Coaching Youth Basketball - Chapter 27

Chapter 27 - Showtime

And now, it's showtime. The ref throws the ball up and the game has begun. The ball is tipped and 2 players from the other team and one of your players end up in a tug of war, with all three holding on to the ball for dear life. The whistle blows, and the ref calls jump ball. Whoever did not get the tip, gets the ball out of bounds. In this case, no one got control of the ball so they literally call for another jump ball.

This time the other teams gets the tip and the ball, and your kids are scrambling to find the player they are covering. You watch the ensuing confusion and just want to puke. Three of your players are guarding the same player on the other team. This leaves two of their players undefended and wide open for a pass.

You've all heard of Murphy's Law, well here's Riley's Law: YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE BECOMES REALITY ON A BASKETBALL COURT. So let's see how Riley's Law applies here.

Two of their players are wide open because 3 of your players are all guarding the same player. The ball gets passed to one of their open guards. This player happens to be the best shot on their team, so naturally they pivot, shoot, and score. There's Riley's Law in action.

Here's another example, same scenario. The ball gets passed to a player who can't shoot and has never made a basket, even in practice. This player catches the ball, pivots, shoots, and nothing but net, they've scored their first basket.

The game goes on one minute and the score is 2-0, your team is losing. Sixty seconds into the game, one of your players asks, "Hey coach, when can I go in?" Now you remember to tell the kids to stand up after 3 minutes, so you'll be reminded to substitute them into the game. You now tell the kids when to stand up.

After 2 minutes your players on the court are still having a hard time trying to figure out who to guard. All you want to do is scream at the top of your lungs, "How hard is it to remember you are guarding # 20, and you are guarding #4?" You have this irresistible urge to grab them and shake some sense into them.

You have now encountered your first crisis as a bench coach. You can't thrash them or scream at them because they're littler then you. You have an unfair advantage, you're big and they're small. So what do you do? Call time out.

You are only allowed 3 or 4 timeouts per game, depending upon your league or tournament rules. You have just used your first. You call the kids over and in your best Mr. Roger's voice you say, "Why are 3 of you covering the same player?" No one responds. All you get are 3 blank faces with baby doe eyes. You begin to wonder if it's deer season yet.

"All right, here's what we are going to do." And you point out who each kid is supposed to guard, and their uniform number. You mentally pat yourself on the back for handling this like a big person, and the game resumes. You sit down in your chair, as smug as a bug in a rug.

You jump up suddenly, in near hysteria. Three of your players aren't guarding anyone. They are standing in the middle of the court, looking like a 3 year old who's lost their parents. The reason being, the other team substituted and with new players in the game, your players don't know who to guard.

At this point in time, you are glad you never paid for this book. In fact, you wish I had written something that had made you give up this wonderful idea you had of coaching your child's team.

Here's the solution, communication. Your players have to talk and whenever the other team substitutes, they have to start yelling, "I've got 15!" " Well then I've got 10," another yells. This is one of those times when you can coach. You should be helping out by yelling for Johnny to cover this person, or Suzie should be covering that person. Communication solves most of the problems of the world.

Play continues on the opposite side of the court, away from you. You think you have a pretty good long distance view, when the ref calls a foul on one of your players. It's just like the times you sit in your easy chair at home watching a game, you scream out, "No way ref, you need glasses." The ref looks at you and you suddenly remember where you are and what you are doing there. You quietly sit down on the bench. Every eye in the whole gym is on you, and you could hear a needle drop.

This last scenario is not a good one. Your players and their parents are now going to take your lead and start giving every ref grief over every call they make, good or bad. You will become known as the whiners, sore losers, bad winners, and not fun to be around.

In all my years of coaching, I have never seen a ref reverse a call, never. So as a coach you need to act, not react. Don't yell over a call. If you need to make a point with a ref, use this as an example. "Hey ref, please watch #23 on the other team. My players are bruised to death because of the elbows that are flying under the basket. " You always get more with honey than vinegar.

"Now coach?" you hear 5 voices ask in unison. "It's been 3 minutes, can we go in now?" You say yes and tell them to go kneel by the scorer's table. You are now making your first substitution. The ref waives them in and your starting 5 come to the bench. These 5 are just a buzz with what happened so far in the game. You ignore them, and watch your players who are playing.

The game goes on and your child is now in the game. You watch as your kid screws up on defense and the other team scores, Riley's Law strikes again. You jump off the bench yelling at your own child to get it right. The problem is the tone in your voice, it's nasty.

Let's stop here for a moment. It is natural for you to expect more out of your child. You see, you know you are perfect and so any child of yours has to be perfect as well. This is a well known fact, right???? WRONG!!!! Your kid is just that, a kid. Don't expect any more or less than you would out of any other kid!! Burn out is a common disease amongst coach's kids.

Let me tell you a little story about coach's kids. Last weekend I coached a team in a tourney made up of just coach's kids. It started because a bunch of the coaches were talking about how their kids were a pain in the butt and how they wished someone else would coach their own kid. After a few brewski's, the idea came up of putting together a team of nothing but coach's daughters, and playing in tournament. Everyone thought it would be fun to sit on the bench and be a parent for a change. As you can tell, I ended up coaching the team.

I held a grand total of two practices, not LS's, for this team. Guess what we did for four hours? Scrimmaged without dribbling. Why? Because I wanted these girls to depend on each other. Also, coach's kids are famous for being ball hogs, and there are no ball hogs when you can't dribble.

Wanna know the outcome?? These girls had more fun than they had had in a long time. They didn't have their father's screaming at them from the bench. In fact, their parents didn't scream AT them from the bleachers either. Why?? Because my deal with the other coaches was that I would coach and they would be quiet in the stands. The moment one of them broke this agreement, they got to coach the team, and everyone else was then allowed to criticize them. Needless to say, everyone was on their best behavior.

How much fun did the girls have?? One girl, who was a center and never allowed to shoot a long distance shot, made a 3 pointer. This was the first 3 pointer she had ever made in 5 years of playing. When she came off the court, she had a smile wrapped around both ears. Three of the girls secretly asked me if they could be on my team. The were really tired of being yelled at by their parent. Learn a lesson from this, TREAT YOUR OWN CHILD THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE ON THE TEAM. By the way, we lost all 3 games, and the girls still had fun.

Back to the game. It's now half time and you are losing by 2 points. The score is 4 to 2. One of your players says, "They can't dribble or pass the ball very good, can they?" Suddenly you realize that they're right. Your team was much better handling the ball. You may be losing the game, but right now you just don't care. Your team has been doing what you taught them. You are now a basketball teacher, Coach = Teacher.

You tell them to dribble with their heads up and starting looking for an open player to pass to. You tell them to make sure to talk and everyone will know who to guard that way. And you tell them to have fun.

The second half is a breeze. Every 3 minutes your bench players stand up to substitute in. Your team is out-dribbling and out-passing the other team. You don't even get too upset when one of your players steals the ball and goes down the wrong end of the court and shoots at the wrong goal. (This is going to happen because at halftime, the teams switch ends of the court. If they were shooting to your right the first half, then they shoot to your left the second half. This confuses a lot of kids.) None of this bothers you too much because they are dribbling with their heads up, making good passes, getting a lot of rebounds and doing a lot of things right. All this is happening because you have LS's, not practices. Because you don't talk in a monotone to the kids. AND BECAUSE YOU HAVE HELPED TO MAKE BASKETBALL A FUN GAME!!!!

Who won the game? How should I know, it's your game!!!