As the calendar turns over, basketball coaches begin conference play, and hope to have the answer to how their team can win. Through the experiences gained from October to December, most teams have had an opportunity to be challenged, learn from adversity, and establish an identity. Below are three questions that you had better know the answer to, if you want a chance to win your league:
✔ What does your team do better than anyone else in your league?
✔ What is your team’s biggest weakness, and how can you help your team overcome it?
✔ Do your players know and accept their roles?
These three questions are guiding thoughts, which will give your team a chance to play their best basketball. We hope this helps your coaching staff evaluate where your team is at, as you prepare for the most important stretch of the season.
You can follow Dynamic Coaching Tools on Twitter at @DynamicCoaches
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WNBA Finals Preview – Xs and Os
After two highly competitive five game series, we now have our WNBA Finals match-up. Game 1 tips off tonight and features the Seattle Storm against the Washington Mystics. Coaches should be tuning in, as both teams run some tremendous stuff offensively. Below is a breakdown of three sets to look for, which have been highly successful for both teams. Thank you to Ben Dull, from SplitThePost.com for providing all of the videos for this preview.
Storm – Flex Action (BLOB set)
This BLOB set involves Bird setting a flex screen for Stewart, then receiving a down screen.
Storm – “Horns Down”
The Storm have different Horns looks, but this ball screen that flows into a down screen is tough to guard in transition.
Storm – Empty side / Two Man Action
The Storm love to include Stewart in a “two man game,” on an empty side. They use DHOs, ball screens, and slips.
Mystics “Stagger Split Rip”
This set shows a double stagger, before a split, into a rip (rescreen) for the back cutter. Great counter to a traditional double stagger!
Mystics – “Zipper 15”
The Mystics use a zipper cut, to trigger this backscreen action with Toliver and Delle Donne. This is just one of the ways that the Mystics use a backscreen to get the basketball inside.
Mystics – “Drag Back STS”
This set uses a drag screen and throw back, to set up the screen-the-screener. Toliver shows a screen for Delle Donne, before she actually receives the screen for an open three.
Two actions that will be critical for both teams to figure out are the two-man game, with Stewart on the empty side. The Storm lead the WNBA in three point shooting, and that action puts the defense in a scramble situation. The Storm must be ready to guard the screening actions involving Toliver and Delle Donne. They use back screens, ball screens, and screen the screener actions to free up both players.
This blog will be re-posted on www.FastModelSports.com, with all set plays being diagrammed and available for download in the playbank. Look for this repost before Game 3.
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You can also catch our most recent Dynamic Coaching Tools Podcast by clicking here.
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PROGRAM BUILDING MODEL
TALENT
The number one factor to winning games is TALENT. While this might not be a popular reality, because some aspects of talent are out of the control of a coach, it is the truth. Without talent, it is hard to win games. Talent is made up of three main categories; athleticism, skill, and depth.
CULTURE
Culture is defined as “how we do things here.” Every person around a program has an impact on the culture of a program. Culture is the easiest area to impact, but the hardest thing to control. Sustainable success can be directly attributed to good program culture.
COACHING
Coaches have all of the power, but very little control. The best coaches recognize that their role must shift from driving force to quality control. The sooner that this can happen, the quicker a program has the opportunity to become an elite program.
The word ELITE is thrown around too frequently, but there is no denying that the definition of elite describes what every program is striving to achieve.
Want to know how you can become the driving force to making your program elite? Be on the look out for our next blog post, which will talk about the first three areas that a program must improve!
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Instantly Improve Your Offense
Every off-season, coaches spent countless hours researching and studying different ways to improve. Too often, this leads to coaches completely hitting the reset button on their program’s offensive plans. Here are a few simple ways to instantly improve your offense!
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Offense starts the moment your team gains possession. TEACH the game this way.
- When teaching our half court offense, we stress things like spacing, player movement, ball movement, and we provide structure to help players read the game. Why not teach transition the same way?
- SPACING | There two ways to stretch the defense. Vertically and horizontally. If we can get multiple bodies in front of the ball, we will stretch the defense vertically. If we can get our wings to run wide, we are now stretching the defense horizontally. This should be an instant reaction, the moment your team gains possession of the ball.
- PLAYER MOVEMENT | Win the first three steps! If your players will sprint the first three steps, you will get players in front of the ball. When you throw the ball ahead, have you taught your team how and where to space around the ball? Do wings run to the corner and spot up or bounce off of the baseline and lift to free throw line extended? Transition offense includes player movement and should be taught.
- BALL MOVEMENT | One of our favorite phrases is that we want “two early shares” in transition. If we can get two direct passes in transition, we are likely to have tremendous flow and rhythm on that offensive possession.
- PROVIDING STRUCTURE | We want to provide spacing rules, simple secondary actions, and then teach our kids to flow seamlessly into our half court offense.
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REMOVE “set it up” from your vocabulary
- One of the most under taught parts of an offensive attack is “FLOW.”
- Teaching FLOW requires a coach to get creative in practice, abandon static starting points, and requires teaching players HOW TO PLAY.
- The benefit is that the defense is unable to use the “setup time,” to also get themselves organized.
- One of the most under taught parts of an offensive attack is “FLOW.”
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Create an ATTACKING mentality, with an understanding of IF/THEN responses.
- The easiest way to create an attacking mentality in your players is to view mistakes in practice as teachable moments.
- The best teams are confidently attacking, as opposed to having “paralysis by analysis.” In simple terms, they are too busy playing basketball, to stop and think about what is next.
- If you can create aggressive basketball players, you will see improvements in your offense.
- To learn more about IF/THEN responses, check out THIS BLOG POST.
Lastly, what does this look like? Here is a video of our team putting these three simple concepts on display.
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