Monday Morning Thoughts #4
Welcome back for the 4th edition of Monday Morning Thoughts. As most schools have started up by now or are just getting started good luck to you all as you open the school year with your programs!
In your first few practices/on court sessions what do you prioritize & how do you begin the introduction process?
Will tailor this from an offensive perspective to stay consistent with all the other content you get from me lol
As an offense what are your absolutes? Many teams take this time to teach general principles like spacing/penetration rules, maybe a primary/secondary break, etc. What are some of the things that you emphasize? (fast or slow paced team, ball movement, player movement, etc.)
I think this is great & very pivotal information that your team must have early on in the process of offensive implementation. The question that I would continue to pose is many of these things have nothing to do with your playbook. You might put in some basic base play family or maybe a couple special situations (BLOBS mainly) however a majority of the stuff going in is without a call.
How much of an emphasis do you continue to put on this after the first few days/weeks? Do you consciously make an effort to continue to find ways to build up on these principles in a way that effectively enhances and improves your teams decision making?
Another one that I have always liked, when working on your base offensive principles incorporate guided defense to allow players to be awarded for making correct reads (meaning you dictate the defensive coverages).
I also personally love the idea of teaching your halfcourt offensive principles 4v4. This increases the chances of your players getting an immediate awarded for making the right read and acts as positive reinforcement. Also building in 2 side rotation attacks and playing through the numerical advantage out of your actions.
How difficult is it to really stay on the cutting edge of trends?
This is one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. More of a general principle and a life principle, but I just genuinely have no idea how to gauge this yet.
Obviously it’s hard. Very hard. It requires a lot of time and effort. With the time and effort it requires becomes the real dilemma. There’s really no overly efficient way to do this. You have to study the game a ton, talk to others that study the game a ton, but you’re still just kind of throwing stuff at the wall and hoping that something sticks.
This is something that I see far too often because of the amount of work it takes, we fall behind and understandably so. However, as someone who prides themselves on trying to stay ahead (which I do not think I am but I try my hardest) I’m trying to figure out how we can continue to make this process efficient and take more calculated risks with our time.
Can you create trigger areas in your flow offense to play through a big that is a non scoring threat?
Now if this question was non shooting threat the answer would undoubtedly be yes. I would ever argue occasionally depending on your personnel it might be better. Can see this with many NBA teams.
This question is more of what if our offensive player is a complete non scoring threat? This depends on the skillset but I it can be done. The question is just how efficient
In the past few years we have seen few teams toy with this in years past Memphis two years ago with Steven Adams & Charlotte 2 ago with Mason Plumlee. This is something I will be diving more into in the future. I had a bunch of clips in the vault from both of these teams but I would like to study it a little more in depth in the near future rather than just studying their offenses as a whole.
Coaches as always, please reach out. I’d love to have a conversation with you and talk some hoops. I have met some really great people since starting this series. I would like that to continue as much as possible. My contact information will be below.
Cell: 330-787-1146
Email: connor.harr@westliberty.edu