Notes from Australian Boomers Coaching Clinic (Feb 2023)

The following are notes taken from the Australian Boomers Coaching Clinic held at the State Basketball Centre on 25 February 2023, featuring Boomers’ coaching staff Dean Vickerman, Jacob Chance, Robbie McKinlay and Jamie Pearlman.

Notes were taken by Darren Anderson & Daniel Gianchino. If you’d like to watch the clinic (and compare your notes with ours!), the video is supplied below too.

On the wealth of data coaches have access to (stats, game tape…)

• Ask yourself “What is most important?” – the head coach’s role is to boil down hundreds of insights into the most important thing that will impact players.

On Defence

• Defence is about trust – do I trust my teammates?

• High level of physicality of defence at FIBA level and the skills needed for players to use their chest effectively to deviate the offence off-course and keep their hands out.

• “What are you willing to live with?” We can’t have our cake and eat it too: if you’re going to press the ball, you need to be at peace that you may give up some open lay-ups and don’t berate players for it. Risk = Reward.

On Managing Load

• “Play 50% game pace at 100% talk”

Other Observations / Comments

• The coaches called fouls in practice – didn’t reward poor defence.

• “Your team will be good at what you emphasise”

• Gets action is believed to be more effective than Dribble Hand-off at youth levels, as the latter is easier for defence to switch and force away from basket.

• “[At the COE] we need better defenders. Our athletes are practising closeouts every day [because the skill isn’t there currently]”

• “Changing the pace of your finish” – as game gets more physical, players need to finish off two-feet or use slower steps. A one-pace drive is likely to be less effective versus contact.

ON Planning your Baseline and Sideline Out of Bounds Plays

• Limit yourself to 1-2 ‘shapes’ (e.g. Box, Triangle, Line alignments) for your baseline plays, and have multiple actions/options within each.

• Have 3 options per shape, for example on a sideline play:

  • One to create a side Pick-and-Roll

  • One to create a middle Pick-and-Roll

  • One to create a quick shot (low shot clock)

• The main takeaway was that sideline and baseline plays should be seen as an entry point to your offence – and less as one-off patterns that look like NFL plays (SIMPLICITY!)

  • If you have a zone offence, the inbounds play should link to your zone offence

  • If you play 4-out (“EARLY”), the inbounds play should lead to EARLY actions and spacing

  • If you play 5-out (“DELAY”), the inbounds play should lead to DELAY actions and spacing.

Tips on Practising Baseline/Sideline Plays

• Should not take up more than 10% of training – the reality is they are a really small part of the game.

• Find ways to place them into training randomly, like they appear in the game. Some examples for our Cougars sessions could be:

  • Straight before/after a drink break

  • To start a three-possession game