The shot clock, international rules, and decision making
During the women’s Final Four and WBCA convention, I spoke to several college coaches about potential rule changes in NCAA basketball. The most prominent rule change would be a change in the shot clock...
View ArticleAll-Blacks and Pep Guardiola: Two articles on expert coaching
In “Pep Guardiola: The Man Behind the Manager”, Jamie Scrupps wrote that there are three things that separate Guardiola from his peers: Never ending quest to learn, relationship with players, and never...
View ArticleHow do we determine a “great drill”?
This drill was posted on Linkedin as a “Great Drill.” Why? What makes the drill great? What is the purpose of the drill? After posing these questions on the Linkedin page, the response centered on...
View ArticleThe effect of game constraints on practice shooting drills
Last week, I used a shooting drill that my friend Safa Kamalian introduced to me. It is a very easy set up: There are four offensive players and two defenders, and the offensive players pass the ball...
View ArticleLearning vs. following directions
In an historical context, our sports system grew out of our school system ,which was designed to produce workers for the industrial revolution. Consequently, our school system is designed to produce...
View ArticleFake fundamentals: Marketing or skill development
The video above circulated throughout the Internet this week. Business Insider titled its article that featured the video, “Why the French are good at soccer.” Really? In its video, BI wrote: “It’s a...
View ArticleIndecision with the ball
A friend sent me an email with the following drill: How to develop an explosive dribble Only allow one dribble to get to the hoop after grabbing the ball off the chair to develop an explosive, fast...
View ArticleApplying lessons from the tennis lab to the basketball court
Every singles tennis match is bound by the same dimensions…. yet each one is a laboratory for innovation, unrestrained by a risk-averse coach or the conflicting desires of teammates (Bialik, 2016)....
View ArticleThe effect of coaching on players’ behaviors
When I referee soccer, and especially when I am an assistant referee, I hear exactly how coaches coach during games. Often, it is apparent that they do not understand how their behaviors affect their...
View ArticleOffensive and defensive assumptions behind Blitz Basketball
Last week, I re-formatted the diagrams in Blitz Basketball to make it available through Amazon Kindle. It was the first time that I had read the book since I wrote it in 2008 (originally in 2006, with...
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