How to Use Stats to Coach Your Team
No matter how good you are at analyzing game statistics or how much you analyze them, the use of such stats alone can never assure any coach a 100% guaranteed success or win rate. The reason for this is simple, basketball is too complex and dynamic to be predicted accurately, it is like life or better yet, it is like the weather, unpredictable. When a hurricane comes, no one can accurately predict how much damage it may cause; we simply do the best that we can.
So before I talk about using statistics to coach, I would like to point out some important facts about, players/team development.
When it comes to basketball development for players or teams, the only way to improve your team progressively and effectively is to approach your program and training in a particular order. If you want your team to win more games and be more successful, coaches must concentrate on five fundamental things, preferably in the order listed below;
PLAYERS PHYSICAL ABILITIES: In basketball, the team with the most physical abilities, always has an advantage. Size, height, speed, strength, quickness, jumping, stamina, timing etc. So the more a coach concentrates on developing the physical abilities of his players/team, the more a coach enhances the chances of his team’s success. Personally, I try to build speed, quickness, strength, jumping and stamina in my perimeter players, while concentrating on strength, stamina and jumping for post players.
PLAYERS IQ: The more players know about basketball and what to do or not to do in every situation the better. The knowledge in relation to every playing position, game situation, skills set for every player is important. Demonstrated and instructional game situations must be outlined for players to appreciate and grasp more quickly. It is important for players to watch game footage of vintage, classic games featuring superb basketball players with great abilities and fundamentals in different areas and under different situations. For example, when teaching players effective post play, it's important to highlight game footage of post players such as Kevin McHale in the 80’s Hakeem Olajuwon in the 90’s and Tim Duncan as examples of players with great fundamental post skills. So players are able to appreciate how these stars were effective in the post and how they reacted to defences of varying types and situations. Watching and reviewing team game tapes is also a way to illustrate to players what they are doing wrong and right and also if they are applying particular skills learned during practice. For example, when I teach players about screens, I always teach them to go over screens or fight through the screens but never under the screens as it enables the screener to lock down two defenders leaving the offensive player with the ball wide open to shoot over the screener.
PLAYERS EMOTIONAL MATURITY: It is very important to develop your players emotionally. Issues such as selfishness, jealousy and complaining too much about everything is only going to hinder a team’s chance of success.
PLAYERS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT: Issues of fear and lack of confidence, stage fright, and even other emotional problems are mostly attributed to lack of proper psychological development. Coaches must encourage and motivate players, admonishing them when they make mistakes and rewarding and praising them when they do the right thing. It is also important to constantly remind them of exactly what their weaknesses and strengths are. This will help your players play within their limits and abilities, accept their roles while appreciating others without undermining other teammates.
FUNDAMENTALS & SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: Basic fundamental skills like passing, dribbling, shooting, defensive slides, footwork drills, all under various and different situations, must be practiced religiously. If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years it is that the hardest things to improve in a player are the core fundamentals. This simply means if you’re a 15% 3pt shooter the chances you’ll improve to say 50% or even 40% are slim. However, the more we practice on fundamentals the better chances we have at improving individual weaknesses over time. It is such practice that can help weak teams improve on rebounding, assists or reducing total team turnovers etc.
Personally, as a basketball coach I look at stats from three perspectives; THE PLAYERS, THE TEAM AND THE COACH, I first look at my team’s individual stats then I look at my opponent’s individual stats. After that, I look at my team’s totals then compare them to our opponent’s. Lastly, I look at the stats in relation to how the coach is playing the game. For example, if the coach is telling his players to shoot from outside, I am going to look at their 3pts % against other teams and how successful they are with that style of play. I will then begin to strategize on how to beat them. I believe by looking at stats this way, it improves my teams’ performance and chances of winning, while also understanding my opponents better. This allows us to be prepared for what they do well and also attack their weaknesses.
Over the years I’ve developed this approach and it has worked quite well for me. I will break it down stage by stage so as to enable other coaches to understand my method clearly.
When it comes to my players, naturally I know what my players are good at and I know their weaknesses. I try to create a playing style that compliments their abilities and minimizes their weaknesses. It's not just about copying an NBA or college team simply cause a certain coach has been successful with it. I tell them exactly how to play, where to go and how to react to different situations. This is quite important as majority of players, especially young players, don’t really know their capabilities very well and some players just play without knowing what they are doing.
First and foremost, I make a distinct line between my frontcourt and my backcourt players in terms of the stats that we should be concerned about.
STATS FOR PERIMETER PLAYERS
For perimeter players, the stats I track and I let them know about are, in order of importance, TURNOVERS, ASSISTS, STEALS, FT% , FG% PTS
OUR TEAM TURNOVERS: For our team, when a perimeter player turns the ball over more than once in a quarter, it simply means that the player lacks the necessary ball handling skills, composure or experience to play effectively. For our team to be successful, such a player should be given a limited role or less playing time as turnovers are the number one killer of any team.
OPPONENTS TURNOVERS: When I scout opponents, I really watch out for how their perimeter players play, handle the ball, pass the ball and their decision making under different situations. If I’m able to watch a few of their games, I look at the average number of turnovers made by their perimeter players. If it turns out to be high, anything between two to three turnovers/game, it simply means that their perimeter players give away at least 10 - 12 points per game. This makes the team weak from the perimeter. Against such a team, I would pressure the ball by playing full court defence and forcing their players to play a fast tempo game.
OUR ASSISTS: Players that have the ability to create for others are an asset to any coach. They might have the ability to collapse defenses and kick out to an open teammate or the confidence to keep the dribble until a player is completely open. They may have that innate ability to have a pass for every situation, on set offense, motion offense or transition.
OPPONENTS’ ASSISTS: Whatever the case, whether the player is on our team or on our opponent’s team, any player that can average 5 assists/game is an asset for us and a threat against us. Such players normally get good playing time and are the focus of most teams. Against such players we try as much as we can to cut off the passes, close out the shooters on the help side forcing the guards to take shots and finish. We body them up on transition and limit their vision by not giving them clear paths and open lanes to run and make passes.
OUR STEALS: Players that can play good on ball defense on the point guards of opposing teams and come up with an average of 2 - 3 steals/game are game changers. An extra possession can prove valuable or fatal as the case maybe. When I’m lucky to have such a player on my team, I put him on opposing point guards early. I encourage him to be aggressive but smart to give us a good boost and neutralize the opposing point guard early.
OPPONENTS’ STEALS: If we’re playing against a team with such a player and they’re trying to put such a player on our point guard, I usually push the point guard to the two spot and the two to the point. This nullifies the strategy and takes pressure off of our point. This allows our point guard to play at ease and get back into the groove of things late in the game.
FT% FG%: When it comes to free throws and field goals percentage, we definitely want players with high percentages an average of 70 - 80% from the free throw line and anything between 40% and above field goal percentage. We view the percentages quarter by quarter and one thing we don’t want is volume shooting with low percentages. We also do not want players that go to the line but rather prefer to pay throws (miss and pay the consequences later) than take free throws. If you have Shaq’s syndrome (missing a lot of free throws), most likely I won’t use you late in games unless you’re phenomenal in other areas. We try not conceding unwanted fouls giving opponents with good perimeter shooters easy free throws and always close out shooters and rise on the shot then box out to minimise offensive rebounds.
We do our best to make sure our opponents shoot less than 33% from the perimeter by making sure our opponents take difficult shots. Normally I watch game footage or live games studying the kind of shots players on our opponents like taking and how efficient they are from specific spots. Our strategy is never to stop players from getting to their spots but playing at a tempo that makes them either shoot in a hurry or having defenders recognize the spots so that they can adjust the defence accordingly to make such shots difficult.
For shooters who are good off the dribble or off all ball screens, I have a thing I teach my players called “GETTING IN THE SHOOTERS’ POCKETS.” Usually all basketball players shoot the basketball in a distinct way, especially shooters who shoot off ball screens and off the dribble. For some they normally dip a bit low and bring the ball either from slightly below hip level or slightly above it where the dribble terminates and they pick up the ball and raise it up to forehead level and above the head then shoot it. So what we do is make sure our defenders, big or small, stay close enough to the shooter to make it difficult to pick up the dribble without brushing the ball to the body of the defender. If the defender is about one arm’s length from the shooter, we make sure to stretch out our hands close enough to the pickup hand and not the shooting hand (usually most off the dribble shooters like to pick up the ball with the offhand). We get close to make them uncomfortable and if they get into the lane, we get close enough to force them to retreat. They will be forced to go all the way to the hoop, where our big men can choke the lane for a charge or block/alter the shot. Then the small defenders recover and plug holes for drops or kick outs. We always, always contest all shots and rise on the shot. Absolutely no wide-open shots should be allowed.
OUR POINTS: When we’re fortunate to have a perimeter player with tremendous scoring abilities, be it shooting, slashing, off transition, post, one on one etc, and he displays consistency statistically during practice or exhibition matches, we must fuel and encourage such effort. He might even become a focus of our offense depending on his temperament and abilities. After all, to win games, players must score the ball as basketball is all about offense and defense.
OPPONENTS’ POINTS: When our opponents have a player or players with a penchant to score in volumes, we try to take away this player. We make sure that such teams don’t beat us with one or two players. They must beat us with the entire team.
If after scouting such teams, we find players like that or when we play games against teams we don’t know, the moment a certain player gets hot we cool him off by doubling up (double teaming on the perimeter) or doubling down (double teaming in the post). We will rotate on the kick out and open shots. There’s just no other way to do it. One player can’t beat us.
We make sure no player on any team scores more than 15 points against us, no matter how proficient he is and we make sure that no two players, either perimeter or post, score more than 25 points against us. If any two or more players score 30 points or more against any team, be rest assured that they’ve scored at least 33% or more of the total points that the team will score that day. If the remaining 10 players average at least 4 points each or more, then the team will finish with a minimum of 70 points in that game which is high score and a score that’s difficult to beat. To successfully beat a team you must keep them below 50 - 60 points.
STATS FOR POST PLAYERS
The stats I track for my forwards are TURNOVERS, REBOUNDS, BLOCK SHOTS, FT%, FG%. When it comes to TURNOVERS, FT%, FG%, POINTS, our expectations for the frontcourt is practically the same as with our perimeter. The only differing stats that we track for post players are:
OUR TEAM’S REBOUNDS/BLOCKED SHOTS: There’s absolutely no way you can win games without having your best rebounders and rim protector on the court. These are both effort stats, though some physical abilities are required like, height, jumping ability or size. I believe it is about 70% effort and 20% skill and 10% physical attributes. Alonzo Morning led the NBA in blocked shots many a times at barely 6'10" and Charles Barkley once had 33 rebounds in one game, though realistically standing at barely 6'5". It is important to check during practice and exhibition games who the best rebounders and who the best shot blockers are. A defensive rebound means you've limited your opponents' 2nd or 3rd chance points and an offensive rebound means you've created a 2nd or 3rd chance for your team to score. So rebounds should never be over looked.
OUR OPPONENT’S REBOUNDS/BLOCK SHOTS
Playing against teams with good rebounders, especially offensive rebounds, is no easy task. Once you scout a team and know that this a key strength that they have, you better prepare your team for a war. One of the main reasons, why David Robinson/Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon/Othis Thorpe, Dennis Rodman/John Sally/Luc Longley won championships was offensive/defensive rebounding. All championship teams have good rebounders.
It is an effort stat and it is all about psychologically preparing your team. Though drills like boxing out and continuous rebounding, you can improve your rebounding intensity and confidence.
When it comes to shot blocking, this is a stat that to me is overrated. Unless you're Manute Bol or Dikembe Motumbo, I doubt you're shot blocking is really going to change the outcome of a game. However, a good shot blocker is an important piece in basketball. I try to encourage our shot blocker to block a shot or two to scare our opponents, but later just scare opponents into changing their shots. I also make sure to teach him not to overreact by leaving the floor too much, or drawing fouls as this nullifies the essence of having a shot blocker. If your shot blocker picks up stupid fouls while trying to block shots, thereby sending players to the line, you need to get him out.
If we have to play against a good shot blocker the strategy is to attack him early, make him pick up fouls and sending him to the bench early.
UNTRACKABLE STATS:
It's no doubt that analytics and stat tracking is becoming more and more important in basketball. Science is trying as much as possible to take over instincts, experience and sheer gut feeling as a means of predicting, explaining, preparations, planning and strategy in basketball. However, there are certain stats that can never be tracked. Certain players don't score, rebound, assist, steal or block shots. They motivate, lead, organize the troops. Some play unbelievable defense and are able to shut down other players in an uncanny and unbelievable way. It's 50% effort, 50% DNA. No stats can show you such players they just exist and most coaches are lucky to have them. Tony Allen of the Memphis Grizzlies, Bruce Bowen of the San Antonio Spurs, often referred to as "BLANKETS", are an asset to any team. No, analytics can show you such players, they are undetected by any radar. Coaches have to find them or create them.
In conclusion, the key stats I generally concentrate on for our team and against any opponent are; TURNOVERS, REBOUNDS, FG%, FT%. The team that wins the battle in these categories is most likely going to win the game.
Good luck! Coaching!
Coach Umar Bala
International Coach
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