The Disconnect

There is a disconnect between players, coaches, and trainers. The idea that players should do what their coaches and trainers say, while idealistic and technically “correct” is not teaching players to think the game. Players seek approval, or worse, seek to avoid disapproval by doing precisely what they have been told. Coaches want the Playstation controller to program the players to move how they want. Trainers are often too focused on individual skill, fueled by the dopamine from social media and they fail to make their players better at playing/understanding the team game. Or even one step further, having their players develop their own concepts about training. What is important to work on, what is the purpose, a “why” behind the “what” to put it generally.

My dad has been a college professor for thirty years. During this time he became a reliable and helpful advisor to students, guiding them through the tricky labyrinth of the ever-changing course catalog and graduation requirements. Whenever a student in his department had an issue, they came to him to solve it. He had the reputation around campus for getting students on track to graduate. One might think he was helpful because he spent a lot of time reading the boring catalog and making notes about changes from year to year. That’s wildly untrue. While he was knowledgeable in that area, his secret was to get the students to help themselves. “You are your best advisor,” he would say to every student that came to see him. There was no carrying the young men and women through their struggles, he explained where they needed to look, and some pointers on how to outline their own plan to graduate. More simply, he gave them the confidence and a few tools to figure their problems out for themselves.

To carry over the idea of You are your best advisor, to basketball. Direct transfer is impossible and a bit cliche to claim that you should be your best coach or you should be your best trainer. That is a near impossible task for young players. They simply have not had time to develop the knowledge base, skills, and cognitive ability to coach, train, and also play at a high level. That is a lot to ask. But I believe there should be an appropriate amount of time dedicated to learning different schemes and strategies for basketball. As well as spending time to understand some of the basics behind strength training and skill development.

Obviously there needs to be a balance between learning basketball strategy/theory and training. Should players spend time to memorize sets and different SLOBS/BLOBS? No, while that might be beneficial for a game or two, the general progression of basketball knowledge should be thought on broader terms. Should players be able to see and identify different Pick and Roll coverages? Yes, being able to identify will help to learn the weaknesses and how to attack each defense. Should players be able to create their own speed and strength program? No, leave that to the professionals. Should players have basic knowledge of what they’re working on in the weight room as well as how sleep and diet can affect them? Absolutely, learning these things through immersion by being in the gym frequently can really benefit young athletes. It can also be a tool of motivation when they understand and feel the things they work on in the weightroom transfer to the court.  Should players come up with their own basketball drills to work on and improve their game? Maybe not at first. But I think a good goal for trainers should be to teach players how to get a good solid workout in with two or three of their buddies. No adults, no trainers, unsupervised.

To reiterate, players do not need to sit in a classroom and grind tape with their coach for hours and hours. Being shown a couple clips about a specific concept and a five minute discussion is all that is needed. That should happen routinely. Simply by being consistently exposed to proper basketball and training ideas players’ understanding of the game will broaden. Hearing their coaches and trainers emphasize what is good basketball or ideas about what makes a good training session is a great place to start. Exposure to these ideas will lead to comfort which will lead to discussions. Players should be asked questions, given ideas to think about, problems to try and solve. If they are told day in and day out exactly what is happening and what to do, they will become reliant on someone else to give directions and tell them what to do.

This responsibility to shorten the disconnect does not fall solely on the shoulders of coaches and trainers. In fact, I would argue the opposite. With as many resources that are available in today’s world, player’s can easily widen their knowledge base. To what extent and how is up to each player but taking the responsibility to learn on their own about various basketball concepts on a team and individual level will be extremely beneficial for their development.

I believe a good benchmark for this idea would be that player’s should be able to watch tape on an upcoming opponent and be able to come up with their own ideas of how to approach the game (within their team’s system). They should have a feel for what style of play the opponent has, some individual tendencies for their specific matchups, and a few ideas on where they can take advantage of the opponent (on both ends of the floor).

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Theory into Practice

Thinking the game is not playing the game. Evaluating situations and coming up with strategies is what happens beforehand. That is an active process through discussion as well as trial and error. While playing it is necessary to have instincts and a feel for the situation. Those traits can be trained. Players should understand what options are available to them and train to consistently make good, aggressive reads with proper timing. That is not a simple concept. It is not solely made up of “If – Then” scenarios. It is dynamic. It is constant. It is a skill. And it needs to be progressively developed over time.

After my second year as a pro, it became evident that for any real progress to be made, I needed to study the game at a high level. The goal was to develop the ability to read the game better, on both ends. A fair question is, why did it take two years to come up with this idea. The problem was in those first two years, I was overpreparing. Studying specific sets rather than team or player tendencies. During the games I was trying to think through which set play was coming instead of recognizing patterns to anticipate the coming action. I was trying to recall what I had seen on film instead of defending what was happening in front of me. Trying to analyze in real time made me slow and out of position. It was a bad strategy. The bottom line is my preparation was too specific and hyper-focused on that opponent. I needed to take a broader approach by focusing on the development of my overall ability to read, anticipate, and adapt, in real time during games.

Studying the game meant examining different actions and patterns, and starting to come up with counters and techniques to help me on both ends of the floor. Listening and watching coaches on YouTube became routine. While I did not agree with everything they were doing, I was adding to my knowledge base of how to defend certain actions, and started looking for weaknesses to exploit while on offense. Learning the theory of the game and implementing those theories in practices to see what I could use to become a better player. Trial and error. If YouTube was the classroom, practice was the lab. It became a game of cause and effect. I learned to manipulate defenses with position. I learned to anticipate the offense and choose the right moment to be physical or to give space. Over time, my processing time became less and less and I was able to read and react properly a lot more consistently. Am I perfect? Hell no, I still get beat. But did I become a much more solid piece on both ends of the floor? Absolutely.

These ideas are the connection. The way players should see the game is the skill that needs to be developed. Talent will get them to a certain point, but understanding the game to be an efficient piece on both ends of the floor will take them further.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Basic Strategy

Playing blackjack can be an incredibly frustrating experience if you have one player at the table who does not understand they should not hit if the dealer is showing a six. Not knowing the basic strategy involved in Blackjack ruins the game for other players. Similarly in basketball. If a player does not understand basic spacing on offense or basic rotations on defense, the game becomes frustrating for his teammates.

This past summer during COVID, I was itching to play and knew I needed to play more five on five than I normally do because it was going to be a long stretch between games. A friend of mine set up some runs with the best players in our area. We do not live in a basketball hotspot, so some guys drove 3 hours to get a run. These were not professionals, they were college guys or guys who had finished their college careers and wanted to get a good sweat in. So more or less I expected them to have a solid understanding of how to play, especially on defense. I was completely shocked when even the most basic rotations were consistently missed or the lack of pressure by any of them. After two of these runs I realized these guys were so worried about their man scoring they were scared to be aggressive and scared to rotate on defense because that meant leaving their man. Even the idea of being put in a mis-match situation was enough to deter them from being aggressive.

Here I am, trying to work on my stuff and get in shape, so I’m hard-showing out of Pick and Rolls, trapping in the post and in the corners when I could, using my size to be disruptive, trusting my teammates to pick up the cutters and close out to shooters. I was shocked at how few times they read the play correctly. It didn’t seem like any of these guys played 4 years of college basketball! The struggles continued on the opposite end. While the one on one skills were decent, any ability to read or attack a pick and roll was seriously lacking. Slipping screens was never done. Backdoor cuts almost never happened, let alone a good pass to the guy cutting. Walking the ball up was more common than an early pitch ahead which was especially frustrating because the transition defense was non-existent. Guys would settle for step backs rather than get it to the paint and kick it out. They were doing what they had been taught and also what they had worked on. While sometimes frustrating it was also eye-opening.

After 5 or 6 of these open gyms, guys started to pick up on what I was doing. They got with the program, started rotating, trusting the help, being more aggressive, making solid basketball plays. It was interesting, I offered a few coaching points here and there but basic stuff, and never talked for more than a minute about strict basketball stuff. It interests me, but I was there to play, not coach. Through conversations before and after with the guys it became evident that these things were foreign to them. They hadn’t been taught what I perceived as basic concepts of the game that help immensely to improve whatever strategy their coach wants them to do.

Here is one specific example. One guy asked why I was so good at Hard Showing in PnR defense. I’ll preface my answer with this. I think a Hard Show is a skill and needs to be treated as such. Timing, angle, hand position, are all super important. The one detail that makes it much easier and more consistent to perform well is staying attached to my man as he runs to set the screen. I stay attached so I can push him a little bit higher than he wants to be. The pushing while he is running is another important detail. It is way more difficult to move guys when they don’t want to be moved, in this example, when they are actually setting the screen. But while they are running, before they set the screen, it is quite easy to push them slightly off the path they want to take. If you can make them set the screen two steps higher than where they want to, the ball handler has to retreat further and the screener has to roll further. Increasing this distance buys time for you to help rotate based on what the ball handler does. There are few other details to prevent getting split and to not foul, but this tip is a good one for starters.

To me, this is what I mean there is disconnect. Pick and Roll defense is essential in today’s game and many coaches today did not have to defend them like we do today. That is why some of these techniques I get from other players, not coaches. This one came when I was asking a teammate the same question the young player asked me. My first year as a pro, I was an awful Pick and Roll defender, so I needed to develop in order to not be a liability. My coach at the time thought going over the film of me getting beat and saying I was too early in one clip, or too late in the other would help me understand. It did not help me and worse, made me feel like I lacked the long arms and athleticism to be a good defender. In a sense, I felt helpless. However, this conversation with my teammate and the concept of manipulating the position of the screen, I was able to understand. The answer wasn’t foot speed and athleticism, it was to change the dynamic a bit, alter the situation in my favor to make the action easier to defend.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

“Box Out!” “Run Back!”

How many times have you heard coaches scream those phrases during the game? Or how many box out drills have you done in practice where, before the wannabe football drill starts, the coach sticks his butt right into the thigh of an unsuspecting victim and backs him up beyond the three point line to “demonstrate” proper Box-Out technique? Or arriving to the huddle after a timeout and hearing the phrase, “we have to run back,” dropped with the tone of “what the f*** are we doing here guys?” There is no depth and no thought behind these phrases. If repeated enough, they lose all their meaning. The idea that it is just effort, while holds some weight, does not encompass everything. I have played with plenty of guys who give tremendous amounts of effort but they are terrible in transition defense and struggle to help the team rebound. The effort is there when they sprint back, or when they box out their man. However, they are so focused on doing what the coach says, they miss the times when they need to slow down the ball in transition instead of sprinting all the way back to the paint. Or the times when not boxing out and leaving their man to chase the ball down on a long rebound is the correct play.

Plays like this require situational awareness and understanding of tactics. It is more than effort. It is more than sprinting back or boxing out. It is the ability to read what is happening, as it is happening, and responding correctly. To understand the game as a whole and have purpose for your movements. Becoming efficient with movements in addition to effort is more important than the simple output of effort.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

It Depends

Take any strategy game and talk to the best players of the world for that particular game. Asking them about a certain technique or style of play and their answer will, a vast majority of the time, will include the phrase, it depends. Since they have mastered whatever game they play, they have thoroughly analyzed the pros and cons of each strategy and know when one should be used over another. This does not mean they focus on only the strongest strategies. While they are capable and practiced with the strong strategies, they also have the capacity to perform lesser known, supposedly, “weaker” strategies. This is because at the highest levels, the basics are known. Players can anticipate how their opponent will react to what they do, and make the appropriate read. They know what is strong in certain situations, but good players have the ability to identify, improvise and counter what is going on. This is not easily learned. This is a skill that takes time, thought, and practice to develop.

With that idea in mind, a player, when asked a difficult question should include the phrase, “it depends” in their answer. This means they understand the question on a deeper level than a simple If-Then. They have thought through several situations that may take place and can respond to them appropriately. Dynamic responses are necessary for the dynamic situations that happen on the basketball floor.

—————————————————————————————————————————

Stereotypical Thought

When you ask what is the number one skill in basketball today, everyone will, and should say shooting. If you can’t score, you can’t win. Fair, but that question is a bit basic without any underlying thought. What about deciding when to shoot, or how to have proper spacing to find good shots. Those two ideas are also skills. It is not solely the responsibility of the coach to put players in a good position to shoot, it is the players responsibility to understand the “meta” of the game of basketball in order to place themselves in proper positions.

A simple example. Everyone in the world knows Steph Curry is going to try to shoot threes. Is he able to get his shots off because the defenses leave him or because he is athletically superior to his defenders and able to create that separation? Obviously, neither is the case. Part of it is his incredible talent but the other is his cognitive ability to read the play, and also his detailed tactics that he uses to create space for himself, especially off the ball. That combination of physical, mental, and tactical make for one of the best players the game has today.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Actions

It is the coaches responsibility to put players in a good system with good action. It is the players responsibility within each action to execute it correctly as well as read the defense and take advantage of their weaknesses. This distinction needs to be clear and also needs to be worked on. In some sense, I view it as the player’s responsibility to have enough understanding of the game to read the situation and react appropriately and aggressively. Will players make the correct decision every time? Of course not. Once again, that is the skill that needs to be developed. Reading and reacting correctly in real time. That ability is dependent on the player’s skills and confidence. The player needs to have enough skills so when the defense makes their choice in how to defend a certain action, the attacking player can gain an advantage. That could mean making a well-timed cut, finding the correct open space, or making a move with the ball to get into a position to shoot or pass. Coaches need to place players in good actions that are difficult to defend and the players need to have the IQ and skill to read what is going on and punish the defense appropriately. The more often players and coaches can get in sync with these two ideas, the more dangerous the offense will be.

The worst systems I have played in have been what I deem as “cookie-cutter.” In my specific example as a stretch-4, the coaches wanted me to pop after every single ball screen I set. It did not matter what the defense did, I was required to pop. No slips, no post-ups after a switch, set a screen and pop. No matter what. While it is easy to point a finger at the coach and say he is not using me properly. I would argue I did not demonstrate the skills or the IQ to be able to do anything different. My post game was too weak to attack a switch. My slips were poorly timed and usually at a bad angle. If I did choose to roll, I did not read the space properly to gain an advantage. It was more my fault for not preparing myself for these different situations rather than the coaches fault for whatever reason. Admittedly, I wanted to blame the coach for my shortcomings. It was easier to use him or his system as an excuse for why I wasn’t getting touches or why I felt like a robot doing the same exact thing over and over again with each action I was involved in. Being dynamic and versatile is critical to success in this era of basketball.

What Changed?

During the first week of practice in my third year as a pro. Coach had the bigs playing one on one in the post. I was trying to back down this guy who had forty pounds on me and it was not working. I imagine it looked like a scrawny seventh grader trying to back down a fully-bearded senior. Coach stopped the drill and told me in broken english. Mike, you are not a strong player. You are a FAST player. I want YOU to play fast. For some reason that resonated with me. Not only for that drill but also for how I saw the game. I am difficult to defend because I can shoot and I’m mobile at my position. I need to use that to my advantage. Why fight for deep, low post position when I can catch in the mid-post where the threat of a jump shot and a quick one or two dribble attack makes me way more difficult to defend? I am never going to be a great offensive rebounder, but I can make sure to be great in transition defense. And every once in a while, I can win a deep spot in the post or grab an offensive rebound and make those types of plays. But those are not what define me as a player.

Understanding what options are available in different positions/situations on the floor, what my individual strengths are, and having an aggressive approach made me much more dangerous as a player. However, I still read plays wrong. I still mess plenty of stuff up while playing. My focus is to look for advantages and make as many plays as I can on both ends of the floor. And “making a play” can mean a lot of things. Sometimes it is slowing the ball down in transition, a good bump on a cross screen, making a hard basket cut to free up a shooter. Being able to identify those good plays and try to do them intentionally and consistently in games.

It should also be mentioned. As a pro, I did not want my career to be dependent on a system or a coach. Meaning if I find myself in a bad spot (which can happen), my performance and production would go way down so I’d be at risk of not having a job the next season. That meant being adaptable and versatile with my skills and my mental approach so I could find a way to have an impact on the game independent of the system or the coach. This means being comfortable in different situations on the floor and understanding what options I have, without the coach having to walk me through it. My philosophy became it doesn’t matter where I am on the floor, put me in a spot, explain the action, and I’ll be able to make plays from that position. Part of that is understanding tactics of the game and the other part is a mindset that I want my future and my career to rely on my actions, not anyone else’s. Simply put, if I’m on the floor I’m going to make plays.

Talent gets you in the door, but consistency keeps you on the floor.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

Conclusion

This is not a bashing of under qualified coaches with amazing twitter followings or 25-dribble-combo-into-midrange-stepback trainers. Not even worth discussing. I am a huge believer in individual responsibility. What I hope to do is share my experience as a player and what helped me make genuine strides in my game. I was never recruited in high school, got cut from a D3 school my freshman year, became a D2 All-American, and am currently playing in Spain’s ACB. Slow, steady, continuous improvement was critical in many areas. But I went from being an average pro to a solid pro by developing my basketball IQ and ability to read and react to the game. The things that helped me make genuine strides in my game were discussed earlier. Analyzing the game, discussions, trying different tactics, working on the cognitive ability to read and react properly. These are keys to bridge the current disconnect between players and coaches. X’s and O’s are great but they aren’t the answer. Focusing on practical knowledge players should know and strategic details to help develop habits to play winning basketball.

After much thought in this area I truly believe that the solution is for players to raise their basketball knowledge (see bottom for a link to a project I am starting to help players understand the game better). There are enough YouTube videos and podcasts to study and learn on their own. Start with what they find interesting and then go deeper into the rabbit hole. There are no wrong answers here. Exposure, thought, practice, trial and error. All of those aspects are part of the process.

Disclaimer. There is a certain standard of behavior that comes along with this. Players should have respect for their coaches. Coaches should leave their ego and personal vendettas at the door and be the best leaders they possibly can. Approach each game and practice with humility, with an intent to work hard and improve. Lead by serving those around you, helping when you can. I always tell my guards to be aggressive on defense, don’t be afraid to take risks, to be brave because I’ll have their back. If I continually show them that I will be in the right spot at the right time, they can go defend the jet-quick PG averaging 18ppg on the other team aggressively, not passively. It is not their individual responsibility to check that guy for 94 feet, it is our responsibility. I need to show my coach that I am reliable. I’ll be in the right spot. I’ll do my job. I’ll be aggressive and make good decisions with the ball without forcing it. My teammates need to believe that as well. That is important to prove to everyone on a daily basis. Balancing being solid  and reliable with pushing my own comfort zone by trying new things to expand my game and my development. I want to be able to help the team in multiple ways, without becoming an unreliable player who does the wrong thing at the wrong time. There are two pieces to that puzzle, talent and knowledge.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and ideas about the game, and a special thanks to Dan and Pat for having me on Slappin’ Glass. As mentioned earlier, I have started a program for individual players who want to learn more about the game and how to properly use film. More information can be found HERE. If you would like more information or know a player who would benefit from this program, please feel free to contact me:

Email: michaelkaz05@gmail.com // Twitter and Instagram: @mikeykaz05