BNT Coach Workshop – International Trends

As part of an ongoing commitment to coach development, Basketball Northern Territory hosted a coach development workshop for their high performance coaches recently, focusing trends in the international game.

The workshop involved coaches from the BNT state teams and high performance programs, as well as coaching staff from the Darwin Salties NBL1 program and was facilitated by Peter Lonergan from Basketball Australia. Here are some observations and takeaways from the session.

Defensive trends – 

• Trend back towards pressure systems
• Disruption a key area of focus – impacting rhythm, impacting common actions, impacting best players
• Defensive schemes for common actions
• Switching as a staple
• Use of “advanced switching”
• Expectation of defensive IQ
• Scout discipline crucial to modern defence

Pick and roll defence – 

• Use of schemes to impact best players
• Focus on impacting the ball at the point of attack – hard show, blitz, “nexting”
• Need to show elite guards different coverages – “ice”, “weak”, “next”
• Scout discipline crucial in this setting- on average 50-60 PNR per team in NBL game
• Teach it to defend it, but also recognise it offensively

Switching – 

• Common strategy now – far more than even 5 years ago
• Focus on switching to disrupt
• Use of 3-way switching – attempt to stay out of “gross rotations”
• Understand what hurts in the switch – paint catches against mis-match, offensive boards
• Terminology – “wrap switch”, “peel switch”

Offensive trends/observations – 

• Concept of “One action is an offence” – Kerry Rupp
• Less “sets”, more focus on concept and advantage
• Advantage basketball – Quinn Snyder
  • See an advantage
  • Take the advantage
  • Keep the advantage
• Wide pin downs and staggered screens – trending away from straight pick and roll sets
• Spanish action – must expose players both sides of the ball
• Early offence – you don’t want to “play against the scout” – Brian Goorjian

Thanks to Basketball Northern Territory High Performance Manager and Darwin Salties Women’s Head Coach Rod Tremlett for organising the workshop.