Telltale signs of bad basketball coaching

When your "go-to" defense is a triangle and one.
When you are such a devotee of fundamentals you don't allow your players to take a 3 point shot.

 

I don't know about you sp, but I can't stand the grammar police!

 

Piggybacking on Batman's comments - It's also a good sign if players improve as the season go on. Obviously, some won't because of injuries or because of their own talent limitations. But two JV coaches I'm thinking of, they always manage to turn a kid or two I'd think would have no chance at being a varsity contributor into one.

 

If you are out of time outs but have had the lead the entire game.

Coaches that call time out for that added possession when their team is scoring about .1 of a point every time they have the ball and they are down 35 points.

 

On the other hand, what's the difference between good coaching and over doing it?

Two situations from my experience come to mind:

1). A boys game about 15-16 years ago. It was early in the fourth quarter. The team was in compete control, up by about 25 or so, in absolutely no danger of losing. They committed a turnover and got burned for an easy layup. The coach called a timeout just to rip into them. When play resumed, the same thing happened. The coach called another timeout and ripped into them again.

2). A girls game about two years ago. A team is up by 30 with about three minutes left. Just about everyone in the gym just wanted the game to end as soon as possible (or at least I did). The winning team's coach called all his timeouts to go over situations and plays. "OK, we're tied right now," he said. I felt like he was holding the other team, the officials and everyone who could not leave early hostage.

Is that good coaching or overkill?

There is this thing called practice and I've always thought that if a coach needed to iron out something, or work on something that was the time and the place.

Or am I missing the point?

I will admit, I'm a big fan of the "Practices are the coach's time; games are the players' time" philosophy.

 

I don't know about the coaching part, but having Northwestern on your jersey is definitely a telltale sign of bad basketball.

 

Ugh, this reminded me of my coach's brilliance my senior season in high school. We won our conference the year before with a senior laden team (20 of 22 full time starters were seniors). So, all summer, we put in an entire new offense with a heavy focus on traps and counters. It was similar the Redskins offense of the 1980s, but with no passing. I am thinking, "this is great. We are going to beat the crap out of bigger teams this way." We kept a portion of our old offense as well. Well, first four games, we never show the new offense and get beat brutally in each game. Fifth game is against a team we haven't beaten in about seven years and the head coach's alma mater. All of sudden, he shows the new offense and we win a squeaker. I thought "aha, he was saving this for them and now we will use it the rest of the year, and win our conference." Nope, he put it back in the box.

 

I don't know if those are good or bad. I think they're annoying, but maybe they work for some coaches. It seems like the kind of thing, if a good coach does it on the way to great season, brilliant, if a bad coach does it, overkill.

 

The first one, I think, can be good coaching. Especially the second timeout. He'd just gone over something and they screwed it up again, so you call timeout again to hammer the point home. Especially if it's a good team with high aspirations, those are the moments that can drive it into them not to get complacent.

Second scenario just sounds annoying. He probably had a purpose to it, especially if the JV guys were in the game and they might not get a lot of work in those spots, but work on that crap in practice. That's almost to the point of bad sportsmanship.

 

Here is bad coaching from when I played high school baseball:

Our coach was one of those guys who played favorites and acted like he was coaching a pro team.

So pitchers did not hit. They did not even get to take batting practice. Well, our best pitcher was also one of our best hitters. It was clear to everyone. So the coach had to change his philosophy halfway through the season and let him bat as the DH every game.

Also, he had three catchers who were the biggest suckups on the team. Guys who never questioned him. Guys who were not very good at catching. So the coach realized that he needed someone who could do the job and brought a player in from the outfield to catch and put these three guys in the outfield -- benching three better players.

I once won a contest at practice among all the players. The prize was that you did not have to run after practice. So when the running started, I stood there grinning.

Coach: "What are you doing?"

Me: "I won. The prize was I didn't have to run."

Coach: "You probably want to run anyway."

Me: "(silently while jogging to the outfield) Not really."

He left after that year. The rumor being that he had cancer. The responses went from "serves him right" to "he's probably faking it."