Brendan Suhr Basketball 2014 Clinic Notes

Brendan Suhr – 10 Ideas that Transfer from NBA to college & high school.

– Last year: Why do I coach? Would I want to play for myself? When you lose your “why” you lose your way. This clinic is about understanding why we’re coaching. We coach for the kids.
– The goal – why do I do what I do?

1. Player/coach relationship – Coach K, Doc Rivers, Geno, Popovich | Brendan Suhr Basketball 2014 Clinic Notes
– They can coach in a demanding style because of the relationship they have with their players.
– The great players demand that you coach them hard.

2. Evaluate your practices – How much time do I practice? | Brendan Suhr Basketball 2014 Clinic Notes
– Pat Riley – 3 hour practices. “Kill them every day”
– Chuck Daly tapered toward end of season because of all the games and the wear on the players. Stopped practicing and then saved their legs.
– PRACTICE SMART AND BE EFFICIENT. Decide what you want to do!
– Teach defense while you teach offense. Do both at the same time! Be twice as efficient. This is not football.
– Watching film: In the NBA the players’ attention span is very short. As short as the kids we’re coaching. No more than 13 clips! 4 or 5 best offensive players. 2 BLOBs, 2 SLOBs, 2 transition.

Make sure learning takes place while you’re watching video!!! It’s not meant to punish. Things that you say because you’re mad and angry sometimes leave scars on players. Shout praise and whisper criticism. Isiah Thomas would coach his teammates very hard, but when it came time to coach Isiah, Suhr couldn’t coach him hard at all or he’d go in the tank. Know what turns the button on each one of your players.

– How many meetings do you have with your players during the course of the year?
– 2800 in the NBA. Every timeout. Every halftime. Every quarter. After every game.
– During meeting: Change personnel, change strategy, motivate, inspire, give hope – when we come out of the timeout 28,000 know whether we had a good meeting or not.
– Business meetings are 1-2 hours and nothing gets accomplished. We must get results right away! You have to determine strategy and you have to get results.
– Tom Flick – 70 huddles a game. 15-20 seconds to determine strategy, play, motivation, 10 teammates with different education, backgrounds, religions, etc. For that play to work, that group of people has to come together to be one. And in 6 seconds we will know whether it worked or not! Bring them together and make them one!

3. EXECUTION – Offense and defense. You must execute. Therefore you have to teach well. You have to be prepared. We must demand execution. | Brendan Suhr Basketball 2014 Clinic Notes

4. Belief system. – You have to know what you stand for. Offensively and defensively we have to believe something. Don’t change your system after bad games! You get buy in from believe in. If you keep changing they’re not going to believe in it. The other key to get buy in is to get your best player to buy in. “Heres what I want to do. But it won’t work unless you buy in.”  |

5. Offensive style of play. – Danger of clinics and watching champions. We try to emulate their system without having the personnel. Make your style fit your talent. Take back what fits you!! Take bits and pieces from the best coaches in the world and then make it your own. When you put it in, it becomes yours.
– Can you beat the best teams that you play? Does your system allow you to beat the BEST. That’s the style of play that you want to have. Get your team ready for the playoffs. Don’t change your style of play just because you’re playing weak teams.
– Things to consider: Do we want to fast break? Does your team have the personnel for it? Are we going to have a secondary break? Triangle? Princeton? Passing game? Motion? Dribble drive. Set play? Continuity offense? Pick & roll attack? – Do you play anyone that plays the P&R, if yes you better learn it.
– Quick hitters help you get the right player get a shot. Do I have 3-5 sets to get my best player a shot?

6. Do I have a crunch time offense? In the course of the game we figure each other out. Do we have special plays for last 4 minutes of games that LOOK just like other sets, but are a counter. Suhr has a whole series of plays that they will do that they only use for last 4 min.

7. How many zone offenses do we need to have? Do you have enough attacks in zone that when teams take away your man plays that you are still on the attack.
– How many press offenses do you have? Is my team prepared for special situations? Timeout with under 20 seconds to go. Am I making stuff up? Less than 5% of stuff made up for the first time in timeouts works. Have them prepared!! Coaches at every level are making up plays in the last second – it doesn’t work! Run what you have practiced.

8. Defensively – how do we defend pick and rolls? How do we play post defense? What do you do when we play against a phenomenal player? Do we have a defense to stop the very best player. Can we get the ball out of the best player’s hands? Do we have junk to disrupt a team?

9. This should be number 9 – Are you a discipline coach or a standards coach? Do your rules prevent you from winning. Coach’s job is to help win the game. There are basic discipline rules for missing practices, etc. Coach K’s book called the Gold Standard. Standards allow you to be a leader as a coach. “Be on time.” “No excuses.” “The way you treat your teammates.” You have to have a vision of how you want your program to be. You also have to have a vision of how you are going to react when you get a call at 2 AM that one of your players has been in an incident. You must have a plan for when things go wrong. Talk it over with someone that you trust.

10. Every one of your players have to be an A student in basketball. All of them have to know it! In our class it matters that every player learns. Otherwise things don’t work. Academics and basketball IQ are not the asme.

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Brendan Suhr Basketball 2014 Clinic Notes