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Seven Key Concepts All Point Guards Should Know

Came across this article today, which is written off a speech given by Dena Evans, former point guard at the University of Virginia.

Dena uses an acronym to describe the seven keys - RACECAR.

R A - Race the ball from Arc to arc.

C - Control

E - Eagerly hunt the paint

C - Cleverness

A - Arrum which is play on "air 'em"

R - Reminders (My favorite)

Here's the link - http://bit.ly/8ZcqYV -- HIGHLY SUGGEST TO READ FULL ARTICLE!

Steve Nash Showing Us All How To Be Better Teammates

Something I’ve noticed with some of the U17 and U19 soccer teams I train is their lack of interaction on the field, by way of communication, encouragement and just general “feel goodedness” (for lack of a better term) about playing the game of soccer with each other.

We as coaches are constantly striving to build team chemistry. Chemistry is a hard thing to define and you know it when you have it. I’ve been on some teams that I felt had good to great team chemistry and I recently discovered at an alumni game, that that chemistry doesn’t go away, even after a few years having gone by without seeing said teammates.

So what can you do as a player to be a better teammate and build more team chemistry? There may be no easy answer, but I would like to point you all in the direction of an article recently published on ESPN’s basketball blog, Truehoop.

The article and video is about Steve Nash and the amount of high fives he gives to teammates during a game. Though the video is done in a manner to be a little bit silly and poke fun at Nash slightly, the lessons are there for the taking.

Nash is quite an interesting NBA player. Definitely cut from a different mold than the typical NBA player, Nash can teach everyone involved in sports a thing or two about leadership and being a good teammate. For further proof of this, I encourage you to read the chapter about Steve Nash in Chris Ballard’s book “The Art of a Beautiful Game,” and this other article about Nash by Coach Steve Finamore.

A simple thing like handing out high-fives after good and bad plays (maybe more important the bad) can go a long way in helping someone’s confidence and overall team camaraderie. Keep the lessons coming Nashy.

LeBron Posterizes James Johnson But Gets Help From Varejao

It's been a while since I've posted, but now with the NBA playoffs in full gear, I'm hoping to get some more posts up.

What I'm going to try is to pick out a play or two from a game and sort of break down some of the X's and O's of the play.

The first one I'm highlighting is LeBron James' monster throw down against the Bulls last night in Game Two.

Now LBJ does a lot of things right on this play. He's a superhuman athlete and really doesn't need the help of his teammates on most plays, he made that pretty clear last night. But if you watch closely there is a subtle assist from Anderson Varejao on this spectacular play.

Notice in the picture below: As LeBron gets isolated, the Bulls help defenders (mainly Joakim Noah and Luol Deng) are both in good position to help and seem like they are anticipating having to help.


Now, right before LeBron begins his move, Anderson Varejao flashes from the weakside to the center of the rim, seemingly to make himself available as an option for LeBron to pass to. Based on the timing of James' move in correspondance with Varejao's flash, I think this was only done to "seal" off Noah who would be trying to protect the rim on James dunk attempt.

The rest is done by James, who gets unbelievable seperation on a jab and rip through move. Secondly the elevation and ferocity with which he threw down that dunk makes me think that Noah was lucky he wasn't able to come over as a help defender. Knowing the kind of player Noah is and that he wouldn't back down from a challenge, he would have probably attempted to block that shot, and it would have been Noah and James Johnson on a poster, instead of just Johnson.

Here's how the play turned out in real time.