A Busy Summer: An Account of Life with the England Under 18 Mens Team - (by Rick Wooldridge)

Introduction

Torbay Tigers head coach gives a snapshot of his time with the England U18 team during this Summer. Very interesting reading.

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How To Evaluate Talent – Part 1 - (By Rob Meurs)

Introduction

As borders open across the globe and the world becomes smaller, talent evaluation has become an area of major investment for elite clubs.

In 1998 Dirk Nowitzki was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks as a relative unknown, (certainly in the USA) and a player who had not even played in Germany’s top division. Fast forward to 2006 and NBA and European clubs have dozens of scouts scouting the globe for top players, making the chance of unearthing another Nowitzki-like secret seem slim at best.

One of the best in the international scouting business is Rob Meurs.

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How To Evaluate Talent – Part 2 - (By Rob Meurs)

Introduction

In the second part of his article "How to evaluate talent" Rob Meurs focuses on the feel for the game and the skill level of the young player.

How many times a coach gets frustrated because his big guy wants to play PG and starts to dribble the ball and screwing up plays. Or the defensive specialist who also wants to show he can score and misses one shot after the other. Or the wing who is open and takes a 3 pointer while he can’t throw a rock in the ocean, not realizing the leave him open because he can’t shoot. For scouts and coaches it’s important to know if the player can play within his limitations and if not can it be fixed.

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How To Evaluate Talent – Part 3 - (By Rob Meurs)

Introduction

In this series of articles, Meurs explains his philosophy on talent evaluation, an issue that is vital for basketball coaches at all levels.
In part 1 and 2 he talked about physical, mental feel for the game and skill level aspects of talent in this part 3 I will go into what influences the chances of a young talent to grow into a big time top level player and where can it go wrong.

Physical, mental, feel for the game and skills are the 4 aspects in talent evaluation, maybe you can add learning ability to that to make it complete. As coaches and scouts we know most of this and still we miss out on very good players and we rate players talented and they never develop and even disappear from the international scene. Brings us back to “what happened with the (so called) talented players who never lived up to their expected level”.

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Defensive Transition - Its About Time ? (by Alan Lambert)

Introduction

In my forty some years experience as a player and coach, one area of the game looms in my mind like a man sinking in quicksand.  What I'm talking about and today's teaching topic is defensive transition.  Few players do it with enthusiasm. Failure to do it costs your team easy points. More commonly it is one of the primary causes of infighting amongst teammates, because someone's mistake or failure to get back leads to that easy score.  

To be perfectly honest there may be nothing in the game that takes more energy and optimism out of a team's play than failure to get back and stop your opponents transition. So why do I choose this subject as this month's Playground Pointer?  Primarily because I want to show you player's and coach's that it's not about stopping every fast break.  It's about making the effort every time and stopping some of the breaks.  It's really about time don't you think ?

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Nine Commandments of Successful Play making

Many coaches see the team’s smallest player who can dribble the ball into the front court and enter it to the wing as the point guard. To me, this is like seeking a quarterback to receive the snap from center and hand-off to a running back. I need more, want more and demand more from a point guard. I envision a quarterback in a West Coast or Fun n Gun Offense.

The lead guard requires a special skill set. He leads his team, acts as a catalyst on defense and a play maker on offense, knocks down big shots and creates easy opportunities for teammates. They understand the game, while an increasing number of players, at all levels, rely strictly on physical abilities, failing to develop the game’s mental aspect.

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When and Where to Play a Trapping Defense 

The trick to playing a trapping defense is to have a signal as to who will trap, and who will cover the remaining positions.  In general on any trap with two players the trapper committing should have a code name, something like FIRE or STRIKE.  This man commits to the double, while the remaining three players must leave their man coverage momentarily to form a zone triangle up to anticipate the pass out and protect the basket weak side.

Normally this zone triangle must put two floating players in the paint high and low whenever a trap occurs outside of the lane to cover any quick passes to cutters down the middle which might results in a quick score.  The same would be true if you called 25 RED CORNER, 1 and DONE where you would pick up at half court, and trap the first deep corner pass.  Regardless your three remaining players must zone up to protect the high and low basket and the most dangerous pass back out.

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To Become a Shooter (by Otis Birdsong)

When I stepped out onto the court before a game, whether it was in college or the NBA, I had only one thought running through my head – what is my role defensively tonight?  No, I wasn’t trying to decide how best to get my shots off or even what moves I would make to get my teammates open.  I wasn’t thinking about my offensive game at all.  I was preparing to shut my assignment down while playing team defense.

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