1. Roman DeBeers

To bring this back up, we're really screwing this up. Now that we know her other profession, we need to send Victor as the SE rep, not yeota.

That's a great video. We get to practice about once a week for an hour and devote about 35-40 mins to skills and another 20 or so to team stuff. It's tough b/c we just don't see the kids that often. The zone defense thing is something that the commissioner brought up at the draft. He wanted coaches to teach some man defense, but everyone seemed to shrug it off like no one was going to run it.

The position pigeon-hole thing he is right about, and I see a lot of. We've used our worst player at every position in practice/game aside from PG (and taught him some skills at all), and we've used our best player at every position (trying to develop his inside game b/c he might keep growing). Our Beast Wing we've moved around a lot too. He is right, though, about the extremes. I feel like this kids have it already ingrained into them what position they play. We put PG1 inside once in a run of our play at practice, and he straight up said to us "I don't need to learn this from here b/c I am a guard not a post player".

I still think attempting to optimize offense, defense, and lineups is something that will help the development of the kids compared to what I have been doing. If anything, learning a bunch of defenses (and how to react to offensives as they counter) has to be good for them. Offensively we have a lot of skill-type stuff to work on (moving without the ball, ball handling, etc), and I should probably put more of an emphasis on it at practice.

Victor is currently in love akaik

judging by that 2nd wall of text i think you should watch the video again

I do declare, the NBA is the moast best league!

huh? I watched it. I get to see the kids for an hour a week. I spend 2/3 of the time on skill stuff. I've tried to give them "homework" to work on specific stuff, but I have no idea if they do or not. I try to take away teaching points from every game, but it's not always easy.

I think winning at 12 actually means a lot. It did for me at least. These kids ceiling is probably varsity high school, and that's probably for about half the league at most. Decent chance there is a kid or two in the league that could maybe play D2-D3 bball. Really good players in this area don't play in this type of league. These kids probably have 6 seasons left (including this one) if they are able to continue to play the sport. Why not try to give them the best chance to win it all?

I don't think I'm doing them a huge disservice by trying to figure out a way to be a better in-game coach. We are going to run an offensive style in a game. We are going to run a defensive style in a game. We are going to set our lineups in a game. Why not do all of that that helps them develop and win? I won ONE championship in 13 yrs of playing baseball it was probably my coolest moment on the field ever, despite being some rinky dink rec league at age 10.

I think you have a good idea with the 1-3-1 trap defense and the box and 1. When I was this age my team played a ton of box and 1 and it works incredibly well. Kids this age being followed around and face guarded freeze up so much.

When people adjust to this I would switch into a 2-1-2. Two guards out around the sides of the key extended (give them each a range of their side of the court), kid at the center of the free throw line, and two on the low blocks. This can be used as a trap as well, where the 2 guards both pressure the other teams point guard, or work with the 1 at the free throw line to trap the first pass (of which the 1 denies a pass to the center and the off ball guard then shifts to anticipate the 2nd pass). Have the really fast kid as one of the first 2 and have him focus on forcing the pass to the opposite wing. Then the 1 and the other guard go trap, he tries to deny/steal the next pass. Put the best player as the 1, as he is likely to have the best basketball instincts and he can move up top to help with trapping and creating turnovers, or drop down low as the action moves. It also allows him to get in as much quality action as possible on defense, and be in a good spot for transition.

For substitutions, there really isn't a magic formula. Usually its a pretty good idea to have more balanced teams so the 3 subs don't create a B team for the 2nd half of quarters. But watch what the other coach does, and don't get caught with his best 3 subbing in against a super favorable lineup for him. Another trick is when the other coach calls timeout or is putting in subs and clearly about to try and exploit something to change defense. More than likely he is going to tell them to do something pretty specific, and if you change they are going to try and do it anyway and get confused.

It is a GREAT and underused strategy imo to sub your best and fastest players out for short breaks in the 4th to catch their breath and grab some water. If they know it is going to be 1-2 min until they are back in they will stay with the flow of the game and be able to really push it when they get back out there. The worst is when kids are on the bench for extended times and get cold. Much better to give everyone subs here and there but just give the worst kids less, at that age the kids that arent that good care more about playing every quarter (especially the 4th in a close game!) and will not care if they are on the court for a few possessions.

FWIW we are the fairest team in the league wrt to playing time and haven't had a kid play less than 16 mins a game, and have sat our best player > 4 mins every single game while having all 8 at every game.

SO MUCH TEXT

they are 11 and 12 yr olds (so like 4th-6th grade)



seems crazy to be thinking about it so much

afaik 11-12 year olds are 7-8th graders

I didn't take it as much as tdomeski only cared about winning, he just wanted to not fail as a coach. Seems reasonable imo.

yeah everyone in the league is in 6th or 7th grade.

I put the thought into it b/c I have no idea what I am doing outside what I've learned from YouTube and online over the last 2 months. It's like completely foreign to me. I'm sure it's way easier for people that have experience or have a general idea on good strategy. It's like anything you are doing but have no idea how to do it. It takes way f longer to figure it out than it should.

So don't ****ing read it yeota. Jesus Christ. Quit being a goddamn idiot.

I'm pretty sure the keys to little kids basketball are to press, trap and get out into transition as much as possible, because half court offense at that age level is a disaster. Crash the boards when you do get into half court situations too, that's another way to get easy looks

Yea there's not much point in offensive suggestions, and I assumed pressing was not allowed, or only in the last 2 mins of 3rd and 4th quarter or something?

Crashing the boards when he's getting crushed in transition seems like a terrible idea

YES

well obviously i didnt read any of it

ive got 15 years of experience of basketball with kids ranging from 3rd-HS doing officiating



now i run a youth officials organization. i watch like 20 hours of youth basketball per week. i think 12 yr olds who could handle the ball with both hands, shoot from <8 feet and box out would be an accomplishment.

Of course yeota is a lolref

and umpire!

yeota taking out his pent up anger at screaming youth bball coaches itt

11-12 is little league world series age, lol you act like these are kids who are too young to understand the rules and too weak to get a ball to the hoop from the foul line

tdom, would you say you have a team of natural athletes or scrappy hard workers?

not really, its just hilarious to see 40+ year old men going ballistic over 4th grade girls basketball

kinda funny when the 25 year old is the adult of the situation

the majority are though, very few kids have good skills and even the ones that do are just bigger and faster and dribble with their right hand only until they get enough picks set for them to get to the hoop