Being Prepared vs. Over-Coaching: A Fine Line

This is the second in a series of coaching articles that analyzes, and questions, some common coaching practices. The first article took a look at the nature of player-coach relationships the coach’s role in that relationship. This article takes a look at a common coaching principle, one that most of us hear, and say, time and time again; a coach’s primary responsibility is to prepare his team for every situation that it will face in a game. In principle, this seems obvious: a coach’s job is to have his or her team fully prepared once game-day rolls around. But coaches apply this principle in a variety of different ways. Some are not very constructive, in my opinion.

As much as I enjoy the strategy involved with bench coaching, I remind myself from time to time that this is basketball. It is not chess. The primary difference between the two? Wooden chess pieces always do exactly what I tell them to do. People don’t. To borrow from John Wooden, “Over Coaching is a bigger problem than under-coaching in the today’s game”. Tactics aren’t the only factor in team success. In fact, as far as its importance in determining wins and losses go, I’d rank tactical adjustments – the chess match of basketball – a distant third behind talent and aggressive execution.

This is where the problem arises for some coaches: The more tactical adjustments you try to make, the less likely it is that you will execute aggressively. A critical part of coaching basketball successfully is finding the appropriate balance for your team.

As a basketball coach, I want my players to develop a certain degree of mastery at whatever it is that I am teaching. I think that this is critical to team success and to individual growth. I also have to understand that in order to bridge the gap between the type of play I want to see and the results I am actually getting, to develop mastery, what I need more than anything else is game-speed repetitions.

I’ll give a couple of examples of the problem.

1. A JV coach is looking for ways he could have beaten a specific opponent the previous season. The opponent had a star guard who was impossible to stop. The coach tried everything against this kid with no luck, from a man to man, straight zone, box & 1, and triangle & 2.

• This approach is all ‘tactics’, and no ‘execution’. In this situation, the answer is the problem. If I’m resorting to a box and 1 and a triangle and 2, the real problem is probably defensive fundamentals, not defensive strategy. The answer is to address those fundamental problems as thoroughly as possible, and to find ways from within the basic defensive philosophy to adjust to the other team’s star. If you don’t run your man to man defense well, how can you expect to run a box and 1 and a triangle and 2 and a zone and a man to man well? You can’t.

2. Several years ago, I coached a very good rec league team over the summer, that ran a simple but tricky inbounds play that involves a backpick on the ballside block. It’s a play that, when executed well, usually grabs the attention people in the gym. We were very successful with it in one particular game, scoring 10 point off of the two scoring options. After that game, one of the coaches in the following game tried to run the play a couple of times, but gave up after turning the ball over each time.

• This coach had his own package of plays that his teams had worked on in practice. Each would have given his team a better outcome, even if they did not exploit the defense in the same way.

In some situations the need to be prepared for every game situation clashes with the need to develop mastery through game-speed repetition. The conflict between the two is evident at every level, but is more apparent at the youth – high school levels. As a coach, its not as simple (or should I say complicated?) as preparing your team for every situation. Maybe a better way to approach the issue is to prepare as much as you can for what you are likely to face, within the simplest possible framework possible.

Filed Under: Basketball Coaching

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