#82 Building the System From Ground Up

“Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.” 
–Tim Westergren, co-founder of Pandora

I continue to get calls about the System, and most calls are from high school and small college coaches who are excited about the idea of the System, but are somewhat afraid to make the big jump to implementing something so unique compared to what their community is used to seeing on the basketball court.

I am using a business quote today to introduce the theme of the blog because it is important to understand who exactly your "team" is if you are going to launch the System.

Your team is not just your players, your assistants and you.  Your team consists of your Principal, your AD, your parents, and your community at-large.  All of these people will be making some level of investment into your program, so it is important that you include them in the beginning, so you can "soften the blow" a little bit and help them understand what you are about to implement and why.  

STEP 1:  Get the Bosses on Board

Set-up a meeting with your Principal and AD.  Tell them that you only need 15 minutes, but you want to let them know what you are thinking about doing for next season, and you want them on board because there may be some rocky stretches.  Make sure they understand the following:

• You want to implement a program where you can play 14-15 kids every night.
• Every kid who makes a team will get the opportunity to get actual game experience almost every game.
• The top players will play less minutes than normal, but their stats should dramatically increase.
• Each player will have an essential role and be asked to be in the best shape of their life
• There will be highs and lows early on, but we will draw more fans than we ever have before because the style of play is so fun to watch.
• You want the administration prepared that some families may not be thrilled about their child getting less minutes than usual and will not understand why you will be substituting new players into the game and the frequency of those substitutions.  If your administration understands that you are trying to wear down the other team's top 5-7 players by throwing 14-15 fresh bodies at them so the other team will eventually run out of gas, they will have a much easier time protecting you from skeptics.

STEP 2:  Get the Families on Board

With your administration on board (and they should be because they hired you to run the basketball program), you can now focus your energy on the players and their parents.  Schedule a meeting this spring (maybe a month after your end of season banquet) with the kids who will be returning for next year.  No need wasting the time of your graduating seniors and parents.  Tell the families and players that you will be implementing a new system of play next season, and you want them all on the same page, so they understand from the beginning what the purpose and goals are.  I would have clips of another team running the system available to show the players and families what the system will look like.  Focus on the following:

• Each player who makes a specific team (Var, JV, SO, FR) will be running the same system.
• Ideally, we will have 15 players on each of those teams (small schools may only have a Var and JV)
• You will rotate groups of 5 young men or women into the game every 45-90 seconds
• You will be pressing full court all 32 minutes of the game to create lots additional possessions per game.  (We want to be shooting a lot more than the other team.)
• We will be giving up a lot of lay-ups, but we will be countering the other team's lay-up with 3-point attempts and extreme offensive rebounding efforts to, again, create lots of additional possessions per game.  If we can get 15-20 additional shots per game than the other team, and we are shooting 3-pointers 60% of the time compared to their 2-pointers 90% of the time, we will be scoring more points per attempt while creating many more attempts.
• Make sure the families understand that you will begin implementing the System processes as soon as Spring/Summer open gyms and practices are allowed, and you will be implementing it into Spring and Summer camps and leagues as soon as possible.
• Ask the families to help build the System mentality by reminding your child how important it is that we:
1. Play aggressively ("hair on fire") for all 32 minutes.  If you are only on the floor for 45 seconds, can you create a steal or turnover, get at least one offensive rebound or shoot 2-3 3-pointers in that time?
2. Play aggressive on defense but DO NOT FOUL.  Every time we foul, we allow our opponent to rest.  We want the other coach to have play 5-6 players that normally would never see the floor.  We want their best players to be exhausted and in foul trouble playing against our 15 players who always play and completely understand their role.
3. Play hard knowing that you are going to get a rest in a very short amount of time, but you will be on the bench for a very short amount of time as well.
4. The top 5 players will typically play 16-18 minutes.  The next 5 will typically play 8-10 minutes, and the last 5 will typically play 4-8 minutes per game.
5. If mom and dad are supporting these goals and reminding their son or daughter how important it is that they play their role to the best of their abilities, there will be many nights that we score over 100 points in a game and 10-15 players will have scored, rebounded, created steals and helped us win the game.

STEP 3:  Make Sure the Team Understands the Goals 

Okay, now you are going to feel a lot more confident.  You have your team on board.  They know your plan, and they all know how to support you and the players toward the same goal.  Now, it is time to implement.  The best way to implement the System with your players is to give them the hard stats that they will be responsible to hit every game.  Tell that them that if they hit these stats each game, they will win 90% of the time.  The other 10% will be those nights where the ball just doesn't want to go in the hole.  As you have heard me say and write many times, no one does all of this better than Dave Arseneault at Grinnell College in Iowa.  Dave's 5 statistical goals will be a great place for you to start.  You may want to tweak these as you go because Dave bases these off of a 40-minute college game and not a 32-minute high school game.  I have had high school teams hit these stats in 32 minutes, but because of the obstacles (i.e. shot clock, mercy rules) it may not be always possible.

1. Take 94 shots per game
2. Half of those shots (or more) must be 3-pointers
3. For every shot missed, you must get 1/3 of those back on offensive rebounds.
4. Force 32 turnovers per game
5. Have 25 or more possessions than your opponent (steals, offensive rebounds, forced turnovers)

Coach Arseneault has proven for over 25 years that his teams will win 95% of their games if they hit these numbers.  My teams have proven that statistic to be fairly accurate as well.  Now, most of you will be implementing this at the high school level.  I encourage you to implement three additional goals:

1. Keep the fouls under 7 each half - never be in the double bonus for fouls in either half, and the other team is in trouble - no breaks and no free throws
2. Never let there be an offensive possession where you do not get a clean shot up in over 10 seconds.  As the season progresses, you want that number to move as close to 6 seconds per shot as possible.
3. When open, you shoot.  Never pass up an open shot.  Too many passes in the System leads to more turnovers.  The same goes for dribbling.  The point guard should be the only player who ever needs more than 2-3 dribbles at a time.  You are working so hard to create more possessions, the last thing we want to do is give the other team the ball right back.  A shot will always be better than a turnover.

STEP 4:  Building System Practices

Coach Westhead from Loyola Marymount taught me a long time ago that if you are going to change your style of play so dramatically when running the System that it is imperative that you change the style of your practices to match the System.  If you are running a two hour practice each day, 100 of that 120 minutes, your boys or girls should be running and moving.  The other 20 minutes is going to be teaching, pressure free throws and rotational drills where you are moving very fast for 5-7 seconds and then you get a 5-7 second break.  Here's what a good System practice should look like:

1. 5 minutes:  50% pace full court drill:  2-man passing, 2-man dribbling, 2-man offensive move to score - DO NOT start practices with a static stretch.  Get them warm first, so their muscles are ready for a stretch
2. 5 minutes:  Stretch: Leg swings, hip and groin and IT band stretches, high knees and skip jogs.  Get the core opened up once the muscles are loose.
3. 10 Full court System drill:  We have multiple drills that simulate our break with 2, 3, 4 and 5 players going up the court to score and then another group taking the rebound or taking a score and turning into an outlet and up the floor repeating the same attack
4. 10 minutes Trapping drill:  Again, we have multiple drills that allow us to simulate trapping in pairs with proper fundamentals full court and half court.  If you are not teaching them how to trap, they will never do it right, and you must practice it every day.
5. 10 minutes Shooting drill:  Again, simulate your offense where your 2's are getting the shot you want them to get 90% of the time over and over again in a full court fashion.  After 2 minutes of the 2s getting their shot, now move to the 3s and then the 4s and then the 5s and then the 1s.
6. 3 minutes First Break (but not really):  We have multiple pressure FT drills where the kids have to make 10 FTs in a row at 6 different baskets or they have to make 6 consecutive FT's moving 1 FT at a time to each basket.  If they miss one, they have to start over from the beginning.  If the team doesn't make 10 in a row or the individual doesn't make 6 in a row in that 2-3 minute span, we run a team sprint (maybe 3x down and back in 35 seconds).  They get a longer rest and drink if they hit their goal.  They get a shorter rest and drink if they miss their goal.
7. 30 minutes of group work:  At this point, I like to move into working into groups.  Mondays, we spend the next 20-30 minutes on 1v1 offensive and defensive drills; Tuesdays are 2v2; Wednesdays are 3v3; Thursdays are 4v4; Fridays are 5v5.  We do drills and contests to get them to understand how to play on one-side of the floor; how to attack certain aspects of a defense; how to break presses and traps, etc.
8. 10 minutes of half-court rotational defensive drills:  Your players have to learn how to go sideline to sideline on defense.  When you are trapping for 32 minutes, you must build muscle memory, so your body knows how to explode from a trap into help and without thinking.
9. 10 minutes of half-court rotational rebounding drills:  Just like trapping and rotating, your team must have twitchy rebounding instincts. You must implement defensive and offensive rebounding drills each day.  The difference between what you used to do and what you do now, is now a defensive rebounding drill leads to a fastbreak attack to the other end.  An offensive rebouding drill leads to an immediate trap forcing the offensive rebounder to be quick, decisive and smart.  I can power up and score myself or I can find a shooter with the defense broken down for another 3-pointer.
10. 3 minutes for Second Break (but not really):  Another team pressure FT drill using all 6 baskets
11. 20 minutes of scrimmage implementation:  Just like our games, our scrimmages are 45 seconds to 90 seconds long.  I put the shot clock at 7 seconds and we go.  If you do not get a shot off in 7 seconds, you put the ball on the ground, the other team grabs it, and in a split second, we go from offense to defense trapping like wild men or women.  Kids will get frustrated having to put the ball down and not a getting a shot.  They will get more aggressive.  They will run the floor harder.  They will get the ball out of their hands faster.  Before you know it, they will be getting shots up from full court in-bounds in 3-4 seconds.  You can keep score with points, rebounds, turnovers, deflections.  You don't have to just win the game with scoring.  Make sure you are practicing winning the games in short intervals and stressing the 5 Grinnell components above.  You may have a scrimmage where one team wins 3 offensive rebounds to 2 offensive rebounds in a 45 second game.  The winning team must hit one free throw to win the game.  If they miss that FT, even if they won the stat game, they still lose.  Losing team runs a sprint while the winning team claps and cheers.  Give yourself a 45 second time-out to coach the next scrimmage and go again.  [You will have days each week where you will use some of this time to put your sideline and baseline out of bounds stuff in]
12. Final 5 minutes:  This should be a contest...something where they have to make a lot of shots as a team or work as a team in a full-court setting to win the competition.  I have 5 that I use for each day of the week.  The kids know them.  They love them.  They look forward to trying to beat them.

There you go.  That is how you build the System from the ground up.  If you try and skip Step 1 and 2, I promise at some point, you will regret it.  If you try and implement Steps 3 and 4 starting in November, you will be lucky if your team doesn't revolt against you by Christmas.  You must start in the Spring and the Summer and break bad habits well before you get to November.  They should already love it before your first practice of the season.

Email or call me if you'd like to talk about any of this.  Good luck!  No fear!

Matt Rogers

Email: coachrogers12@gmail.com
Twitter: @madcoachdiary
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rogersmatt16
Blog: madcoachdiary.blogspot.com
Phone: (312) 610-6045

Matt Rogers is a 23-year high school and college coach veteran.  He has led two teams to the NCAA National Tournament and one team to a High School State Championship.  His teams hold numerous school and one NCAA record. He has mentored and coached players at every collegiate level while serving as an athletics administrator at the high school and NCAA levels. He currently is the Senior Recruiting Specialist for NCSA - Next College Student Athlete where he has helped over 3000 young men and women from around the world achieve their dreams of playing at the college level.  Coach presently lives in the Denver, CO area with his wife of 22 years and his two children. 

To request Coach Rogers to speak at your school or event, you can reach him through any of his contact information above.