Basketball is a very technical game.
You want to find the exact player development programming for your position, your age, and your level of play.
Technical before tactical.
- Technical aspects of the game need to be prioritized.
- Tactical aspects of the game come later.
There is a great story about a famous basketball coach giving a dissertation on the 2-3 zone at a coaching clinic. Repeatedly, one of the attendees continued to ask questions that they wanted to know the answers to:
- What happens when the ball is over here?
- What are the responsibilities of the player up top?
- Who covers the the middle on a skip pass from the opposite corner?
With each answer, a new question was asked that required a more specific response.
Finally, this very famous basketball coach announced:
"Look, I run the same 2-3 zone you do. My players are just way better than yours."
Tactical expertise is actually a rarity within all basketball circles at every level. And it will only get you as far as your players will take you. The problem with overemphasizing the tactical approach over the technical approach is that no matter what basketball game strategy you use, you're only going to be as good as your players can dribble, shoot, pass, catch.
What good is your any offensive system if:
- Your players struggle with shooting?
- Your point guard struggles with dribbling?
- Your bigs struggle with scoring or passing in the post?
Note: While coaches are busy searching "How to beat the 1-3-1 zone," players are often searching... "How to improve basketball skills."
This is why technical expertise is far more essential for any coach than tactical expertise. If any of your players have poor footwork, bad coordination, poor court awareness, your in game strategy may not be commensurate with your players game IQ.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't ask all of the questions and try to learn all of the answers to all of the in's and out's of certain offenses and defenses.
It just means that there are too many random, unpredictable situations that occur within the game all of the time - from loose balls, deflections, turnovers, fast breaks, rebounds, and your opponents' strategies. All of these situations occur with great regularity all of the time. Sometimes, many of these situations occur on same possession.
If your game plan relies heavily on your players being able to carry out your tactical strategy, you are going to have to require your players to have a high degree of technical skills.
That is why player development has got to be the single biggest priority for any basketball program. Lack of player development is the single biggest factor that holds programs back. (Not the x's and o's).
As often as there may be miscues with players remembering specific actions that are supposed to occur on certain plays or possessions, you will find that the biggest miscues where players fail the most occur when your players struggle with passing, catching, finishing, shooting, scoring, and handling the ball.
Think of one particular loss that you had this past season.
- How many turnovers did you have that game?
- How many missed layups?
These matters are often the simple factors that win or lose games.
Spending too much practice time dedicated to tactical skills while overlooking technical skills often results in having a great strategy with poor execution.
- The wide open layup that gets missed
- The post entry pass that bounces off a players leg
- The possessions that end in turnovers simply due to poor handling of the basketball.
These situations lose basketball games. And while there may be some big differences between the coaches that you see on TV and the coaches that you see in your local high school games -- the biggest difference is -- they just have better players.
The fastest way to help players improve basketball technique is by using techniques that all great players regularly use.
