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All posts for the month May, 2012

“Never Quit”

Posted by Keys to the Gym on May 30, 2012
Posted in: Dick Written Posts. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

Sometimes people overdo the idea of quitting and how awful it is. “A winner never quits, a quitter never wins.” That’s a catchy line, but catchy lines are not to be taken 100% literally all the time.
If you are fourteenth man on your team, never getting in the games, and you have a chance to get on another team where you will get to play, quit. If you don’t like the sound of the word, tell the coach politely that you are “dropping off” or “changing” teams. There is nothing wrong with quitting when you are merely making an intelligent choice for a better use of your time.

However, when quitting involves not a better use of your time but merely a poorer use, then quitting is bad. A poorer use of your time is when your team gets behind, and you are still playing, but it is obvious that you have quit trying to win, you have quit hustling, you have quit playing with enthusiasm, and you have quit giving your best effort. There is no excuse for giving less than your best in practice, in games, in any circumstance. Learn to give your best routinely, and don’t quit doing your best regardless of what those around you are doing.

Quitting when there is a better alternative (like going home to work on ball handling drills instead of remaining in a pickup game where no one is trying hard) is intelligent and should not be confused with quitting-but-still-going-through-the-motions.

From Dick’s book Stuff

Beating Pressure

Posted by Keys to the Gym on May 23, 2012
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Beating the pressure of three blitzing linebackers in football takes strength, quickness, guts and ability. If you don’t have those things, despite your good intentions and great attitude, you could get knocked to the turf all night long. But in basketball, no one is allowed to knock anyone down, and no one is even allowed to bump you.

In other words, basketball pressure is mostly hype, a bluff. It’s false advertising, a sort of “Hurry! Act Now! Supply Limited!” with the warehouse full and no one buying. Basketball pressure is a ruse, a fraud to get you nervous and disorient you so that you make a mistake.

Do you understand that fully? They run around and wave their arms, and sometimes they even run at you with two or three guys, leaving people wide open everywhere just to get you to think you are in a game with blitzing linebackers. They have to make you think you can get knocked to the turf when they know that even their own coach told them, “Don’t touch them. Don’t foul.”

To get a team to apply good pressure, a coach has to do a selling job. “If you guys do this (overplay, get close, wave your arms),” he promises, “they will make a mistake. Just watch and see.”

But players aren’t easily sold. Every day in practice, their second team scores layups against that same pressure. Everyday in drills, their second team gets the ball upcourt many times. So why should they believe the coach? How can he be sure a group of first-teamers won’t do what the second team does—and even better?

Isn’t it true that almost anyone can bring the ball upcourt on another man, one-on-one? Even a center with the aid of a few reverse dribbles will get the ball upcourt on the quickest defensive guard almost every time in practice. And nearly everyone can get away from another man to receive a pass or go backdoor after a few seconds. One man just can’t stop one man at anything. Players know that. So, why is pressure supposed to work?

It isn’t. And it won’t. Unless you let it. Unless you get nervous and start treating waving arms like blitzing linebackers. The answer to beating pressure is to remain calm and strong. Keep your objectives firmly in mind: make decisive moves; come to crisp, sharp stops; throw short, snappy passes; run quickly wherever you go.

Pressure doesn’t begin being effective until you start thinking about stringing moves together, taking two more dribbles, throwing lob passes and getting short rests. As long as you are thinking strong, you should play strong. You may throw a pass away now and then, just as you can anytime. But pressure will not bother you if you realize that (1) they are waiting for you to make a mistake, and (2) a mistake will usually come at the end of a tentative, strung-out play, not at the end of a brisk fake, two strong dribbles, a quick stop and a short, snappy pass.

From Dick’s book Stuff

Pointing

Posted by Keys to the Gym on May 16, 2012
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Since defensive players are supposed to see both their man and the ball at all times, and since there are no pockets in most basketball pants, a good place to put your hands is out to the sides, one hand pointing to your man and the other hand to the ball.

Not that you have to have your index finger on each hand pointing like Uncle Sam on an Army poster, but why not have one hand keeping track of the ball while the other keeps track of your man? Why not have your hands up at the shoulders where they are ready to touch a ball if it comes? With hands up and open fingers pointing to the two things you are wanting to keep in your view, you are constantly reminded of your objective: to keep both in view at all times.

Though most coaches do not demand that you point to both the ball and your man, there is not much excuse for doing anything else with your hands. Keep those hands out and up and point. The effort at pointing constantly will almost certainly tune your concentration more finely and help you to play better defense.

From Dick’s book Stuff

POOP (Pivot Out Of Pressure)

Posted by Keys to the Gym on May 9, 2012
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POOP means Pivot Out Of Pressure. Often a player with the ball, especially one who has used his dribble, gets a defender moving into his face, pressuring. And the reaction of the player with the ball is to lean backward, off-balance, and force himself to throw a weak pass to the side. (Once you lean backward, you hardly have any other option.) This tendency to lean backward is a bad habit and not something you must do. Even if the ball is over your head when the defender moves into position with his arms up in your face, there is a move that can quickly put you back on the attack. The move takes no talent, just the thought to do it. To pivot out of pressure, or POOP, you need to twist your upper body a quarter turn to the side and then bring the ball down to your waist alongside your body (on your side, not straight down the front). By giving that small quarter twist, you put your body between the defender and the ball, and you put your elbow in his face as you lower yourself into a crouch where you have strength and mobility with the ball. The elbow in his face is not meant to hurt him, but its presence certainly keeps him from sticking his nose too close in case he is getting any ideas about going for a steal.

Crouched over the ball, no one can take it from you, and that elbow allows you some room to move a bit to find on open teammate.

The habit of pivoting out of pressure takes about a minute to learn. (You don’t even need a ball to practice it.) It will be very helpful the first time a player steps into your face, and you instinctively make a quarter turn away from him, crouch and stick an elbow near his nose. It is not that you wish to hurt anyone, but you do want to be on balance and you want to be the aggressor, not the guy leaning awkwardly backward.

From Dick’s book Stuff

Never Give the Other Team an Easy Shot

Posted by Keys to the Gym on May 2, 2012
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Here’s an excerpt from There’s Only One Way To Win, a book Dick wrote about his dad, the legendary Coach Chuck DeVenzio, better known as “Coach DV.”  Dick played for his dad in high school, where their undefeated 1967 Ambridge team has been called the best in Pennsylvania history.

Coach DV and Dick
Coach DV and Dick

Basketball coaches are typically fond of talking about all the things they do with their teams to get an advantage over other teams. Coach DV stayed out of these conversations. They irritated him.

“Coaches don’t do anything,” he would say. “Players do. They can have all the plays they want. I’ll take the players. If you have good players, everything works; if you don’t have good players, nothing works. There’s no secret: you get good players and just play basketball. You don’t need all that other crap.”

At basketball camps and coaching clinics, he would often be asked by young coaches what his teams do.

“We don’t do anything,” he’d say. “We just try to play basketball.”

Many interpreted his reply as a reluctance to give away secrets. But Coach DV really couldn’t articulate what it was he did. Or, if he could, he wouldn’t or didn’t like to, or he was “tired of all this talk” and didn’t even want to think about it.

Basically, his teaching consisted of four simple rules.

(Here’s Coach DV’s fourth rule)

4. Never Give the Other Team an Easy Shot

This was Coach DV’s one rule that covered everything hereally cared about on defense. Did defense take a backseat for him? Hardly. He spent half his time on it. But he wasn’t interested in a lot of “rigmarole.”

“Get your man and get on him.”

When he would call a timeout because the other team was suddenly scoring some baskets, he was unlikely to change defenses. He was a lot more likely to succinctly review each player’s assignment.

“Who’s your man? Well then get him!” “Who’s your man? Well then get him!” “Who’s your man? Well then get him!” “Who’s your man? Well then get him!” “Who’s your man? Well then get him!”

Just a lot of foolish repetition? It never seemed like it. In fact, as he went to each player, perhaps grabbing the kid’s shirt for emphasis and looking him dead in the eye from just a few inches away, each question seemed to come with complete, spontaneous inspiration. When he stared at the kid and asked the question, the kid had only one thing on his mind: to tell Coach the name and number of the player he was guarding and to nod that he sure as hell was going to get him.

“You can’t give your man an easy basket. If he makes a tough shot, I’ll take the blame for it. I’ll take the blame for all of those. But not easy ones. You can’t give them any easy ones. If you do that, you might as well just give them the game. What’s the point of playing if you aren’t going to make it tough for them? They won’t even want to play you. And they won’t respect you after the game if you’re just gonna let ‘em score. You can’t let ‘em score. You gotta make them work for everything they get.”

“Coach, do you want me to have my right foot forward or my left foot forward when I guard a player along the baseline?”

“I don’t care what’s forward. Just get down like a basketball player and don’t let him go by you. Get on him!”

When someone did score an easy one for the other team, they could expect to hear it again: “Get on him!”

“But Coach, that wasn’t my man.”

But Coach? A kid could get away with that only once in his career with Coach DV. There weren’t any But Coaches. A player free to score an easy basket was everybody’s man. And when Coach yelled, it was clear to everyone that it was everyone’s responsibility. At the time, the mere power of the yell would make it clear. But later, in a somewhat quieter tone (at least initially), Coach DV would explain it with sarcasm appropriate to absolute catastrophe.

“Son, this is a team. Will you please look around you? You know Tom there, sitting beside you. Tom, will you say hello to Joe-Joe-Bean here? Now, Joe-Joe-Bean, these are your teammates. They are on your team. This is us, this group here, this is our team. During games, we play other teams. You see the scoreboard up there? It just says Us and Them. This is Us. There isn’t anything up there that says Joe-Joe-Bean. It’s just Us. We play games. And we try to win games. And when someone scores on Us, Joe-Joe- Bean, they score on our team.