.
#3 We must always keep someone behind the basketball. We don’t want that player “on top of the basketball.” Stay behind the basketball as a release valve, but maintain proper spacing.
#4 Always come back to meet a pass made to you. This one is critical. If you wait for the pass, someone near you can beat you to the pass and get an interception. Come back for the ball and catch it with both feet in the air to land with a jump stop for pivoting.
#5 If at all possible, we don’t want to receive the entry pass to close to the inbound baseline. Again, this is poor spacing. Try to catch the ball as deep as possible to give you more room to operate.
#6 Utilize pass fakes at every opportunity. Almost all full-court pressure is based on active, gambling-aggressiveness and therefore is prone to pass fakes. A good pass fake will get the defense in the air and allow you a chance to put the ball on the floor or give you an opportunity to make an easier, more effective pass — “fake a pass to make a pass.”
#7 Don’t waste your dribble. Catch the ball, pivot, and look ahead for a possible pass as well as to read the defense. If you pick up your dribble without looking ahead or reading the defense, you become an easy target to be trapped with very few options.
#8 Always remember, once you beat the pressure, the good press defense teams like to come from behind and try to knock the ball away. You must always stay alert.
#9 At the end of the press offense, always look for a good shot. If we execute properly, we can get lay ups, short jumpers, and wide open three-pointers. We want to make a team pay a heavy price for pressing us. Always remember that a forced or bad shot is the same as a turnover for a pressing team.
#10 If we don’t get a shot from our press offense, get directly into our man-to-man or zone offense. Often teams that press, especially zone presses or run and jump presses, have a difficult time recovering to their proper defensive assignments in their half-court defense.
Mike Krzyzewski on goal setting at Duke:
"I’ve never set goals of wins and losses. After we went to a couple of Final Fours, I’ve always talked to my players about the possibility of a winning national championship. The reason I don’t do the wins and losses is we approach every game like we can win. If I set 20 wins and getting to the second round of the NCAAs or something like that, my feeling is that once you attain those goals, you might have a certain sense of satisfaction that would stop you from attaining a higher goal...on the other hand, you might have injuries that occur or different things that might happen, and a team that could have won 24 games maybe won 17, but that’s the best that that team could have gotten. I guess that what I’m trying to say is, I would rather define success for my team than to have a goal or other people define it for us."
From "Why We Win" by Billy Packer
It is hard to believe there has been a more thorough job done regarding a video project on one specific phase of basketball than Rick Majerus has done with The Encyclopedia of the 4-Out 1-In Motion Offense.
First, let’s start with the fact that 4-Out 1-In Motion has nearly been perfected by Majerus during his tenure at the University of Utah. He has a reputation of being truly one of the game’s best teachers when it comes to this motion offense alignment. He not only understands the nuances of 4-Out 1-In but is the consummate teacher in the individual development of each position and how it should be played.
Second, this is not your ordinary 30 minute video with a coach standing at a lectern with an overhead projector. It is in fact, a three DVD set with over four hours of Majerus delving into every detail of his motion philosophy. It is all done on the court with a team to demonstrate all the inside pointers that has made Majerus a master of this phase of motion.
An important note in regard to this DVD series is that you don’t have to be a motion coach to benefit from Majerus and his philosophy. He talks a great deal about individual details that can be utilized with your team regardless of what offense you use. In fact, one of the motion alignments we utilize at LSU is the 4-Out 1-In (we refer to it as Regular).
We don’t run it exactly like Majerus. In fact, we have several differences but you can bet that we were able to take a great deal from this video and incorporate it into our execution methods.
While this review is far too short to even begin listing the key points brought out by Majerus, we thought we’d list a few that we will take and involve in our offensive system.
◄Spacing is critical. Not just early in the possession but after the ball has been reversed a few times. Majerus refers to this as “spacing maintenance.” In fact, he says the key to being a good offensive coach is teaching offense so that you finish with good spacing, not just start with it.
◄Spacing goals:
-Too high
-Too wide
-Too far apart
-Too spread apart
◄Offensive philosophy should center around:
-Who am I?
-Who are my teammates?
-Who is covering me?
-Who is covering my teammates?
◄Be decisive against the closeout.
-Majerus wants “economy of motion” (less is more)
◄Complete your cut to the front of the rim.
-Great passers feed you at the rim
-Don’t pass to a cutter who broke their cut off
◄Essence of good basketball
-Personnel recognition
-Role recognition
-Know who your best player is
-Get your best players the most shots
◄On the double staggered screen, make sure the two screeners are not in the same plane. The second screener should be inside the 1st screener’s hip if the defense jumps to the lane. The second screener should be outside the 1st screener’s hip if the defense is tagging.
◄All screens should finish outside the NBA 3.
◄Continue your cut based on your momentum.
◄Post feeder cuts to the basket in the direction opposite of his/her defenders head turn.
These are just a few of the things we got from this three DVD set. Majerus is a great teacher and there is a reason this is called Encyclopedia of 4-Out 1-In Motion.
An important concept that successful people understand is that you are never stuck. You just keep re-creating the same experience over and over by thinking the same thoughts, maintaining the same beliefs, speaking the same words, and doing the same things.
As long as you keep complaining about your present circumstances, your mind will focus on it. By continually talking about, thinking about, and writing about the way things are, you are continually reinforcing those very same neural pathways in your brain that got you where you are today.
To change this cycle, you must focus instead on thinking, talking, and writing about the reality you want to create. You must flood your unconscious with thoughts and images of this new reality.
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” -Albert Einstein
From "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield
The following comes from "Coaching the Mental Game" by H. A. Dorfman:
Major league manager Tony LaRussa is a learner. He’s credited with being a “a smart manager” and his law degree is often a point of reference. But for me, while working in the Oakland Athletics organization, he illustrated his “smarts” by being so open to learning.
Tony and I were discussing a point of view he had about a player, in particular, and people in general. He asked me what I thought of his viewpoint and I told him I didn’t agree with what he had expressed. I also told him why. He was not pleased with my emphatically contrarian belief. That much I could see in the expression on his face. What I couldn’t see were the gears operating in his head. He turned moments later and went to another area of spring training.
The next day, a catchers’ meeting was held. The pitching coach, the catchers at the came, and I found a quiet place to conduct the meeting: Tony’s office. My eyes happened to move across the front of Tony’s open locker during a lull in the meeting. There on the top shelf were three books relating to the topic we had briefly discussed the previous day. They were library book. Tony had gone to the Scottsdale, Arizona public library and checked them out, open to the possibility that he had something to learn beyond and/or in contradiction to what he felt he already knew.
To this day, he continues to express his inquisitiveness about matters of mutual concern/involvement. His questions indicate as much about his smarts as his answers. Sometimes more. Tony LaRussa knows this; Socrates knew it 2,500 years ago.
Learning is part of preparation. For athletic competition; for life itself.
Came across this article via a tweet from Jay Bilas. It comes from www.GQ.com and is titled "The Nick Collison Guest Blog, Vol. 4: How To Survive in the NBA When You're Not a Superstar."
Here are some excerpts from Nick Collison and his thoughts on roles:
The players who can consistently help their teams win games are the ones who stick around, so every player has to figure out what it is he does well enough to help a team win. Otherwise, the new crop of young players who enter the league every year will replace them.
The guys who have success in the league and stick around are the ones who understand how to make themselves valuable to an organization.
You do this by embracing your role and focusing on things other than scoring. Sure, you've spent your whole basketball life developing and displaying your offensive game, but suddenly you aren't getting those scoring opportunities in games. You take thousands of shots in the offseason, you work on your shot before and after practice, yet you may go weeks without taking a jumper in a game. But you can't dwell on it, because there is so much else you can do out there to help the team win. If you can become really good at things like screening, passing, defending pick and rolls, communicating, boxing out and rotating defensively, you can have a huge affect on your team winning a game. If those parts of your game become a habit and you develop consistency, you are going to be valuable to your team and have a long career.
The hard part is being able to have the focus to do it over and over again, knowing you aren't going to get a lot of credit. Doing a great job of talking on defense won't get you any high-paying endorsement deals. Nobody is making a YouTube mix of all your badass screens with a Rick Ross track playing over it. (I'm not saying I would complain if someone did this for me.)
A lot of guys can't or won't do these things because they don't see the value in it. Some people look at it as sacrificing your own game for the greater good. This is true to an extent, but you don't just play this way because you are a nice guy and you are willing to let other guys shine. You do it because you want to win, to be a part of a championship team, and you do it because you want to create value for yourself. If you are a bench guy and you start to take more shots, to take your scoring average from six points a game up to eight points a game, not many people are going to notice. You are doing the same things, just in a more inefficient way.
On the other hand, if you average only five points a game but defensively you can blow up every pick and roll and take that option away from the opponent, you are going to be able to play for a long time and make a lot of money over your career. At the same time, your play will have more of an effect on winning than it would otherwise. The goal is to try to make it very difficult for your team to replace you, so that they have to do what it takes to keep you around. That's how a player creates value for himself.
Sometimes it's difficult to take a back seat when you know you are capable of showing more than what your role allows. It can be frustrating to play without getting the shots you want, and to see your numbers dip. Most fans won't appreciate the things you do well. This is where a little perspective and being secure in yourself can go a long way. If you have perspective, you will realize that your job totally rules. You get paid a huge salary to play basketball. You will be part of the 1 percent. You will get your summers off. You will be encouraged to take naps most days.
Read the entire article (it's worth it): http://gqm.ag/xJSmHt
This is a series of thoughts from "Competitive Leadership: 12 Principles for Success" by Brian Billick. Part IX deals with being a solver:
“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
-John Foster Dulles
...good leaders anticipate problems.
“The most important thing to do in solving a problem is to begin."
-Frank Tyger
At this, the final step in the problem-solving process, the leader must determine whether the problem has actually been solved.
“Why do we fear adversity when we know it is the only way to truly get better?”
I can honestly say I have never known a writer that truly understands the concept of “team.”
The final theme I focused on during the (winning) streak was maintaining a consistent routine. Of all the things I have confidence in, the structure of our routine heads the list. Everything we do is with the idea of keeping our players fresh and healthy, all the while providing them with the information and guidance they need to do their job.
...you should not become so recalcitrant that you don’t leave room for adaptation. However, that too can be a part of our basic routine. The players can be taught that certain aspects of their preparation will be dictated as needed by the success or failure of a particular part of our situational offensive, defensive or special teams.
“The only thing wrong with doing nothing is that you never know when you are finished.”
-Anonymous
...the best way to deal with a problem is to take steps to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. Not only is it less costly, but it also enables an organization to avoid negative circumstances that might otherwise be a byproduct of the problem.
Preventing a problem, however, usually requires that a leader has superior planning skills.
We devote a considerable amount of time and resources during our summer training camp to address issues that might become a problem during the season. Such issues involve personal, as well as professional circumstances. Along with the structure of handling a losing streak or a prolonged period on the road, we address such personal issues as spousal abuse, drunken driving, and parental responsibilities. Handling these potential problems in a proactive way serves two purposes. First, it provides the players with a resource to draw on should the problems arise. Second, it gives the players a sense that management is well organized and has a plan for every contingency.
“The world is full of thorns and thistles. It’s all in how you grasp them.”
-Arnold Glasow
...leaders should learn to trust their intuition and to consider their gut feelings as one factor in developing and evaluating potential solutions.
Leaders should keep in mind that procrastination only deepens a crisis.
The best organizational structure for dealing with a crisis is one in which responsibility for leading the organization out of the crisis is assigned to one individual.
There are three perspectives that must be maintained in handling any crisis: dealing with the crisis itself, dealing with the effects on the organization, and finally, dealing with the ensuing media and its effect on the first two concerns.
“The reward for being a good problem solver is to be heaped with more and more difficult problems to solve.”
-Buckminister Fuller
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing is the wrong thing; and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
According to John Maxwell in The 21 indispensable Qualities of a Leader, there are three basic kinds of competent people in the world:
-Those who can see what needs to happen
-Those who can make it happen
-Those who can make it happen when it really counts
The following comes from a book that I started a few years back and have yet to finish. This is an excerpt from the chapter titled "Prepare and Compete."
CLIMBING THE LADDER OF SUCCESS
PROGRESSION is the fourth rung on the ladder. Progression refers to the level on which we are playing and practicing and the importance of working on one area before moving on to the next. “Level” does not have to refer to going from the junior high school level to the high school level. It means the level of play that you are on within yourself. That sounds a little dramatic but the competitive athlete understands even the importance of playing at a certain level. It is competing and finding out that the once difficult fundamental has now become an easy part of your game that you can execute naturally. By working with progressive teaching ideas in fundamentals, we are actually putting parts together to form the whole. As young players learn to master one level of the teaching, they can then move on to the next level. As they increase their skill level, they graduate on to more difficult drills or perhaps try to raise their repetitions in certain drills. It is working in a progressive manner that will allow each youngster to move towards the basketball potential.
We often use the example of the farmer with our players at LSU. There are a lot of fundamental steps that the farmer must go through before he/she can harvest their crop. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time, but it is the only way for their crops to succeed. They cannot pass up any steps or skip one phase. They must tend to the soil, properly plant the seeds, and then work each day to water and fertilize in order to have the harvest they desire. A basketball player must understand that either she or her team will not have the opportunity to cut down the nets if they are going to try and take short cuts. It is the law of the harvest!
The same is true of our coaching philosophy at LSU. We utilize a Part/Whole Method in all phases of how we play. What this means is that regardless of the offense or defense that we are utilizing, we are going to break it down in to simple parts to teach a more concise level. In recent years, our team at LSU has gained a reputation for being very good on the defensive end of the floor. Our base defense is man-to-man. Each day we break that defense down into smaller parts for teaching reasons and to help simplify the habit-forming process for our players. We will work 1-on-1, 2-on-2, 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 on various parts of our man-to-man before we advance to the 5-on-5 that players probably enjoy the most. However, our team defense (the 5-on-5) would suffer if we did not spend the time that do breaking the defense down into smaller parts.
Here’s a “no-brainer’ that a coach must always remember: leaders affect the behavior of the world-be/should/be followers. Let me express is another way; players follow the coach’s lead. If the leadership is misguided, the “followers” will be lost — in a variety of ways. Or they will choose not to follow.
Make no mistake about it, athletes not only need effective leadership, they also desire it. Young people want consistent parameters, direction, order, structure, organization, and discipline. They need it, whether they know it or not. It gives them security, and that, in turn, helps them to be more confident.
A leader who knows how to manage athletes can direct their mental and behavioral efforts toward a common goal — a goal established by the leader. This becomes the organizational/team credo. “What we stand for” is the way I put it with players. “What we want and how we go about pursuing it.”
The credo should be one of the first expressions of position power. I have light-heartedly told teams at initial meetings, “We are a controlled democracy here. You have the freedom to do whatever you want — as long as I approve.”
From "Coaching the Mental Game" by H. A. Dorfman
