Non-Raider related Youth Basketball

Oh, and…

- I had two players not show up so I only had 7 players. It forced me to put the autistic kid in for far longer than I wanted to because, if I didn’t, I only had one sub. The poor kids were run ragged already by the second half.
- on the pick and roll, the kids would forget the “roll” part of the play. When they did remember to roll, the point was so used to them not being there that he didn’t even look to pass anymore.

I’ve got to be better.
 
TheNextStep said:
Well, week one was a loss. 23-18. I’m so fucking disappointed and feel like I let the kids down and I hate how disappointed I know they feel. The grandson played well and led all scorers with 8 points. There are several things that we can do better.

- we’re starting our offense from too far out. I don’t care how good your motion is, if you’re trying to make your entry pass from half court, you’re asking for trouble.
- on defense, the kids are allowing themselves to be pulled out. We want to be around the key and that’s what we’ve coached. All game long though, the boys kept running out to the perimeter.
- on our pick and roll plays, the kid setting the pick kept running to set the pick. The play design is to let the point dribble into the pick, not have the pick come to him. As a result, when the point went around the pick, he was running directly into a defender. We have to stay where the play is supposed to be run.
- we have one kid on the team who is severely autistic. I coach him like I coach anyone else and had planned on using him sparingly (that’s at his dad’s suggestion). He’s a really sweet kid but, when he got onto the floor, he forgot everything I’ve ever taught him. On offense, he’d just jog to the middle of the paint and stand there. When you’re running a give and go offense, that is EXACTLY the worst thing you can do. It completely fucked up the other kids. They couldn’t cut to the basket without running into him AND his defender. That said, we were still high fiving him and encouraging him. Just because I’m venting here a little bit, please don’t think I’m upset at the kid because I’m not. I just have to figure out what the hell I'm going to do to overcome it.
- another thing that fucked our offense up was that this league for some fucking reason allows illegal defense. This team had one really tall kid and they just had him stand in the paint. Since they don’t call three second violations, he just stays there. It pisses me off because it’s just teaching kids bad fucking basketball.

Anyway, I feel like absolute shit. Hell, the game has been over for an hour and I’m probably taking harder than the kids are.

So, yeah, that’s the update for today. Goddammit.
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Don't forget to focus on fundamentals. My favorite drill to run with the kids was a box out drill. put four kids under the basket and you throw the ball up like a shot (that you miss on purpose). Have your two defenders make contact with the offense player and get their ass into them to push them out of the rebounding area. This is a drill you could literally do for an entire practice session.
 
Took our second L today. Frustrating because we’re a better squad than them WHEN WE RUN OUR OFFENSE. We jumped out to an 8-0 lead… and then started playing street ball. We were down 11-10 at the half. At halftime, I got on the boys about not running the offense. We came out and scored 8 straight points to go up 16-11… and then they started playing street ball again. We lost 27-20.

A lot of good things to build on. We were right in that game because we ran our offense for about 10 minutes. We lost that game because we didn’t run our offense for about 30 minutes.

What was surprising was that I had to pull 4 different kids out at different times because they got so frustrated that they were tearing up on the court. The grandson (who is hyper-competitive by nature and also one of the best players on the team) was one of them. I pulled him and took him aside to talk to him.

Me: Hey, what’s going on with you?
Him: What? Nothing.
Me: Dude, you’re crying. Clearly there’s something. What is it?
Him: The whole reason we’re losing is because of me.
Me: It absolutely is not. You’ve made a mistake or two but you’re playing good ball. I only pulled you because you’re crying, not for how you’re playing.
Him: …
Me: What is it you kids like to say? “Lock in.” You’re not locked in. You’re in your head, so upset about the last play that you’re not thinking about the next play. You’re not in trouble and you’re not playing badly. Sit down, take some deep breaths. When you’re “locked in” let me know and I’ll get you back in.

I had that exact same conversation with 3 other kids. We’re definitely going to be talking about mindset at the next practice.

I did have a feel good moment at the end. The last game of last year, we got absolutely blown out. Devastating defeat to close out the year. During that game, I was just flat out coached. Completely got my ass kicked. I knew that I was going to have to step my game up and worked on coaching and strategies over the off-season. The team that demolished us last year? That’s who we played today. Last week, they beat their opponent 47-17. Anyway, after the game, that other coach came over and took me aside and was incredibly complimentary of our player progress, our team progress, and of my coaching. It was nice to hear.
 
TheNextStep said:
Took our second L today. Frustrating because we’re a better squad than them WHEN WE RUN OUR OFFENSE. We jumped out to an 8-0 lead… and then started playing street ball. We were down 11-10 at the half. At halftime, I got on the boys about not running the offense. We came out and scored 8 straight points to go up 16-11… and then they started playing street ball again. We lost 27-20.

A lot of good things to build on. We were right in that game because we ran our offense for about 10 minutes. We lost that game because we didn’t run our offense for about 30 minutes.

What was surprising was that I had to pull 4 different kids out at different times because they got so frustrated that they were tearing up on the court. The grandson (who is hyper-competitive by nature and also one of the best players on the team) was one of them. I pulled him and took him aside to talk to him.

Me: Hey, what’s going on with you?
Him: What? Nothing.
Me: Dude, you’re crying. Clearly there’s something. What is it?
Him: The whole reason we’re losing is because of me.
Me: It absolutely is not. You’ve made a mistake or two but you’re playing good ball. I only pulled you because you’re crying, not for how you’re playing.
Him: …
Me: What is it you kids like to say? “Lock in.” You’re not locked in. You’re in your head, so upset about the last play that you’re not thinking about the next play. You’re not in trouble and you’re not playing badly. Sit down, take some deep breaths. When you’re “locked in” let me know and I’ll get you back in.

I had that exact same conversation with 3 other kids. We’re definitely going to be talking about mindset at the next practice.

I did have a feel good moment at the end. The last game of last year, we got absolutely blown out. Devastating defeat to close out the year. During that game, I was just flat out coached. Completely got my ass kicked. I knew that I was going to have to step my game up and worked on coaching and strategies over the off-season. The team that demolished us last year? That’s who we played today. Last week, they beat their opponent 47-17. Anyway, after the game, that other coach came over and took me aside and was incredibly complimentary of our player progress, our team progress, and of my coaching. It was nice to hear.
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so the question I have is: how many hours of suicides did you make them run after?
 
TheNextStep said:
Took our second L today. Frustrating because we’re a better squad than them WHEN WE RUN OUR OFFENSE. We jumped out to an 8-0 lead… and then started playing street ball. We were down 11-10 at the half. At halftime, I got on the boys about not running the offense. We came out and scored 8 straight points to go up 16-11… and then they started playing street ball again. We lost 27-20.

A lot of good things to build on. We were right in that game because we ran our offense for about 10 minutes. We lost that game because we didn’t run our offense for about 30 minutes.

What was surprising was that I had to pull 4 different kids out at different times because they got so frustrated that they were tearing up on the court. The grandson (who is hyper-competitive by nature and also one of the best players on the team) was one of them. I pulled him and took him aside to talk to him.

Me: Hey, what’s going on with you?
Him: What? Nothing.
Me: Dude, you’re crying. Clearly there’s something. What is it?
Him: The whole reason we’re losing is because of me.
Me: It absolutely is not. You’ve made a mistake or two but you’re playing good ball. I only pulled you because you’re crying, not for how you’re playing.
Him: …
Me: What is it you kids like to say? “Lock in.” You’re not locked in. You’re in your head, so upset about the last play that you’re not thinking about the next play. You’re not in trouble and you’re not playing badly. Sit down, take some deep breaths. When you’re “locked in” let me know and I’ll get you back in.

I had that exact same conversation with 3 other kids. We’re definitely going to be talking about mindset at the next practice.

I did have a feel good moment at the end. The last game of last year, we got absolutely blown out. Devastating defeat to close out the year. During that game, I was just flat out coached. Completely got my ass kicked. I knew that I was going to have to step my game up and worked on coaching and strategies over the off-season. The team that demolished us last year? That’s who we played today. Last week, they beat their opponent 47-17. Anyway, after the game, that other coach came over and took me aside and was incredibly complimentary of our player progress, our team progress, and of my coaching. It was nice to hear.
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Hire AP as head cheerleader for next year.
 
TheNextStep said:
Took our second L today. Frustrating because we’re a better squad than them WHEN WE RUN OUR OFFENSE. We jumped out to an 8-0 lead… and then started playing street ball. We were down 11-10 at the half. At halftime, I got on the boys about not running the offense. We came out and scored 8 straight points to go up 16-11… and then they started playing street ball again. We lost 27-20.

A lot of good things to build on. We were right in that game because we ran our offense for about 10 minutes. We lost that game because we didn’t run our offense for about 30 minutes.

What was surprising was that I had to pull 4 different kids out at different times because they got so frustrated that they were tearing up on the court. The grandson (who is hyper-competitive by nature and also one of the best players on the team) was one of them. I pulled him and took him aside to talk to him.

Me: Hey, what’s going on with you?
Him: What? Nothing.
Me: Dude, you’re crying. Clearly there’s something. What is it?
Him: The whole reason we’re losing is because of me.
Me: It absolutely is not. You’ve made a mistake or two but you’re playing good ball. I only pulled you because you’re crying, not for how you’re playing.
Him: …
Me: What is it you kids like to say? “Lock in.” You’re not locked in. You’re in your head, so upset about the last play that you’re not thinking about the next play. You’re not in trouble and you’re not playing badly. Sit down, take some deep breaths. When you’re “locked in” let me know and I’ll get you back in.

I had that exact same conversation with 3 other kids. We’re definitely going to be talking about mindset at the next practice.

I did have a feel good moment at the end. The last game of last year, we got absolutely blown out. Devastating defeat to close out the year. During that game, I was just flat out coached. Completely got my ass kicked. I knew that I was going to have to step my game up and worked on coaching and strategies over the off-season. The team that demolished us last year? That’s who we played today. Last week, they beat their opponent 47-17. Anyway, after the game, that other coach came over and took me aside and was incredibly complimentary of our player progress, our team progress, and of my coaching. It was nice to hear.
Click to expand...

Best thing to do after a game like that is make the next practice fun. Do scrimmages, sometimes things not even completely bball related is good to bring it into perspective for them. Finish with a good talk and then back to business for the next one.
 
Chris_77 said:
Best thing to do after a game like that is make the next practice fun. Do scrimmages, sometimes things not even completely bball related is good to bring it into perspective for them. Finish with a good talk and then back to business for the next one.
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That’s advice that I’m taking. Thank you, man. You always have good advice to give and it’s been really helpful. Sincerely, thank you.

We’ll start practice going over what we can improve on and then, for the second half, I’ll have them do a 2v2 knockout tournament kind of thing. It’ll let them work on both pick and roll and also give and go. It’ll also just them have some fun.

- both players have to touch the ball on offense.
- first team to two points wins.
- bickering with each other is a point for the other team.
- there are specific players that I’m going to pair up with each other.
 
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