To dribble or not to dribble, that is the question!?

Well folks, I had a game tonight with my boys team born 98 and we played one of the best teams in denmark in SISU and I`m very happy to be able to say that the things we are working on in practise is getting better and better. It was a vene game where we came out as winners with 58-55 after trailing with 9 points in the last quarter. We finished really strong the last couple of minutes...

Whats "funny" is that we in the 3 period let SISU take a 10 point lead just because we were dribbling the ball so much and we became a one man dribbling show with 4 guys standing and watching. Thats som kind of NBA sickness that is well spred on every level. It doesn`t matter what level you play, when you overdribble the ball you will become very static and easy to defend.

What I`m very happy about is that we came back to playing basketball after that period and moved the ball very well and of course got easier scores and most of all better chances to score.

The strange thing with the dribble is that you see this happening on every level and why I call it NBA sickness is because there you can do it much more and still have success with since you are not allowed to play real helpdefense. You just have to wait out the help to leave the 3 second area and explode to the basket.

LBJ "overdribbling" will not win the NBA

Today was a good day, not because we won (sure helps), but because we did so many right things in this game, so we can go back to practise and continue learning the game, the best game in the world.

What game?

BASKETBALL

Charlie Burgess from Bakken Bears

I have so far during the season watched a lot of games from the danish league and I`m surprised so far how bad some of the importplayers are and even more suprised that mnay of them has played in other teams in denmark before, that means that the coaches/clubs knew what the went for. I simply dont understand.....money, no dont come with that excuse, its not about that its about contacts and good recruiting job to find the really good players.

Was nice to see Bakken bears Charlie Burgess, thats a classplayer and used to right way he would score even more points for his team. Yes, now I`m coaching from the sofa of my apartment, but it doesn`t take a Einstein to see that he is one of, if not the best 1 vs 1 player in the danish league, so simply more 1 vs 1 situation out of a team concept...not NBA style everybody stands and looks at the player witht he ball.

3-4-5 passes with ballmovement from one side to the other and him with the ball...BOOM! score, assist or foul. Would love to coach a player like that, makes the game so simply.

Video is from when he played in finland.

Wednesday night special

Wednesday nights are special nights for me since our ladies team headcoach Johan Enbom has very early morning practise on thursdays, so he sleeps in my apartment. Two coaches in a 2 room apartment that means a lot of basketballtalk.

Last night I had a pretty bad fever so I told JE that I will not be so social and propably sleep when he arrives, but that didn`t happen. Somehow I managed to stay awake and we talk and talk......
I found this funny picture about comunication. Where are back to tappin again :-)

Why I`m I charing this with you?

Well, a big part of development as a coach is to talk basketball with different people and everybody no matter what level you coach at needs somebody to exchange thoughts with or you will get stuck in a certain mindset.

I always found that the thing that gave med the most at basketball educations from the federation was the talks before and after with the other coaches. So many different minds, ages and levels, thats some great talks and you go to bed at night with new thoughts.

One of the subjects we talked about is that clubs and coaches needs to get in a mindset to develop players for the highest european levels and not be satisfied with winning the nationals or some tournament.
The belief has to be there among the coaches for it to succeed and the clubs needs to have a mindset to wanna or at least have the ambition to play as much as possible against other top european teams.

My mindset is I`m a coach in Hørsholm Basketball, but I coach for the danish federation and their nationalteams. Thats my highest goals to develop players for the nationalteams and I think at least with that mindset you will try to the best of your possibilities to make your players ready for Europe and not the national competition.

Behind this mindset there is of course the most important thing and thats the players and nomatter what ambition they have I will do my best to teach them as players and humans and support them as long as the show up for practises and do their best.

I heard a great coach once say "There is only one stupid players and thats the one which doesn`t wanna learn anything new" and I have tried to live by that since.

In the nordic countries we cant be so selectiv that you can be in other more basketballcountries, we have to have everybody along for the ride, maybe not in the same team, but the has to be a place for everyone.
I think thats great, but of course it makes the demands on coaches abilitys much higher, since you can not only focus on the best players at the time.
Thats also something to think about, many players/athleets develops late and maybe, maybe you just cut the next Michael Jordan from your team at the age of 12.

Congratulations!

Great games today

If you dont have TV channels that show the games you wanna watch, there is a lot of great streams on the internet. This is todays basketball games online :-)

(If you klick on the picture you will come to the page with links, the links you find to the right of  each game where the arrow is)

Iverson in Besiktas

Well, no news that he is there, but it was nice to see Allen Iverson play real basketball for a change and not the NBA style of play. He had a OK game 15p in 23minutes, but he is not in gameshape really, but he will be I hope.

I watched a little of the swedish womens league game between Solna and Norrkoping, but I became quickly bored af all the dribbling without anycause at all.
So went back to see most of Besiktas vs Hemofarm instead a game thart besiktas had in their backpack, but the coach made som really stupid changes and he kepted Iverson in the bench until like 5 minutes left of the game.
What happened was that they had a comfortable lead, when a of a sudden Hemofarm became on fire from beoynd the threepointline and whoops, they where back in the game and of course with a long 3pointer went up by 2points.
Lesson learned in basketball a 15p lead goes away very quickly, dont celabrate until the game is over. The coaches helped with strange changes and hesitated to change back.
Besiktas learned there lesson with a loss in this game, a very unecessery loss as I see it.

Went back to womens game and all of a sudden Norrkoping came back from 20points down to making it excitning again, but the players in Solna that should take their team on their shoulders did and Solna got the win.

There was a big win in Sweden for Norrkoping Dolphins mens team who beat Turk Telekom in Euro challenge.

Norrköping Dolphins - Turk Telekom 101-89
(41-21, 25-21, 18-20, 17-27)
Norrköping: George Gervin 16, Mikael Linduist 15, Oladapo Ayuba 14, Joakim Kjellbom 14, Tomas Gaidamavicius 12, Anton Saks 10, Polivas Sakinis 9, Joe Mcnaull 6, Andrew Mitchell 5.
Turk Telekom: Anthony Gaffney 24, Yunus Cankaya 23, Heiko Chaffartzik 11, K'zell Wesson 7, Mehmet Yagmur 6, Ceyhun Altay 6, Sani Becirovic 4, Gregory Stiemsma 4, Ümit Türkoglu 2, Adem Ören 2.
Publik: 1 803 (Stadium Arena)

Swedish womensleague game LIVE tonight

Swedish basketballtelevison airs the game between Solna Vikings and Norrkoping Dolphins, this sis a game between first pace and secondplaced Norrkoping.

Watch it here starts 19:00 CET

What has Iron Man to do with basketball?

Well, at first of course nothing but when you start to look into it, you will find lots of common stuff. Tonight I will have the pleasure of listening to Torbjørn Sindballe a double world champion in Iron Man competition I tell you thats one tought son of b*tch.

One of the things that we can learn of the non teamsports is their mental toughness and how they dont blame other for failure.Normally the non teamsports athleets have much better selfawarness and mentally they are stronger. The have like I wrote no one else the blame, so the better be prepaired.

Another thing is that they often take much more responsability in their own training, if they dont train the will fail, they have nobody to hide behind or to change with on a bad day.

Hopefully most of our 50 coaches in the club will come and listen tonight.

Danish talent on the way....

Sitting in Farum Arena in Denmark and are enjoying one of the most talented danish youth nationalteams ever practising. What this team has is rare in the nordic countries and its size, I`m talking real size and thats not enough they can move too.

The coaches of this nationalteam really has some unpolished diamands to handle in the next couple of month.  Right now they have about 30 players in the group, where 3 players will arrive at a later stage during the summer since they play in USA, Croatia.
So they of natural causes cant practise during the season. But they will be ready....

Of the players at Farum Arena 1 player gets me a little extra fired up and that is Sami Elaraki.

 Sami  (210cm fra Aalborg) is a huge talent with a great body and has great hands, but somebody needs to teach him how to shoot the ball the technic is horrible, but if somebody will teach him. He will be one of the most talented players coming out of Denmark ever.

In  the arena there are one coach and one member of the federation watching the practise, which is a great learning tool for coaches.For clubcoaches to see what the NT works with and how the will play and so on, will help their player reaching his dreams.
Its almost always the same in Sweden coaches stay away and thats just sad.

Coaches Steen Guido, Morten Thomsen and Roberto Velosa have a great group to work with, there is lots to discuss

Watching coach Morten Thomsen at work he is propably one coach with a record of different coachingpositions, he moves, sits, stands, semi stands, one knee, D-positions and more,  its pure enjoyment to watch him coach in practises. Clear instructions (shown and spoken) and very involved and if the players listen they will learn!

Question is will they?

And next question will their clubteams work on the same things to help the nationalteam and danish basketball to be succesful ?, well maybe :-)