In every pre-season article, every coach will say their team is going to be uptempo this year. “We want to get up and down the court and play fast.”
Yet a couple weeks into the season, we look at scores and the scores are 46-39, 52-44, 42-38, and 36-30.
Many of the major rules changes in the game of basketball have been designed to prevent coaches from slowing the game down. The 10 second line, over and back, 5 seconds closely guarded, and the shot clock- they are all rules designed to not allow coaches to slow the game down.
A coach needs to develop a plan of who much of an uptempo they want to have. A coach doesn’t have to do all of these things to be an uptempo team, but a coach needs to realize all of these things can impact just how much of an uptempo team you will be. If a coach REALLY wants to be uptempo, here are some things to consider:
Develop Fastbreak Offense- This is an obvious, but a coach needs to develop a plan for their fastbreak. Work on your outlet system or your rebound and go system.
Run on Makes- If you don’t run on makes, you are probably giving up somewhere between 20-30 possessions per game where you could be running.
Shot Freedom- To be a good uptempo team, you need to be willing to allow players the freedom to take early shots in your offense. If you discourage early shots to get a better shot 10-15 later, you are slowing the game significantly.
Aggressive Pressing- Some coaches claim they want to be uptempo but then press in a way that slow the game down. If you press 3/4 court, or even if you press some form of man to man where you allow the ball in- you are most likely slowing the game down. You may get turnovers but you are not speeding up the game with your press.
Don’t Foul- If your defense is aggressive in the full or half court but you are fouling- you are slowing the game down. For example if you are fouling 5 times per quarter, you are either creating five 30 second time outs or 90 second free throw time outs for the other team to catch their breath. Fouling is the biggest enemy of tempo.
Substituting- The NBA adage is, “Play 8, trust 7.” If you are not playing 7-8 players, you probably are going to have trouble being uptempo.
Substitute Fast- If you are uptempo, you don’t want to do anything to slow the game down. When you sub, you need to train your subs to hustle in and hustle out. If handled poorly, substitution can provide a 30 second break, if handled well it can be a 10 second break.
Time Outs- Sometimes you have to call a time out, but every time out gives your opponents a chance for rest.
Water on a Rock- You don’t need to score every time you run, you just need to run. You are like water on a rock, if you keep doing it, you can wear the other team out. So players can’t look up and decide that we don’t have anything and let up. Make the defense sprint back.
Demand Sprinting- At a clinic, Paul Westhead said, “Every players SAYS they want to run until you make them run every possession.” In practice, you cannot ever allow the fastbreak to become a “sometime thing.”
Conditioning- Whether it is physically conditioning or mentally conditioning, your players MUST believe they are in better shape than everyone they play.
Invest Offensively and Defensively in Advantage Breaks Situations- You want your players to be masters at handling 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, 5-4 fastbreak situations offensively and defensively.
Create Advantage Breaks for Your Opponent- Defensively you need to be willing to be aggressive and give up advantage breaks to your opponents. You want to feel that you players will be better handling a 2-1 or 3-2 break defensively than your opponent will be offensively in that situation.
Offensive Rebounding- This is becoming one of the biggest changes in both college and pro basketball. More and more teams are willing to send more people to the offensive boards. Sending 3 or 4 to the offensive boards will create more advantage breaks for the other team but it will create tempo.
It’s Not Working- When we as coaches get out of our comfort zone, at the first sign of trouble to revert to our old ways. When we decide to really commit to being uptempo, we need to realize if things go wrong the answer may be opposite of what we are thinking. The reality is that your team needs to be MORE uptempo, not less uptempo. You are struggling because you and your players need to step it up more.
The trend in college basketball has been that the best teams are averaging more and more points per game. The 120th ranked offensive team last year in men’s college basketball would have been ranked 25th ten years ago.
If this trend is true for high school basketball too, coaches need to analyze what they are willing to do to create more offense.
I think most coaches would like to play faster. I know most players want to. Until they realize that it’s hard. It’s tiring. And, some years when I pulled back on the reigns on my team it was because our skills and/or decision making was making it harder to score playing as fast as we would have liked to. We just weren’t good enough yet. So, we had to get better at ball handling (mostly passing and catching), understanding concepts, and decision making before trying to go faster.
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