Educative vs Training Environment

Much has been written on Twitter about passing and catching in the last week, prompted by Oregon's Kelly Graves' tweet about the high percentage of turnovers in women's basketball and his implication that a slow, shuffling 2v0 passing drill explained their relatively low turnovers and high assist to turnover ratio.

In the comments, someone pointed out my team's relatively high turnovers and low assist to turnover ratio last season, although our turnover ratio matched the NCAA average that Graves' tweeted. This was used to argue that my points were invalid. 

I never posted anything about reducing turnovers. I don't worry about turnovers. We do not stress over turnovers. I work in a developmental level where our goal is to increase scholarship opportunities for our players and prepare them for NCAA D1 basketball. 

As I have written previously, I favor an educative environment. In the video below, soccer coach Larry Paul differentiates between an educative environment and a training environment. An educative environment builds and expands options, whereas a training environment reduces options. We aim to expand options, whether through encouraging long passes, behind-the-back passes, one-hand passes, etc. 

You will never hear me yell at a post player to "pass it to a guard" or "stop dribbling", and instead will hear me yell "Go!" as soon as one rebounds the ball. There are not a lot of teams who encourage their 6'3 centers to lead the fast break, but it is likely one reason (of many) that she left with a Division 1 scholarship. 

Similarly, it is not in my nature to play conservatively. When we get possession with 3 seconds left in the quarter, 94' feet from our basket, I encourage a long pass. I want to score. We do not inbound and protect the ball like a smart team; we go for it. Sometimes we score; other times we commit a turnover.

First highlight. Freshman to freshman to freshman. No starters. Not a set play or anything that we had practiced. They organized as they set up for the inbound pass.

Against presses, not many teams look for the 40-foot pass. We do. We do not break presses to get the ball into the front court. We break presses to score layups or shoot open 3s. When the ball goes out of bounds in the front court, we do not inbound the ball and set up; we look to score. Occasionally, we get a 5-second violation or another turnover.

Not many coaches encourage behind-the-back passes. We do. Not many teams have back-up power forwards throwing crosscourt hook passes with their weak hands. We do. I spent the offseason sending texts to two of my guards challenging them to make passes like Milos Teodosic.

Our players play with freedom. Nobody exits the game for a bad pass or a turnover or a bad shot. That's not our style. Does that lead to more turnovers? Sure. But, despite our turnover issues, our offense ranked as excellent or very good for almost every offensive category at our level, according to Synergy. 

There are other factors that explain our turnovers, but my point is not to defend myself or my coaching. Instead, I want to point out that improving passing and catching skills and reducing turnovers are not the same thing. There are two general ways to improve: (1) increase your potential options or (2) decrease mistakes. We improve by increasing our options: throwing different kinds of passes, making different moves, increasing shooting range, etc. Most coaches focus on limiting options in an effort to decrease mistakes and ultimately win the game. That's not us.

Therefore, our players improved. Our passing and catching improved. Our turnover numbers may not suggest that, but that has to do with our style of play and our level. How?

If you need a form passing drill, I suggest this:

Mostly, our drills are competitive because I worry less about the correct technique and more about the ability to find a pass against the defender:

We add in some two-ball transition shooting drills to practice one-hand passing and add conditioning. These are examples (not my favorite)

We also pass in all of our shooting drills.

 In a short practice (we never go over 2 hours), I don't understand the purpose for an uncontested passing drill when players throw dozens of uncontested passes during shooting drills. Therefore, when we practice passing specifically, we practice the decision-making aspects of passing: identifying the open player, reading cuts, timing, etc. 

We clearly are not perfect, but our record, our offensive stats, and our progression of players to the next level, especially with some constraints that we face, suggest that while our turnovers may look high, and may suggest that we cannot pass, they probably are not a big problem and are somewhat indicative of some of our strengths, namely the players' freedom and confidence to explore and try new things. 

By Brian McCormick, M.S.S., PESCoach/Clinician, Brian McCormick Basketball, Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball DevelopmentDirector of Coaching, Playmakers League