Happy Wednesday - Make sure you’re taking game shots.

Instilling Confidence in Players

Basketball is a momentum sport. Sometimes it feels like everything is going your way. Lucky bounces, you get the"shooter's rolls", guys are in the zone, the entire team is connected on defense.

But we've all been on the other side of momentum. Where everything is going wrong. Every bounce seems to go to the other team. Every judgment call by the referees seems to go against you. Every shot seems to rim out at the wrong time.

But one thing we can certainly control as coaches is our reaction to these events - especially our reaction to our players' mistakes, failures, and ups and downs.

I had a recent conversation with a coaching friend of mine, and we both came across a quote from Matt Painter about how he always wants his scorers to play with confidence and feel good. He makes it a point to instill confidence and make sure they are playing loose.

Think about that next time you're coaching and your scorers or shooters are struggling. Be very attentive to their confidence levels and how they react to misses. If they are hanging their head, looking over at the bench after every shot, or looking at the crowd to see what a parent is doing, you may have a player seriously struggling with confidence.

Make sure that you keep your focus on teaching the game, correcting mistakes from a tactical standpoint, and getting your best scorers to have short memories. Focus on the next play, the next shot, and the next opportunity. One of the hardest things for players to understand is that the last shot has no bearing on the next shot. It's a completely new set of circumstances and has every chance of going in. But if they are in a mindset that it won't go in, then it likely won't go in!

Questions for you as a coach:

Offense Simplicity

I think coaches and players have a tendency to overcomplicate offense.

At its core, great offense comes down to two simple ideas:

There are plenty of ways to create an advantage on offense:

• Push the ball in transition and force a numbers advantage.
• Use screens, whether down screens, ball screens, back screens, or flares. If a defender gets caught on a screen, you have created an advantage.
• Drive the ball to score, which forces defensive rotations.
• Space the floor so defenders are stretched thin. Bigger gaps mean longer closeouts, and longer closeouts create more chances to attack.

I’ve always felt like great coaches figure out what fits their team and their personnel, then drill the repeated ability to create those advantages. Some teams are awesome at ball screens, others are great a dribble drive, and some are great at motion principles like down screens. Your job is to find what suits your group.

But creating an advantage is only half the equation. Players also need to understand what to do with the advantage once they have it. This is where decision making separates good offense from great offense.

Once the advantage is created, smart players know how to keep it alive. Sometimes that means drawing help and finding the open teammate. Sometimes it is a point guard keeping the defender on his hip and slowly probing until the big defender backs away, opening the lane for a bucket or a foul.

The hard part for a lot of teams is that advantage creation and decision making need to be blended together in real time. You can install great actions, but if players freeze when the advantage appears, the action breaks down and doesn’t mean #$%@. On the flip side, you can have smart decision makers, but if your team rarely creates real advantages, those decisions never have a chance to matter. The best offenses build both layers together so players learn to recognize advantages the instant they appear, then make confident and simple reads.

This is where repetition becomes your best friend. Not the kind of repetition where players go through motions with no pressure, but the type that forces quick recognition and rewards the right decision. Small sided games, constraint drills, and competitive breakdowns teach players to see the advantage, keep the advantage, and finish the possession. When players start recognizing these moments instinctively, your offense becomes much harder to guard because it is no longer scripted, it is reactive and confident.

As a coach, the challenge is deciding what your team needs most. Do they struggle to create advantages, or do they struggle to keep them? Are your players hesitant passers, or do they over-dribble and let defenders recover? Use those questions to guide your next week of practice. If you can build a team that consistently creates advantages and makes simple, confident decisions, your offense will improve. Give your players clarity, give them repetition, and trust that these two pillars will raise the ceiling of everything you run.

The Scouting Report is your weekly dose of resources that can help your coaching. Plays of the Week, videos, drills, etc. What’s the old joke? The best coaches are just the best thieves?

Shared Resources

4-1 Zone Defense Concept:

There is no crazy parent of the week - but I look forward to all the crazy emails and messages you get this week after tryouts and cuts :)

We’ve all gotten that one message from a parent that makes you pause, blink twice, and say… “Did they really just send that?”

If you’ve got a funny, confusing, or just plain wild message sitting in your inbox, send it in to [email protected]. We’ll feature the best ones anonymously - names and personal info will be removed.

Let’s remind each other we’re not alone in this coaching journey.

That’s a wrap on Episode 17 of Game Shots. Thank you for subscribing. Truly.

My mission has always been, and will always be, to support coaches around the world who love the game and want to keep getting better.