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First To Worst
An interesting perspective on mistakes made when taking over a first-place program.
"Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that it doesn't go into a fruit salad."
- Miles Kington
Eraser
"As a young coach, Tom Osborne gave me a piece of advice I never forgot," a longtime offensive coordinator said. "He said, 'When times get tough -- and they will -- get out your eraser, not your pencil.'"
This is a great quote from former Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne. Granted, as a head coach, it's a lot more easier said than done. But there is a lot of wisdom in it if you take the time to process and plan for how you will handle adversity.
Chip Kelly always says "Make your tough decisions in air-conditioned rooms." You should plan your approach to adversity, stressful situations, and in-game scenarios when the pressure is on. If you do that, you can handle the heat because the stress of winning and losing isn't impacting your decision. You've figured out your approach ahead of time, now all you have to do is execute.
One of those things to think about in the off-season is how you are going to handle when your team isn't playing well. What is the best way to get your team out of a slump or change the approach to spark your group? Naturally when things aren't going well we try and do more. We change the line-up, we tweak the offense, we try a different defense. We run more sets to try and get certain people the ball, or we shorten the rotation to keep our best players on the floor longer. When we are struggling, we want to do more.
Sometimes the best approach is to do less. Maybe your team isn't executing because you are trying to do too much. You might be over-coaching them. I know I've been guilty of that before, and it took my team to teach me how to get away from that approach. Even if your team is struggling for no apparent reason, your thinking needs to be 'how can I get the most out of them?' Is it to add more stuff, to give them more to work on and think about? That's something you really have to think about.
This isn't to say that change is a bad thing. Many teams will just need a shake-up, something different to spark a fire or at least let them know that change is coming. But how you change and what you change are worth thinking about. Simplification is a form of change, even though it's not adding anything new technically. There are ways to implement change while getting your teams to think less.
Most of the time I've had a struggling team that is under-performing, it's because I've been giving them too much. Even when I thought what we were doing was simple and easy to understand, it's really how they process it that matters. And I've gone down that rabbit hole where I keep trying new things to shake my team out of it, only to dig the hole deeper. It's a very uncomfortable feeling, one where you know what you are doing isn't working but for some reason you can't stop.
I love the idea of taking out the eraser rather than the pencil. When your team is really struggling, give them less. Simplify everything and see if they start to grow. So often less is more, and a team on a bad run usually needs some room to breathe.
Ability Over Experience
Value ability more than experience, and put people in roles that require more of them than they know they have in them.
- Robert Iger, Former Disney CEO, The Ride of a Lifetime
(Good advice for a coach)
College Basketball Analytics
How men’s college basketball teams are using outside analytics firms to find an edge
By CJ Moore
September 29th, 2022 - The Athletic
During the Big 12 tournament semifinals, Kansas guard Remy Martin took a mid-range fadeaway from about 17 feet. How the coaches on each bench felt about that shot when it left his hand varied, based on their reliance on analytics.
If they subscribed to the website hoopmath.com, for instance, they would know that a 2-point jumper from Martin went in at a 47.1 percent clip. If they were on Synergy, which tracks every shot and play type in each game, they’d know that Martin made 49.2 percent of his jumpers off the dribble and shot 50 percent on jump shots from 17 feet to the 3-point line. Since the jumper occurred in a Big 12 game, the Jayhawks coaches could assign a value to it using ShotTracker. That company, which is located in Merriam, Kan., has a chip in the ball and inside the jersey of every player. At ShotTracker headquarters, the game plays out with the players showing up as dots on a screen. Kansas coach Bill Self helped come up with what statistics — like paint touches and ball reversals — that the company tracks.
The KU coaches also had at their fingertips analysis from Jam Basketball Intelligence, a third-party analytics company, which provides opponent and self scouts. JBI’s report on Martin said he made 55 percent on those type of shots last season and was 13 percent better on contested looks verse uncontested. And if the coaches subscribed to ShotQuality, which gives an expected value of every shot taken in a basketball game, they’d know that shot was worth about 0.58 points.
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Simon Gerszberg, the creator of ShotQuality, used that Martin field-goal attempt as part of his presentation for prospective clients this offseason. On the video, you see a bubble over Martin that shows the expected value of the shot, and at the top of the key you see teammate Christian Braun wide open with a 35 percent bubble over his head. The video freezes, and lines point to both Martin and Braun, showing that while Martin’s shot was worth 0.58 points, had he passed to Braun, that shot would have generated 1.05 points on average.
And had Kansas coaches later tried to tell Martin he should have actually passed, they would have had the power of film and math behind their message.
This is college basketball in 2022.
Over the last decade there has been an analytics boom in basketball. In the NBA, teams have built their own analytic staff and keep their data in-house. On the college side, few programs have the budgets to copy the NBA model, which has created a market for outsiders to cash in.
The Godfather of college basketball advanced stats is Ken Pomeroy, whose site kenpom.com is gospel for some and recognized by most who work in the game. Pomeroy’s site became so popular that he was able to quit his job as a weatherman in 2012 and focus entirely on hoops. But he’s no longer alone in the space. Not only is there a demand for data, but there’s also a market for explaining it in actionable terms.
Colton Houston, who co-founded analytics firm HDIntelligence, uses the example of “Moneyball,“ the best-selling book that later became a movie.
“A lot of people’s takeaway from that was on-base percentage is undervalued,” Houston said. “But that wasn’t the takeaway. That was the example in the book, right? But of course, once the book is written, and everyone knows that, that’s no longer a market inefficiency anymore for those teams. So the takeaway from the book is, what advantage can data analytics help you unearth? What’s undervalued? Where’s the opportunity to have a potential competitive advantage? Data analytics is a continual search for those advantages.”
If this movement has a poster child on the coaching side, it’s Todd Golden, the 37-year-old who was hired last spring at Florida after three seasons as the head coach at San Francisco. Golden has invested in numbers on his own staff. Jonathan Safir, who worked as an assistant at San Francisco, followed Golden to Florida and has the title Director of Basketball Strategy and Analytics.
Golden and Safir are disciples of Washington State coach Kyle Smith who, while at Columbia, came up with a system where he tracked just about everything on the floor, including hustle stats, and assigned values to everything they measured. To this day, both he and Golden use that scoring system to decide playing time.
During the 2019 Final Four in Minneapolis, Golden and Safir met Pomeroy for beers and asked the data guru this question: Was there anything no one was doing in college basketball that the numbers suggested they should be? Pomeroy told Golden that teams should foul at the end of the first half to gain an extra possession.
Nine months later in a game against Pacific, San Francisco put the idea into practice. After Jabaree Bouyea made a free throw to put the Dons ahead by 12 with 11.4 seconds left in the first half, Golden instructed his team to foul immediately. Pacific’s Pierre Crockrell went to the line to shoot a one-and-one. He made the first and missed the second. San Francisco got the rebound, Bouyea attacked the paint and kicked out for a buzzer-beating 3 by Remu Raitanen. So instead of trying to simply get a stop, which would have meant Pacific ended the half by scoring zero to three points, San Francisco got a 3-1 advantage by fouling and pushed its halftime lead to 14.
Two weeks later, Golden put the theory to test at the end of a game. San Francisco held a two-point lead with 22.3 seconds left against BYU, which entered the game as a five-point favorite, according to Pomeroy’s projections. Safir told Golden that he thought the statistical play was to foul Yoeli Childs, a 57.5 percent free-throw shooter. Childs was also BYU’s best rebounder, so the Cougars’ chances of grabbing an offensive rebound would decrease. The Dons executed the plan, fouling Childs, who missed the front end of a one-and-one. Raitanen got the rebound, was fouled, made both free throws to create a four-point advantage. San Francisco went on to win the game by one.
Todd Golden’s innovative use of analytics helped him win at San Francisco and land the job at Florida this offseason. (Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)
When COVID-19 shut the world down, Safir asked Pomeroy to help determine the statistically-correct move in those end-of-game scenarios. They created handy charts that help dictate the proper move.
Safir needed Pomeroy because he couldn’t research the topic in a timely fashion without the ability to code. Pomeroy used 11 years of play-by-play data for his research. Pomeroy was willing to help because he knew the San Francisco coaches would value the results of the study, which is available for anyone to see on his website.
“People are just risk-averse and not willing to challenge conventional norms and the way things are always done — or the way things will continue to be done or need to continue to be done — until somebody like us comes and disrupts and continues to disrupt and hopefully has success disrupting,” Safir said. “We think our competitive edge and differential ability is deciphering information that is readily available. We think we’re really good at it and can’t code and can’t create our own data, so we’re relying on the publicly available data and breaking down sites like KenPom or (talking to) Ken himself. Whereas NBA teams have entire front offices working on it.”
The new Florida coaches believe in process over results. They’ve been teaching the ShotQuality method, for instance, with their in-house stats for years. In practice, a mid-range jumper that goes in is worth one point; if it misses, it’s minus-2. A 3 that goes in is worth 3 and minus-1 if it misses. A shot at the rim that goes in is worth two and minus-1 if it misses.
“We don’t ever really discourage or disincentivize (mid-range shots) when we run dummy offense,” Safir said. “Everything is around shooting layups or shooting 3s. So our guys are kind of mindf—ed. They’re not even thinking. They’re just playing. Why would you shoot that shot? That’s a shot we don’t practice.”
The Florida coaches watch every practice and game together, making sure they all agree upon the numbers that are assigned to each play and player.
It’s a tedious process, a similar exercise that turned Gerszberg into an entrepreneur.
During the 2019-20 season, then-Colgate assistant coach Dave Klatsky tasked Gerszberg with tracking every shot in practice and games and assigning an expected point total based on the quality of it the attempt. Gerszberg had shown up in Klatsky’s office a year earlier, when he had randomly been assigned as freshman roommates with Colgate guard Tucker Richardson and expressed a passion for analytics in sports. Richardson told him to go see Klatsky.
Gerszberg and Klatsky came up with a system where they’d grade the quality of a shot on a 1-to-100 scale. The value was based on the location of the shot, who was taking it, how open it was and whether it was off the catch or the dribble. For instance, a catch-and-shoot 3 from a good shooter might be a 50, which would mean it’s worth 1.5 points. Gerszberg would chart every shot, then Klatsky would go back through the tape and check his work.
“I freaking hated it,” Gerszberg said. “Because I had friends on the team and I wasn’t even watching the game anymore. I was just outputting numbers on this clipboard, like all these data points spinning out of my head. It was so nauseating.”
That Christmas break Gerszberg decided he’d see if he could automate the process, using multiple play-by-play data sets to do the work for him. What his algorithm spit out was nearly identical to what he was tracking by hand. He showed the Colgate coaches his work. “They were totally in shock,” he said.
The rest of that season, Gerszberg continued tracking every shot by hand and cross-checking his automated data. It was always within one point. After the season he learned to program what he was doing on his spreadsheet for every team in college basketball and in the NBA. A business was born.
During the 2020-21 season, 25 teams signed up for ShotQuality in what was basically a proof-of-concept season. Last season, 60 teams paid for the service, along with 500 bettors. ShotQuality spits out a projected score of every game; Gerszberg’s model correctly predicted the over/under in 54 percent of games last season with 15 pushes, and it correctly picked the closing line-adjusted winner 51.4 percent of the time with 30 pushes.
Gerszberg bet on himself by essentially quitting school to run his business. He didn’t enroll in any classes during the first semester of what would have been his senior year and then took only two classes in the spring. He’s now a college dropout, a decision his parents weren’t too pleased with initially. Then this summer Gerszberg received over $3 million in ShotQuality’s first funding round.
“Which is part of the reason my parents are OK with me taking a little bit of a break from school,” he said.
This season he’ll offer a service that will use computer vision to track the players on the floor and extract the same data he’d been tracking from the screen, precisely telling the distance of every shot and how close a defender is to the shooter. Gerszberg hired Neil Johnson from the Washington Wizards to add the computer vision tool to his service. He saw Johnson present at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2020, and Johnson convinced him to focus on college and not the NBA. The NBA, Johnson told him, has Second Spectrum, which uses cameras around the arena to track the movement of every player. ShotTracker provides a similar service for college, but only the Big 12 and Mountain West have the technology installed in their arenas.
Johnson argued to Gerszberg that colleges didn’t have anything to measure process-based data; their hope is to allow coaches to change how they deliver information to their players.
“Using analytics to coach is really good, but I think it’s even more valuable when you have film to pair with it,” Golden said. “In my mind, that’s an easier way to teach guys shot selection than trying to do it without having that film to fall back on.”
Colton Houston was the director of operations at Alabama under Avery Johnson when he became fascinated with the analytics movement. Near the end of his Crimson Tide tenure, Alabama started using alumnus Matt Dover as a consultant for scheduling. Dover worked in politics and projecting elections, and he figured his expertise in data modeling could be used in college hoops. Houston later pitched Dover on starting their own analytics firm.
“It seemed inevitable to me that eventually analytics would have the same type of impact in college basketball as it does in the NBA, because it’s a powerful tool if used correctly,” Houston said.
Their company, HDIntelligence, launched in April 2019. The first season, Alabama, Cincinnati, Dayton and Incarnate Word were clients. This season, they will have 11 employees and project to work with 70-80 teams. They also recently signed a deal with the SEC to consult on scheduling for all the league’s teams.
Patrick Stacy, who runs Jam Basketball Intelligence, has a similar concept. Similar to Gerszberg, he started out as a volunteer during his time as a student at Loyola Chicago. After college he took a job with CDW as a financial analyst but continued his consulting work for Loyola Chicago. After two seasons of taking vacation to travel for his volunteer job, he decided to make it a career. He worked with seven teams last year, most notably Kansas. He signed the Jayhawks when he cold-messaged assistant Kurtis Townsend with a Baylorscouting report he had built the season before.
Both HDIntelligence and JBI send scouting reports before every game and also help with different projects and recruiting work, including tracking transfers. Dover has a system that assigns a value to every player, similar to an overall rating given to players in a video game.
“When I started and wrote the code for my website, it was really laborious and difficult,” Pomeroy said. “Now if you have data and you want to figure out what things matter in certain situations, it’s pretty easy to cut that data up and come up with some meaningful insight in a short amount of time.”
College teams could try to do this work themselves, but Houston argues it’d be more expensive. And if the person in charge of the analytics is good, you run the risk of losing them to the NBA or another team.
It’s not just the data that’s valuable either, Houston contends; it’s being able to explain the data and how to put it into practice. That’s where Houston and Stacy believe they provide real value for coaches who want to use numbers to find an edge.
“There’s probably still a minority of coaches who are anti-analytics,” Houston said. “Ten years ago that might have been the majority of coaches, and now I think it’s a fairly small minority. If we tried to launch this company a decade earlier, we would not have had as much interest as we do now.”
Golden believes most high-major programs will have a staffer dedicated to analytics in the next 10 years, as younger coaches like himself take over programs.
That doesn’t mean the third parties will be eliminated. BYU coach Mark Pope, for instance, hired Keegan Brown three years ago to be his director of analytics and video. In addition to analytics work Brown does in-house, one of his responsibilities is helping Pope decide what outside products he’ll use. Last season BYU contracted with ShotQuality, Synergy, HDIntelligence, Just Play Sports Solutions (a virtual playbook) and Noah (a camera system that tracks the flight of a shot).
Safir sees coaches like Golden and Pope as outliers still, skeptical most coaches are truly bought into allowing analytics to help them make decisions.
“Analytics is a catchy buzzy term,” Safir said. “But it’s also kind of like how talking about religion can be a turnoff to some people. We just try and break it down into simple terms that can be easily applied and provide actionable bits of information and data to our team.”
Arkansas coach Eric Musselman believes there’s more of an investment in analytics in the NBA because the general managers hire those people, not the coaches.
Musselman has long been bought in on the data. Arkansas has its own systems in place — for instance, Musselman still uses a rebounding-per-minute metric that his father, Bill, came up with years ago — and he’s always searching for new ways to use numbers in decision-making. He makes his staff read “Moneyball” and regularly sends them stories about how other teams use analytics. His interest lately is in football’s evolution in the space. He recently went to visit the Los Angeles Chargers to find out more about Brandon Staley’s propensity for going for it on fourth down.
“The reason it works so well with Coach Staley is because he’s the head coach,” Musselman said. “He believes in it, and he’s bought into it. And then there’s other people where there’s a line in the sand and there’s friction between analytics and coaching staffs.”
Musselman has also studied the Baltimore Ravens’ approach to building an offense, investing heavily on the offensive line and tight ends. His interpretation of how to apply that approach to basketball is at the free-throw line. In his eyes, having a high free-throw rate is basketball’s version of controlling the line of scrimmage. An attacking team that gets to the line generates more spacing on the floor.
It’s all about creating an extra point or possession here and there, which in the long run can be the difference between a win or two. When that can be the difference between getting into the NCAA Tournament or going a round further in the tourney, then that makes the investment worth it.
So what’s next? Houston suggests AI-powered programs could pull data from a broadcast, which is similar to what ShotQuality will be doing this season. Safir said he believes rest and recovery are “ripe for disruption.”
“I think we are getting to a really interesting stage where, with so many more products being out there and so much more data being available, that it will take some skill to use that data properly,” Pomeroy said. “We’ve come a long way from just looking at four factors and interpreting what that means. We’ve now got to the point where I think you could actually use data in the wrong way. And so I think understanding maybe the limitations of what is useful and what is not useful, that is going to be kind of how things evolve going forward.
“Simply signing up for these services and thinking that’s just going to be an advantage right off is not the way things are anymore. You’ve got to figure out specifically how you’re going to use this data to give yourself an edge and make your team better.”
Adjust To Your Talent
In my second year at Maine, we had the most athletic team in the America East. We started three freshmen and two sophomores and we played at the fourth fastest pace in the country. We had a chance to be a top three team in our league the next year. But our young talent didn't return, with four of our best players and athletes transferring up, while another of our athletes graduated.
We scrambled to replace them that spring and summer, but we didn't get nearly the same level of athlete we had on the roster my first two years. We went from being the most athletic team in the league to being the least, or at least close to it.
The biggest mistake I made as a coach at Maine was going into that third year. We didn't change our approach to playing the game fast, even though we didn't have the athletes. I had always coached a fast, athletic team and we were always in attack mode, playing aggressively. I didn't re-think my approach, given that we weren't very athletic at all. I realized about halfway through the year that I hadn't put my team in the best position to win. I was asking them to do things that didn't fit their ability.
When I became a head coach at Rhode Island College I had an idea about how we were going to play: fast. I wanted to attack on both ends of the floor, and I wanted to play a lot of guys, with a relentless style. Fortunately I took over a really athletic, deep team, and RIC was a place where we could continue to recruit athletes. The style I wanted to play fit perfectly with the talent in the gym.
We were good every year at RIC, so I never had to really adjust my approach. We did tweak some things on offense to fit our personnel better, but as far as style of play went the team you played against at RIC in 2005 was pretty similar to the one you played against in 2014. We wanted the game moving fast at both ends of the floor, and we had the athletes and talent to play that way.
The question gets asked a lot across all sports - do you adjust your style of play to your team, or do you ask your team to adjust to you? I think it's a pretty simple answer. Your job as a coach is to put your team in the best position to be successful. You have to evaluate the talent you have in the gym and figure out how to get the most out of them. You can take pride in being a "man to man coach" but if your team is slow but has some length, you may be better off playing zone. You might want to play up-tempo on offense, but if you don't have guards that are quick and can play at speed, that style isn't really going to work.
A lot of coaches aren't willing or able to re-think their approach. This doesn't mean you have to make major changes or lower your standards. You might adjust your man to man defense so that you don't pressure the ball as much, or introduce a more structured fast break so that your guards can see two or three options, rather than just making plays in the open floor. But I see a lot of teams that don't necessarily have the personnel to fit the way they are playing, but they are playing to the coach's approach and they struggle to win. The default for the coach becomes blaming the players, saying they just couldn't figure it out.
The best coaches know when it's time to adjust, and how to implement the change. Evaluate your team thoroughly each year to really dissect their strengths and weaknesses. Figure out what changes you need to make to give your team the best chance. The adjustments might be minor, or some year they might be major. But it's your job to adjust your approach to the talent in the room to give your team the best chance to win.
Leadership Development
Interesting concepts regarding the difference between horizontal and vertical leadership development. Many leaders fail, not because they don't have the skill set, but because they struggle with insecurity and don't understand or manage the mental and emotional side. A good six minute video.
"Awareness of Yourself"
From the last chapter of former Disney CEO Robert Iger's book, The Ride of a Lifetime. It's a very easy read and a fun look at the inside of Disney as they dealt with leadership change.
Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we're essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that's the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you've lost your way. That may be the hardest but also the most necessary lesson to keep in mind, that wherever you are along the path, you're the same person you've always been.
Think Again
A good book to read if you are looking is "Think Again," by Adam Grant, about the "power of knowing what you don't know." It's about re-thinking your opinions, and the power of un-learning and re-learning. Do you ever think about the non-negotiables you have as a coach and whether or not you should re-think them?
Some approaches in basketball that might be worth re-thinking.
Two Fouls In The First Half
When I was growing up watching college basketball in the 1980s, it almost seemed like it was a rule that if you got a second foul in the first half you had to come out of the game. It was standard practice. This is one approach that has been re-thought over the years, and thanks to Ken Pom we can actually track which coaches allow their players to play the most in the first half with two fouls.
Have you ever re-thought your approach on this? Using halftime as benchmark is pretty arbitrary. Why does he have to be on the bench with two fouls with 22 minutes left to play, but once we get to 20 minutes we are good playing him the rest of the way? I've been burned before losing control of a winnable game in the first half with my best player on the bench, only to look at the box score when it was over to see that he had played just 23 minutes, and he finished the game with 2 or 3 fouls.
Have you thought about preparing your team to play with 2 fouls? How about setting it up during practice, where everyone has 2 fouls during a drill, and making them run if they commit a foul. Maybe you take him out when he picks up his second foul to give him a breather, but you can prepare him to play with 2 fouls. You get 5 of them.
Fouling On Purpose
There are a lot more scenarios where fouling on purpose is a good idea than the one where we actually do it as coaches - when we are losing late in a game. If your opponent has a terrible free throw shooter on their team, putting him on the line isn't a bad idea. Even in the first half. If they are in the single bonus and holding for one shot, put that awful free throw shooter on the line. First of all, you'll really get into his head. Secondly, statistically it often works out to be a better play than just trying to play defense, especially against a really efficient offensive team.
Would you ever foul when you are up 1, with the shot clock off, late in the game? A lot of coaches in Europe will do this. Again, statistically there are a lot of scenarios where this is the most efficient play, even though it seems counterintuitive. If you do foul, they'd have to make both free throws to take the lead, far from a guarantee. Even if they do take the lead, you still have a possession to win the game. And if they miss one of the free throws, you have the ball in a tie game and almost no chance to lose the game. There are more scenarios than you think about where fouling on purpose is the right play.
Leadership
I've talked a lot about the traditional leadership model in this space and in speaking engagements, as well as in my book. How often do you re-think your approach or definition of leadership? I've never been a fan of the top down model, where one or two people lead the group and tell everyone what to do. That creates a lot of followers, not a great way to develop an elite team. Think about a way to empower everyone to lead, and a definition that fits your approach. Does the traditional way to pick captains and promote leadership within your team really work?
Role Definition
I think as coaches we really over-emphasize role definition. Your role on my team is always to help us win. That's it. That's what everyone is trying to do. Have you ever thought about how defining roles specifically might limit what you get from your players? It's easy to put them in a box, where they have one or two strengths in your mind and that's all you want to see from them. You can learn a lot more about your players, and how your team can be successful, by allowing them to be who they think they are - not who you think they are. Does specific role definition really make your team better? Common coach speak says yes. I'm not sure it does.
Good Shot/Bad Shot
Does constantly harping on your team about good shots versus bad shots help you offensively, or does it hurt you? Think about it. I know we all want our teams to take good shots, and we feel we have to teach our guys what the shots are that "we" want. What is the best way to get them there? You can constantly talk about good shots and bad shots, but odds are you are making them think about it and that's the last thing you want. If you teach your guys how to play and let them decide what shots to take, it might help their confidence. I've always said this - guys that constantly take bad shots, they aren't very good players. If you are constantly coaching it, you might have the wrong players out there.
Defensive System
Are you clear with your team on how you want to defend, or are you constantly changing? Giving your team a lot of options defensively can also give them licenses to make excuses or take the easy way out. I know we have to make adjustments as a coach, and that's fine. But do you have a defined set of principles that your guys know inside and out, that don't bend? Reliability, trust and toughness are huge elements of a great defensive team. It's hard to believe in each other and compete at an elite level if you aren't 100% sure about what you are doing. When was the last time you thought about how you approach defense? Is it worth re-thinking? A defined defensive system can be a separator between good teams and great teams.
Conditioning
It seems like more and more we are doing less and less. We want to save their legs, make sure they are fresh, and avoid any type of injuries. I realize staying fresh and healthy is important. But to me the best way to do that is to be in great shape. How much does your team run? And how tough are they? Conditioning is not only a great way get in elite shape, but it also develops a lot of mental toughness.
Think about the way you condition your team. It doesn't always have to be punishment. You can incorporate it into your drills, and work on execution right after you run to challenge your team. Put them in tough situations and make them come through.
The Starting Line-Up
Does it matter who starts, or who finishes? I like to play a lot of guys, and there are certain line-ups that are better for against certain teams. Does it make sense to start the same guys every time? Or can you prepare your team that different guys are going to start each game based on practice, match-ups, and performance. Tell them their goal should be to finish the game, and be one of the 5 guys out there when the game is on the line. It strikes me that we might all be better off as a team over the long season with different starting line-ups that create better rotations for certain games, but we are so married to the traditional idea of starters and bench players that we don't even think about it.
Pick-Up Games
If you read this blog somewhat regularly, you know how I feel about pick-up games. It's something our players are going to do a lot in the off-season, and if they do it a lot it's important. Have you ever taught your players how to play pick-up?
The most important thing to me about pick-up games is that the players learn how to win. Winning has to matter. And for winning to matter, there must be something on the line. Ten guys playing pick-up games over and over isn't ideal, because if they lose they just run it back. Having a team waiting to play makes a big difference, because if you lose you know you are going to sit out.
Put something on the pick-up games. The losing team has to run. The team that loses the most games in a week gets up Monday in the morning to run. Pick-up games have to matter, or they quickly become garbage and a great way to practice bad habits. Put something on the games and your team will learn how to play to win.
Competitive Edge and Composure
I've learned over the years that the best players, the best coaches, the best leaders I've been around - people who can sustain elite success - have one thing in common: perspective. They all have the ability to handle everything that comes their way - good and bad - with the right amount of balance. They have a particular way of looking at things that allows them to take what they do very seriously, but not take themselves too seriously. We often use the term "he just gets it" as a way of explaining it without being able to explain it.
The way I see perspective translate to players on the court is a balance between competitive edge and composure. Compete-level is usually the first thing I notice in a player, and it's the thing I'm most attracted to. I love watching anyone compete at a high level on matter what they are doing. But the elite players are able to balance that with composure, and that's not easy to do. You compete with an edge, you give everything you have on every play, but then when things don't work out you handle it. A big part of being a great competitor is showing the composure necessary to handle everything and move on to the next play.
Creating a competitive environment around your program is essential. You want there to be competition in everything you do, so your kids see it and feel it every day. Time the sprints and the conditioning sessions and keep track of progress. Have your players count makes and misses in shooting drills so they can try and beat their numbers every time. Keep score of pick-up games. Make your drills in practice competitive.
You also have to keep that competitive edge in the right perspective, and your kids will follow your lead on that. You can demand an elite level of competitiveness out of them every day without making the results seem like life or death. If you don't react emotionally to the results, your team won't either. The right perspective is something they see every day, and they can absorb. They will look to you on how to handle the positives and the negatives that come along throughout the season.
Competitive edge and composure. When you find guys who show you both, get them on your team. When you are coaching your team, show your guys both so they can see the behavior. Players and teams who are elite competitors and have great composure have what it takes to sustain elite success.
It's About Decisions, Not Answers
A great point to think about as a leader, from Chris Millette:
As a leader, you may believe that you need to have all the answers. This is a myth. By virtue of the position, it’s often lonely at the top, but remember, you are not alone. In fact, when those at the top act as if they have all the answers, it can appear disingenuous, weakening their influence rather than strengthening it. This miscalculation happens when leaders do not differentiate between answers and decisions.
The role of the leader is not to always have the answer, but rather, it’s simply to make the decision. As it’s frequently reported, the best leaders surround themselves with smart people, creating an atmosphere of speaking openly and confidently. In this type of environment, after hearing different ideas and solutions, the leader simply makes the decision. Unfortunately, I’m aware of how common this mistake is because early in my coaching career, I was a frequent offender.
I became a head basketball coach at the college level at the age of 28. At the time I believed I was ready, but, in hindsight, I wasn’t. Like most new leaders, I made my share of errors (like holding everyone accountable for the mistakes of just a few, as you’ll read in a future post Don’t Make Everyone Run.) But, one of my most glaring and dangerous mistakes was believing that I needed to have all the answers.
In my third year, still not truly confident, I decided to change our team’s offense, spending months preparing and researching. As the season approached, I was ready to go. Two people who didn’t know I was ready to go? My assistants. With all the pre-season preparation, meetings and conversations we had, I kept them in the dark. I needed to be in charge. I needed to be all-knowing, so they were kept out of the loop. On the first day of practice when I introduced the offense to the team, it was also the first time my assistants heard about it. Even writing this now makes me cringe!
What was I worried about? Perhaps they would ask questions I couldn’t answer? Perhaps they would know more than me about the offense? Who knows, but I couldn’t risk it. Not shockingly, things didn’t go well; both with the offense and the season as a whole. My need to have the answers, and the insecurity that surrounds that feeling, underscored the making of a mediocre year.
Five years, and a lot of growth later, I was in my fourth year at Tabor Academy. By this point, I was a much more comfortable and confident coach. Entering the season, I knew two things: 1) we needed to change our defense, 2) my previous leadership approach had failed. So, when it came time to make the change, I was confident enough to listen.
Although I knew which defense would work for us, the reality was I wasn’t totally familiar with it. “No problem,” my assistant told me, “I know that defense very well.” When it came time to introduce the plan to our team, I blew the whistle, gathered everyone, then I walked off the court and let my assistant take over. Certainly, a different approach than my insecure mess five years earlier. My assistant became the master of the defense. This not only empowered him but also allowed me to focus on other things (one of the benefits of not micromanaging I outlined in a previous post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-less-produce-more-chris-millette/). And not surprisingly, we’ve had a good amount of success over the last decade. Amazing what not having all the answers can do!
As a leader, it’s easy to think not having an answer makes you look weak or incompetent. It’s quite the opposite. By empowering those around you and holding on to the decision-making power, you strengthen your role as a leader. Now my assistants and I talk about everything we want to do. They give their thoughts...I merely make the final decision.
Know Your Role
My second year as a head coach one of our post players, who was 6-9, asked me half-jokingly during the pre-season, "Coach, is it okay if I shoot 3's?"
I answered him with another question. "Well, can you make 3's?"
"Yes! I can make them."
"Well, I like made 3's as much as anyone. I like any player who does things that help our team win. Of course if you can make them, you can shoot them."
He was obviously concerned that as a big guy his role wasn't to shoot 3's. We needed him in the post and the paint, banging and getting rebounds. He just assumed I wouldn't want him out on the perimeter shooting 3's. But he was a capable shooter, and he worked hard on shooting the ball, especially from the top of the key where he'd get a lot of trail 3's. He didn't shoot a lot of them, but he became a reliable threat from 3 for us, especially when we wanted to bring the opposition's post player out of the paint. I remember starting some games with a quick-hitter to get him a top of the key 3.
I know role allocation is an important point for a lot of coaches, but I've never been a big believer in it. It goes back to my early days as a head coach. I always said I wanted a team that played with freedom and confidence on offense. In return, I was going to demand a lot out of them defensively. If I defined for each player what they were and were not allowed to do, were they really going to play with freedom and confidence? I didn't think so. In a lot of situations I think "know your role" is a code for "I want control" of what you do.
My approach to this really started with our pre-season pick-up games, when our guys played for six weeks before we started practice. They chose teams at the beginning of a week and kept them all week. They kept score, and every win was recorded. At the end of the week, the team that lost the most games had to get up at 7 AM on Monday morning and run a mile. The result: those games mattered. No one wanted to lose, and guys took pride in getting through the pre-season without ever having to run on Mondays.
Because those games mattered, the guys learned to play the right way. The goal was to win, and they learned what gave them the best chance to win. That approach in those games took care of a lot of bad habits before the season even started. If you couldn't make 3's, do you think you were going to pull up for a 3 when it's game point? If you did, you were certainly going to hear it from your teammates. They didn't want to run either. The result was guys learned what they were good at, and what they could do to help their team win. It wasn't a lab to try out your new dribble moves or work on your left-handed runner. You played the games to win, and it became very clear what worked and what didn't.
I realized over time when we got to practice I didn't have to talk about strengths and weaknesses. I didn't discuss good shot vs. bad shot. And I certainly didn't have to talk about your role. "Figure out what you are good at, and do it a lot," I would always say. If you were good at shooting 3's, you should be looking for ways to get open looks from 3. If you were a great ball-handler you should be getting in the paint to make plays. If you had good post moves and could finish at the rim, guess what? That's where you should be.
I found that most of the good players never asked about their role. They knew what they were good at, they did it a lot, and those things helped the team. Usually when a player did ask me about their role it was simply because they weren't playing well. They didn't like how they were playing (or they just weren't good enough) so they'd say they weren't "comfortable in their role." I would always tell my guys the same thing "Your role is to help us win. That is your role." If a player needed clarification, we would talk about it. What are you good at? What can you do to help us? Usually they'd have an easy time talking about their strengths. My follow-up was then pretty simple. Do those things a lot, and they'll help us. I was happy to offer some suggestions based on what I thought they were good at if they needed it, but usually it was better coming out of their mouth.
I'm sure it's easy to look at this as a coach and feel a lack of control, but that's kind of the point. We used a military phrase "In command, without control" to describe how we wanted our team to look on the court. I didn't want to have control, because I don't think control is the best way to get the most out of my players. When you allow the players to define their own role for themselves, instead of putting them in a box, you learn a lot about your team that you may not have known. Your players have some skills and ability that you don't know about because they are trying to fit in to what they think their role is.
Now it's not total chaos. It's not like you aren't coaching them on their habits, or you are just letting them do what they want. That's not what you create. What happens is everyone learns the strengths and weaknesses of the entire team, and then you can make better decisions. If players are doing a lot of things they aren't good at, they aren't going to play. If you keep shooting a lot of 3's and you can't make them, you won't play. If you stand on the perimeter all of the time and refuse to rebound, I'm sure I can find someone who can. You will get to strengths and weaknesses organically when the role is not defined for them. If they can't figure out what they are good at that helps the team win, guess what? They aren't very good.
Think about the way you define roles for your players. For me, it's help us win. That is your role. Figure out what your players are good at, and coach them to do that a lot.
Steph Curry
From The Atlantic on Steph Curry and the impact Davidson had on his career.
Before Stephen Curry was everything, there was Davidson
DAVIDSON, N.C. — Kevin Oleksiak, a senior for UNC Greensboro, wasn’t exactly offended Steph Curry was defending him. But he certainly noticed who wasn’t defending him.
Max Paulhus Gosselin, a 6-foot-6 wing who eventually was named the Southern Conference Defensive Player of the Year, was who Davidson put on the opponent’s best perimeter player. And he was defending Mikko Koivisto, Greensboro’s other guard. Which meant Oleksiak had Curry, a smaller and thinner sophomore, in front of him.
“They obviously think Mikko is more of a threat than me,” said the 6-4 guard from Pennsylvania. “I’m gonna come out and be extra aggressive.”
Oleksiak made his first seven shots, punishing the Davidson defense as Greensboro built a 20-point first-half lead. Fleming Gym was rocking this night, Feb. 13, 2008. See, Davidson came to town on a 13-game win streak. They had competitive losses to No. 1 North Carolina, Duke, UCLA and North Carolina State on their non-conference schedule. So Davidson was well groomed and ripping through its SoCon slate.
Something happened with the Wildcats’ one-and-a-half-hour trip to Greensboro. The bus arrived late and impacted their warmups. The whole team started cold. Greensboro went into the locker room feeling like the hype of Davidson, and Curry, wasn’t justified. Oleksiak was feeling like this was his night.
“And then that second half,” Oleksiak said, “he took over. In that second half, he was just like, ‘I’m on a different level than everyone else on this court. Hey, everyone, get on my back. I’m gonna win this.’”
Curry scored 23 in the second half and finished with a then-career-high 41. He scored 15 during a 24-5 run as Davidson roared back for their 14th straight win.
“So I think that was when we were like, ‘Alright. This guy actually is pretty special.”
Before elevating Golden State’s moribund franchise. Before becoming an MVP and capturing the imagination of the sport. Before becoming a champion. Before the debates about where he ranks among the greats. Before becoming a global icon and admired citizen. Before — “Finally,” athletic director Chris Clunie said — becoming a Finals MVP and stamping his legend. There was Davidson.
Some 20 miles north of Charlotte, ever so fittingly off Exit 30 on I-77, is 665 acres of manicured grass, fancy brick buildings and antebellum homes, all embedded in trees that whistle from the winds off nearby Lake Norman, where the superhero figure got his superpowers. Where young adults congregate at burger joints and dorm lounges for fun. Where one-lane roads, jogging neighbors and elders with warm eyes remind that leisure is the local pace. Where the dress code is comfortable and the vibe affluent. Where small-town smiles and kind gestures seek to compensate for rampant privilege and lacking diversity. Where jocks and geniuses, artists and activists, are indoctrinated alike with values of service and community steeped in the school’s Presbyterian heritage and liberal arts bent. Where red is an emotion and a statement as much as a color. Where, unbeknownst to everyone, the foundation of an NBA legend was being laid.
Wednesday, he was back. Curry was welcomed by No. 30 jerseys and spray-painted greetings on white sheets hanging from porches and trees. He was serenaded by a packed Belk Arena, buzzing with students geeked that this Warrior is also a Wildcat and alum, who still awe at the prestige he’s delivered since 2008. He was anointed as their favored son, beloved brother and embodiment of every ideal crammed into their mission statement.
“Everybody sees the polished, finished product on the court,” Curry said. “They see these Finals runs. They see the impact I try to have off the floor. But I think these are moments to reflect on where it all started.”
In front of his wife, whom he called 13 years ago crying, torn over whether to stay swaddled in one more year of Davidson love or be an NBA lottery pick. In front of his three children, all old enough to remember the cherishing of his dad. In front of his parents, fighting back tears born of pride in a son who continues to impress. In front of old friends and former teammates who make sure the celebrity knows he’s one of the guys. In front of teachers who supported and prodded him.
The 3-point king was the honoree in a three-part celebration. The first was a full graduation ceremony, with a procession and all, for the lone and most famous graduate, to give him his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. The second was his induction into the Davidson Sports Hall of Fame, which came with a gold medal medallion on a red ribbon. The third was to put No. 30 in the rafters, never to be worn again, the school’s first and only retired number for any sport.
Davidson is where his confidence on the court hit puberty. Davidson is where he learned to blend his individual brilliance with a team motif. Davidson is where it became clear the road to greatness has no shortcuts and no chauffeurs — a lesson that started taking root after his first practice when he got kicked out for being late and trying to sneak in like he wasn’t. Davidson is where he was constantly reminded of the resilience needed to finish what he started, the spirit that kept him tethered to the Warriors through the rough early years and eventually earned him his college degree. Davidson is where he was first fitted for stardom, and learned to tailor his special brand of celebrity to include humility and purpose.
It wasn’t lost on Curry, as love from some 5,000 people took his breath away, the value of this place, which prompted him to send thank you cards to alums after he was drafted No. 7 overall in 2009. It’s instantly recognizable, the role this community had in shaping the face of the NBA.
After committing 13 turnovers in his first college game, a home win over Eastern Michigan, Davidson coach Bob McKillop played his true freshman 35 minutes the next day. Against Michigan. In Ann Arbor.
He took 15 threes in that game, the second of his college career. In his sixth game, he took 20, making nine against Colby. The audaciousness sprouted at Davidson.
“One thing I like about him,” said Dontaye Draper, a guard for College of Charleston who faced Curry three times, “he was little, but he was fearless. He’d miss like four in a row and come right back and make the next one. He didn’t care.”
Google “Stephen Curry I love the commons” and see the origins of the jovial celebrations and willing self-deprecation.
“So all of that has given me a sense of gratitude, a sense of work ethic, a sense of running my own race,” Curry said. “I don’t know what it would look like if I went anywhere else. If I went to a high (Division I), or a power-conference school. I don’t know what my career would have looked like. But I do know that I got to come here and, again, just blossom at my own pace and had the confidence of a coach that really felt like I could be that guy.”
The Wildcats had put together back-to-back 20-win seasons and made the 2006 NCAA Tournament when Curry arrived on campus. Everyone knew he was Dell Curry’s kid. But he hardly invoked fear in opponents. His 6-3, 185 pounds felt like a generous listing when he walked on the court.
His 32 points and nine rebounds at Michigan made it clear he was a good player. And he almost immediately tormented defenses with his off-ball movement and quick release. But back then, in 2006-07, Draper was more the guard that worried defenses. He was a 5-foot-10 athletic type, tough like his Baltimore hometown and quick. He spent the summer working out with Carmelo Anthony and new College of Charleston coach Bobby Cremins, the longtime Georgia Tech coach, moved Draper to off guard so he could attack more. He came into his senior season, Curry’s freshman year, looking to get to the NCAA Tournament on his last dance. Draper put up 38 in the conference semifinal and was one win away.
But like so many others, Draper had his hopes splashed away. In the SoCon title game, Curry had 29 points to lift the Wildcats back into the tournament.
“Davidson, they play smart, the right way,” said Draper, who played more than a decade overseas. “And they literally come down and do the same exact thing every time. The point guard dribbles all the way to the free-throw line, and they got Steph and those guys coming off screens. You couldn’t make mistakes against them and we made a few mistakes. Steph had a big 3. I remember that.”
When Draper graduated and started his pro career, Curry was but a good player in a great program. But people he knew that kept tabs on the conference kept telling him sophomore Curry was different.
A year later, he ended Oleksiak’s college career in the conference semifinals with a 26-point game, then dropped 23 in a win over Elon in the championship game. What followed was the tournament run that would initiate the legend. It would lead to national prominence for Davidson. And a move to the Atlantic 10 conference. And no doubt more red Davidson jersey sales than ever before.
And that led to the NBA success. The permanent alteration of basketball. The historic dynasty. And the full-circle moment on Wednesday, on the court he and his wife donated in honor of McKillop, when he got the flowers he waited 13 years to receive.
That’s how this thing was built — gradually, element by element, until the bedrock was in place. No one foresaw an NBA superstar would emerge from those humble beginnings. Those who saw him early say anyone who claims to have predicted this from Curry is lying. But looking back, those are Davidson bricks at the base.
“This is an absolutely amazing day,” Curry said. “An amazing moment for myself, for my family. Heard a lot of amazing words and stories and memories from childhood to high school, to the best decision I ever made — to come to Davidson College and pursue an amazing education.”
Oleksiak still gets a bit of a sting whenever he hears or sees Davidson, the rival that deprived him of glory. Even though Curry was a primary reason, he can’t help but feel the opposite about the former Davidson star. Even in losing to Curry, Oleksiak was rewarded. His father, Kevin, never let anyone forget his son scored 26 points against Stephen Curry. His co-workers, his friends, anyone who would listen, heard him brag about his son’s great college game against a future legend. He even showed them pictures of his boy matched up with Curry.
Oleksiak’s father died a couple of months ago. The grief is still raw. The disbelief was still present. But Wednesday, as Curry was honored with a trifecta, it gave reason to remember where his journey began. At Davidson. Curry’s jersey retirement, Hall of Fame induction and solo graduation was a reminder to Oleksiak that he was a small part in Curry’s miraculous rise, yet big enough to make his father proud.
"Unbelievably Direct Communicator"
“But the thing that struck me most then and strikes me every day now is, he is an unbelievably direct communicator. He tells you precisely what he thinks. He is not going to sugarcoat something or say something he doesn’t believe in. It sets him apart in many ways.”
- Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame Athletic Director, on new football coach Marcus Freeman
Leeds United
A good look at how Jesse Marsch, who is from Wisconsin, took over Leeds United and is implementing his own style. Imagine the pressure of trying to change a culture while also avoiding relegation?
"We can't feel too good about ourselves, we can't feel too bad about ourselves. We just have to have a relentless commitment to keep moving forward. The goal isn't to have total harmony, but to create a common understanding as to what we are, our identity and to commit to that every day. I don't have a problem of telling somebody if they're not carrying their weight, or of telling them how disappointed or angry I am because I will protect the environment above everything. That's the most important thing: it's not harmony, it's about identity, expectation and making sure that in every way we're maximising the potential of each other and of the group every day."
First Team Meeting
- It will not go the way you think.
- We are all on the same team
- Richard Pitino writes this on the board for his team's first meeting of the season.
Things I've learned about the first team meeting of the year:
- You aren't getting all of the messages you want across.
- It's better to talk less and listen more.
- Ask questions and hear your team.
- Who do you guys want to be?
- What's important to you?
- How good can we be?
- How are we going to get there?
- Start the process of ownership of your culture for them.
- Let them know how hard it's going to be.
- It's too early to name captains.
- Don't set numerical goals - set goals for how you are going to compete every day.
- Take everything you want to say and throw 75% of it out - it's too much.
- People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
- Let them know who you are.
- Ask them about the pre-season.
- The less absolutes you declare the better.
- Be absolute when it comes to academics, punctuality and respect.
- Don't paint yourself into a corner with penalties - you don't know what's coming.
- It's a marathon, not a sprint.
- The path to success is not linear.
- Your culture takes shape gradually, over time. You can't force it.