Today's Quote: "Failure to prepare is preparing to fail." - John Wooden
Today's Theme... Watching Game Film
Watching game film is a good way to teach basketball and most good high school (and above) teams incorporate it in their program. This page discusses some of our experience with this technology.
Getting Started - What's Involved
Shooting film, editing and showing film to your team takes a lot of time. It's too much for a single coach to manage. You need to have a reliable, dedicated tech person to do it for you.
And you need a budget to purchase all the equipment you need, and an available classroom.
Have a Regular Schedule for your Viewing Sessions
What worked best for us was to watch film the day before the next game, and usually once in-between... so usually three time/week Monday-Wednesday-Thursday (games are on Tuesdays and Fridays). Our sessions are in a classroom just before practice starts, and are usually about 30 minutes, and focused. Once over, we head to the gym for practice.
Sometimes, when we are playing at home, we might watch film of our opponent just before our game, while the JV's are playing.
What are we Watching for?
Next opponent
We will watch either scouting film, or film from our last game with this opponent. We look for their overall tendencies... fast-breaking or slow-down, pressing, man-to-man or zone defense, offensive preferences, best player(s), and how we are going to stop them defensively, and attack them offensively. We will run the video, stop it, back it up, re-run it, etc.
Things we need to fix
We will highlight the things that we need to get better at... defensive rotations for example. It's obvious on the film when someone fails to rotate and is not working hard, and not rebounding.
Another big one is players not sprinting back in transition to defense. It's amazing that they often think they are, until we show them the film. The film does not lie! We can often point out that a player did not immediately sprint back, but stopped and looked for a second or two, and then ran. It's the first two steps that often count.
We sometimes have to point out players taking bad shots, or failing to take an open shot. We'll ask the shooter, "What do think John... was that a good shot?"
Show good stuff too
To bolster their confidence, show some clips of some really good stuff too... taking a charge, great defense, some super offensive action, a great hustle play, etc.
We occasionally have a session where we show highlights of archived previous years' (now graduated) teams who had great success in their tournament runs, and all the fun, excitement, and school pride that created for them and the community.
Players Focus
It's just that, focus - no screwing around during sessions. Players should focus on defense, rotations, hustle, and transition. On offense, look at the spacing and movement, good vs bad shots, etc.
Individual Player Film Sessions
Some coaches will do sessions with individual players to help them with their individual skill and team development. But we never had time for that, except in the off-season.
I hope you find this helpful in organizing your own program. Good luck! ~ Coach Gels
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Put in a new offense or defense this season.
Run a special inbounds or buzzer-beater play and look like a genius!
Use a special defense to shutdown a star player.
Teach your team how to break a press.
