Playing At The Right Tempo
Every Team Has an Optimal Tempo for Success

by Alan Lambert

Introduction

Since my early days as a player, and long into my coaching career, one of the facts about basketball players that amazes me is how few really understand the importance of controlling the game tempo.  I think there are several reasons for this including the fact that the focus of many players in today's game is on the "I" not found in the word "TEAM".  While you can be a great individual player the reality is that your team has the best chance of winning the highest percentage of games over the course of a season when a team "finds and executes" at it's best tempo.  Believe it or not, every team has an optimal tempo at which they perform the best, whether you are a 20 win team or once struggling to get a few W's.  Play too slow and things begin to break down, or play too fast and your team crashes and burns.  How do you know what tempo is best for your team?  Smart player know from experience. Inexperienced or selfish players don't recognize the importance of controlling tempo.  If you don't know ask your coach they almost certainly do.  Many factors affect what is the best tempo for your team including athleticism, fundamental skill level, and personnel.  The important point I want to make in today's Playground Pointer is you must find that optimal tempo and learn to stick to it to give your team the best chance of success on the court. 

An Optimal Tempo for Your Team

For some teams getting to the right tempo means speeding up an opponent, for others slowing down the tempo.  Coaches accomplish this by changing defenses, personnel, pushing the ball, controlling the number of passes prior to a shot, and working the shot clock for a specific amount of time amongst other tactics.  The reason most players don't tune into this important skill is because it's not as tangible to feel or to execute at the team level.  However, talk to any coach at any level and they will confirm what I am telling you.  We have a tempo that is best for our team and our offensive and defensive focus should include understanding it and finding that rhythm on the court.  This team skill compares well to the individual skill of balance.  Most players can tell you when you have balance and when you don't but they don't often know what exactly it is or how to control it.  Optimal playing tempo for a team is similar. 

The most obvious way to determine what is the best tempo for your team is to talk with you coach.  Beyond that your keen powers of observation on the court will go a long way toward helping you to assess whether you're playing above or below that optimal team tempo.
This has less to do with whether or not you are a up tempo fast break type team or a Princeton style ball control team.  Whatever system your team runs there is a tempo that produces more scores and less errors and that is your goal.

Here's Why It's Important

When you build an individual basketball skill you are tying together a series of well practiced movements in a specific temporal sequence.  This is called a "motor program" in sport science language.  If you think of it like a computer program your skill is a series of rapid if-then statements resulting in a specific action.  In the team game coaches preach practicing at game tempo.  Whatever tempo your team develops it is the result of many practices over time to develop a coordinated sense of rhythm and timing between players within your teams' offense or defense.  The timing between sequences and the counter decisions you make when a defense takes away options become well rehearsed and automated.  When a defense forces your team to play offensively faster than the "subconsciously automated" optimal rhythm an uncomfortable feeling creeps into your play and the team motor program breaks down.   The consequence are rushed shots, forced passes, turnovers, and uncertainty in decision making.  Teams that defensively cause you to slow your offensive tempo produce the same results. 

One of the best tools a coach can have on a team is one or more players who have a great sense of a team's best tempo and know when to push or slow the tempo to get control of the game.

The Player's Point of View

Most players I have coached have said to me at one time or another we need to play "more up tempo" or "we need to slow it down".  This is a good perspective when they are talking about team concept but more often than not it has more to do with "what tempo that a player plays best" rather than what is best for the team.  The goal of the coach is to have so practiced team offense and defensive schemes that the team develops it's own internal sense of the right tempo.  When the player(s) have problems controlling the tempo then the job falls to the coach who must often substitute a player out of the game if they are too quick or too slow to adjust in given situations. 

It is much easier to control the tempo of the game when you are the primary ball handler on your team.  You have the ability to push the ball into the paint in transition or back it up and out to initiate your team set offense.  If the game gets hurried and your opponent has just scored 2 or 3 times in a row off transition making a comeback to break down your big lead, working the clock and settling down the offensive tempo to get the ball to your "sure thing big man" is but one of many ways you can control tempo offensively.  If your team is having problems getting scores in the half court set because of defensive perimeter pressure, you will probably want to rush the ball into the front court to reduce the amount of time the defense has to get their pressure set prior to initiating your offense.  This doesn't mean to rush to the first shot, but pushing the tempo a bit can take away some of the defensive pressure that might be slugging down your teams' offensive flow and optimal tempo.

If you are not a primary ball handler it becomes more difficult to affect the tempo of the game.  However, there are subtle ways you can contribute to finding and maintaining your team's optimal tempo.  One of those ways is to get yourself into position up court quickly to prevent your team from having pressure slug down your offense. Other ways might include using verbal or physical signals to fast breaking teammates to pull the ball back out in transition to get the offense under control, or telling the PG to speed it up or slow it down.  This should be done only when you are an experienced player and have an excellent sense of your team's optimal rhythm.  Championship teams at the Pro level are able to do this because most of the players understand the best tempo based on the huge amount of playing experience they have together.

Different Personnel and Offensive Sets Produce Different Optimal Tempo's

There is a sub-set factors which will affect your general team tempo you should not fail to overlook.  The first of these is the type of offense set or defense.  For example you might run a motion offense against zone defenses that has sort of a lazy flow back and forth across the court in an attempt to lure the defense into over-committing and opening up a hole for a quick score.  You will find that your set play offense has a different rhythm.  Be sure to develop the sense of what tempo works best for your different offenses.  One of the primary reasons teams change defense is to manipulate your team offensive rhythm.  When teams change up on your try to keep in mind that "internal rhythm clock" you are comfortable with when looking for shots following changing defenses. 

The second sub-set has to do with the type of personnel your team has.  Each teams' optimal tempo will vary based upon their skill level, athleticism and personnel.  If you have a great center who's not quick up and down the court on a consistent basis than playing a very high up tempo offense will push you outside of your optimal tempo envelope.  Conversely if your team doesn't have a prominent inside game you'll want to look at getting the tempo up into a more wide open up and down game.  But don't be fooled.  Even fast break teams can play too fast, and half-court teams play too slow. 

Defensive Tempo Affects Offensive Tempo

Player should also understand that defensive tempo affects offensive tempo and vise versa.  One of the hardest things for a team to do is to play an up tempo pressure defense and a controlled patient offense.  Your teams intelligence and understanding that optimal defensive and offensive tempo's can be quite different is key to reaching both on both ends of the court.  In a Jan. 22, 2004 article in The Daily Texan, Texas Longhorn's Head Coach Jody Conradt said 

The Importance of Controlling Tempo Increases on the Road

There is an old coaching adage that says you can play a bit loose from the vest at home but you had better control game tempo on the road if you want to win.  Controlling the tempo forces the appointment to play at your speed and in general you want a lower scoring defensively controlled game on the road to keep the fans out of the game and the energy level of the crowd from positively affecting the home team.  If you don't control the tempo on the road, the crowd will control you.

Most teams shoot better at home than on the road.  If the other teams gets more shots in a up tempo game it's more likely they will outscore you.  The way to off-set this is to control the game tempo so that less possessions are to your benefit than vise versa.  For an up tempo team this simply might mean taking a slightly more conservative approach to fast break possessions if it helps you to keep a crowd out of the game.

Keys to Reading Your Teams Tempo

Offensively here are some clues to look for in determining if your team is playing at it's best tempo;

Defensive tempo is a bit more complex than offensive tempo.  Here are some possible clues to poor defensive tempo;

Summary

To sum up today's Playground Pointer the key point is that every team has an optimal offensive and defensive tempo.  Know it and work toward maintaining it to give your team the best chance to hang a W on the wall.  Your ability to help your team maintain this tempo let's you play with more confidence and enhances your ability to execute in game situations.  A player should know what is a good and bad tempo and use their decision making with or without the ball to help the team stay "on tempo".  Remember that within a game there are different sub-tempo's on offense and defense and that they can affect each other.  Controlling the game tempo on the road increases your chances of winning a game even more so than at home because crowd's affect tempo.  Finally, while it's often difficult to pinpoint the cause of tempo changes as a player during the course of a game, being alert to sudden and undesired tempo changes can help you to exert proper decision making to keep them under your individual and team control.  Playing at the right tempo has everything to do with improving your teams chance for success on the court.

Playground Pointers courtesy of The Basketball Highway®.

The Roots of on Court Success Lay in Self-Discipline
Doing Things Right When No One Else is Looking

by Alan Lambert

Introduction

I often have been asked at clinics the question what makes the great players?  There is no question that God given natural athletic ability is one of, it not the primary contributor to on court success.  However the years I have played and coached have been littered with the bodies of "great athletes" who never were able to get to or sustain success at the top.  Another key factor in the making of a great player is realistic assessment of one's own talents and potential.  Some of the best players at times appear to be almost surprised by their success, because their focus isn't on themselves but on their team's success.  An over-inflated view of one's abilities might fool some of the coaches some of the time, but not all the coaches all the time. More than anything it hurts you when you aren't realistic about where you are at as a player because you fail to recognize and work on the skills really important to improve yourself to your maximum capabilities.   From the coaches standpoint however if there is one element in the recipe of a great player that cannot be missing, it would be "self-discipline."  That is the topic of today's Playground Pointer.

Automating Your Skills the Right Way Requires Discipline

Getting big time skills and game requires an enormous amount of dedication, practice and commitment.  As I have stated in a previous Playground Pointer it can take up to 200,000 repetitions to automate a basketball skill.  That works out to about 500 repetitions on "one particular skill" every other day for about 2 years.  For shooting a basketball that means as much as 2-3 hours a day just to automate your shot and that doesn't come close to taking into consideration the other important skills in basketball such as ball handling, passing, defensive footwork, cutting and moving, and rebounding. 

The obvious question you might ask yourself is how on earth can I ever get enough practice time in a day to do all I need to do?  Combining your skills workouts into programs that allow you to practice multiple skills while condensing the time is the best, but not the whole answer.  The deeper rooted answer lies in being extremely self-disciplined to practice when your coach or other players are not around.  While the affects of practice afforded you in season, practicing 5 or 6 times a week for 2-3 hours a day, can make a significant contribution to your skill improvement, the greater impact on your basketball future will occur by what you do when no one else is looking. There is no question that practicing on your own is harder in terms of motivation and getting proper feedback regarding the proper way to practice your skills.  But the players who have the best chance of succeeding up the basketball food chain are those that can take what they practice in the gym with their coaches, and who can "on their own" to gain the additional repetitions required to be successful at their home basket, playground, or friends houses. 

There is another aspect of being self-disciplined and that has to do with your practice habits with your team and it's affect on your ability to rise to another level as a player.  Learning basketball skills is indifferent to direction.  You can just as easily learn a skill the wrong way as you do the right way.  Poor self-discipline to "give it your best to do it right" leads to sloppy practice habits.   Some coaches call this skill erosion.  Getting into a groove where you can execute your skills under pressure without thinking about them involves so automating your skills to the same pattern that it literally becomes a "programmed movement", an almost permanent habit.  When you lack the discipline to practice a skill at game speed under game conditions all the time, you are practicing to "un-automate that skill".  

Your Effort When No One is Watching

There is no question that it's easier to motivate yourself when your coach or teammates are watching your performance.  However in reality, there are many situations in practice where you are the ONLY judge of your effort.  No one is going to force you to run your transition fill lane the proper way every single time when the focus of the drill is on the trailer.  Your coach isn't going to physically force you to stay in your defensive stance away from the ball when you are not directly involved in defending an on-ball screen and they are concentrated on teaching that aspect of the drill.  Nobody is going to force you to run your offensive patterns with energy, accuracy, and proper game speed, like you were designing a computer circuit board when the drill is structured to work on team defense.  Just keep this important fact in mind.  Every time you do it the wrong way, there is increasingly less chance you will be able to perform it the right way in a game at a critical moment under pressure.    The more doubt you have that you can perform that skill "out of the can perfectly" when you need it, the more your mind will be thinking about that uncertainty, and less likely to focus on the actual key elements of that snap-shot picture of time in the game where a split second decision decides your success or failure.   The more skill you can completely automate the more brain processing time you gain in which to slow down the games events and make the right decision when it's time.  Great players talk about the game being almost in slow motion.   That occurs because they have been self-disciplined along the way to do things right so often they are habit and not chance.

For the player who is naturally self-disciplined you have an inherent advantage over other players.  You just need to focus your discipline on practicing the right things at the right time.  For others however it can be a more trying challenge to be disciplined when you instincts tell you to take it easy or goof off.  Here are some of my ideas to help you focus yourself and become more self disciplined in specific areas.

Ways to Demonstrate and Improve Your Self-Discipline

1. Be on Time- There may not be a more telling tale to a coach about a players ability to be self-disciplined and perform what the coach demands than whether or not you are on time.  If you don't think your coach notices this trait, you are dead wrong.  There is also no greater trait to demonstrate to your coach your commitment to the team, the system, and your teammates than being on time.  Why is it so important?  Because basketball is a team game that requires every body working together.  While it is somewhat natural for you look out for yourself, no team succeeds without the 5 players on the court, and all the others from the bench being committed to doing the same thing in a predictable manner at a predictable time.  The more your decisions are made in concert with the others players and within your system of play, the greater your chance of team and personal success.  Just look at the great talent of the Los Angeles Lakers this past couple of years.  When they were in concert in execution they won championships.  Even with their great talent, when they weren't together in concert they were less than the best, not enough to win an NBA championship.  One of the great quotes of all time came from Branch Rickey when he said "luck is when preparation meets opportunity".  It isn't luck, it's timing.  Your self-discipline has taught you to be prepared with all your basketball skill tools so when the opportunity comes you can seize it and grab the trophy.  If you can't be on time to practice, or self-disciplined enough to meet your teammates at the proper time they need you, you'll never be a great player.

2. When You Want to Slack, Push It Back!-  There isn't a player alive that hasn't at one time or another thought about slacking off when they were tired or somebody wasn't pushing them.  This is the time to think of your goals as a player or team.  When you slack, someone near you isn't.  Pushing back becomes a trained habit just like slacking off.  When you learn to break the mental barrier of doing less, and instead do more, you are training self-discipline against adversity.  Great players rise during adversity.  Sometimes being great in game situations doesn't require you to do more than everyone else.  Sometimes, it just doing what is required in game situations when others break down.  I am a firm believe that you set personal and team goals as strong reminders of why you push when you want to slack.  Without goals the motivation to push just isn't the same.

3. Success Begins With You and Powers Motivation-  Hall of Fame Coach John Wooden, winners of 7 straight and 10 overall NCAA Championship, was a stickler for discipline.  But it wasn't punishment or forced discipline.  You did it the right way or you didn't play.  Why were his team so good.  Because they avoided many of the highs and lows associated with external motivators.   He believes that striving to be the best you can be is what produces champions. He didn't drive his players because he wanted something.  He encouraged them to do their best each and every day.   In one of his recent books entitled Coach Wooden One-on-One he talks about the worst thing you can do for one that you love are the things they could do for themselves.  He attributes this quote to Abraham Lincoln although somewhat uncertain.  The point is if you expect others to do things to get you to play the right way, or make the right effort all the time, you will be the loser.  It begins with you.  There is a great by-product of investing your own discipline, energy and effort into your practice habits.  It is an intrinsic reward that serves as a motivator far greater than any external motivator.  Confidence and a sense of accomplishment come from your own efforts.  These rewards in turn generate more motivation and in a sense become like a nuclear power source for the long haul and effort required over the years you develop as a player to reach the highest levels of the game.  External motivators like money, clothes, and travel can light a fire, but only the sense of accomplishment can be the torch that drives you to your best.   We repeat what rewards us, it's just human nature.

4. Compete Against Yourself-  When you are growing up as a player you are in constant competition against a wide variety of players, some much better some much worse and most somewhere in between.  It is pretty easy to get motivated when you must play against someone who is much better than you but a lot harder when the challenge is against a player with much lesser skills.  This is why as part of becoming more self-disciplined you must learn to compete against yourself.  Your standard is "becoming the best you can become" and the only way to accomplish that is to better your own performance each and every time you attempt a skill.  You may not win that competition because some days you'll be a bit tired, have other problems on your mind out side of basketball, or maybe even needing a break from playing so much.  But if your goal is to better yourself there is no better competition than yourself.  Set goals in everything you do and keep records of it.  When you are shooting by yourself record the number of shots, shooting percentages and the time it takes you to properly complete a drill or drill circuit.  Use these figures to give you an overall sense of your improvement.  Just keep in mind that sometimes external results occur more slowly than internal growth.  This is called a performance plateau. Where your skills are improving but due  to external factors, such as fatigue, experience of teammates, and even distractions you may not show that improvement in the stats.  However if you are competing against yourself to "win against your last performance" you will get better.  This requires self-discipline.  In competing each time out you are in a very quiet but powerful way improving your self-discipline.

5. You Get What You Give-  Some people might argue with that way of thinking but few could argue with the fact that it is hard to out give what you receive in return for great effort.  It isn't even quantifiable.  Pat Riley, NBA Championship coach once said "you can only receive what you are willing to give."  If you do not have the self-discipline to do what is right, do it to the best of your ability, and unselfishly, how on earth can you expect others in your team setting to go to battle for you.  Everyone wants to follow a champion up the hill, few want to chase the man that cowers in the trench. Self-discipline starts with the big E (EFFORT).  There is a famous law of science that I have previously written about in an earlier Playground Pointer called Wolf's Law.  It has to do with the direction of bone growth, but it's principle applies in a lot of places in sports.  Wolf's Law states that there will be growth in the direction of a consistently applied pressure.  When you push in to learn a skill, practice it properly every day, with maximum effort, you will sustain the best growth possible.  Anything less will leave you with a sense of regret.  If you push in, and give all you can give you can live with your own efforts.  Giving all you can give doesn't just mean stupidly throwing away energy or practice repetitions.  Remember, learning is indifferent to direction.  When you give be self-disciplined enough to practice the right way every time, all the time.  It's where you get back the greatest results.  If you choose only to work when others are watching, you will only get back what you have invested.  Don't do that to yourself.  Push in, push on, and push right.

I'm sure there are many other areas you can think about in terms of how to better your self and improve your self discipline.  These represent only a fraction ideas that we could generate to give you a sense of accomplishment through improved self-discipline.  You may have read through this Pointer today and scratched your head a bit.  You might think self discipline is something you can overcome with effort at the right time.  Just remember the right time is all the time.  And the greatest path to you rise to become the best player you can be starts with SELF-DISCIPLINE. 

Courtesy of The Basketball Highway®.