Coaching Basketball

So, I am coaching my son's U10 basketball team and I was hoping for a little feedback/advice.



I have coached other sports (soccer/baseball) but this will be my first time coaching basketball. From what little research I have done, I have decided as follows:



For defense I will run a man-to-man defense with some help because my goal is to build better defensive skills, and from my research, teaching zone at this age is rife with problems--like not knowing who they have to defend and learning lazy defensive habits



For offense I will run a three out two in motion offense. That is basically a three guard, two forward offense that consists of setting screens when you don't have the ball, feeding the low post when its open, and taking the first available good shot.



I believe in getting everyone equal time and in developing skill/athleticism in players. The wins are a nice by-product, but not my sole, or even my main focus for these younger guys.



Anyone who has coached basketball before have any good on-line resources/advice?



Your input would be much appreciated. The draft is on Friday.

Love that you are running a man defense. Lazy coaches who care about meaningless W's at this age run zones; good to see you're focused on what's more important -- player and skill development.

I personally love man to man defense. Wish BYU ran more of it, BUT... zone is not lazy, unless you want to lose.



I find it far EASIER to stay in front of one guy than defend an area where mismatches are easy to create and 3 pointers are nearly guaranteed to be wide open shots if the offense knows what they are doing. My high school team would run shell drills to keep our spacing even and learn how to defend in the zone. It's a skill that few are truly proficient with. A team like BYU who knows how to rotate, how to keep spaced correctly, and how to quickly adapt can defend effectively with the zone and it's anything but lazy basketball (and I'm not a fan of the zone). But thinking that all you have to do is defend an area and you can shut a team down is actually not real zone defense. That said, I prefer man to man though, good call.



Learning TRUE defensive habits at this age are far more important than offensive. Run whatever offense you want but keep it simple. I totally agree with your philosophy that winning/losing isn't important at this age. EFFORT is though. I loved my coaches that pushed me but didn't lose their cool (doubt that you are that type of person from your posts).

BroncoBot wrote:
I personally love man to man defense. Wish BYU ran more of it, BUT... zone is not lazy, unless you want to lose.



I find it far EASIER to stay in front of one guy than defend an area where mismatches are easy to create and 3 pointers are nearly guaranteed to be wide open shots if the offense knows what they are doing. My high school team would run shell drills to keep our spacing even and learn how to defend in the zone. It's a skill that few are truly proficient with. A team like BYU who knows how to rotate, how to keep spaced correctly, and how to quickly adapt can defend effectively with the zone and it's anything but lazy basketball (and I'm not a fan of the zone). But thinking that all you have to do is defend an area and you can shut a team down is actually not real zone defense. That said, I prefer man to man though, good call.



Learning TRUE defensive habits at this age are far more important than offensive. Run whatever offense you want but keep it simple. I totally agree with your philosophy that winning/losing isn't important at this age. EFFORT is though. I loved my coaches that pushed me but didn't lose their cool (doubt that you are that type of person from your posts).

From what I have read, they said that you shouldn't really teach zone until high school. Conceptually little kids just don't get "guard anyone that comes through this area of the floor." Man to man is much easier to teach conceptually, but it also forces them to work on basic defensive skills as well--especially the post players that have to chase their guy around the floor rather than just camp out. I agree that is not the way a zone is supposed to be run, and it is actually a great defensive philosophy for high school and beyond--it just doesn't work well for the development of kids. One of my colleagues was telling me he once tried to teach his kids a zone defense by putting masking tape on the floor and having the kids stand in their zones for practice. When it came to game time, they were all sorts of confused. He asked what happened, and they said they were looking for the tape on the ground but couldn't find it. :lol: I appreciate you comment on defense. I agree that focusing on defense and rebounding are far more important, but far less sexy to the players and parents, at least to those that don't know any better.

Best thing you can do for these kids is find a way to teach the concepts and keep the kids physically active while maintaining fun. Kids this age need to be having fun to stay motivated and interested and all too often you get coaches in there who think the kids have a college age mentality who need to be pushed and worked every moment of practice and game time.

Thought I would add a report after our first practice. 6 of the 8 kids on the team showed up. I was not able to ever get a good phone number for one, who was added late to the team and the other just didn't attend--maybe he didn't get the message.



Anyway, we did some conditioning (jumping jacks, dribbling line drills with both hands, and hot coals with push-ups on my whistle) to start off. Then we spent almost the entire first practice covering on-the-ball defense (closing out, defensive stance, attack step, retreat step, and switch step, etc.) with some drills. At the end, I let them scrimmage three on three for the last 15 minutes or so and paid attention to defensive stance, whether they were staying with their man, and whether they were crossing their feet. I liked what I saw for the most part, when it came to man to man defense. Most managed to keep their knees bent and stay in front of their man. A few times, some of them lost their man, and there are two kids that are going to need more help. One has terrible foot work, and the other gets burned because he tries to steal every pass instead of closing out like he should when the pass is coming to the guy he is guarding. Overall, I am pretty optomistic about this bunch. They seemed to listen, and I know the parents enjoyed watching them scrimmage. I was impressed with the passing skills of several of these boys.



For next practice, we will reinforce on-the-ball defense, work on off-the-ball defense, and scrimmage. I think my practices will focus on reinforcing the skill learned in the previous practice, implementing a new part of being a better player (this week it is defense and rebounding), and then scrimmaging to reinforce those principles while we are actually playing. One kid likes to shoot anything that touches his hand, so I told him he can shoot three pointers when he can prove to me he can make 4 out of 10. Fun times. I love coaching! I love seeing the things we teach them implemented and immediately make them better.

Also teach about help and communicating.

scott715 wrote:
Also teach about help and communicating.

Thanks. I do need to work on help defense and calling out for a switch when the defenders get left in the dust.

Sounds like fun. So far I've only coached soccer--a sport I played up until I was maybe 6.

Have you taught your PG's the low-post eye-gouge?

My one son's AAU coach played virtually everyone the same amount of time. Meant we lost a few games we might have otherwise won if the better players played more. But the boys--all of them--loved the game more, and some of the "lesser talented" players got better, much better. I admired him and today we all still consider him the best coach hands down in developing the boys (ages 14 and 15) on this team

snoscythe wrote:
Have you taught your PG's the low-post eye-gouge?

No, not yet. It seems to be pretty effective, though. :angry:

BoiseBYU wrote:
My one son's AAU coach played virtually everyone the same amount of time. Meant we lost a few games we might have otherwise won if the better players played more. But the boys--all of them--loved the game more, and some of the "lesser talented" players got better, much better. I admired him and today we all still consider him the best coach hands down in developing the boys (ages 14 and 15) on this team

That's my plan. It was the same on my baseball team. The really good players started the first three innings and then the other kids moved into the infield for the last two innings. I don't think it ever cost us a game, but I wouldn't have changed it even if it did. Either we were way up when we made the shift, or we were hopelessly out of it anyway. The hardest thing was dealing with the parents who coudln't understand what I was trying to do--but there were plenty of other parents who really appreciated it.



I have looked at the other teams practicing and I think I got a pretty good bunch. I'm hoping the refs let them play a little, though, because man are they physical. We spent the first two weeks almost entirely working on on the ball defense, off the ball defense, keeping your man out of the key, and rebounding. Last practice I showed them how to set a screen, and how to run the transition offense. Today it will be review and starting the first motion in the motion offense (pass to the wing followed by the PG and PF setting screens). That should pretty much take up the next practice or two. If these kids remember even half of what they have been taught, we should be in pretty good shape. I am trying to move slowly and quiz them on prior practices. They know the stuff academically, but when we start scrimmaging sometimes it seems like it all goes out the window--other than calling shot when the ball goes in the air. I think a couple of them got tired of running line drills when they failed to do so. All in all, they are starting to keep their spacing pretty well and moving without the ball on offense, which is awesome. We did a passing drill where I spread out the five positions and had them do fingar taps with the ball and pass to one of the open positions (three teamates were playing defense). Then once a pass was made, everyone who did not get the pass had to move to one of the other four positions. It seems to have translated well into keeping spacing and moving without the ball.