Questions From Subscribers...

No matter what you do, you'll always have game slippage. But you do want to do your best to minimize that slippage.

This is really a tough question and the answer is probably an entire book. But here are a few ideas to ponder:

- Bench time. Playing time is the ultimate motivator. If you bench players when they don't go hard on defense and don't help, they will quickly develop new habits. If you play the kids that do the little things you want, the others will get the message and do what it takes to get back in the game.

- Overloads. If you really want your help-side defensive players to have one foot in the lane, then in practice require them to be directly on the rim line. In other words, over emphasize in practice so when they get in the game, the slippage will be closer to what you want.

- Too much coaching. Many times coaches make the mistake of trying to do too much. It's impossible to be great at everything, so the best coaches in the world will strategically pick a few things to emphasize and become great at. For example, a local college coach that was very successful only focused on: man-to-man defense, rebounding, and minimizing turnovers. They hardly every shot the ball in practice and they had winning teams every year.

They might not have been good at fast breaks, but they were great at man-to-man defense and out rebounding the other team. They had a horrible zone but that didn't matter. They were great at a few select things.

Perhaps it will help if you focus on fewer things. Coaching is all about what you emphasize. And if you emphasize too many things, your player will be confused and never know what they should do.

I don't know if any of these ideas are the source of your issues, but hopefully this helps a little.

Good luck.

Jeff Haefner
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com

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