The Benefits of Simplicity

Building with SABA, depth, and pace of play

We had a few weeks after we returned from our training camp (read about it below) before we played our first real games.

The Opening Lessons

The country is big, and clubs vary in competitiveness, so the competition schedule includes two leagues: Everyone plays a regional league, and clubs play to qualify for the simultaneous national league, which is a series of stages with the theoretical 12 best teams.

Roughly a month after my arrival, we travelled to the qualification tournament, which essentially amounted to three must-win games; failing to qualify would have been a colossal letdown, and a lost season for our club in this generation. Fortunately, we were drawn in a manageable group, although we faced a team from one of the top three professional clubs and the host who featured at least one national team player (same as us).

Prior to this tournament, we played three friendly games, only one of which used actual referees. Very little could be drawn from these games, as nobody played at full strength and nobody played to win. We simply played to get a look at our teams and our players against different opponents. Nevertheless, things looked promising.

At the qualification tournament, we averaged 111 points through the three games. We secured as many offensive rebounds as opponents had defensive rebounds. We had more steals than turnovers, a 1.5:1 assist to turnover ratio, and assists on more than two-thirds of our baskets.

Our goal is not to run any specific called actions or sets, especially after a live-ball change of possession. We want to play fast and move the ball for good shots.

When the team stops our initial transition, we just play with our basic SABA concepts, specifically spacing and some principles for cutting and post entries.

We have our one basic action for all half-court possessions, BLOB, and SLOB. We have different options, but none is called specifically. Players read each other.

We could reduce turnovers considerably if we named each action as a separate play to organize, improve spacing, and eliminate the necessity to read each other on every pass, but that is short-term thinking. If we can play in this way and improve our spacing, decision-making, and speed of processing, we will be even more difficult to play against.

We added one other quick action as an alternative before the tournament, although we rarely used it, and also added one quick zone action, as we expected one team to play zone, but they did not play as much zone as expected, and we did not struggle against it.

We spoke early in the season about the two ways to win: Shoot better than your opponent or use more possessions. We did both, although we did not shoot as well as I would like. Our size, depth, and pace set us apart. One team called an early timeout to rest the starters, as it was clear they wanted their best player to play the whole game. Another team had their best players asking to substitute. Opponents’ best players probably faced five to six defenders during the game. They could not sustain their best performance against the constant pressure by fresh players.

From my arrival, I spoke about playing 12 players. Other coaches kind of nodded, accepting that I would play everyone in the meaningless games, but asking if and when I would move to an eight-, nine-, or ten-player rotation like normal coaches. I intended to use our depth as our strength, coupled with our pace. One reason I have pressed and played fast with almost every team I have coached at every level is to create the need to play more players. I want players to play 20 minutes but feel like they played a full game because we created more possessions. I believe playing everyone maintains the competitiveness of practice throughout the season as everyone improves, not just the starters, and it helps to inoculate a team against injuries, as everyone is prepared to play late in the season.

We have 16 players on our roster, but the selection was easy, as one player missed the tournament with an illness, one has yet to be cleared due to bureaucracy, and two were injured. The 12 healthy players played.

I enjoy X’s and O’s as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the minimalism of two basic concepts and challenging the players to be creative. Thus far, we have emphasized freedom and expanding skills. Eventually, we will have to shoot better, cut down on some turnovers, take better shots, and utilize some additional actions against better teams who can match our size and depth and prepare for our basic actions with scouting and game preparation. My goal is to delay this as long as possible.