2-1-2 MATCH UP ZONE DEFENSE

In women's euroleague, a very good Italian club (FAMILA SCHIO), runs very well an interesting match up zone defense. The (very good) coach of the team Maurizio Lasi achieved to hide the disadvantages of his bad defensivly players thru this zone, to confuse a lot his opponent and make them play very slow and to increase the possibilities of winning. Finally the moderate (until that time) team manage to entry to the final 8 of euroleague.
The rules that has that defense is mostly to follow every danger cut, to adjust and take positions very fast to 2-1-2 zone even if the point guard need to fill the middle of the paint or the center to follow on the top of the key. Of course in order to play that zone defense you need to have big guards, athletic bigs and excellant communication.
Maybe at the following video you'll have the feeling that defense is in man to man, but trust me they stay in zone.

A COACH’S OFF SEASON PERIOD

Everyone more or less knows a team or player’s needs during the off season. Basically, the goal is, “improvement of all individual characteristics of the player", to mostly improve his/her weaknesses. It's the only time throughout the whole year that the player has an adequate amount of time to work on his weaknesses without concern of his muscles being overused or exhausted from the heavy weight lifting program or intensive sprints. Also, even the fear of changing, or improving his technique will not cost him performance because there are no official games during this period.
I ask the question, the same philosophy that we teach to our players, can we also apply it to ourselves, as coaches? In my opinion, it definitely can and it must be like that! No matter what level each of us is coaching, this is the only period that we can learn something new, and create new ideas and philosophies. In basketball, every two years presents new tactics and plays, or even brings back old plays in which the new generation of players has never seen before. I believe if we do not involve ourselves to keep up with everything new, we will actually be moving backwards since everything around us is moving very fast forwards. Don’t forget, at exactly the same time that we are trying to convince our players to do something which is totally opposite with our personal moves!
My point is that in exactly the same way that we try to improve our players in the weight room, or practicing on the court on his techniques with shooting, dribbling, passing, etc., are the same way that we must improve ourselves on the skills a coach must have. A quick note, some of these skills a coach must have are:
-Drills and practicing philosophy
-Plays and game philosophy
-Coaching
-Leadership
-Ways of communication
-Modernization of our job
and of course many more which anyone can add.
But now crucial questions appear, in which each one of us must ask ourselves, regarding:
Where do I need improvement?
What am I good at?
How shall I improve?
The answer to these questions is not as difficult as it looks. We live in the era of information that makes it easy to get informed of anything. There are many websites where we can always find something new. Also during the offseason, many clinics take place where the best coaches (at least interesting coaches) are eager to share their experiences and their knowledge, including their drills, plays, and game philosophies. For those that are more familiar comfortable with internet orders, there are plenty of DVD's from the states that can be inside your DVD player in less than a few days.
But the knowledge of the coaching is something that no one clinic can show us. That knowledge can be gained only from the observation of one coach by watching some games. My advice is to choose two or three coaches who you think are really good, download their games (it's very simple and easy to download any NBA, NCAA, or Euroleague game, even with some small amount of payment) and observe them very carefully. I personally prefer to watch Euroleague games, the March Madness of NCAA, KAI and the last playoff rounds of NBA; Also a lot of the Spanish league, and a bit of Italian, Russian, and Turkish league (of course I always follow the Greek league). Some of these games I record, and then watch them during the off season period. All of these games show me new directions of basketball, and help me create new ideas. It may sound strange, but the truth is that often times, communication with other coaches is something that can offer us many things and add a lot to our bag of knowledge.
And don't forget that in this period many important games take place, such as the Olympic Games, and World or European games, of all ages. As much as we want to watch all the games, no one has enough time to, because time is money. I suggest at least choosing the highest level games and analyzing them. Also during the off season those coaches who are unfamiliar with computers and the newest basketball software try to gain access to this equipment to make your lives easier, since this is the goal of technology after all.
Next, I believe that the most important thing for a coach is his inside charisma. It is not only how to show his players how to execute a drill, but how to inspire them to make the drill the best that they possibly can. In general, use basketball to inspire them about life. To be their father, their best friend, but at the same time be the one who everyone trusts as their leader. Some say leaders are born, but I believe that if someone is competent to realize and adapt that role, than anyone can be a leader in his own right.
The background and the education of the coach play a big role in his job, but his best weapons are his words which must touch the hearts of his players. Never forget that a coach is always a manager of personalities, but an even better manager of adversity, so he must have a many-sided multi-dimensional education in order to relate and correspond to his profession.
I dare to say that there are many books, even that have been written hundreds or thousands of years before us, that seem to have been specifically written for coaches, although they may not mention one word about sports. In my opinion, some of these great books are as follows (some are modern):

"The art of war" of Sun Tzou
"The prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli
I would also like to suggest to you the following books, but these will offer insight not just on being a coach, but also for one’s personality as well:
"The leader who had no title" Robin Sharma
"Women are from Venus, men are from Mars", especially suggesting to coaches who want to coach on women's basketball.

"Leading and Coaching Teams to Success: The secret life of teams"

"Personality: How to Unleash Your Hidden Strengths" by the specialist of these books Rob Yeung

"Out of our minds, learning to be creative" by the amazing Ken Robinson

There are of course many more “diamonds” that are hidden in bookstores that can really help improve the culture, attitude, and behavior of a coach towards not only his players, but to the people he works with, as well as his own family, all aspects that are very important and basic for a coach’s job.
I am pretty sure that this list of books on personality could be written even longer because maybe it is more important than the X's and O's. That is why I would be grateful if you could suggest to me any book in which I can positively influence my personality and life as a coach.
Let us never forget that although our job is one of the most difficult jobs in the world, at the same time it is the most beautiful! We help our players not just in basketball, but also build their character and develop their personalities to make them human beings for their futures and careers by establishing the basis foundations of hard work ethic and teamwork. This is a very big responsibility which we always have to be proud of and always try to be worthy.

Even the most nice things have an end...

Finally we manage to keep Latvia among the best 8 teams of Europe, something that few people believed on that before the Eurobasket '11. I don't know if this is a succes or not but the reality is that we did it without many important players, and also I 'm proud that we did it with many young players. Someone that few people know is that only Latvia France and Russia have done this the last eight years. Congratulations also to the Latvian federation who didn't choose the easy way of naturalizing American WNBA players although is a small country of 2 milion people, and they trusted their young talents (something that FIBA must take care, because teams don't start from the same root).
That was my last game as the head coach of the Latvian national team, for personal reasons I will not continue working with those sweet and good players. It was an honor for me that I had the chance to cooperate with such good players, with such characters, these are the DIAMONDS of Latvian sports! A very big THANK to my stuff who was by my side every second, to the fans who believed in us and support us, the federation who gave us everything that we asked, thank you all players during these two years, thank you for your kind messages that you wrote to my whiteboard, and especially a big thank to one of the QUEENS of european basketball GUNTA BASKO who was the perfect captain and a huge help for me! I wish in my career to have always players and personalities like Gunta!
Generally it was a big honor for me to work in such a beautiful country with so many good and polite people and as an epilogue I would like to make two wishes:
-the young players to continue keeping high the flag of Latvian Basketball,
-some day to meet at the court all together again!

THANK YOU
COACH GEORGE DIKEOULAKOS

COMMUNICATION

We all know that one of the most important things in defense is communication. I 've seen teams that communicate excellant, rotate and keep playing defense until the last second. I don't know if one of these teams is Granada, but the defense you'll see that they played against Caja Laboral for the Spanish ACB championship was amazing. Enjoy it!

Play for a versatile 4

In 2009 Men's Eurobasket U-20, Spain had a player named Pablo Aguilar. Aguilar was playing at the "4", and altough his size was 2.09 cm (6'09'') he could be very effective outside the 3point line as inside the paint, drive and score from any spot and shoot the ball even off the dribble. At the following video you can watch one of the plays that his coach was using for him.

LET THE KIDS PLAY

It’s been a long time since the last time that I wrote in this blog, but the duties with a national team roll in a very fast tempo; Double practices, difficult trips, games, video and many thoughts. We had to become a real team which will play a high level basketball in a month and I am telling you, all these are very difficult things especially if you work with a team that you don’t know players as much as you’d like to, as is the case with my national team of Latvia. Then I attended the two world championships, men’s and women’s. I was watching more than 5-6 games per day, and even when I closed my eyes I had the visions of basketballs aiming at the rim, players running everywhere. Anyway, I’ll tell you more about the world championships and my impressions in the future.

The truth is that today’s issue is coming from some collected ideas which I wanted to share with you a long time ago and it’s about some violent incidents that took place. While watching some youth basketball games, I noticed at least four games with these incidents and unfortunately they took publicity. I am talking about extremely big fights between the fans of the two teams, and to be honest, these fans were the parents of the players of the teams. Of course that unfortunate phenomenon started from the unquenchable thirst of the parents for distinction of their children to the point where they cannot imagine or accept any team playing better than their own, any opponent to be superior in talent, or even a teammate to play more time or take more shots than their child! Sometimes they cannot even accept their team to lose or their child to not play well because they are in a bad day and maybe a little tired. For them, everything is a collusion and an organized injustice against their child, the unique talent. Such attitudes certainly we do not meet only in Greece or just in recent years. In America, the problem is so big that in coaches’ forums, this often becomes the first issue. Spain and Italy also face many problems with parents. If you ask me what the solution to problems posed by parents to the coach of their team and by extension to their children, I do not think I would have a ready answer. Although we all know that a number of measures would help but wouldn’t completely solve the problem!

Overall, I’ve always believed that we should not let things end up where there is a definite loss on both sides. An honest relationship between parents and their child’s coach, rather than their embargo should be held to higher standard. The coach in some cases needs the help of the family, and the family needs the support of the coach on several issues. Sometimes I consider myself very lucky because in my first basketball steps I had coach Kostas Bogatsioti to guide me. If we did not present good grades in school each semester, we were threatened that he’d cut us from the team…(I’ll kick you out of the team and you’ll become gasolines…”meaning that without basketball in our life we’ll become freaks like David Bowie at his video clip “gasoline” back in the 80’s…).These kind of coaches in youth basketball is what we need not only on the backetball court but in our society as well. At the same time, he never gave the right to any parent to think that he or she can influence him for a better treatment of their child.

On the one side he put all the players to think about how they can be useful for the team, and at the same time - and this is amazing - he put all the parents to think about how their son can be useful to the team and this way everyone was happy. The atmosphere was amazing; imagine that several tips and thumbs up were coming from the parents of our teammates. But these took place because at the age of 80’s, the council board of the club PAPAGOS decided to give the keys of the youth basketball program club to a coach with personality and knowledge, rather than someone who was inexperienced or unskilled. The results the next few years vindicated that move, with that batch of players raising the team so high from the last divisions of the Athenian league to the first division and to the quarterfinals of Korac cup, with coach Kostas Missas for those who remember history. At this time, however, the society was so much different, as was the "schedule" of the kids. In these days we were growing up in the streets, playing basketball and football, chasing each other, sometimes hiding and playing stone throwing. Children now are growing up in apartments, they spend hours in front of their computer surfing the internet, playing play station or watching television. It is clear that today’s children do not spend their energy in a useful manner.

So as a necessary way for their children to be more active, parents pay for their kids to participate in any team sport, in order to spend their energy wisely. But whatever the purpose of the parent, these hours for children remain the hours of play. The pressure and advice from parents do not fit here; it’s the hours that the children will see their friends and run together, laugh while playing games or just simply be competing in something. We must never forget that the child grows properly only if properly developed into three categories: a) Physical b) mentally and c) psychic. Proper nutrition is the "food" of the first category, books and education are the “food” of the mind, game is to "feed" their soul. If we parents press our children at the time of the game, pushing them at the edge of their abilities wanting them to always be first and never lose, the chances of our children to hate the sport in general are very big. The results from a child who retire from the sport at an early age for any reason is tragic.

Let’s see some potential impacts:
1 - The sport is losing a potential talent and the society is losing a healthier person as he should have a healthier life.
2 – Even if the child never developed into a talented player, his love for the sport can keep him involved somehow through other positions such as a coach, referee,manager, an agent, etc. (Because in sports we need people to cover all of these positions).
3 - If we are talking about a man who would have the chance to develop economically, he could be offered as a sponsoring group or the sport he loved.
4 - Even if there was not anything about this, once a man becomes frustrated with the sport, the game will begin to lose him as a fan.
5 - And perhaps the worst of all is that being disappointed he does not want to let his own child feel the same emotions and not let him being involved with sports.

I do not want to go any further on this issue; it is so often talked about that someone will probably write books about it. My intention was to give more food for thought to the coaches and parents. I do not know if I made you tired with these thoughts, but since you had patience thus far, could you please watch the short movie that is relevant to the subject, featuring many well-known basketball figures? I would highly recommend to show it to any parent who encourages his or her child to play basketball. I would like to thank my good friend and coach of San Jose Leon, Miguel Estrada Blanco who sent me this movie. One more good thing that happened to my life because of basketball, I made good friends all over the world!

https://vimeo.com/26582295

Pick n roll 3 outside 2 inside

Most of the pick n roll that we have used to watch are with the screener (usually) cutting inside the paint, and the other big man outside the 3-point line, so we had 4 players standing outside the 3 point line and one inside. But as you'll watch from the video, it's very effective as well the option with the other big man standing at the middle post asking for the ball, so with 3 outside players and 2 inside. Very crusial for these kind of pick n rolls is the player with the ball to know and read the defense and be very good passer.