[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Pantherdreams

His poor shooting percentage is hurting the team’s average. He will only be allowed to play defense. The coach will not be introducing any advanced skills with the ball because your son will always be a role player. The team is going to run plays that highlight only those players who can shoot ... Teaching kids to play and make decisions and then letting them play at game time.

I coached middle school basketball for over twenty-five years. I always worked on shooting at practice, every day, for everyone on the team, good shooters, and bad shooters. And short players (and tall players) always worked on rebounding skills, and tall players (and short players) always worked on ball handling skills, every day. Weak hand dribbling and weak hand shooting, every day, for everybody. Offensive oriented players (and defensive oriented players) were taught and practiced how to become better defensive players, while defensive oriented players (and offensive oriented players) were taught and practiced how to become better offensive players. Everybody learned how to set, and more importantly, how to use screens.

Unlike a few other sports, basketball is a sport where players have to be able to play both offense and defense at the same time.

Everybody on the team was taught all aspects of our offensive and defensive sets. Our center was expected to be able to play the point guard position, and our point guard was expected to be able to play the center position.

Ten players were guaranteed to play in every game, some for just a few minutes, and some for a lot of minutes. Nobody played thirty-two. Some of the younger players on the end of the bench knew that they may have to sit out the game unless we got way ahead near the end.

My play book was small, with only a few set plays, seldom designed for a single player. We lost some games because of that, and that's on me, but we won a lot of games because my players were often more skilled in a helter skelter middle school style game, especially toward the end of the season.

During games, we ran some plays to win games with the players that we had on the roster, and on the court at the time, winning (and losing) with our players doing what they did best, some shooters, some rebounders, some defenders, some passers, some dribblers, some screeners, etc.

During my senior year of high school, I don't think that I took a single field goal attempt from more than ten feet away, and seldom dribbled more than three or four times in succession. That wasn't the best way for the coach to utilize my talents to help the team win games. My job was to get rebounds, set good screens, and play good defense, that's what I did best, yet I still averaged about fifteen points a game. I would have loved to score more points, but that wouldn't have given my team a better chance to win games. I was never told what not to do, I was just told what to do (but I kind of knew that if I took a twenty footer, or tried to dribble through a trap, that I'd be sitting on the bench next to the coach).

As a freshman, I was the worst player on the freshman team roster, and only got into games when we were way ahead, or way behind. As a sophomore and junior I split time with varsity players who had similar skills as mine. As a senior I played as long as I could stay out of foul trouble (I was sometimes a little too aggressive). Of course I wanted to play more my first three years, but that wouldn't have given the team its best chance to win.

I know that there are other good coaching philosophies (one opposing coach in my league always played his five best players for the entire game unless they got into foul trouble, and he ran several set plays for his star players, he was usually successful against me), but what's wrong with the coaching philosophy I played under and coached with (double digit wins almost every year, players ready for high school basketball after playing in my program)?