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Coach's Clipboard Archives: October 2004
November 30
When faced with a long road trip, I think that you kind of have to take it one game at a time because each team poses a different threat. You look at the Orlando team you played the other night, and they are more perimeter oriented with Steve Francis and Grant Hill, (Hidayet) Turkoglu and Jameer Nelson. And now when you look at Wednesday night’s game against San Antonio, you look at the big presence with (Tim) Duncan and (Radoslav) Nesterovic. I think you have to take it one game at a time and prepare your team for that versus getting ahead of yourself. Sometimes too, you can look ahead and miss what’s right under your nose. So you kind of don’t want to do that as a coach as well.
As far as long road trips, I think on games where you have back-to-backs you can’t obviously do as much as you would if you have days in between like we have from Orlando to San Antonio. Monday we went longer than what we normally do because we have a couple days in between. So we might have pushed them closer to an hour and a half, to hour and 45 minutes. Where as if it were a regular situation, an hour max. Whenever you can get in some teaching time, particularly when you are bringing in a whole new staff and guys coming from different parts of different teams you kind of tend to let the schedule dictate how much you can do during practice time. Saving legs versus resting versus go harder one day versus not. It depends on the schedule and who you are playing. But when you are tired, you’re tired and you can sleep anywhere. Granted it’s not like being in bed at home, but we’re staying in a nice hotel, nice and comfortable with big feather beds. These might be better than what some of the guys have at home.
November 23
This week, we play Boston for the second time this season. We'll just kind of clean up some things they hurt us on, and work on some offensive execution that we can hurt them on. But you can’t really surprise them. Now we're 10 games in and they’re eight games in, and there’s not too much tinkering going on with teams – maybe another play or two here and there. Generally we'll just try to work on things that hurt us against them and things that they did to hurt us. So we'll just work on a little bit more execution and try to run the offense a little better.
When things aren't going the way we want in a game, I think you have to always stay positive. Against Seattle, they were making tough shots. Guys were making threes with hands in their faces. Against San Antonio, we were getting so many great looks that if we had made the shots that we were making in the second half in the first quarter alone, they would have been chasing us all night. So now we have to battle back, and Tim Duncan decides to show why he’s the former MVP. They’re a good team, they execute well. But just staying positive, keep getting extra shots like you see our guys shooting [in practice] – getting extra shots up and just saying ‘the next one will go down.’
November 16
Normally going into a game you have a certain game plan that you want to try to implement against certain teams. We may tweak some things if they're a good pick and roll team. But our defensive schemes really never change. I was talking to Dei Lynam, and she was like (when falling behind), "Do you guys change, do you do this, do you do that?" No, we just do what we do, but we try to do it better.
So when we fall behind by 16 to 18 points, or 14, double digit leads that we've given teams and in some roles we've battled back to win, the guys kind of bring us out of that. They put us into it, and then they get us out of it. So it's nothing that we really change defensively or philosophy wise, it's just that it clicks in to them that they have to play a little harder and with a little more intensity and a little more effort.
Now what we're trying to do as a coaching staff is get them to start out like that for four quarters, for 48 minutes, and they will start to see how easy we can win and how much fun everybody can have. But, we generally don't change our philosophy or anything. If we're getting beat, then the energy is just not there to stop them, it's not like we're not prepared.
I think it's a combination of both offense and defense stepping up to make a comeback, because you've got to makes some shots obviously to come back, and you have to stop some teams from making shots too, so. If you're getting up and challenging shots in the fourth quarter vs. the first, second, and third that you're not challenging shots which is something that we keep on the bench, how many challenged shots we're getting. If we're getting 50 percent challenges, then that's ok.
Then you start, how are we going to score, are we getting outside jump shots, are we getting to the foul line, are we getting into the penalty early and making them pay for that? So I think it's a combination of both offense and defense that gets you back, it's not just one thing or another. Because if you're stopping a team but you're down by 15 and you're not scoring any points, then the clock is going to end up running out and you're going to lose by 15. So I think it's a combination of both.
November 9
No matter what you’ve read, we don’t play a match-up zone. All of our guys on the court, just like offensively, have assignments. If one of those guys breaks down on his assignment, it kills your defense. Just like if one guy doesn’t know the play on the offensive end, it kills your offense. Conceptually, all of our guys are working cohesively as five men but come together as one.
So far, I would have to say as far as the big men go, Marc Jackson has the best grasp of what we need our five men to do when we are playing defense. Out of the wing players, Kedrick Brown because he was with us in Boston, and Kevin Ollie.
We don’t make any changes in our defensive scheme on a game-to-game basis. What has to happen is that the guys have to understand what we are trying to teach and that they have to trust that the other defensive players are going to be there covering him. Right now, I think we are having a little bit of hesitancy on doing and being in certain places on the floor because they don’t necessarily know if there back is being guarded.
The term used in the League, ‘I’ve got your back,’ applies. I think once the guys trust and understand the other players have him covered, then they can go ahead and do what they have to do. Then I think you will us playing better half court defense and start to put together some wins.
November 2
[This week] basically we’ve been fine-tuning our defense, rotations, and offensive executions… those things, and trying to work on not turning the ball over so much. We’ve been turning the ball over at an alarming rate, and we don’t seem to understand why. Our rebounding is not where we thought it would be coming in when we first took over the job here with this team. So there’s some areas of concern. But not as many on the negative side. On the positive side, Kenny practiced today for the first time since he got his eye scratched, so it looks like he’s ready to go. Everybody looks like they’re healthy and ready to go.
We’re just sort of working on some things, tinkering with our defense, and putting a couple offensive sets in. Teams scout you real well during the preseason, so if we can catch them by surprise on a couple plays, then we’ll try to do that.
With almost the whole coaching staff coming over from Boston, that’s going to be a big game for us. With the Red Sox winning, I’ve heard they’re gonna have a couple Red Sox at the game to try and get the fans fired up. Paul Pierce is obviously a key because he can score the ball inside and out, and we’ve had him over there for seven years, so we know what he can do. They brought over Gary Payton, who’s tough at the point guard spot. Ricky Davis obviously is an outstanding scorer in this league. So they have a bunch of talent over there. We just have to be ready to play and not worry about letting down.
