If you had all the money in the world, what would your dream house look like? Would you have a large living room with a beautiful view on the beach? Would you have a study with a grand piano in the middle of it? Perhaps you’re thinking about a cool lounge in the basement with a pool table and a fully-stocked bar? Which color would you use to paint your walls?
Before we get too far with our perfect house dreams (and realize that in today’s economy actually owning a place is damn near impossible) we need to take a step back, because as fun as furnishing your imaginary home is, we need to lay down the foundations for it first. No house can be built without a strong base which will hold it all together. The same thing can be said about building a team. We can have our dreams about designing the most impressive out-of-time-out plays, but those plays will not make any difference if we don’t start with a system for our team. But what exactly is that system? It is something very reliable, something the whole team can hang their hat on. It’s usually their strongest suit, their identity, their style of play. Whether one thing or another goes wrong, the team knows that they can always trust their system.
Let’s take a look at a few examples: in the NBA we’ve had more than a fair share of famous systems: Mike D’Anthony’s “7 seconds or less” Phoenix Suns in the mid 00’s – sacrificing defense to focus on outgunning the opponents with quick transition offense; the “Beautiful Game” Spurs in the 2010’s, using the pick’n’roll offense to the fullest and willingly sharing the basketball, Phil Jackson’s “Triangle Offense” mostly associated with the 90’s Bulls and 00’s Lakers, providing a lot of spacing and cutting opportunities and, my favorite, the 80’s “Bad Boys” Pistons: despite their lack of All-Star talent, playing a physical, defense-oriented brand of basketball. We’ll find different styles of volleyball, too. National team of Japan is mostly known for their defense and agility; team Russia will most likely try to beat you by being bigger and stronger than you. Team Poland will design their defense around their world-class block while Brasil will definitely try to play faster and with more finesse.
There’s probably as many styles as there are teams. It’s all a preference. But the preference is not based on just the coaches’ desire. Any coach can have their own taste or priorities on how they think they want their team to play. They may even scout and recruit their team based on those preferences. But then the pre-season comes, they see that some players can do even more than they thought, or some players can do less. This is the moment when they should let go of their ideal system and adapt it towards the players they have. What is the strongest part of your whole team’s game? What is the most reliable part? What is something you can always count on? If you have a 12-foot player, your job is easy – the system automatically becomes “no matter what happens, let’s get the 12-footer the ball, he will score for us, every time”. But, in the real world, deciding which system you want to use is not that simple. Again, think about ALL of your players. Think of the team as a whole, as a unit. When shit hits the fan, when all hell breaks loose, is there anything you can come back to, to build your game back up? What is your starting point? Which skill are you going to emphasize and utilize to build the team’s confidence back up? Because you don’t always connect on the fancy behind the back pass to the corner for a three pointer. You don’t always hit the ball down the three meter line after a fast set. So if you have to break the game down, and reset for a second, where does your team go in those moments? You have to answer those questions yourself, but if there’s one advice I can give you, it’s this: a good place to start for any team is having a defensive mindset. Building your own system on a defensive foundation would be my way to go. Here are a few reasons why:
1. NO TALENT NECESSARY
No matter how much talent you have on your team, defense doesn’t really care about that. In most team sports defense relies on a few factors:
- effort
- reaction time
- positioning
- anticipation
- proper preparation before the game
- physicality/athleticism
All of the things mentioned above can be either taught, or trained. The level of physicality among the players depends on their work in the weight room. Their preparation before the game, watching film, looking at the scouting reports, it’s all about how much time they want to spend studying their opponent. Positioning is about learning the proper place on the court at the right time, depending on what’s going on around you. Anticipation is the one step above positioning, meaning that not only am I in the right position, but I am ACTIVELY ready for the ball to come my way. Reaction time can be trained with many different exercises. And effort (in my opinion the most important thing) is all about just the pure power of will – how much do I want to stop the opponent? How much am I willing to sacrifice? This mindset of never giving up and always fighting can also be taught and practiced, by rewarding and applauding correct behaviors and actions during practices and games.
2. DEFENSE TRAVELS
Most of the time your team is going to practice and play home games in one specific gym for the whole season. This is your home court advantage: you’re used to the feeling of the floor; with your eyes closed you can tell exactly how far is the first row of seats from the sideline. Your fans are cheering for you and you don’t have to travel. You can go through your whole pregame routine and eat your favorite home cooked meal. You’re in full control, which means that there shouldn’t be anything distracting or interrupting your performance. There’s no excuses – now it’s all up to you how you play.
Those rules do not apply on the road, unfortunately. Sometimes you’re going to play games right after a 10-hour bus ride. Sometimes the restaurant you were supposed to eat at before the game will cancel your reservation at the last second. Perhaps the team hosting you will cancel your practice time, which will mess up your game day routine. Maybe you’re going to have to wait in the hotel lobby for hours instead of getting a proper rest. What’s more, the away gyms will have different sizes than the one you’re used to, messing up the player’s depth of field and timing during the game. In some sports, like soccer for example, the field itself can be bigger or smaller, depending on the arena (even on international level!), which may affect the team’s spacing offensively. On top of all of that you’re going to play in front of people who’ll do anything they can to distract you and intimidate you.
Offense in team sports usually relies much more on precision than defense. And when you have so many things against you when you play on the road the same level of precision you’re used to at home can simply not be there. Instead of getting frustrated by all of those things which are beyond our control, we should rather focus on the things we can control. If I’ve taken my time to study film of my opponent, if I know their tendencies and preferences, I’m giving myself the best shot of stopping whatever they are trying to do. If I’m in the correct defensive position, if I’m active and focused, I’m unlikely to be surprised by anything on the court. If I’m willing to throw my body on the line, trying to win every loose ball, diving all around the place and hustling for every single scoring point, I’m giving my team the best chance to come back from any deficit on the scoreboard, trying to use easy transition opportunities to the fullest. If the team’s effort is consistent, so will its defense. That’s where the old adage “defense travels” comes from.
3. GET IN THEIR HEADS
Imagine a scenario where you had an awesome week of practices, last night you slept wonderfully, your body feels fresh, you’re extremely motivated and excited for the game later that day. You go through your game day routine, you start to warm up, you feel like you can fly out of the building and that nothing is going to stop you today. The game begins. You get the ball, but as soon as it’s being passed to you, you see two bodies right in front of you, suffocating you with their reaction time and physicality. Or let’s say you’re in a 1v1 situation, but your opponent knows your every move, he’s reading you like a book, predicting your every next step. Perhaps he’s using a referee’s blind spot to hit you with a little bump, just to throw you off your game a bit. Or maybe you get a perfect set, with no block in sight, you hit the ball with all your might, but a defender, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, takes that shot on his chest, gets up, the play continues and you end up losing a point you were almost certain you’d win. The feeling of helplessness that sneaks into your mind, the physical exhaustion caused by having to play at your highest gear, the frustration caused by not seeing your offensive efforts translate into desired results – all of these things are the consequences of a great, hard-working defense. Actually, it goes even a step further: when we see that what we usually do to score doesn’t work or it’s being predicted and prevented, we tend to try things outside of our comfort zone – we’re so desperate of finding a solution to the problem in front of us that we reach for moves and strategies we don’t practice often or even start doing things we’ve never tried before. It goes without saying that in those moments the probability of our success gets even smaller, causing even more frustration and creating a vicious circle of trying to come up with increasingly more and more obscure solutions. So, if that’s the case, why not try to be on the giving rather than receiving end of this equation? Make sure you’re the one doing all the damage on the defensive end, you’re the one more prepared for the game, you’re the one hustling harder, you’re the one frustrating your opponent more. Get in their heads first – if you do, it’ll be harder for them to get into yours.
ON THE SAME PAGE
Realizing what your team’s system early in the season is obviously vital from the coach’s perspective – we want to maximize the biggest strengths of the team and while doing that we also want to hide the team’s biggest weaknesses. But the system is just as important for the players. Even the coach just telling the team what he or she thinks is the team’s best quality can be helpful in itself. Most players, especially young ones, are told to develop their overall game. Their specializations usually come later in their careers. So, let’s say that my best quality as a player is my defense. I may not even realize it, because the gap between my defense and my offense is not as big. And instead of embracing my specific role on the team, I am more focused on picking up the slack in other areas of my game. Don’t get me wrong, the so-called “universal” players, the “Swiss army knives” are great, you can fit them in any situation and they’ll do a solid job most of the time. Moreover, we SHOULD be working on filling the gaps in our skill sets. But we should also have an identity on the court and know it well. Embrace being a serving substitution, embrace being a 3pt specialist, embrace being a rebounding machine, embrace being an immovable object on defense. The rest of the game will come, too, (provided you work hard enough), and when it does, your identity can transform or shift to a slightly different one. But you should know what your starting point is. What is my game at the moment? What do I do best? How can I help my team the most? Which part of my team’s system am I? What is my exact role and how can I shine in it? Think about this: even if I’m a bench player, so far back my coach’s rotation that I almost never step onto the court, if I know my role on the team I’ll know what to focus on once I finally get some playing opportunity. I’ll know what’s expected of me, so anything on top of that will be just gravy. If I’m a serving substitution I sure can try to show off my setting or attacking skills, but that’s obviously not gonna happen if I don’t focus on my primary task first.
To sum up – from the coaching perspective, having a clear idea for the way you want your team to play will be beneficial for everyone involved. Introducing a system to your players will ensure that everyone is on the same page, while also giving the players more understanding of what their specific roles are, even if these roles were to change or evolve in the future. So, with all that said – what’s your system? How do you go about building it? What do you start with? How do you adapt it?
Court of Wisdom 