Home On-Line Clinic MASTER'S COURSE

Ettore Messina blog excerpts The ground-breaking Ettore Messina On-Line Clinic, which concludes this week with a hands-on seminar in Barcelona, has given basketball coaches around the world direct access to a giant in their profession. As a team organizer, tactician and motivator, the Euroleague champion head coach from CSKA Moscow is recognized as a leader in his field. It goes without saying, too, that Messina is in a class with few peers when it comes to communicating ideas, arguments and insights about basketball, not only to his players and staff, but to media and fans as well. To further expose some of the essence of his philosophies, Euroleague.net is re-printing excerpts of the blog that Coach Messina has maintainedon the Russian website www.sports.ru over the last two seasons. Enjoy.... Rules and roles "In basketball the same rule applies differently depending on the situation on the court. Let’s say, we have a rule to find an open man to shoot. If I play basketball, to be open I need the defender to be at least 2 meters away from me, because I’m slow and need some space and time. Suppose great players that everybody knows, Kirilenko and Ginobili, are also in my team. They are incredible athletes with great vertical jump. Even if they are guarded, they can either go by an opponent or jump higher so they are as free as I am with 2 meters of distance. According to the rule you might say: Ettore is open, but Kirilenko and Ginobili are defended, so they should pass the ball. However with the great quickness they have, if they make a step or jump they will be as free as I am. And in this case you want them to shoot, not me, because they are much better shooters than me. So, the rule might say the open man takes a shot, but we all must understand what means for each of us to be open in accordance with our different abilities. It cannot be the same for everybody. "If I want to do with my limited abilities what Kirilenko or Ginobili can do, I’ll simply turn the ball over. For them, dribbling against a quick defender who is pressing them probably means to get advantage and do good things for the team. It might look the same only on PlayStation — offensive player trying to go by his man, — not in real life. If one player has more talent than the other, there will be two completely different situations in reality. Let’s not forget: we don’t coach PlayStation, we coach human beings. "If you as a coach apply a rule the same way to everyone, you forget the fact you have different talents among your players and you fail to use it. If the players want the rule applied strictly without accepting that they have different talents, abilities and level of responsibility, you cannot have a team. You have a group of robots." Read more on www.sports.ru Ready to shoot "If you are a youngster playing in a top team, you’ll always have your chance because the attention of defense will be focused on key players of your team. So you can contribute if you try to play defense, rebound and shoot when you’re open. There will be plenty of moments when your defender will leave you open while helping his teammates. In such moments you need to be extremely determined to shoot. You shouldn’t waste your time on thinking when you are open. It will only cause mistakes. You also need to be a decent outside shooter, because what defense will give first and foremost is a jump-shot. You will rarely have an opportunity to penetrate. "Unfortunately, most young players don’t understand the importance of developing a reliable jump-shooting ability. They rely more on their dribble penetration or some strange moves. It’s funny that most young American players who come to Europe experience exactly the same problem. They think that with their jumping ability, their ability to penetrate with the ball, they can resolve a lot of offensive situations. They don’t understand that at our level the defense will first give them a jump-shot. Only then, if you prove being a decent shooter, they will be aggressive and this will open to you some space for dribble penetration." Read more on www.sports.ru Making players better "In my opinion, you're a good coach if you can improve your players. To improve a player you both need to understand and acknowledge his weaknesses and decide how to overcome them. This is a great motivation for me as a coach. Especially with young players, but also with experienced ones. Developing strengths and eliminating weaknesses are two sides of the medal. If you fix the weakness, you add up to your strengths. Suppose, I cannot shoot well. I keep on working on my shooting fundamentals. My shooting percentage goes up. Immediately, I get more versatility and technical strengths with the other elements in my arsenal as well. "Many times I heard an opinion that if you're good with, let's say, your right hand, you should focus on developing it even more. It's a wrong concept. Let me explain why. If you develop your left hand a little bit, it gives you more versatility. In basketball, versatility is the first thing to surprise the opponent with. If you're limited to only a few things you can do well, you're in big trouble.Getting versatile has its chain effect. I still can use my right hand, but I can also use my left hand now. If I face an opponent, I can go right as well as left. I can surprise him. I have more freedom in choosing my next action.If all you can do is go right, you'll depend on your opponent. Once he blocks your movement to the right, you have to pass. This limits your freedom, your value for the team. "The more fundamentals you have, the more confident and unpredictable you are on the court. You can do everything — go right, left, stop, shoot or pass. The eventual goal is to become a complete player. "Many years ago, in 80s and early 90s, the NBA cultivated the idea of specialization. There was a theory that all players (except superstars) should become specialists in one field — either shooting, rebounding, defending or passing. That theory represented a big problem. If you have too many specialists, you become predictable. The higher number of complete players you have, the better the game is. That's why I have always liked to have three guards on the court. In Virtus and CSKA we usually played with 3 guards. With 3 guards you always have at least 3 players who can shoot, dribble, pass and play defense. "One more thing is worth pointing out. I think the more talented the player is, the more he should work on his fundamentals to become a complete player." Read more on www.sports.ru The night before "I don't think that it's a good thing before the big games to think only about them. There was a great coach Petar Skansi who coached Lele Molin in Treviso when they won the national championship of Italy. He always went to dinner the night before the game. When Lele asked him “Why?” he replied: “Because we haven't lost yet. If tomorrow we lose, at least I had a good dinner the night before. If we win, I'll have the reason to party for the second time. "This is an incredibly smart approach and a good way to relax. This story changed my attitude. Personally, I don't like to go out after the game. I'm tired no matter whether it was a Russian league or Euroleague game. If I don't have people who are visiting me or special guests of the club, I'd like to go home or maybe have a very quick pizza with my wife and my son. I'm curious to watch the game on DVD. So if I want to relax a little bit, I follow Petar Skansi's theory and go out with my wife and my son the night before the game." Read more on www.sports.ru Read and react "The system that I had in Virtus, Benetton, the national team of Italy and now I have in CSKA is based on what the Americans call 'reading the situation and reacting'. If you adopt this kind of system, you immediately admit that you need players with two qualities: a) the intelligence to understand what is going on on the court and b) the ability to do it quickly. You also need players who are not afraid of taking responsibility and making decisions on the court. "The ability to read (understand) the situation is not strictly related to player's talent. Once you read the situation, then you need the talent. If you are a talented player and you can dribble, shoot or pass, this gives you more options to do something in reaction to what you see on the court. "If you are an intelligent player, but not so talented, you should know your limitations and try to use your talent just for what you have. For example, if you are a good shooter, but not a great one-on-one player, after reading the situation, you limit yourself to take a good shot if you have time. But if the defense is running towards you, you pass the ball. You don't force yourself to penetrate. Knowing your limitations, playing through them and not putting yourself into situations you cannot solve are the marks of the highest basketball IQ level." Read more on www.sports.ru Expectations "The second thing that changes completely after winning the title is the expectations. If you’re expected to do well in something, whether it’s school, job or sports, it becomes more difficult. Everybody understands this, but really few people are capable to perform under the pressure of expectations. And it has nothing to do with your abilities. No matter how good you are in doing your job. You might be an average player, but do miracles under pressure. Or vice versa, you might be a perfect player, but be a complete failure when it comes to play under pressure of expectations. "There are different kinds of pressure and the pressure of the expectations is the worst. If everybody — your wife or girlfriend, your children, your colleagues — thinks that you will do it well, this might destroy you mentally. You start thinking: “what shall I do if I deceive all these people?” Moreover, like a famous volleyball coach Julio Velasco was saying, you might start playing to defend the previous titles, which is a completely wrong approach. According to this approach, what you do now will justify the award you’ve already received. If you defend something instead of going on and getting something new, it might kill your performance." Read more on www.sports.ru Defense as offense Good defense starts with good offense. There are three very important things about good offense. First, you can get a balanced shot. A shot by an open man usually means that the defending team had to work a lot before that shot. This makes it difficult for the opponent to run a fast break, which is much easier when you lose the ball or attempt a bad shot. As you see, good offense is about preventing transition from the opponent. "Second, if you have good offense, you can draw fouls. Getting one of the best opponent players sidelined with two, three or four fouls is the best defense. "Third, good offense implies having good balance on the floor. Once you have balance on the offensive end of the court, it's easier for you to transform it into a good balance on the defensive end of the court and thus prevent transition. In these days the court is more or less the same size it used to be ten years ago, but players are much bigger, faster and more physically fit. They can cover the court very quickly. This is why you can usually have a fast break only after a turnover or a bad shot, because in these two cases the team is not balanced and cannot cover the court quickly." Read more on www.sports.ru Personal responsibility "One day, Antoine Rigaudeau, one of the greatest point guards in European basketball in last 25 years, told me: 'When I go into a game, I know that I have to win my match-up against my opponent, like in tennis. If I do this, my team has a better chance to win. If I lose my match-up, my team will probably lose, especially because I play point guard, which is a key position.' "That was an incredible lesson. It taught me a lot about the team sports of high level. Personally, I never played at a high level, so I don't know what's going on in the mind of a great player. Antoine is an ultimate team player, and still, he wasn't saying 'team' or 'we.' He was taking his responsibility. He showed me that personal responsibility is extremely important. I learnt to help my players to understand how to win their match-ups. If there are five match-ups and we win three of them, we're likely to win the game. If we win four, we will win the game for sure." Read more on www.sports.ru Repeat "It would be an incredible accomplishment to win two Euroleagues in a row. Only Maccabi did it during the last 15 years. We had a strong desire to win (in 2006). That would be something special. It was painful to lose. We could find a lot of things we could have done better, but many of those things got us to the final. Winning two Euroleague titles in a row is not a dream. It's rather a goal for the years to come. And my true dream is to coach a team in the Olympic games, walk with my team in the opening ceremony. One of my favorite movies is Chariots of Fire, where British running team prepares for the Olympic games of Paris." Read more on www.sports.ru Simplicity "Offensively, our game is much simpler that many people think. On offense, we try to take advantage of our opponent, to get open for 1 second to shoot or pass. It makes opponent's defense work to stop me, and it makes them leave somebody else open. Now, if I can find another open man with a pass, we keep the advantage and, sooner or later in 24 seconds, we'll have a completely free shot. "You can keep the advantage only with a pass. Many players can create the advantage, thanks to their jump, quickness or receiving a screen. The defense reacts to take away this advantage. This is why players like Papaloukas or Vanterpool are so good. They make an extra pass to keep the advantage. This is why CSKA, Panathinaikos, Maccabi are great teams. Most of the players in these teams can make an extra pass. The pass that gives you the opportunity to keep the advantage is the key to the offensive game." Read more on www.sports.ru Methods "When you teach young players, you need to develop your own teaching method at first. I think it's the most underestimated part of coaching job. No matter how thorough your knowledge of basketball is, you should have a teaching method.  Nowadays, with all the clinics, videos and even the possibility to attend practices, knowledge has enormously increased as compared to what it used to be 20-25 years ago. "The biggest part of developing a method is to select what to teach young players from a long list of different things. Usually, coach cannot communicate all his knowledge to a player, as it will create confusion. Moreover, the things you're trying to teach should be consistent with one another and should be put into a logical succession. Coach must take into consideration the level of the player as well. You cannot create expectations of huge improvements over a short period of time, as it might destroy player's mentality. "There is no secret at all. Help young players to advance step by step. Make sure every step is neither too difficult (it will cause frustration), nor too easy (it will be a waste of time). Offer slightly harder challenges every time to help your players to build confidence and gain knowledge.This is the essence of any teaching method. If you don't have such a method, having the biggest knowledge in the world won't help. With no teaching method, you'll remain the only one who knows it." Read more on www.sports.ru Music class "Basketball is like music. Young players who just started practicing basketball develop an idea, though random, of what the game is. They start with a global idea that basketball, normally, is played in a harmonic way. Then you give them drills or exercises to master specific aspects of the game. And then you put everything together again. Basketball is unlike mathematics. In mathematics, you start with elementary arithmetic operation and, at that point, have no idea what further mathematics is. In music, in sports we have this idea where we would end up. It means coach must always keep in mind this whole-part-whole teaching method. "You cannot develop good players only with the part method. Your players may be great in doing exercises and still wouldn’t play basketball. Neither you can develop players only with the whole method — always going 5 on 5. Your players just won’t have sound fundamentals as they should. You should develop your own method where you combine both whole and part methods according to your understanding. It’s the key to be a teacher." Read more on www.sports.ru Mistakes "All mistakes in basketball can be divided into two types - technical mistakes and mental mistakes. Technical mistakes are easy to recognize. Mental mistakes are mainly caused by the lack of attention or understanding what's going on the floor. Unfortunately, I have a very low level of tolerance for mental mistakes, and sometimes I realize I'm putting too much pressure on a player. Believe it or not, I'm still trying to get better in this part of my job. Anyway, it's important to explain to players the difference in the way you treat both types of mistakes. "At the same time I think the player's personality plays a great role in the process. If you are a player and you want to improve significantly, you should put pressure on yourself to work on eliminating mental mistakes. The difference between an average player and a great player is that a great player has a very clear idea of what a mental mistake is. He works to cut down the number of mental mistakes. "Try to understand the mistakes you make and work hard to correct them. This is the only way to advance to the next level. Start by defining your mistakes. Great players immediately recognize their mistakes and either try to avoid them or correct them quickly." Read more on www.sports.ru Tailor-made "I adjust our system, our strategy, our tactical organization to the individual abilities of the players that we have. In this theory coach is similar to a tailor who makes a suit for a customer. Even if you use some general frame to make suits, you have to adjust it to the customer’s body. Ready-to-wear suits always need to be adjusted to the individuals that will be wearing it. "The same rule applies to the strategy we implement every year. First, it needs to address individual abilities of the personnel. Second, there should be mutual cooperation between coaches and players. Coaches have to come up with a tactical organization that will allow the players to use their individual abilities. Players have to make an effort to understand coach’s philosophy. "Generally, I might have some defensive and offensive objectives, but it will depend on players’ individual abilities what kind of system we’ll choose, and how we get to the point this time." Read more on www.sports.ru Monday, June 23, 2008 Euroleague.net