Those of you who've played the game tell me...

[CBAreject]

I am not a basketball player, but I love the game, so I think a lot about strategy, coaching, player development, etc. I would've loved to be a powerforward, because I've always appreciated the efficiency of the post game. It was not to be.

Here is my question for you guys who played at the high school level and above:

When you had practice, did your coaches try to teach you the importance of SCORING EFFICIENCY?

I wonder sometimes if these young athletes have ever been taught.

When you drive to the basket and shoot a short-range shot, several good things happen.

1) You make a higher percentage of your shots

2) You frequently get fouled and get very high pct FT's

3) Sometimes you make the shot AND get a high pct FT

4) You get your opponents in foul trouble

5) You increase the chances of a follow-up basket

6) You decrease the chances of a fast-break the other way

Contrast that with what can happen with a 3 pt shot. The good things?

1) You make the shot sometimes and get 3 pts instead of 2

The bad things are essentially the reverse of all the things listed above. In addition, 3 ptrs if not taken in the flow of the offense can have bad effects on ball movement, as players get discouraged. The long rebounds can lead to fast breaks.

Again, my question is do your coaches try to explain this to you? Do they try to explain the value of optimizing your possessions? Do they explain that shots are limited, and it's not about how much you score; it's how efficiently you score?

I have a hard time believing they do. Look at what these PROFESSIONAL players do every night. I think it's similar to the situation in baseball. Many players don't understand the importance of patience. In a similar fashion, patience has multiplicative positive effects for a batter and a team (more walks, more baserunners, works the pitcher more, pitchers forced to throw better pitches in deep counts, more opportunities for pitcher to make mistakes).

[Vafan]

I was never taught scoring efficiency. But, I always drove to the basket because like you said good things usually happen. I usually got foul or the whole defense would collapse and I will pass it for a easy layup.

[buckeye242424]

I have coached at the high school level, and to a certain extent, scoring efficiency is addressed through which type of offensive philosophy the coach has, and the types of players skill wise on the team.

I assume this post was in regards to Smoove and his decisions to chuck up so many three's last night. I agree, he is not being "efficient" in regards to scoring. Until Woodson tells him not to shoot anymore three's (that particular night) or sit him down on the bench, the Hawks' offense will struggle in that sense...

[CBAreject]

So from these two replies, it looks like the answer so far is 'No'.

Buckeye, if you coach in the future, don't be afraid of speaking conceptually to athletes. Basketball is a game of optimizing possessions. All the things you teach are really just about efficiency.

"We gotta cut down on turnovers"

"we gotta pound the ball inside"

"we gotta make the extra pass"

"we gotta keep defenses honest"

"we gotta hit the offensive glass"

"we gotta get out and run"

"don't play out on the perimeter; that's not your game"

All of these things are different ways of saying we need to optimize our offensive efficiency and not wasting possessions.

All of these things are said but nobody is reinforcing the overarching concept here. Why do we make the extra pass and not jack a 3 ptr? If I don't know why, I'm less likely to adhere to your "rule". The reason, of course, is that the extra pass might be to a player who has a higher percentage shot or a lane to the basket.

When a coach says to a player "don't play out on the perimeter; that's not your game," he's really confusing the player. Why is that my game? Just because I'm tall? I hit three pointers at a decent clip. Shouldn't I be well-rounded? What the coach means is "You don't score efficiently enough out there to justify taking the shot." OR "You could score even more efficiently inside." If Smith shot 40% of his 3's, we'd have no problem with him taking them. He's not Rashard Lewis, though. Somebody needs to explain that to him.

I think it's harder to remember and understand the importance of all these "rules" than it is to understand the single concept of efficiency.

I believe that most NBA players think that if they score 20 points they did their part. Imagine a player goes 8-22 and scores 20 points. At the end of the game, I bet you he's thinking "Man, my teammates didn't help me out." What he should be thinking is, "Man I sure did waste a lot of possessions for my teammates." That's why "ppg" is not a very reliable indicator of player value.

[thesheedera]

Most coaches I have a lot of respect for (especially Dean Smith and Roy Williams) believe in playing your butt off on defense, sharing the basketball, and taking high percentage shots. Taking the ball inside is like running the ball in football, if you do it effectively, it opens up the whole game and really good things happen, everyone benefits.

If you cand pound it down low with success, you have to depend on getting hot with the low percentage stuff, and the game becomes more of a gamble.

[skankin_richard]

For the most part, I agree with you guys about playing inside. But I think its worth mentioning something about the three point shot: lets say a play is 3 for 6 from inside. that's 6 points, on 50% shooting. I think we can all agree that 50 is good. Now, lets say that that same player is also 2 for 6 from 3pt. that's 6 points, on 33% shooting, but the player still only took 6 shots. so, in essence, if a player can shoot 33% from beyond the arc, he can be just as effective as a player that is shooting 50% on the inside.

My coach always taught that, for an offense to be at its best, they need to be balenced. for example, I'm going to use thesheedera's football analagy. Why are our falcons struggling right now? there are a lot of reasons, but one huge one is our one-dimentional offense. Because of our lack of a passing game, our team can't run effectively, because teams can put 8 or 9 guys in the box, without the threat of getting burned on a pass. the same applies to basketball. I think that, if we try to go inside too much, we get owned, because teams can pack it in, and shut us down. so, i think that our offensive system, as far as balence goes, is fine. however, I'd much rather see someone other than smoove take the threes for us.

[warcore]

I played at St. Pius Highschool, and we were VERY patient on offense. No turnovers, waited for the easiest bucket available. Our coaches praised defense. The final scores usually had both teams in the high 30's.

[AHF]

Quote:

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For the most part, I agree with you guys about playing inside. But I think its worth mentioning something about the three point shot: lets say a play is 3 for 6 from inside. that's 6 points, on 50% shooting. I think we can all agree that 50 is good. Now, lets say that that same player is also 2 for 6 from 3pt. that's 6 points, on 33% shooting, but the player still only took 6 shots. so, in essence, if a player can shoot 33% from beyond the arc, he can be just as effective as a player that is shooting 50% on the inside.

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That is true if all things are equal but 33% from 3pt range is not as good as 50% from close to the basket because of the reasons mentioned earlier in the post (for the 3pt team they end up with fewer FTs, more fast breaks against them, etc.)

[TheNorthCydeRises]

The teams that tend to be patient, are the teams that didn't have a superstar on their team. I played on a high school team that pretty much had equal talent, so we all shared the ball at times.

But when you have a superstar talent on your team, the coach tends to just put the ball in that kid's hands, and let him go at people. That's why you see a lot of these kids that came straight from HS to the NBA, trying to do everything themselves, instead of working within a team structure.

In high school, a superstar player is far and away ( on most nights ) easily the best player on the floor.

In college, the talent level is a little closer, so even the superstar player has to learn how to play within a team structure. This is why most of your 3 - 4 year players in college turn out to be decent pros. But most of those guys don't have "superstar" talent level, so their games really don't drastically improve much, in most cases . . not all, but in most cases.

But the NBA game is predicated on beating your man in one or two man situations. And the 24 second shot clock isn't really favorable to a lot of ball movement to find a good shot. So when you do get an open look, and if you're a decent shooter, you probably need to take that shot. And if you know that you can beat your man off the dribble, you might want to do that regularly.

[mrhonline]

Quote:

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That is true if all things are equal but 33% from 3pt range is not as good as 50% from close to the basket because of the reasons mentioned earlier in the post (for the 3pt team they end up with fewer FTs, more fast breaks against them, etc.)

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True. But I definitely think that ~40% from three is just as effective overall as 50% inside.

[TexasPete]

Teams that win in crunch time are usually the teams that attack the rim. The Hawks settle for Jumpers time after time and rarely maximize a possession with the game on the line. That is why we lose and it drives me crazy.

Josh Smith either needs to start attacking the rim or they need to sit him down when MW comes back. He plays very unsound ball a lot of the time. There are times he gets by with being out of position on defense because he is such a great athlete. But he is the epitome of young and unsound. That is where a good coach would help.

In general, good things happen when you attack the basket. Its an aggressive mindset we don't have...and we pay the price in losses that should be wins.

[frosgrim]

The problem with the 3 point shot is that the rebound tends to lend itself to a fast-break opportunity for the other team. 3 pointers have long bounces. An inside shot, the ball stays around the paint. This increases the chances of an offensive rebound, and when a defensive rebound occurs, it is much easier to defend by boxing up the rebounder.

The 3 point shot is also an inconsistant shot. You can go hot and cold with it. Antoine Walker is the perfect example of why a power forward should not be shooting 3s. It takes him away from the basket for rebounding another player's shot. It removes any chance for a rythm inside.

Inside shots are also more demoralizing to a team than a 3. 3s are going to happen but not with consistency. A good inside game wears down the other team, and by the fourth, they are tired, thus more foul prone.

Salim, JJ, and Lue should be the only guys with the green light to shoot 3s on the Hawks. Smith needs to be given plays in the post until he learns to score there. Sheldon can only learn to score in the NBA by getting the ball in the post. Woody really needs to revamp our offense to put guys in the post and get them the ball.

[joannes3000]

I played on two allstar teams in high school and the thing that separated the team I played with during the season and the team I played with during tournaments was the same thing warcore mentioned - patience.

The team I played with during the season lost two games and we sent nearly half the team to allstars my senior year. We played a Phoenix style of offense and press/trapped on defense all game long. That worked great during the regular season because of the sheer talent we had. It usually didn't matter how poorly we shot because we could almost always make up for it by the end of the game.

Once we got to tournaments, though, it was a different story. Just like in the NBA, we slowed things down and played efficient basketball. Lots of post play and a ton of ball movement. We'd typically grind the clock down to ~10 seconds compared to scoring a basket in ~10 seconds. We probably could've run the same high tempo game, but when you're facing elimination we didn't take chances unless they were good ones.