ROUND TABLE 21 – WHAT IS SOMETHING UNIQUE YOU DO TO CREATE A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT IN YOUR PRACTICES – EPISODE 361

Round Table 21

Welcome to the twenty first edition of the Coach’s Corner Round Table on the Hoop Heads Podcast. Each episode of the Coach’s Corner Round Table will feature our All-Star lineup of guests answering a single basketball question.  A new Coach’s Corner Round Table will drop around the 15th of each month.

September’s Round Table question is:  What is something unique you do to create a competitive environment in your practices?

Our Coaching Lineup this month:

  • Rob Brost – Bolingbrook (IL) High School
  • Erik Buehler – Chatfield (CO) High School
  • Chris DeLisio – Olmsted Falls (OH) High School
  • Danny Gallagher – Magnificat (OH) High School
  • Joe Harris – Lake Chelan (WA) High School
  • Bobby Jordan – Wagner College
  • Alicia Komaki – Sierra Canyon (CA) High School
  • Pascal Meurs – Belgian Professional Coach
  • JP Nerbun – Thrive on Challenge
  • Nate Sanderson – Thrive on Challenge
  • Dave Severns – Los Angeles Clippers
  • Don Showalter – USA Basketball
  • John Shulman – University of Alabama Huntsville
  • Joe Stasyszyn – Unleashed Potential
  • Lee Swanson – Bunker Hill (NC) High School
  • Jonathan Tsipis – University of Wisconsin
  • Todd Wolfson – St. Francis (CA) High School

Please enjoy this Round Table episode of the Hoop Heads Podcast and once you’re finished listening please give the show a five star rating and review. Make sure you’re subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod so you never miss an episode.  You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, & YouTube.  If you haven’t already, please tell a coaching colleague or friend about the Hoop Heads Podcast so they can listen and learn from some of the best minds in the game!

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THANKS, COACHES

If you enjoyed this episode with our all-star lineup of coaches, let them know by clicking on the links below and sending them a quick shout out on Twitter:

Click here to thank Rob Brost on Twitter!

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Click here to thank Chris DeLisio on Twitter!

Click here to thank Danny Gallagher on Twitter!

Click here to thank Joe Harris on Twitter!

Click here to thank Bobby Jordan on Twitter!

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Click here to thank Todd Wolfson on Twitter!

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ROUND TABLE 21 – WHAT IS SOMETHING UNIQUE YOU DO TO CREATE A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT IN YOUR PRACTICES – EPISODE 361

[00:00:00] Narrator: [00:00:00] The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

Pat Baldwin: [00:00:21] Hi, this is Pat Baldwin head men’s basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. And you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

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That’s a great deal Hoop Heads get your Dr. Dish shooting machine today.

Welcome to the 21st edition of the coach’s corner round table on the hoop heads podcast. Each episode of the coach’s corner round table we’ll feature our all star lineup of guests answering a single basketball question. A new coaches corner round table will drop around the 15th of each month.

September’s round table. Question is. What is something unique you do to create a competitive environment in your practices? Our coaching lineup this month includes Rob roast from Bolingbrook high school. Eric Bueller from Chatfield high school, Krista Lisieux from Olmstead falls, high school, Danny Gallagher from Magnificant high school.

Joe Harris from Lake Chalan High School. [00:02:00]

Bobby Jordan from Wagner College.

Alicia Komaki from Sierra Canyon High School

Pascal Meurs, Belgian professional basketball coach.

JP Nerbun from Thrive on Challenge.

Nate Sanderson from Thrive on Challenge.

Dave Severns from the Los Angeles Clippers,

Don Showalter from USA basketball.

John Shulman from the University of Alabama Huntsville

Joe Stasyszyn from Unleashed Potential.

Lee Swanson from Bunker Hill High School.

Jonathan Tsipis from the University of Wisconsin and

Todd Wolfson from St. Francis High School.

Please enjoy this round table episode of the Hoop Heads Podcast. And once you’re finished listening, please give the show a five star rating and review, make sure you’re subscribed to the Hoop Heads pod.

So you never miss an episode. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, and YouTube. If you haven’t already, please tell a coaching colleague or friend about the who peds [00:03:00] podcast so they can listen and learn from some of the best minds in the game. Get registered for our Hoop Heads pod webinar series, too.

If you’re focused on improving your coaching and your team, we’ve got you covered. Visit  dot com slash webinars to claim your seat. Make sure you check out our other great basketball podcasts on the hoop heads. Pod network of shows, including Thrive with Trevor Huffman, Beyond the Ball. The CoachMays.com podcast Players Court, Bleachers and Boards.

Plus our newest NBA team podcasts, Cavalier Central Grizz and Grind and Knuck If you Buck lastly, if you’re looking for podcast management, editing or launch services, check out mypodcastmanager.com. Get ready to hear for some great coaches about how they make their practices more competitive.

Rob Brost, Bolingbrook High School Bolingbrook, Illinois.

Rob Brost: [00:03:55] What’s up hoops, head round table. Number 21. This is Rob [00:04:00] roast, head boys’ basketball coach at Bolingbrook high school. Today’s question. What is something you, you do to create a competitive environment in your practices? I don’t know if this is necessarily unique or not, but we put everything on the clock.

Everything is timed and everything is scored. So once we start practice, we have a little pre-practice session and then we have a stretching, but once. Practice

starts.

] Everything is on the clock and everything is scored. So that translates into competition really all the time. So no matter what we’re doing, everything’s on the clock.

Everything is scored. So it may seem simple. Might not be that unique. But that’s what we do to remain competitive. Also we charge everything. All of our shooting is charted. And so that becomes competitive as well. So, um, we chart everything time, everything, and score [00:05:00] everything. So, um, that’s what we do at Bolingbrook high school.

Great. To be back with you guys, the hoops had a podcast or the way to go, happy to participate. I hope everybody’s doing well and we’ll talk soon.

Mike Klinzing: [00:05:16] Erik Buehler, Chatfield senior high school, Littleton, Colorado.

Erik Buehler: [00:05:21] Hey Hoop Heads what’s going on? This is Erik Buehler, head coach at Chatfield senior high school.

And this month we were asked what w is something that we do to make our

practices competitive. And I don’t think we do anything special. One thing that we really like to do is we try to find situations to make one team, have an advantage and force the other team to either come back from being down or play against more players, or have less players that they’re playing with.

Um, we accomplished this in many different ways. Sometimes it’s in the full court. Sometimes it’s in the half court. Um, we [00:06:00] use a lot of shortsighted games to simulate, uh, defensive rotations, uh, getting be badly on the dribble, um, things along those lines. Another thing we do is we assign points and we make things games.

So we have a rebounding, we drew a drill. We do where. Um, you actually earn points by getting rebounds and you also are in points by getting offensive rebounds. So we just want to add a point total to something to make it more competitive and make. Make it so that the players want to win the game. And if we can make everything a game, um, hopefully they’ll want to do the drill.

They won’t just want to go through the motions. They want to win the game. And there’s always a consequence. Uh, that’s another thing we, we add to make things more competitive. If you don’t win, then there there’s gotta be a consequence for not winning the game. And there’s also rewards sometimes as well for winning the game.

So, um, that’s all I got this month and hope everyone out there is staying safe. Talk to you later, [00:07:00] but

Mike Klinzing: [00:07:03] Chris DeLisio Olmsted falls, high school, Olmstead falls, Ohio.

Chris DeLisio: [00:07:09] Hey Hoop Heads Chris DeLisio from Olmsted Falls, a round table this week on a competitive environment that we do in our practice. And even though we try to make everything competitive, they, one of the unique ones that we have that we really like is what we did with our shooting, because you.

You can get caught up in so many shooting drills during the year, uh, that we’ve created for individual and for team shooting drills that we do all year and we have a. Dry erase chart in our gym, uh, that we keep track of our, uh, shooting records and we compete shooting wise. So every time we do a shooting drill, whether it be team or individual, it’s a competition.

So our guys really work hard to try to get their names up on the board or surpass somebody. Um, we even keep track of the records over the years, as far as who’s had the [00:08:00] most, um, through all of our teams and, um, It’s a really nice competitive thing to do. Cause shooting can be something that kids don’t always compete at or, um, really work at.

And, um, with so many shooting drills out there, you can kind of get caught up in trying, you know, more and more and more when really I think the goal is just to get shots up, uh, that are game speed and, um, This certainly helps do that. Cause the kids are moving at a fast pace. Try to get more shots up to beat the last score or to get to the top of the record board.

So, uh, hopefully that helps. Thank you,

Mike Klinzing: [00:08:37] Danny Gallagher. Magnificat high school, Rocky river, Ohio.

Danny Gallagher: [00:08:44] Hello, this is Danny Gallagher from Magnificat high school. This month round table question is what is something unique you do to create a competitive environment in your practices? Um, one thing that we started doing two years ago was, uh, we, we [00:09:00] track every free throw that shot. In practice all season long.

So at the end of each week, we’ll announce a, a free throw winner. And then at the end of the season at our, at our post season banquet, we give out an award for the highest shooting, free throw percentage combined in practice and in games. Um, it’s just something that has been fun, fun for the girls.

Something that they look forward to do each day in practice and has definitely led to an increase in our free throw percentage throughout the season.

Mike Klinzing: [00:09:32] Joe Harris Lake Chelan high school Lake Chelan, Washington.

Joe Harris: [00:09:39] Hello Hoop Heads? This is Joe Harris from Chelan high school with this month’s around table question.

What is something unique you do to create a competitive environment and your practice? I believe to gain that competitive edge. It has to be a mindset that you instill in your players. As soon as they walk into the gym for practice, for games, everything in the team, in between that [00:10:00] they need to be competitive.

You have it expect your players to be competitive for your teams can be competitive. There’s a number of drills that you can do and practice to. To gain that competitive edge. What we have used extensively as a disadvantaged drills, where you, you put your offense or defense at a disadvantage and force them to be real competitive in situations.

Couple of those would be two onto no dribble against pressure to get the ball line. We on four rebounding drill and five on five situations, you can. You can limit the fouls and have your teams play really, really hard. Nose defense without calling fouls, you can go next. Hoop wins regardless of the score.

Coach neighbor’s is, has a. Library full of competitive competitive drills. One that comes to mind is score stops, score a drill that we’ve had great success with is one. We call finish it where your office is either you’re up one or down one with [00:11:00] 15 seconds left and the offense rented down and back, and then they have to come and finish out the game either up one or down one against a fresh defense.

Any of these can. And if you do them consistently and instill that mindset of being competitive will help your teams be gain that competitive edge.

Mike Klinzing: [00:11:21] Bobby Jordan Wagner college, Staten Island, New York,

Bobby Jordan: [00:11:27] One way at Wagner that we Create a competitive environment in our practices. Uh, as we have a wind chart, uh, something that we introduced, um, towards the end of the last season, uh, and the wind chart, it is not just four, five, and five or three, or, you know, any game like situation.

But the wind chart is for everything. It’s for a  [00:11:51] sprint in practice, a guy gets a win. Um, it’s for shooting drills guys and get wins depending on how many shots [00:12:00] they make. Uh, so just instituting that wind chart and posting that in our locker room on a weekly basis, got the guys competitive. This is flowing because they did not want to be.

At the bottom of the chart, they want to be at the top of the chart. Uh, so with forced our guys to run harder during sprints to win, um, to take game shots every single time during shooting drills, because they want it to make the movie shots in the drill. Uh, so the wind chart was a great way to, to create a competitive environment in our practices last year.

Mike Klinzing: [00:12:39] Alicia Komaki, Sierra Canyon, high school in Chatsworth,  California.

Alicia Komaki: [00:12:48] I’m going to give a two out of the box answers as to what contributes to our competitive practice environment. The first is we place a huge emphasis on nutrition, and if we constantly are [00:13:00] having 10 of 15 players coming in, they’re lethargic, they’re lacking energy from their diet. We wouldn’t have productive practices.

So we truly think that this emphasis on nutrition allows us to compete. On a daily basis. And the second is that we record every single practice from roughly seven different angles. And so the girls know how much we watch and we review film. And I think that it keeps them honest in most of their efforts.

So to kind of out of the box thinking, uh, on what contributes to our competitive practices at Sierra Canyon,

Mike Klinzing: [00:13:34] Pascal Meurs, Belgian professional basketball coach.

Pascal Meurs: [00:13:41] Actually, it’s quite funny when I think about it for years, for sure. At the beginning of my career practice, after practice would be yelling, um, at my team to finish the place in any kind of, or whether we talk about a half cord one-on-one drill or [00:14:00] a shell drill or whatever it is, I would see myself always yelling out loud for efforts to finish the play.

Two players in offense, I would be yelling, go and follow your shop, go for the offensive rebounds. And for defense, of course, I would do the opposite yell to box out to keep on fighting, stay aggressive till we have possession. But basically it never had success because for me it wasn’t working. And now since a couple of years for myself, yeah, I think I found the solution and I call it nets game.

I’ve met that’s game. Basically. That means you can run it in, in any house. Gord drill one-on-one two on two defensive rotations, shell drill, whatever kind of thing  you do. But maths games means. That’s the player that takes the bowl out of the Mets for the next possession. He can play an [00:15:00] offense again. Um, what did brings two to my game, to my practices.

That’s quite impressive because you see players fighting all over the place to go and grab the rebound. Even if that ball is bouncing, rolling outside of court,  they keep going at it to play an offense, uh, next time. So for me, it really adds something to the overall intensity of my practice and that’s my purpose.

And maybe on practice, we overdo it, but that’s the way I like it. Overdo it on practice to have a good and hot, steady intensity during the game. So for me, that works perfect.

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JP Nurbun from thrive on challenge.

JP Nerbun: [00:16:31] Hey, this is JP Nrrbun from thrive on challenge.com and the current head coach at they lift the Celtics protein in Ireland. Absolutely love this question because one of my core values is competition. So over the years, I’ve really tried to make more and more of our practice. Competitive. I think I’ve always struggled on when there’s a winner or loser, what to do.

Right. I never really liked running the losers for many reasons. Just one being. [00:17:00] I think it takes away from practice time. And also, I just want my players to compete harder, not necessarily because of the running, but because they just want to win. You’re like you want those competitive athletes, right? So over time, what I’ve kind of created a is a competitive culture.

I know Pete Carroll runs one of the Seahawks and Anson Dorrance runs it at North Carolina. And then a lot of NBA teams run as well. It’s really been a foundational system for, for my teams as well as. The dozens of coaches. I I’ve supported through my work TOC, um, you know, the competitive culture really then a day.

It’s a simple system to help you objective, we track and rake your players based upon their practice performance. And what you end up getting is players who are more bond in their role, and they are more competitive and practice, you know, over the years though, we’ve, we’ve developed more and more guiding principles.

Just to make sure it keeps it as a healthy competitive environment and also [00:18:00] keeps the players focus the process, not just the results. Um, I’ve also developed a kind of a spreadsheet, which makes it super, super simple to record, to track, and then rank the players and multiple categories based on their win percentage, uh, which is important because certain players may miss a practice.

Um, or they’d be injured or certain players will just play more games. So you want to use would percentage, um, you know, really over a decade of coaching, I try to motivate players, you know, with the, the speeches. Um, also struggled like many of you probably with dealing with complaints about the plane time, because they felt like they deserved a bigger role.

Um, but if in our experience of running a cauldron, it’s not going to save you your practice time, but. You don’t have to work on using those motivational tricks, um, as well as it’s just gives you that data. So when you’re having those hard conversations with the athlete, or even sometimes the parent, um, you have that [00:19:00] objective practice data, you know, cause especially cause.

Our game data is so skewed. It’s so limited and people are always questioning that. But practice data seems to be a much more credible. And Mike Mike recommendation for coaches that may be interested in this is just to really start tracking wins and losses in your practice, do it on your practice plan.

It’s just a really simple way to do that and start to look at that data. And you start to do, you’re going to create a more intrinsically motivated culture and competitive culture as opposed to something that’s really extrinsically motivated. Also feel free to reach out to me. My email is JP Nerven. Any are bun@thriveonchallenge.com.

If you’ve got any interest in my spreadsheet or training course on the competitive cauldron. Yeah. Uh, once again, my email is JP at thrive on challenge.com.

Mike Klinzing: [00:19:53] Nate Sanderson thrive on challenge.

Nate Sanderson: [00:19:59] Hey, Mike, [00:20:00] this is Nate Sanderson from thrive on challenge. And I’m going to share just a few ways that we try to raise the level of competitiveness in our practices. And the first thing that I would say is that over the last few years, about 90% of what we do in practice is game-based. And what that means to us is that we’re trying to compete.

We’re trying to teach our techniques and our fundamentals and our skill development. All in the context of a game. And oftentimes that also includes trying to keep score even in our one-on-ones. Our two on twos are advantaged or disadvantaged drills. We’re always trying to find creative ways to keep track of winners, losers.

And sometimes that’s done by team. Sometimes that’s done by. Individuals now many coaches, right? Probably familiar with scoring the process and not necessarily just determining winners and losers based on made baskets or won possessions. And that’s something that we also spend a lot of time on is trying to create constraints and rules or a [00:21:00] scoring system that rewards our players for doing the things that we want them to do on a particular possession.

In other words, We may add bonus points, defensively for deflections. We might add a bonus point for an offensive rebound. We might play where a team gets a bonus point. If they shoot it at the rim, or if they shoot an uncontested three point shot. In many ways, the more you can make your small sided games or your scrimmage act like a video game where they’re, I think of these types of examples as like Mario brothers, where, you know, Mario in the week, they jump up and they, they hit the bricks and outcome, these kinds points, you know, that when players do things right.

That reflect your process, that they’re rewarded in the scoring system. Now, the question then becomes, well, what do we do with the results of the scoring system? So let me give you a couple of creative ideas. As far as that goes, number one, we oftentimes will keep track of our winners and losers, and we don’t necessarily always share that data publicly, but we do like to [00:22:00] keep track of it and talk about it as a coaching staff, using a competitive cauldron symbol, similar to what.

Brian McCormick or GP nervine have created templates for that, where over the course of a season, you can get a players winning percentage and the things that you’re scoring in practice, though, we’ve done that in a moment, short term effect as well, where, you know, we may take a Wednesday practice where we need to really add some energy, knowing that there’s a team dinner that night.

We might do six or seven competitive games where we’re tracking our winners and losers and whoever accumulates the most points at the end of the night, they get to eat for us at the next team dinner. We’ve also experimented over the years, um, with a shooting ladder. And that’s simply doing competitive shooting drills in season and out of season, we rank our players one to 15 based on the results.

And then during the week, one goes against two and a best of three kind of shooting series three goes against four or five goes against six, [00:23:00] et cetera. And then the next time that we do that, either in the following week or the second time we might do it in that particular week. Two would go against three, four would go against five.

And you’re continuing to kind of reshuffle your ladder in these head to head match-ups. Again, it doesn’t necessarily always mean there’s a game context in our shooting, but it does add a little bit of competitiveness to it. Yeah. And that ladder we do share with our team team and make public throughout the year.

The last thing I’ll share with you here today, Mike, is that. We also have a tradition in our program of something that we call the shooting Olympia it’s and you know how it is when you get into your practices over winter break practices sometimes can be long and you know, you’re maybe 15, 16 days between competitions.

So we try to break that up with this thing. We call it a shooting Olympics and that’s typically 10, one of our favorite shooting drills. We break our teams and this is nine through 12 into, into mixed age group teams of four, three, four, five players. They all compete in [00:24:00] these 10 events, come up with team names and entrance music.

They have to do a skit when their team is announced, we do the national Anthem. And then at the end of the event, we do metal ceremony. We actually roll out the stand that the wrestlers use to give away metals. At the end of their tournaments, we take pictures of the whole thing. We promote it on social media.

Um, and it’s just become kind of a fun thing. Again, there’s some basketball skill involved. Players are mixed up with kids from different levels, right. Different teams. Uh, and it creates a little, it’s been a competitiveness. And one of the fun things about that is that if a team or when a team wins, the gold medal is one year they are required or asked to come back, even if they graduated to defend those metals in the following year.

So it’s become this event that even alumni pay attention to after they’ve graduated. And one final idea I’ll share with your audience here is we’ve at times done a King or a queen of the court competition as well. I can think back to doing this in our middle school camps, [00:25:00] particularly. Where we might again, the script six, seven, maybe eight competitive drills.

The players are broken up over the six baskets in the gym, and we simply do. If you win at your basket, you move up a level, you move up a basket. If you are the lowest score at your basket, then you move down to basket. And so after each competitive game or each competitive drill, we are reshuffling those groups.

The better players are moving up the ladder, trying to get to the Queens court. And those again that are maybe not doing as well, or are sifting their way down the ladder, but that becomes kind of another fun way to be able to reward players for competing during practice

Mike Klinzing: [00:25:38] Dave Severns from the Los Angeles Clippers question for my cleansing and the hoop said podcast.

Joe Stasyszyn: [00:25:49] The one thing that I’ve seen is very unique is having the players Run the entire practice where the coaches just sit on the sideline. Don’t say a word and watch the players run and organize a practice. Thanks. This is Dave severance from the LA Clippers.

Mike Klinzing: [00:26:09] Don Showalter USA basketball.

Don Showalter: [00:26:15] Don Showalter here from USA basketball. The question is what is something unique you do to create competitive environment in your practices? Well, I think first of all, if you, uh, want to have a competitive drill. Our competitive environment. There’s two things you have to do either you use time or score.

So, uh, you use time and in fact, you have to make so many baskets in a certain period of time, or you have to do a certain ball handling drill in a certain period of time. So time and score is really critical. If you’re going to have a competitive practice. The other thing I think, I think it’s really good to have a competitive start to your practice.

So you put a competitive. Drilling right away and [00:27:00] practice to get the mindset of your team ready. I think it’s really important to have your team have a mental approach to practice. That is a very high level. And by putting in a competitive drill to start your practice, uh, this elevates a level of your players,

Mike Klinzing: [00:27:21] John Shulman University of Alabama, Huntsville, and the 720 sports group.

John Shulman: [00:27:27] Yes, this is John Shulman head basketball coach at the university of Alabama in Huntsville. And the question is what is something unique you do to create a competitive environment in your practices? Um, I will tell you this. Uh, I used to be a drill guy and we used to drill and drill and drill and do fundamentals.

And you still have to do that. You cannot get bored with the basics, as we say, you have to do that. You gotta focus on the fundamentals and you have to do drill work and you have to be able to [00:28:00] jump to the ball defensively and you have to be able to pivot and pass and shoot. But if you don’t. Make your practices competitive in today’s world.

You’re going to lose your kids. And they’re going to be miserable and they’re going to hate coming to practice and you’re not going to get anything out of them. Um, so I would tell you this, and we do a lot of shooting competitions here at UAH, um, because we, we take pride and shooting at ball. Um, so we do a lot of shooting competitions, but the first 30 minutes after our shooting, the first 30 minutes we will play, we’ve got a bunch of kids in this program.

We’ll play five on five on five and we’ll play, make it, take it. So we’ll play five on five and we’re going to run her off into the half court and make it take it. So if you score, you stay, next team comes on. And if you score in score in score and score, you stay the whole time. We will keep score that and we’ll play three, [00:29:00] 10 minute sessions.

I would change up teams after the first 10 and after the second 10. Um, but that has become. The kids have fun. They take pride in it. We get to coach him. Um, but we’re not stopping and starting practice all the time. Um, and this is really was, was when we did this was really February. Um, and so we’re, we’re running our offense, but we’re, we’re competing and I’m telling us 30 minutes of competition, the kids have a blast.

They play hard. Um, And that is the most, it’s probably the best thing that I’ve done in practice in a long time, just to make it take it. I tell you this, you know, when we used to do a shell drill forum forum for, and I loved it, but you got a point for a stop and you got a point for a charge, you got two points for an offensive rebound.

By the time we. Tried to keep score. Um, it was a debacle and guys are getting pissed off and it take you 15. It’d take you a [00:30:00] master’s degree. And in calculus to figure out the scoring system sometimes just make it easy and you get a stop. You get a point and the team at scores get, gets a point. It is what it is.

Um, so I just think, you know, I think it’s a great question. Um, and I think, um, if you don’t make things competitive in practice, you’re going to lose your kids these days. It’s not, Oh, well, when I started coaching, uh, in, in early nineties, you could drill your team today and they, they took it and they did what they’re supposed to nowadays.

You do that. You’re gonna lose your team. You gotta make things competitive. Um, the last time we’ll say I. I like this at the end of a, I think playing a two minute game and score tied, uh, with, with, to, to, to play and jump it up or play a three minute game or four more, four minute game. I think you’d get a lot of different, special situations in there, but I think they compete.

And it’s a two minute game play one [00:31:00] every single day or play a three minute game or play a four minute game. Um, but I think that that will help them compete and get that out of them. But also I think it helps teach a lot of different things. If you talk about different situations afterwards, try to as best as you can, keep your mouth shut during and then talk to them afterwards.

Hopefully this helps and good luck have a great year.

Mike Klinzing: [00:31:27] Joe Stasyszyn Unleashed Potential Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Joe Stasyszyn: [00:31:32] Joe Stasyszyn unleashed potential. This month’s question is what is something unique you do to create a competitive environment in practice? I really love this question because I actually have been speaking on this.

Uh, with my competitive edge model, I speak on this. When I speak for USA basketball, their coach Academy, across the nation. And, uh, Speaking at some Canadian Canada basketball events and [00:32:00] some worldwide events. I also speak on this. So it’s something that I really think is a big part of what I do. Whether you’re talking about player development, individual groups, teams, or coaching, your own team.

My model basically is all about competition. So, you know, rather than just working on a skill, when we work on a skill. We will put some type of competition to each skill that we are developing. Um, and it’s like, I always say, um, I really believe you have to learn how to compete. It’s something that you have to teach players how to do to show them what it looks like, uh, what competing it looks like, and then put them in those situations.

Um, sort of like with a, I just feel like it’s a learned behavior, um, sort of goes along with hard work, hard learning, how to work hard today is at bottom step of the ladder. It’s a learned behavior. I feel that you have to show players what hard work looks like. And I, I just heard an interesting thing.

[00:33:00] Carol Lawson, a new head women’s coach at Duke university just spoke about the difference between hard work and competing. Um, and I totally agree with everything she said, uh, there are two separate things. Um, you know, you can work hard and still not compete. So I think at every practice and every, every training that you do, there has to be a competition, whether it’s a, it’s a time and score thing.

Against going against yourself or whether it’s something that you’re going against another player in practice or in a training. So for instance, when we do our, our, our ball hailing workouts and our player development, we will, we will incorporate a one versus one. Uh, competition with different ball handling moves, where you play players face each other, and there’s a comb put in between you and you have to both attack on the word attack you attack in the first person, you know, may it maybe add a move or two or a counter [00:34:00] move and they have to get to that cone first.

So whether it’s competing like that, or even with, uh, learning how to move without the ball. No, we have, we have developed competing drills, learning how to move without the ball. So you take a, you make a square, so you have a square, you have four corners and you put a player in each corner, you put a player in the middle and they have to learn to compete like a, the person in the middle.

Has to react to the people, exchanging at the corners. And when they exchange the person in the middle of the first person to that corner gets to stay in that corner. And the person who doesn’t get to a corner goes to the middle. So there’s all kinds of things that you can do to create competition, whether it’s for every aspect of basketball, whether it’s moving without the ball, whether it’s ball handling, whether a shooting, whether it’s one-on-one, we incorporate a ball handling competition where you have, where you run the a UGI dribble.

Um, around a three point line, you have one player behind the other, uh, and, and, and, and they each have a ball. So the [00:35:00] person in front, as they’re going around, the three point line handling the ball, when they cross over and go to the basket, the person behind them can then now also attack the basket after they initially the person in front of initially crosses to the basket.

So that gives some ball handling and get some one on one action and per his first person to score, to lay up. Uh, when’s the competition and you know, and the same thing for shooting kinds of shooting competitions that you can do. So the point is, you know, that to me is, was what I really have found to be a very, very effective way to incorporate competition into every practice.

Every workout, no matter what you do, you know, we do a, we do a drill with USA basketball. Um, you know, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a lot with USA basketball, and we do a drill where it’s just a passing and a pivoting drill moving without the ball and communicating, you have two teams and each team has a ball.

So your, your object is to pass the ball, move without the ball with your team and try to catch and [00:36:00] touch a player on the other team without dribbling the basketball, just being able to pivot. So that’s a team competition thing that you can do. So no matter what you do, rather than just working on it on a skill.

I think you’re more efficient in your practice plan or training plan. If you’re gonna incorporate it competition, plus they’re getting the advantage of, you know, people talk about small sided games and things like that. You’re getting any advantage of those kinds of things. The other thing we do is 303 cutthroat.

We do that all through our USA basketball. Camps clinics, junior national teams. We play a 303 cutthroat and we also incorporate the fever rules. The fever rules of three on three is just another way to do it. We just had a program here at unleashed potential. We had a, we have a three on three program that we incorporate now, and then for middle school and high school.

And we play three on three cutthroat and we play three on three with the fever rules. So I just think that that’s how kids get better by competing. And that’s how they learn how to cook again. [00:37:00] You know, I just feel like that’s something you have to teach them and show them how to compete because at the end of the day, player keeps losing, losing.

They’re going to, they’re going to continue to work on her skills and get motivated to get better, to be able to be a better competitor. And I know, you know, as a, as a player development coach, I get calls from all over the country from. Every level of college basketball coaches calling. And one of the first things they asked me is, does the player compete?

So, you know, competing is the top of the list. If you want to play college basketball or high school basketball or any level of basketball beyond the, you know, the very, you know, the introductory, uh, levels that, and, and, you know, we even, we even do that at the introductory levels. We start incorporate some basic games, small sided games of competition.

Uh, I, I have found that, um, over, I work with a lot of Olympic coaches. And national coaches the last couple of years. And one of the things they seem to do is they seem to get their kids competing maybe at a younger age, um, than we do here. [00:38:00] So I, I see some, you know, good things from that and I try to incorporate some of those things in what we do.

So I, uh, I, again, I hope that that helps, um, feel free to contact me anytime. Um, yeah, I could spend a, you know, I promise go speak to people, um, to, to programs and coaches and different clinics. I guarantee them that I will give them a hundred game transferrable. Competitive skill development, situations, performance training situations that they can immediately incorporate to any system, any system that they’re using.

So if you ever have any questions, feel free to contact me. Thank you.

Mike Klinzing: [00:38:42] Lee Swanson Bunker Hill high school Claremont, North Carolina

Lee Swanson: [00:38:49] question was how do we make practices more competitive, something unique we do to make them more competitive. Uh, over the years, uh, you know, as a program we’ve done, uh, numerous things such as, [00:39:00] um, maybe my favorite was have a practice player of the week who we get a championship belt.

We had measurable categories, you know, whether how many dials or helmets, or how many rebounds, how many charges taken, how many fist pounds, so their teammates. So not all of us was on scoring, but that’s one of the way is kind of individually making competitive. Um, I think most coaches will tell you.

Pretty much have a, have a time or score or something to make it competitive in everything that we do. One of my favorite drills, I kind of stole from Mike Dunlap was our three on three winter score losers scored on both ends, um, where you kind of have a. If you, when you stay on a winter sport, if not, you’re gonna to lose your scored and whoever’s has the most winter sports wins it’s going to stay on.

So there’s all sorts of ways to make that practice competitive and make them interesting. At the end of the day, hopefully you’ve got players who are driven to compete, um, and that makes it even better. Um, we’ve been very fortunate to have that. So, uh, if you can make your practices competitive, you get a much better chance to win, uh, on whatever night you’re going to go play.

[00:40:00] Mike Klinzing: [00:40:01] Jonathan Tsipis the University of Wisconsin.

Jonathan Tsipis: [00:40:08] Hey, Hoop Heads, This is head coach. Jonathan sip is with the university of Wisconsin women’s basketball program.  One thing we do that I think is pretty unique that helps drive the competitive environment in our practice is the use of a foam. Uh, oversize dice with our practice plan each day, we make sure that we’ve outlined drills that we know are that are going to have a distinct winner and loser.

And when those drills are completed, we have somebody on the losing team roll that dice, which is a six sided dice. Also on the practice plan one through six, we have a matching, uh, fundamental skill with each number. Uh, that is usually something that’s a minute or less, uh, to complete. Uh, it’s a fundamental skill.

That is a positionless skill. Uh, for example, a one is usually [00:41:00] a nondominant hand ball handling drill that they have to complete two lengths of the floor, uh, to their and backs, uh, as well as a half court. And back in 32 seconds, uh, four might be something we feel like certain days that we need to really work on.

Pass catch and finish, uh, and a good speed. We’ll put a minute up and we’ll do four spot passing and lay up drill. And again, you can, you can change those, uh, based on what, what fundamentals earlier in the season. Maybe you’re really trying nine to emphasize a or C certain areas that, that, you know, for a specific game coming up, uh, that you’ve gotta be able to compete with at a high level.

Uh, I’m a big believer that, uh, teams win games when they win a majority of the smaller battles throughout the game, we feel like, uh, using the foam dice and the consequence one through six helps us, uh, maintain that every day in practice and the importance of it. It also, uh, we have [00:42:00] our point guards always jump in, even if they’re on the winning team, uh, to make sure that they understand they’ve gotta be able to steer the ship.

Uh, during, uh, good times and bad. So, uh, it’s helped us. You can get a set of these dice. Uh, they come into Tupac on Amazon for about $12. Uh, they’re pretty durable. I can tell you that nobody, uh, on your team should like to roll the dice. Uh, but uh, being a foam dice, they can get shat all over the gym and kids are rooting for certain numbers to come up when really every.

Every number is, is pretty equal as far as what it’s going to take, uh, for them to be able to accomplish that task. Look forward to hearing everybody else’s ideas. Have a great day and good luck with, uh, adding to the competitive environment for your practices.

Mike Klinzing: [00:42:46] Todd Wolfson St. Francis high school. Lock-in yadda, California.

Todd Wolfson: [00:42:53] This is Todd Wolfson from st. Francis high school in Pasadena, California. And one of [00:43:00] the things that we do, that’s unique to create competitive environment, um, in our practices. Um, first, you know, we start out every day, um, when we stretch and there’s pretty loud music going on when we stretch, um, it kind of gets the guys in a good mindset, you know, have a little fun.

And, uh, kind of set the mood for, for practice. And then the first few drills we do each day are extremely competitive. Um, one of them is a, is a team competition where they have to do it all together. And if they don’t complete the, uh, the task at hand together, um, as it seems, then they start off with the, with some running.

Um, and the second one is an individual or sometimes a two on two competitive drill. Um, that kinda just gets them going as well. Um, and that kind of sets the tone for practice. So if, uh, stretching is fun and enjoyable and there’s, uh, a good environment there. And then the first two drills are competitive, it makes practice start off on the right foot and tells the guys, you know, we’re ready [00:44:00] to compete right from the jump.

Um, once again, Todd Wilson from st. Francis high school. And thanks for listening.

Mike Klinzing: [00:44:06] Thanks for checking out this month, Hoop Heads Podcast round table. We’ll be back next month with another question for our all star lineup of coaches.

Narrator: [00:44:15] Thanks for listening to the hoop heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.