Open letter to Rockets: Shooting in Practice vs Games

A bit inspired after reading Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops, seeing the Dalai Lama the day before, and coaching a team in a season ending tournament the day before that...

Conflict: There are a lot of players (people) who have difficulty adjusting to the pressure that exists in a real game vs. the minimal pressure in practice. They drain everything when practicing shooting threes, yet can't hit game time.

The typical answer is, 'they just can't handle the pressure', and you're either a person who wants to take the final shot, or not. It's something you're born with.

Wrong.

To a certain extent, most ten-year vets don't have this fear, but they also no longer have the athletic ability either. So is it possible to have your cake and eat it too? To be able to have Jordan's cool-as-ice mentality (and his relative success) from the first year rather than having to wait until people call you the cool-as-ice 'wily vet' when you're close to retirement?

The Transition: Yes. The first step is mental, the second is physical.

The mental aspect involves believing that players and teams that are faster, more experienced, and probably just plain better than you aren't your 'enemies', but rather your allies that exist to make you a better player, and team. Those elite 'opposing' players and teams exist to improve yours, to improve you to the point where your team will easily overwhelm the mediocre teams that gave you trouble in the past. If you lose to the elite teams, the wrong message to take away is that we're not very good, rather than we only got better just by playing them, because we had to play harder, smarter and faster just to keep up. If you're already looking at playing against the other team's best player and saying he's going to make me not play as well, you're doomed. The best bring out the best.

The physical aspect is one that I don't think people have utilized. The only thing worse than consistently playing mediocre teams, is to play against no competition at all - i.e. 'traditional practice'. Yes, Bowen will get better just by defending T-Mac in practice, especially since Bowen doesn't distinguish between practice and game intensity. Yet I trust Van Gundy already demands this. Where I think the Rockets may be practicing themselves into 4th quarter shortcomings, as with many teams, is how they practice individually.

The Turning Point: If one, for instance, practices shooting threes all afternoon without a defender, unless it's about improving their mechanics, they're literally conditioning themselves not to shoot well during games when defenders are in their face. Of the 100 shots they take that day, 10 come in practice, 10 come in the game, 80 without any defender when shooting around, and 3 in the 4th quarter. That's 80 non-pressure shots in one day vs 3 pressure shots - how in the world can anyone not expect failure?

The Close: Institute an innovative practice scheme, at least just for shooting, where players 'hire' streetball defenders to challenge their shots while a 5-second shot clock cycles with a buzzer and crowd noise over a loudspeakeer. Or have those same defenders get a running headstart from 10 feet away while someone passes the shooter a ball to simulate the outlet pass to the open three-pointer. Etc. etc. etc. Sure beats shooting open shots with no defenders all day long in a quiet gym, then expected to hit them at the end of the game with hyperactive defenders and a frenzied crowd when it counts - in situations they experience a grand total of only 30 minutes a week.

 

It's completely relevant, for the same reason veterans (or anyone, at any level) often sink their second free throw after missing the first. By the second free throw attempt, they're better conditioned to the pressure of 30,000 people focused intensely on you, the crowd, the distractions, the expectations... The same reason players get into 'the zone', like McGrady last night, or vs. the Spurs last year - probably not a total coincidence.

Wesley has about 40 game-time shots compared to probably 4000 non-game-time shots since his surgery. The added pressure of needing to perform with McGrady hurting is changing his mental frame from past seasons. There's twice the pressure to perform this year in games, yet he's practicing under the same 'non-game time' conditions as any other year. That's a recipe for failure.

Head? He already had an ice-in-his-veins mentality coming in, and no one expects him, mainly Van Gundy, to shoot as well as he has. However, if he doesn't maintain that game-time pressure off the court, he's going to start hitting that rookie wall soon enough as the expectations rise (and they already are.)

Guys, this is not about NBA vs. high school (and no, I don't coach high school basketball), this is about simple human nature. It's also about thinking outside of the box, something most people can't do past 30 (our brain literally fuses by 30 unless we keep innovating.) You don't have a tightrope walker practice for 30 days, 8 hours a week on a wire one foot above the ground, then expect them to perform the same way in front of a huge crowd a hundred feet above the ground with no safety net. And you wonder why so many players choke in the 4th quarter? Even NFL coaches simulate crowd noise and game conditions when preparing for big games. There's a lot less work involved in setting something up when shooting hoops.

Practice isn't going to make players better athletes, it's going to improve their mental game more than anything, and I can't see how you can do that with major success (like Phil Jackson-eight-championships-success) without equating practice conditions to game-time conditions.

ps To anticipate a question, Phil Jackson actually works to equate game-time conditions to pressure-free practice conditions, but that takes a tremendous amount of skill, patience, discipline and family history of meditation experience, and it's not Van Gundy's style either.

 

Dead horse worth beating. Shooting in practice is nothing like shooting in a game. There's a mental approach to shooting during the games that the Rockets are simply not prepared for - this isn't humane anymore to watch.