This weekend, a guy advocated for stagnation. Why improve the game or the teaching of the game? Just copy the best. Although he said he’d never heard of me, he wrote: “I’m speaking of things such as how to close out, how to defend ball screens, using 3-man weaves in practice, using shell drill, etc.” Fake Fundamentals discussed closeouts and three-player weaves and the shell drill appeared in Fake Fundamentals, Volume 3. I am not the only one who teaches a different closeout or avoids the three-player weave, but I am likely the most vocal and have been so for more than 20 years.
He continued, “Everyone wastes time questioning instead of just mirroring what the best do.” As I asked over the weekend, should we mirror what the best coaches teach and drill at practice or what the best players actually do during games? Most coaches teach defenders not to leave their feet on closeouts, yet every week during the NBA season, we see a highlight of a player jumping and blocking a shot. Is that a mistake because it violates the coach’s instruction or a great play because it achieved its goal of stopping the shot attempt?
Furthermore, as I asked in the Introduction to Fake Fundamentals, Volume 4, why teach the same defensive closeout now as was taught prior to the adoption of the three-point line despite the frequency of three-point attempts now?
In 1990-91, as I was being taught the proper closeout by my first basketball coaches, NBA teams averaged 7.1 three-point attempts per game and shot 32% from the three-point line; last season, teams averaged 34.2 three-point attempts per game and shot 36.1% from the three-point line. Why should defense stay the same when the game has changed so dramatically?
In the late 40s and early 50s, NFL teams employed a 5-3-3 defense to stop the T formation; can you imagine lining up with only three defensive backs against Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, or Patrick Mahomes? Coaches did not mirror the best defenses; they evolved to stop the offensive evolutions and vice versa.
He continued, “Same as what you’d do in business or any other endeavor. You watch the best, and try your best to imitate them.” Keeping an eye on their competitors and trying to be better than the status quo is how businesses such as Blockbuster, Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry and others became irrelevant. They were the best at their business, but they refused to innovate or to see the next thing that would disrupt their business model. They were complacent as the best, and their stagnation caused their irrelevance, much as coaches who were hesitant to embrace the three-point line have struggled in the last decade.
Fake Fundamentals and my other books are not an attempt to reinvent basketball or any of the other criticisms I have heard, nor are these beliefs new. Many of these ideas were there in old articles in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s and certainly in my newsletters which started in 2007. These are not attempts to be Twitter famous.
A common refrain is “research is always a few years behind practitioners”. Often, coaches are a few years behind the players. I did not invent a new way to close out: I watched players and saw the limitations of the prevalent method of teaching and the success of players who ignored these instructions. Essentially, I reverse engineered what I saw in different settings, began to teach these methods, and explained my rationale for the necessary changes. Players made the changes and coaches are still catching up to the players, many of whom do not realize what they do or how they move, they just know if they get beat or give up the shot, they are being substituted. They do what is necessary, not what they were taught.
During a camp in China, two coaches taught defense. The local coaches were there and watched the sessions with the players. Afterward, they asked why I and another coach taught defense differently. They brought us together and we discussed defensive footwork. I advocated for crossing one’s feet on defense. The other coach, a current college coach who had just completed his NCAA D1 playing career, was adamant that one should never cross one’s feet on defense. His primary evidence was his father was a very successful college coach, and he taught players not to cross their feet. I asked him to guard me. As soon as I got a slight advantage, he crossed his feet to recover. I stopped. He did not believe me. We went again. Same thing. He still disagreed. The lessons he was taught as a young player were more powerful than the actions he actually used in the situation. He chose to believe what he was taught, not what he did.
I started to question the manner in which I was taught defense when I was a college freshman playing pickup basketball games. I watched football defensive backs and soccer defenders, and I noticed some similarities, and these similarities differed greatly from basketball teaching. I started to believe skills or movements that were generalizable across sports were probably better than ones that were highly specific to an individual sport.
Nobody in any other sport step-slides in the manner in which I was taught as a junior-high school player because it is too slow for competitive sports. I realized my coaches had never demonstrated their teachings at full speed. Everything was half speed. Imagine a track and field coach teaching sprinting technique in the same way one walks because he never demonstrates or uses a sprinting demonstration. Sprinting is not fast walking; it is a completely different gait cycle. A step-slide is not basketball’s lateral movement; it is a slower, less effective movement.
I reached these conclusions through watching different sports played at different levels and applied these lessons with different age groups, as I coached U10 girls and varsity high-school boys simultaneously. Again, I believe movements that generalize across genders, ages, and sports are probably better than those that are highly specific to a small population.
There are many successful basketball coaches who have never questioned the step-slide or closeouts or the reasons they do the three-player weave or a four-person shell drill at practice. Basketball success is multifactorial; if I coach college basketball and out-recruit my competitors, my practice design is much less important. As Geno Auriemma once said, “We got Diana (Taurasi) and you don’t.” As my friend Oscar always says, “If you can make shots, offense is easy.”
Many coaches have the luxury of never questioning the things they teach, either because of their position and the advantage it affords or because of the players they coach who find a way to make plays, even when it means violating their coach’s principles. Other coaches are experts at motivation or getting players to play hard. Some are defensive geniuses or offensive geniuses and can use their strategy and game-planning to overcome other short-comings. Very few coaches are experts at every aspect of coaching.
Very few changes or innovations start at the top. The pressure at the top is too great to change dramatically from the status quo. The Air Raid offense that took over college and NFL football did not start with the best or winningest NFL coach; it started with Hal Mumme and Mike Leach at an NAIA program. The dribble-drive-motion that dominates, one way or another, throughout basketball in the United States did not originate in the NBA, but at Clovis West High School and Fresno City Junior College with Vance Walberg. People credit Daryl Morey (and Steph Curry) for the explosion of three-point shooting, but Rick Pitino’s Providence College made the NCAA Final Four in 1987 by shooting an abundance of three-pointers, and others followed at various levels over the years; the NBA was the last level to adopt high volume three-point shooting, and it required a re-education of basic math.
Here’s the thing: I don’t care what other coaches do. When I published Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, someone emailed and asked, “Do you really think you’re going to change basketball?” The thought had not crossed my mind. I wrote a book with my ideas, and I have written many more in the years that followed. I speak to coaches or at clinics when asked. I do not care if people follow what I write, change their minds, agree or disagree. I write for myself. If another coach finds it useful, great.
My primary interest is creating a better environment for players, and hopefully, my books prompt coaches to ask more questions about their coaching. If a coach asks, “Why do I do the three-player weave?” and realize they have a great reason, great. Using or not using the three-player weave is not the point. Asking questions, introspection, and discovering the why is the true goal of my writing, as coaches who engage in these behaviors will provide a better environment for players, whether they teach a stutter-step closeout or not.
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest that survives; but the species that is best able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” Do you want to be Blockbuster, the best store to rent VHS tapes, or Netflix? Adapt or die. The game evolves; why not our teaching and coaching?
Brian, brilliant work again. It's a blessing to read your work!
Who goes five wide and throws every down now?