A Game of Mistakes

An excerpt from my forthcoming book, "The Simple Guide to Coaching and Playing Girls' Basketball"...

Coach Bob Knight introduces the second chapter of his new book, “The Power of Negative Thinking” with two important words, “No” and “Don’t.” Verily, sometimes what you don’t means as much as what you do. But his overarching message is “Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.”

Coaches make mistakes, too. We make mistakes in many areas, including talent evaluation, flawed preparation, emotional discipline, strategy, tactics, and psychology. Coaches are human though, and we don't like to acknowledge that we misread situations or have flawed judgments about players. Especially if we've had success, we find accepting change and accountability hard.

Emotional discipline failure occurs when a coach ‘loses it’ in the heat of the moment, taking an unnecessary technical foul or ejection, or becomes an energy ‘sink’, draining the life from her team. Assistant coaches can be invaluable by helping to keep a coach about to walk the plank under control. Coaches need vigilance about how we influence our team, the officials, and fans. Too much criticism, especially of girls without fully entrenched self-esteem can exsanguinate your team. You cannot quit on them, or imply they quit on you, and expect them to play hard. Loyalty is a two-way street.

Strategy problems must be distinguished from execution problems. In a key game where a team planned to double down on the post from the help side and rotate the help side ‘3’ low, the ‘3’ failed to drop three times allowing several critical hoops leading to a narrow loss. I happened upon a photocopied game plan where the strategy was laid out and diagrammed but never executed. Young players are mistake prone no matter how intelligent they are. But coaches are the ones accountable.

Tactical errors often result from “too much” or “too little.” Smart, experienced teams are usually capable of more than younger teams. Conversely, crisp execution of a limited menu has a lot of advantages. The great Celtics of the 1960’s ran six plays, one of which often had Sam Jones shooting a jumper just over the outstretched fingers of a defender. “Too late,” was the last thing the defender heard. In their case, “too little” led to “too late”.

I see teams occasionally elect to extend their defense when they are controlling the game with ‘packed’ defenses. Surrendering a few easy baskets leading to momentum shifts resulted from over-coaching.