By Vytautas Valiulis
Check out the 12 offensive and 12 defensive hidden stats to improve team’s effort and accountability to playing the game the “right way.”
This season can bring more satisfaction for you as a coach, along with improved buy-in with your daily workouts. Stick with this article until the end, and you’ll see how to chart your practices and games hidden stats that lead directly to more accountability, better team chemistry, and ultimately more wins for your program.
Being a coach at any level of basketball is a blessing. Each level has its own challenges and rewards. However, the higher the level you coach, the higher the number of intangibles you must take into consideration, which leads to the meticulous analysis of the team’s strength and weaknesses during preseason, all the while developing the team’s identity. At the end of the season there are only going to be a handful of winners in every conference, region, tournament, championship series and so on. The Villanova’s, Golden State Warriors, Madrid Real type of organizations are few and far between. These teams score efficiently, utilize position-less basketball, have a collective competitive mind-set, and the best group of talented individuals. Efficient scoring and position-less basketball rely upon players’ talent and athleticism, as well as the team’s style of play. These are supported by the coaching staffs’ philosophy, tactics and analytics. However, the most important trait is having a competitive mind-set; and the quicker you get buy-in from the team, the quicker exciting things will start to happen for your program.
“This might sound or look good in written words, Coach.”, you may be thinking to yourself, “But is it really that simple?” There might be a lot of you sitting in your office or at home reading with thoughts about countless books, articles, and hype videos on YouTube about competition. Don’t tune me out just yet, because in next paragraph I will present you with the 12 offensive and 12 defensive hidden stats that will help your team become more competitive during practice, scrimmages, and games; as well as holding each other accountable. Ultimately, these hidden stats will allow you as a coach to be more demanding of your players with words backed up by data.
As you see many of them are self-explanatory as expected. I like to have it charted by quarters, this allows me to follow the game from skills perspective and see clearly defensive and offensive opportunities we miss, and each players activity on the floor. Give it to one of your assistants, managers to chart it during the practices and games, have them post weekly results in the locker room.
- Extra pass-you have an open look, but defender is running at you, leaving somebody on your team open.
- Corner 3Pts attempt-these becoming commodity, chart them.
- Cuts on drives-if your man on help side is ball watching on drive, cut behind him.
- Three drives per possession-this will give plenty of extra passes, and easy looks.
- Hockey assists- last pass that lead to assist.
- Transition possession-team should have 1/3 of possessions in easy scoring opportunities.
- Half court sets-another 1/3 of possessions called half court plays.
- Three Pts. attempts-last 3rd of offense is generated from 3s * last 3 you can adjust to your needs
- Rim runs-bigs has to run to open the floor.
- Mini lane post ups-post inside the paint first.
- Multiple action-can your team create after initial action has been stopped.
- Paint touches-get inside the teeth of defense.
Defense
- Tactical fouls-stopping the fast break without unsportsmanlike foul, not giving a layup, stopping a dangerously evolving possession with a foul before bonus.
- Altered shots- wall ups, verticality,brim protection.
- Help the helper-somebody is going tohelp, sink and fill.
- Miss box out assignment.
- Charges.
- Jumps on fakes-don’t leave your feetof the ground before the shot goes up.
- Multiple stops-team getting 3 stops ina row on defensive end.
- Deflections-disturbing timing, getting 50/50 opportunities.
- Point guard rejected in PnR-this can be treated as activity in PnR defense, miss assignment on team’s defensive strategy guarding on ball screens.
- Big miss PnR-same for bigs.
- Middle break-not giving drives to the middle of the floor (it can be baseline)
- Multiple effort-giving extra after you have already done enough.