Principles of Play for U16s

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Hello and welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to talk about principles of play for the U16 age group or below. So I want to firstly talk about why I think having principles of play Over plays is a much better way to coach the younger age group, the youth players.

Okay, so being principle-focused is a lot better way for you to get to outcomes rather than being set-focused. And the reason is players are going to play for various coaches throughout their life, and especially at the young age group, they're going to go through a lot more coaches, and all these coaches are going to think differently about what Plays are better, where they want the player to play, what position they want the player to play.

So it's super important that we can help this player understand how to play the game, how to create advantages, how to play with advantages, and how to space correctly, how to make zero-second decisions, how to do all of this as opposed to how to follow a strict set of movement patterns from a set play, basically.

Okay. So I think the very important to nail down the principles of play, how, what does your spacing look like? Are you 5 out? Are you 4 out, 1 in? And then how can we create advantages based off these spacings as well? Super important.

Something that I think is a low-hanging fruit for coaches to do is officiate turnovers during practice. So if you know a player travels on his, before he puts the ball on the floor, then you can just start calling it and then the players are going to start to adapt.

And another cool thing about officiating turnovers, I've said this on the episode countless times. It's that you can add constraints to officiate as turnovers. So essentially you're changing the rules of the game and you're providing instant feedback for the players if they do or don't do, depending on the constraint, what you've asked them.

So if it's a dribbling game and it's a one-on-one dribbling game and they're trying to steal the ball from each other, you could say left-hand dribble. So where if a player dribbles with their right hand, it's a turnover, right? Or even Something I like is you can't turtle.

So if the players are dribbling and they protect the ball with their back, so they turtle to the ball, it's a turnover. And I think that small-sided game has been said on the podcast, but it's one that's really good for the players to develop solutions to protect the ball without using their body as a shield.

So defining your principles of play, especially for U16s, right? I think what's super important is Obviously spacing. I think spacing is important at every age in basketball, you know, from little under 6s to under 10s, all the way to the pros. So how can we get the effective spacing basically?

And I think floor is lava is one of them. You can find out how to implement floor is lava and a lot more on the Transforming Basketball website as well. There's a lot of courses and clinics there for you to check out. And especially early in the season before you define roles, Is that you should, or players should experience multiple positions, right?

This will not only help them perceive affordances, like let's say a player is big, so we're going to make him a picker, right? He's going to be setting picks on offense. So what we could do is have him play as a handler so that he knows how the handlers want the pick to be set, for example.

So that's like something. And also, Again, going back to the initial point of having principles over plays, that these players are going to develop. And this player today that's really tall may stop growing. So he'll have to know how to play handling the ball with the ball in his hand.

So he'll have to know how to play with the ball in his hand going forward, right? So it's important that we teach and we put him in situations where he can learn these skills naturally. Right. And I think other principles of play that you want to nail down for your under-16 team.

is shot selection. What is a good shot? What is a great shot? What is a bad shot? So we use the medals, right? So what is a gold medal? Layups, dunks, or free throws. Those are super high-value shots. And what is a silver medal?

Catch-and-shoot 3. What is a bronze medal? Off-the-dribble 3 or in-the-paint mid-range shot, right? And, but these can be different based on your personnel, based on who you're coaching and what you as a coach thinks a good shot, a great shot, and a bad shot is.

And I think it's so interesting when you constrain a game. And let's say you're doing a one-on-one game and it's an advantage one-on-one game where maybe the ball starts on the back of the defense. So initially, if you just play that game, players will— you'll see them shoot some bronze medals.

So they'll stop short of the basket and shoot some bronze medal because it's an easier solution. But then if you add the constraint, has to be a gold medal, You have to find a way to finish with a gold medal. Then you'll see different movement solutions emerge, different functional movements surge to get the gold medal, get that layup finish.

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And then you might even challenge them more and say, you only have 2 dribbles to find the gold medal. So it's just like all these constraints and they're learning on the fly how to, you know, get the shot selection. And then the Dominus principles.

What do your players do when there's an advantage, right? So what principles are they playing with? 0-second decisions. They have to shoot, pass, or drive in 0 seconds or less. 1 can't guard 2. They have to be in great spacing. So that one defensive player can't guard 2 offensive players.

And then as well as that, in and out to space. So basically like floor is lava. They can't be in the mid-range area because it obviously makes it easier for the defense to guard. But as well as that, it's not in a position where we might want a shot.

So even if a player is in good space, but they're in the mid-range, that may not be a shot that we want. Okay. And then how can we create advantages? So this goes back to. Triggers, which we talk a lot about here on the podcast and finding the coverage solutions.

But we can also create advantages just by running, using speed. So being in transition, right? And it's a great way for the U16s to practice because they're going to obviously work on their conditioning. All players are going to be giving max effort. So every practice, the players are going to be having so much better from that standpoint of conditioning, as well as making decisions when they're tired.

And things like that. Yellow as well. So we call it yellow. So we use the traffic light system. So it's green, yellow, red. Green is transition. Yellow is the triggers. So a 2-person trigger. And then red is your set plays or your combo triggers, right?

So you can combine different triggers to get the set plays that you want. And the games should emphasize gaining and sustaining offensive advantages until you find the shot that you want, that you Selected in your shot selection. So some practical games that you can use here at practice.

So let's say you have a 3-on-2 game where the offense starts outside the 3-point line, defense starts inside the 3-point line, and offense have 60 seconds. So we call this Domino's Burst. So offense have 60 seconds to score as many points as they can, and then they can switch offense to defense.

One player stays on offense, obviously, or if you have players on the sideline, they can come in. And what this does, you can work on your dominoes principles here because there's already a numerical advantage. So then you can play with your principles of one can't guard 2, in and out to space, and zero-second decisions.

Okay. And from here as well, you can, depending on what you want to work on. So let's say you want to work on off-ball movement. So let's say now with the dominoes principles that you can constrain it and say, okay, the ball has to touch the paint.

Before we can shoot. So as the ball is being driven into the paint, the other 2 players have to react. Are they push, pulling, or hold to create and optimize the space on the court for the ball and for the team? Okay. Another game that I've used that I really enjoy is 4-on-4 advantage or neutral start.

Obviously you can do this 5-on-5, 3-on-3, whatever is best for your team. But all it is, the Offensive start, coach will hand the ball, coach or another player. I always like to have my players in the games versus me so I can literally just watch and officiate and, you know, give feedback, ask questions.

But you can start where a player or coach will hand the ball out to the offensive player. Depending on what side the ball is on, which hand the ball is on, will determine if it's an advantage situation or if it's a neutral situation.

And then from here, the players have to either play with dominoes or they have to flow into a trigger. Looking to read the defense and create an advantage. Okay. So I think one really powerful thing that all coaches can do, and I challenge you to do at your next practice session, is film your sessions.

Okay. You don't have to film the whole session. You can just film maybe a section of it. And you can show it back to the players. You can review it with the players, or you can review it yourself and see what are some things that we can improve on.

Is the defense doing what they're supposed to do? And if so, how can the offense punish the coverage that the defense is in? Okay. And then we can reinforce our concepts and reinforce the coverage solutions by simply just filming it and showing it to the players.

Okay. So coaches should really push players to identify and act on advantages in real time. So this is where during practice, you can take a timeout or you can give feedback. It's a great time to have an intervention. When players aren't finding the correct solution for the problems at hand.

So if the defense are in an aggressive coverage, the offense have to find what solutions are gonna punish that coverage. So if they're not finding it, this is where you as a coach can have an intervention and ask specific questions to help the players find the correct solution and punish the defense.

Okay. And I just think as well, faster gameplay can unlock higher levels of team potential and performance. Because you're gonna have more players playing. And if you can get more players playing and they're all getting those super purposeful reps at practice and at games, you're gonna be developing more and more players.

And ultimately, as a whole, we're gonna be developing better and better players and just keep growing the game of basketball. And I think that's what it's all about. So I hope that you've enjoyed this episode and hopefully you can apply some of these principles to your under-16 team.

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