Growing up in Texas, it’s understood that football is king. It was therefore not terribly surprising that my first job coaching high school basketball in Texas required me to coach football, too. Originally, this was disappointing news, as I did not grow up dreaming of being a football coach. It was also a little bit scary, as I did not feel in any way qualified to coach football. However, embracing unfamiliarity afforded me the opportunity for unexpected growth, and it wasn’t long before I realized that coaching football might help me become a better basketball coach. With this in mind, I wanted to share some things I learned during those 3 years coaching football that were helpful to me as a basketball coach.
Use Your Hands to Create an Advantage
In football, coaches teach players to use their hands in order to create an advantage with leverage and balance. From the Deacon Jones head slap to the Reggie White club to the Chris Doleman swim move, football players use their hands to eliminate their opponent’s positional advantage. During my second year coaching football, I was observing our head coach (Rob Gardenhire) work with the D Line on the rip, the swim, the spin, and the post/pull. While watching Coach Gardenhire, it occurred to me that all of these maneuvers could be applicable on the basketball court as well, specifically relating to getting through screens away from the ball (rips and to a lesser extent swims), fighting through an opponent’s box out attempt (rips, swims, and spins), and fighting contact to establish position in the post (rips and swims) or get open on the perimeter (rips and post/pull). In my experience as a basketball coach, it was very useful for players to understand how to use their hands to improve their position or to create a balance-based leverage advantage.
Athletic Ready Stance
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It’s very rare to see a football player standing upright pre-snap, as being in a ready stance with loaded hips allows athletes to move immediately and explosively. In basketball, on the other hand, it seems that almost nothing is more common than helpside defenders standing upright. Physiologically, straight legged players must sink their hips at least a little bit in order to move, and sinking your hips a little bit takes a little bit of time. Now, if you consider how often a defender is just a split second late to help on a dribble drive or recover to challenge a 3, and how often games are won and lost by a single point, it becomes clear that staying in a stance with loaded hips can make a huge difference over the course of a season. Of course, this is not exactly a revolutionary idea, as nearly all basketball coaches do preach the importance of staying in a stance on defense. That having been said, however, football coaches on the whole do a far better job of ingraining this simple yet vital fundamental into their teams than we do as basketball coaches.
Compartmentalize Staff Assignments
In football, it’s nearly universal that a head coach relies on his staff to carry out specific football-related duties (ie, offensive and defensive coordinators, etc). In basketball, this seems to be far less common. Granted, a football coach is responsible for 11 offensive and 11 defensive players whereas a basketball coach is responsible for just 5 at a time, so perhaps this division of labor is less necessary in hoops. Plus, as a head coach, you might not be comfortable giving up control of your offense or defense. However, unless you’re a self-deluded egomaniac, you probably can admit that you have weaknesses as a coach. Or, to say the same thing another way, your team probably has areas that require improvement. So, let’s look at an example. As you analyze your stats, you notice that your team is only managing to collect 7 offensive rebounds per game. In most cases, a number this low reflects not a lack of size or athleticism but rather the poor/lazy rebounding habits you’ve allowed your team to form. Furthermore, if you investigate a bit further, you will likely discover that other teams you’ve coached also featured the same deficiency. What does this tell you? It mostly tells you that your top priorities as a coach do not include offensive rebounding, and that’s OK. A head coach can not and should not simultaneously prioritize everything, but that’s kind of the point- you should be self-aware enough to know which important facets of the game you’re likely to let slip through the cracks and place someone else on your staff in charge of those facets. In so doing, you will likely see improvement in the areas where you empowered your assistant coaches, but you may also find that allowing them a greater sense of ownership will increase their morale (and therefore their overall performance) and better prepare them to be head coaches as well.
Single Word Communication
Partly out of necessity, given the size of the field and the noise of the crowd, football coaches have done a marvelous job of developing an entire language based on single-word communication. For example, take the play call “Twins Right 38 Toss,” which would traditionally mean a toss sweep to the right side of the field. However, what if the team is up 4 points with under 2 minutes to play? Given those circumstances, a football coach might be very concerned about the opposing team stripping the ball or about his own ball carrier forgetting time/score and allowing the defense to stop the clock by forcing the football out of bounds. A well prepared football coach eliminates these potential issues by modifying the play call to “Protection Twins Right 38 Toss” with the word “protection” telling the running back to keep 2 hands on the football at all times and to stay in bounds at all costs and reminding the rest of the team to very consciously avoid any penalties. Without that single-word communication, a football coach would need to deliver those instructions in those circumstances, which would be completely impossible without taking a time out. This principle is widely applicable in basketball as well, particularly regarding late game situations. For example, you’re down 3 points after just hitting a layup with 32 seconds left in the game but you’re out of time outs. Do you want your players to trap once and foul? Or do you want them to trap in the backcourt and foul in the front court? Or maybe there’s enough time to get 1 extra trap in the front court before the foul? Or maybe you want to foul their weakest free throw shooter rather than bothering with a trapping defense? Regardless of your philosophy in this situation, it’s unrealistic to expect your team to know precisely what you would prefer and even more unrealistic to be able to offer precise instructions and direct traffic on the fly. If, on the other hand, you had adopted a football-like communication system, you would likely be able to get your message across with greater efficacy. For example, “Avalanche” could mean we’re trapping in the back court and fouling in the front court. “Avalanche Strong” could mean we’re trapping once and fouling and “Avalanche Weak” could mean we’re trapping in the back court and trapping once more in the front court before the foul. And finally, “Avalanche 35” could mean that we’re trapping in the backcourt and fouling in the front court unless #35 catches the ball, in which case we’re fouling immediately. Regardless of the specifics, basketball coaches in general should do a better job of simplifying their communication down the stretch of close games.
I hope these thoughts are at least somewhat helpful… looking back, I wish I had spent more time with successful coaches in other sports to attempt to pick up transferable ideas and universal principles… for example, swimming may have little in common with basketball, but it’s easy to imagine that retired St. Alban’s swimming coach Skip Grant could have taught me a thing or 500 about leadership, motivation, character education, and a host of other traits that made him a legend in the first place… in other words, to a large extent, coaching is coaching, regardless of the sport… thanks very much to Coach Raveling for providing this forum, and thanks to his audience for reading this article…
