Playing Tennis to Win

Harold Solomon, via ZooTennis:

I have a different perspective on winning than some other people in our profession. In my opinion it is ridiculous to ignore that the intention of tennis players when they compete in tournament play is to win. I don't see anything wrong with having that intention every time you walk on the court if you are thinking correctly about winning.
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Most importantly, I have to love the competition, I have to thrive in that environment. I am not afraid of competing, it's what I live for. My job is to push myself, to test myself, to challenge myself.

That's what it's all about - the challenge, the risk of losing. That's what makes competition exciting. That's what makes it rewarding.

Take that objective "to win" out of it, and what do you have? An experience gutted of meaning.

Go read a novel instead. It's a much easier way to experience conflict without risk.

I wholeheartedly agree with Solomon. As he says, it's "ridiculous" to make something evil out of wanting to win and playing to win.

Just ask yourself: Was it winners or losers who spawned this idea? Losers, of course. People who can't take losing, so they make something evil out of beating them. To never risk losing, they never try to win.

THEY are the ones - yes, THEY are the ones - making too big a deal out of winning or losing!

The "reasoning" behind this nonsense fails even the most superficial nonsense check. It's all based on invalid assumptions, straw man arguments, and confusing the issue.

For example, I hate the false accusation that people who play to win are people "who will do anything to win," even cheat. Baloney.

It's quite the other way around.

The people "who will do anything to win" are not really playing to win. Their idea of winning is a perverted idea of winning. They are the ones who settle for hollow victories got through cheating. And they do this because all they care about are appearances, such as the final score. So, they are satisfied with a false win got through cheating.

They do this because they don't think they're capable of winning the legitimate way, and they are too weak to handle losing.

On the other hand, players who really want to win would get zero satisfaction out of such phony winning. They want real victories. In fact, they can tell you of moral victories they are proud and happy about even though they came out on the short end of the final score. In other words, they are real people pursuing the real thing, not mere vain appearances.

In fact, the main reason they don't resort to cheating or gamesmanship is because that would shame them: they would view it as an admission that they couldn't win the legitimate way. They think they are better than that.

This is why THEY - yes, THEY - are the sporting players who want to defeat you fair and square. They are the players who WON'T do just anything to win. Even on the Pro Tour where a great deal of money is at stake, we sometimes see these players give their opponent the next point to make up for a bad call. Why? Because they want nothing to tarnish the victory they seek.

Tennis is just a game. Nothing more, nothing less. The objective of any game is to win it. Winning is fun, and losing is a bummer. Nothing more, nothing less.

The joy of winning and the disappointment of losing are just emotions that pass in a matter of minutes or hours if we don't try to pretend them away (and thus lock them forever in the subconsciousness to motivate irrational behavior without our awareness of their influence on us).

Winning a tennis match never made one person morally superior to, or more noble than, another, and losing never killed anybody.

So, my advice to players and coaches is to use your own head and examine every idea that comes blowing to you in the wind. Don't just swallow whole all the chatter out there. An awful lot of it is stupid.

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9 Steps to Dominating Tennis Doubles - Great for Coaches

This is the time of year tennis coaches in northern climes begin itching for spring in anticipation of the new season. You can give your doubles teams the edge through the simple program "9 Steps to Dominating Doubles," available at volume discount prices and now available in paperback as well as printable PDF ebook format.

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No-Cut High School Tennis Coaching

In the interest of full disclosure: I have never cut a high school tennis player from my team. This, despite having an assistant only for my first two seasons.

But why is the tennis establishment (the USTA and the Tennis Industry Association) leaning on high school coaches to make them feel like bad people if they cut? Indeed, they claim that a no-cut policy is "the right thing to do."

Wrong. It is neither the right nor wrong thing to do. It isn't a moral issue.

But I'll tell you what is a moral issue. Morally bullying others by making them out to be sinning if they don't do what you want them to. That is very wrong.

High school coaches are not paid by the USTA or the TIA. They are therefore not working for the USTA or the TIA. They are therefore not here to serve the interests of the USTA or the TIA.

In other words, their job isn't to provide the USTA and the TIA with tons and tons of new young tennis players to sell stuff to. Get it?

Their job is to lead their players to victory in tennis meets.

Focus. To coaches I say, don't let them take your eyes off the ball. They aren't thinking of you OR the kids. This campaign of theirs is totally self-serving. They want to slide you into thinking that you are obligated to promote the sport. But that's their job, not yours. Know your job and who pays you.

I would encourage coaches to keep all players who show enough proficiency to prove they are serious about becoming the best tennis players they can be. That's just good coaching foresight, because these players are the pool from which your future teams are drawn. And often late bloomers become surprisingly good players by the time they are juniors.

I have always been fortunate to be able to keep everyone who came out. We always had enough courts. Like 2 - right across the street from 16, so rarely did we even have to wait for one. And there were never more kids out for tennis than I could handle. Or more than I could provide JV matches for against all the bigger schools we played.

Many coaches don't have that luxury. And they shouldn't be made to feel guilty about what they must do. Nor should they loose meets by having varsity players sitting around just so they can keep tennis beginners on the team = give them court time. The TEAM wins or loses, and it is a betrayal of the TEAM to do anything that hurts the TEAM's chances of winning.

We don't let the kids do stuff like that. So why should it be OK for the coach to?

Can you imagine the "important" teams at your school doing that? No, eh? Well, if you want tennis to be treated on a par with other high school sports, you have to treat it that way yourself.

I always tell kids on Day 1 that I rarely cut but that I would if I thought it necessary, within two weeks. I always told them that junior varsity players wouldn't get much one-on-one attention from me. Several times I was about to cut a kid who thought I was there to "teach" kids how to play tennis, but those kids cut themselves when they realized they had been mistaken.

Whew! I was always greatly relieved by that. As hard as it is to cut anyone, it doesn't hurt a kid. But melting just because they turn on the waterworks sure will.

That said, don't just post a list. That cowardly dodge WILL hurt them.

You are the adult: if you can't handle it, how do you expect the kid to? Go to the kids you're cutting and make sure they're the first to know. Listen to them.

See how doing this shows them that they are (still) important?

Help them to put it in perspective. (Sometimes you can make them a manager or give them some other important role to fulfill.) Indeed, if you handle it right, your cutting that kid from his or her high school tennis team could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. It could very well teach him or her a very important lesson in life.

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Coaching Tennis

I first became aware of the problem that can arise from men coaching girls back when I was coaching high school tennis, (co-ed) track, and basketball.

I could see that something was wrong with the relationship between the head basketball coach and the girls, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. Then one day, I nearly gagged when I saw one of our best players throw herself on a loose ball and in one continuous motion swivel her head to see if the coach was impressed.

Apparently he didn't seem impressed enough, so her face screwed up with tears for the pain. That did the trick.

Ah, so that was why there was all this (usually unnecessary) "sacrificing of their bodies." They were doing it "for him."

Yuck, eh? ;-)

In this case it was plain to see that she should have scooped up that ball and tried to score instead of just throwing herself on it like a football lineman throws himself on a fumble.

I could also tell that, at some level, he was aware of what was going on and that his male ego was stroked by it. So he allowed it, instead of yelling, "What are you looking at me for? Get up and PLAY!"

The result was a very good team of head cases. He couldn't talk to them gently enough. They usually won, but when their opponents were good and didn't immediately fall behind, they panicked and just blurred, playing terribly.

In the conference tournament at the end of the season, the mass choking was so bad it made me mad, largely because I could see the head coach and his other assistant had just thrown their hands up in the air, completely at a loss about what to do.

So, I went out on the floor at half-time and stood under the basket while they were warming up their free throws. I stood there as if calm (so that the crowd and opposing team would have no idea what kinds of things I was saying) and I read them the riot act. I told them that they were stinking it up out there so badly that I could hardly stand to watch. I told them that they were embarrassing their coaches, fans, and the school with their long faces, their chins dragging on the floor, and their helpless, deer-caught-in-headlights looks. I told them to just quit choking, to grow up, and to show some guts, some pride. I wasn't nice at all.

They just all mouth-breathed at me in total shock. This was their Biology teacher? No, this was a woman coach = one who doesn't put up with that from girls.

They were so far behind already that I didn't think they could win, so I told them that I didn't care if they won but that I demanded that they quit stinking it up out there and play ball – to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, to win.

When I could see that I had them all mad at me, I went back to the bench.

Even I was surprised at the results. They put on a tremendous comeback, coming to within one point of tying the score when they ran out of time.

This doesn't mean that men can't coach girls when a qualified woman isn't available. But it does mean that men coaching girls, and the parents of girl athletes, must be aware of this potential problem.

The cure is focus – focus on the goal = to win, not to please your coach.

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Dynamic Balance in Tennis

In yesterday's post Coaching High School Tennis, I explained how the Inner-Game-of-Tennis teaching method works as a fast and effective way to coach strokes in-season.

But many people just don't get why this method works so well. Consequently, many doubt it without even trying it. Their loss.

To understand takes a little thinking, an effort to zero-in how you use your mind when you consciously try to make yourself swing a certain way. Otherwise you'll never understand why that is a distraction that hurts your performance and makes learning much harder than it need be.

In fact, it's safe to say that most players learn tennis in spite of the way they learn, not because of it.

For a simple, illustrated explanation, see the new lesson entitled Dynamic Balance in Tennis on the main website.

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Coaching High School Tennis

In coaching high school tennis, you must leave the players' strokes pretty much as you find them. For example, you can't change a player's serve or backhand, expecting her to win tomorrow's match with that serve or backhand that you've messed with. Renovating strokes takes time, time you don't have in season.

Which is why I love the Inner-Game-of-Tennis method for dealing with stroke problems in season. I therefore highly recommend the book The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey.

Here is an example of how I use it, to give you an idea how this method works.

First, a fact. Thinking about your form while you swing, or about where you're putting your feet as you run to the ball, IS A DISTRACTION. One that should NOT be encouraged.

That isn't what you should be paying attention to while you play a shot. You should be paying attention to the ball and to the feeling of what your body is doing.

Note the difference between thinking about what your body should be doing and feeling what your body is doing. The former is an attempt to consciously direct movement through thought, and the latter is body awareness through attention to sensation. In other words, one is thinking, and the other is feeling.

In the IGOT method, you focus the player's attention where it belongs – off thoughts and on what he's seeing and feeling. In other words, you raise awareness in him of the right things. That's all. Works like magic. Really. Try it, you'll see.

Here's a simple example. John comes over to me and complains that "I'm having trouble with my forehand. Will you come and help me with it?"

Of course I will, but I won't drop everything and go immediately. That would make a big deal out of his problem. So, I casually tell him, sure, I'll be over in a little bit.

When I get there, I just watch.

"I can't hit a forehand!" he says.

I'm not even going to respond to that. I just ask him to hit a few more while I watch. Then I ask him a question about his stroke. Usually, I ask him to show me about where his racket is contacting the ball.

Invariably, he doesn't know. Why? Because he wasn't paying attention to that. His mind was busy yakking at him.

He expects me to tell him where his contact point usually is, but I don't. So, he asks me to tell him where his racket usually is at contact. If necessary, I lie to say that I don't know or am not sure.

Why? Because my job to get him to focus his attention where it belongs. I tell him to go back and hit some more, paying attention to where his racket head is at contact, so that he can come back and show me about where it usually is.

Then I stand there and watch his forehand miraculously fix itself. As it does so, that contact point moves out farther and farther in front to where it belongs.

Before I know it, John is having a ball with his suddenly fixed forehand. He forgets I'm there. I have to interrupt him to ask him if he can show me where his racket head usually is at contact.

"About here," he says and shows me, as if afraid that I might tell him he's wrong.

But he's never wrong.

"Yup," I say, "It looks to me like that's about where it usually is, too."

Long pause. John looks confused. I guess I'm supposed to tell him whether that's the "right" place for his racket head to be at contact.

But what if I did that? Then he'd be right back where he started – thinking about where his racket should be and mentally instructing himself to contact the ball in the "right" place - instead of simply paying attention to where that contact point is.

So, I don't take the bait, even if he comes right out and asks me if that's the right place for his racket head to be at contact.

Instead I just say, "Well, it looks like a pretty good forehand to me. Don't you think?"

"Uh-yeah."

And so back to the court he goes, scratching his head and wondering how I fixed his forehand. I didn't fix his forehand: I just focused his attention where it belongs for natural learning to occur.

And that forehand really is fixed. He has confidence in it now.

The contact point isn't the only point in the stroke that you can have the player focus on. But it usually works, because adjusting it tends to correct any flaws earlier in the stroke.

Sometimes you need to ask where the ball usually lands on troublesome shot. In the net? Long? If long, about how far long? Six inches? Six feet? John never knows! Really. He's too busy with an inner dialog berating himself to notice where most of these shots are landing.

So, your question reaps the same result. When he goes back to hit some more so that he can answer your question, you get to stand there and watch his shots magically correct themselves and start landing in.

This is a fast and effective way to coach strokes in season.

You don't get to show off how much you know by issuing a long list of instructions, but that isn't the objective here. The TEAM objective is to win tennis meets, and the coach must have team spirit, too.

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Some Tips for High School Coaches

In singles, great skill generally is worth more than great strategy and smarts. In doubles, it's the other way around. Which is why good training of your doubles players can make a real difference in the team's overall success.

1. Training them to proper eyework at net. No head turning to watch their partner hit the ball. Just learning where they should be looking as the ball goes back and forth raises the level of their game, as they start winning truckloads of points they used to lose.

2. Training them to proper footwork at net. Most players just park, never moving unless a shot comes to them. Teach your players to widen their partner's hitting lane and to narrow the opposing baseliner's hitting lane. That alone is a big help, but your players then see that doubles is a game of maneuvering and positioning, and they now notice and discover the finer points of it on their own.

3. Way too many players need to be taught not to run backwards when they are at net and an opposing net player is about to wham the ball. They need it drilled into their heads that while they are backpedaling, they are incapacitated, that they must STEP back and SET themselves for the shot. Or, if they feel endangered, the way out of harm's way is to the SIDE, not back. That is, they must be taught the Move - a pivot turning your back to the net with a step toward your alley.

4. Many high school players always volley crosscourt. You can't do that in doubles. When the opposing team is in the Up-and-Back Formation, be death on you volleyers hitting through the angular Hole between them. Even when they must angle the volley the other way. It isn't that hard to learn. It just takes a little practice. If they have to choke up on the racket a bit to do that, fine. Whatever it takes. If they know you won't take "But I can't" as an answer, they will learn in a day or two.

5. Switching for lobs over your net player is generally thought to be a good idea, the thing to do. The Switch Trick is the first bit of true strategy I teach young players. They need to know the perils of switching and that it usually isn't necessary. They need to know how to switch safely when it is necessary. And, once they know the Switch Trick, they can play it on most opponents all day long.

For some reason, becoming an initiate into the mysteries of the Switch Trick seems to open players' eyes to the game. They suddenly get it and start noticing a lot things, learning a lot about the game on their own. You might say that this is the day they become real doubles players.

In drilling, don't forget reverse-crosscourt shots. Kids should practice them as much as they do crosscourts and down-the-lines.

Doubles players need a reliable overhead. A great many shaky overheads can be helped tremendously by this simple tip on how to move back under a lob to hit an overhead.

None of these things takes a big investment of practice time. And they all pay off in spades.

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Determining a High School Team Ladder

Some high-school tennis coaches determine their team ladder by ladder matches, and others pick the team and assign them ladder positions.

When I began coaching high school, I was skeptical about ladder matches. I just didn't see how you'd find enough time to play enough of them to be reasonably sure of the results.

For, on any given day, a kid can play badly, and you don't want that messing up your ladder - all because of ONE challenge match.

And if your real No. 3 is playing No. 4, you win easily at No. 4, but you may well be losing matches at No. 3 that you would win if your team's real third-best player was playing at that spot.

And I didn't like the idea of shortening ladder matches to fit them in, because, generally, the more abbreviated the the format, the more likely upsets are. Upsets are great, but the whole team suffers when they screw up your ladder in ladder matches.

Another thing that can happen is that Player B usually beats his or her teammate, Player A, because of a purely psychological dominance, as we often see among siblings or friends who have played together for a long time. But you still want Player A at the higher ladder position, because he or she will win more matches at that level than Player B would.

So, I started coaching high school without ladder matches. I didn't want that responsibility though, because, hey, I'm not infallible either. Some players just LOOK better than others because their strokes are prettier.

So, I gave ladder matches a shot. And I never looked back.

What a relief. No more agonizing over these decisions. No more wondering if the kids thought I was playing favorites.

In fact, I found that these matches are very important before the season starts. Competition among themselves prepares players for meets much better than any other kind of practice does. Hey, the pressure is actually DOWN when they go out there for their first meet of the season! And they are in competitive mode, never caught unready by the season's first meet.

And, as for the kid who just couldn't beat his older brother? Well, guess what? When he knew he had to, he learned how.

I made it work by varying the format a lot. Some matches were little 21-point matches. Often I'd work these into a round robin of four players close in ability. Others were a single no-ad set. Yet others were a pro set. Occasionally we went best-of-three no-ad. That way I had sizable database of scores to go by.

So it was normally pretty clear what the ladder should be. And if the record was unclear between two particular players, then I'd have them go best-of-three while the rest of team practiced.

So, that's my two-cents' worth. Once I switched to letting the kids slug it out for their positions, I never thought of going back to the old way.

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The Importance of Doubles in High School Tennis

When I began coaching high school tennis, I soon learned that your doubles is the key to achieving maximum success.

Why? Because your overall win-loss record in the singles is mainly a function of the quality of singles players you're blessed with. As a coach, generally, there isn't a lot you can do during the season to affect it.

For example, I was coaching in a fairly small school that went up against outstanding big ones in two states. Almost every big school has one outstanding singles player. So, we rarely fared well at No. 1 Singles. And there wasn't anything we could do about that.

The rest of the way down the ladder, it was a matter of depth, and in that category we generally fared well, because it was a good tennis town and many good tennis players chose that school.

Still, we were dissatisfied with our performance. We felt we could beat the State Champions of Minnesota, but we just kept loosing those dual meets. We kept losing the No. 1 Singles and both doubles matches when playing in Minnesota.

Our problem was that we played half our meets in Wisconsin and half in Minnesota. Wisconsin had a 6-3 format in which you could use your six singles players again in the doubles round. Minnesota had a 3-2 format with one round of play that required seven different players to fill the three singles and two doubles slots.

To really confuse things, our State Tournament format was 2 and 2. And invitationals in both states came in many different formats.

The bottom line is that we had to constantly reshuffle our lineup and doubles partners. That was a disadvantage that didn't hurt us much in Wisconsin, but it killed us in Minnesota, because those Minnesota doubles teams were doubles specialists who played with the same partner virtually every day of the season.

In fact, I learned the Switch Trick from one of those little devils! She must have played it on our No.1 Doubles team 50 times during her high school career. Till one day I happened to be in exactly the right spot to see what she was doing, and that was end of that.

Then I started to wonder how many more tricks these wily Minnesota doubles specialists knew that we didn't and that you couldn't find in any book or get in any lesson.

I looked at the statistics and decided that we had to start breaking even in the Minnesota doubles events to beat those rivals. For, realistically, there was no way to increase our percentage of singles match wins. The key to more team wins was to stop getting skunked in Minnesota doubles.

That in-season coaching CAN affect.

So I developed a team system for doubles play. (This system eventually grew into Operation Doubles.) The idea was that, knowing the system, you could go out into a doubles match on any given day with a teammate you had never partnered with before and know what to expect from each other.

It was simple: how to handle lobs, the Switch Trick Play and lob plays to avoid the Switch Trick. A little poaching. And the proper eyework and footwork at net.

I was actually surprised at what a big difference these few team conventions made. Our players really did go out there and play much better doubles, simply because every player on our team could be counted on to do certain things a certain way, no matter whom they were playing doubles with today. It made partners look like they had played together for a long time.

Moreover, actually teaching them proper eyework and footwork at net, plus the Switch Trick, and the No-Switch and Safe-Switch lob plays had a tremendous impact. Much bigger than the goal I had set: we didn't just break even in the doubles event; we were usually sweeping it now.

And that was in Minnesota. In Wisconsin, you just didn't win a doubles match against us. Ever. I was as surprised about that as anyone.

Where this really made a difference in overall success was at the State Tournament. We were often outmatched by Milwaukee area tennis powerhouses. Since doubles is more a game of strategy than skill, our doubles teams often beat Milwaukee area teams comprised of much higher ranked players. These seemed like huge upsets, but they weren't, because we could repeat those victories year after year. Especially on my boys team, which lacked enough highly ranked players but always had plenty of good, competitive athletes.

Result? Our players were just much better doubles players and therefore beat doubles teams comprised of better tennis players.

Which is very satisfying. That's when you know that your team is fulfilling its potential.

Coaching Tennis with Drills

Drills are an effective training technique, but I feel that they are overemphasized today and sometimes inappropriately used. The result can be counterproductive. So, here's some food for thought on that subject. I hope it encourages you to carefully observe the effect of drilling on players, so that you get the most out your drills and never have them backfire on you.

We naturally assume that if you drill something into a player's head, he or she then will automatically repeat the pattern during play, rather like an automaton, unconsciously.

Well, that is sometimes true. For example, drilling can "groove" a new or changed stroke, so that the muscle memory instilled becomes more or less automatic. But drilling alone won't give a player that new stroke under match play conditions. At some point you must stop feeding him shots for that stroke and practice executing that new stroke under less-than-ideal conditions, as during actual match play.

Drilling is even less effective when you're trying to teach a tactical pattern. That is CONSCIOUS behavior, involving CONSCIOUS decision making. If you try to drill that tactical pattern into players' heads with mind-numbing repetitions of a drill, you will succeed in nothing but numbing their minds.

In that state of mind a person's state of consciousness dims. So what? Memory of what he's doing also dims. For example, you forget a dream moments after awakening, don't you? That's because it occured while you were asleep -- in a lowerd state of consciousness -- and thus leaves little or no trace behind in memory.

In The Inner Game of Tennis, Tim Gallwey speaks of this phenomenon and its implications. Natural Learning doesn't take place because memory is impaired. So, especially when teaching tactics, you want to RAISE the player's level of awareness and alertness, so that he or she will remember the lesson, recognize that particular situation during matchplay, and recall what to do in it.

Now here's a little story to illustrate what I mean:

Once upon a time, there was a basketball coach who liked the running game. That is, he wanted his teams to fast-break off defensive rebounds, beating the other team down the floor to score by an easy lay-up. He had a good team. In fact, about halfway through the season, it was undefeated. Yet he was frustrated by his failure to get them to run their fast-break during games. One day he said, "Girls, what's the matter? Do you get amnesia out there?"

They felt bad. It wasn't that they weren't trying to do everything he said. In fact, it was quite the other way around: they recklessly "sacrificed their bodies" diving for loose balls to impress him.

His solution, a conventional one, was to "overpractice" fast-breaking. At this point, there was a lull in the schedule. So, for over a week, every practice began and ended with fast-breaking drills. There was a good deal of fast-break drilling in the middle too. In fact, every other kind of practice was minimized to afford over an hour of fast-breaking in every two-hour session. It got so bad that, every time you closed your eyes, you heard "Exit! Outlet!" and saw a replay.

They repeated this drill so often it became like tying your shoes. They didn't even have to think about it anymore. The kid who got the rebound turned, and there was the kid who was supposed to get the exit pass, and she turned and there was the kid breaking for the basket. Boom. They were on automatic pilot, and I thought I was gonna scream if he didn't cut it out already and stop making them run that play over and over and over again.

Not that I didn't expect this practice to work: it's just that it was boring me to death.

Was I wrong! The next game was a disaster. Their whole game fell apart. You could almost see the little cloud around each kid's head. They obviously couldn't even see straight through it because they passed the ball right to players on the opposing team. They did this so often that I was sitting there wondering, "Can't you tell red from white uniforms?" It was THAT bad! (The other team soon learned that they would pass to anyone who waved at them for the ball.)

Run their regular offense? What offense? They forgot their whole game. Shoot? They did everything but shoot. I finally started yelling "Score!" every time a kid had a shot to keep her from just dribbling or passing the ball around some more instead. It was like they forgot that you dribble and pass to get a shot, not just to dribble and pass the ball around. And they never learned from a mistake: they just kept repeating it over and over again.

Astonished, I wondered what had gotten into their heads. I am ashamed to say that enough of it had gotten into my own head that I didn't notice till the second quarter that they hadn't fast-breaked once! And the head coach hadn't said anything about it during time-outs. I kept quiet till I could tell that he hadn't noticed either. Then I elbowed him and said, "They aren't fast-breaking."

He gave me a jaw-drop and that one, slow blink that annihilates what you just said.

It was too embarrassing. So, at first, he acted as though it wasn't happening. But finally, during half-time, he gently called it to their attention that they weren't fast-breaking and reminded them to do so. He reminded them during time-outs in the second half. He was quite patient: he did not get mad at them. But there was no way those kids could remember to fast-break when it was time to — namely, when a defensive rebound came off the board. Their minds were a blur.

So much for trying to drill fast-breaking into their heads.

Read more here at the Main Site.