I know that the phrase “thinking outside of the box” is overused and worn out. Critics will say to me that there’s “nothing new under the sun” when it comes to basketball. Well, I’m not talking about a new way to shoot the ball, or dribbling with your elbows, or playing defense on all fours. I’m not talking about a new way to use ball screens or a different twist on the last hybrid of man-zone defenses. I’m talking about a new approach to developing players, teams, and even coaches.

In order to understand the advantages of The READ & REACT OFFENSIVE SYSTEM (from here on abbreviated R&R), we need to agree on the nature of the problems that the R&R System is meant to solve. The frustrations with these unsolved problems are what led me to develop the R&R Offensive System:

MY FRUSTRATIONS WITH THE TRADITIONAL SYSTEM

When I entered the coaching field, I had a very simple goal: Continue to enjoy the game that I had been playing, while teaching others how to play it. Pretty lame, huh? No Hollywood director’s going to make a movie out of that! It goes without saying that I wanted to win; I wanted to win every game and championship that was possible. But I wanted that “Road to the Championship” to include the day-to-day joy of teaching kids how to play the game.

NOT ENOUGH TIME TO TEACH THE GAME

I found out quickly that I could teach math to anyone at anytime of the year, but when it came to basketball, it was ILLEGAL to teach before a certain date. Oh sure, I could work with at most two players at a time. No one else could be in the gym; no one could even LOOK in the gym! Teaching basketball to youngsters “out of season” is treated like quarantine for the Ebola virus! If I wanted to teach 12 players per day, then at 2 per hour, I would spend an extra 6 hours per day after school! That puts me home at about 10:00 pm! And people wonder why coaches dress funny…

OK, OK, I can play by the rules. I’ll pretend all of the athletes in the school play all sports like they did in the 1940s when there were only three: Football, Basketball, and Baseball. So when can I begin? Oh wow! Three weeks before the first game! How generous! Of course, with tryouts included, that means I’ll have about twelve or thirteen practice days before we begin to tally those Ws and Ls that will determine whether I have job next year or not! Of course, when I was hired, an administrator assured me that wins and losses were not a factor in my employment. Yeah, right. This is the same suit that told me my summers would be free!

And so, every season began the same way: Begin with the fundamentals and as they master them, move into the principles that allow them to play as an orchestrated team. But with about 5 days of practice left, Desperate Realization would set in. Not only has there not been enough time for my players to grasp the fundamentals and principles of the game, they also can’t break a press, get the ball in-bounds, run a primary fast break, secondary fast break, man offense or zone offense. Not only that, when I explain the multiple defenses that we’re going to run based on whether our opponents have made or missed a field goal, made or missed a free throw, or whether they are in-bounding the ball in the backcourt or frontcourt, my players give me the same look as a cow looking at a new gate!

So, with only 5 practice days left before our first game with our powerhouse cross-town rivals that our girls coach has scheduled because she’s loaded with talent and will surely win, I resort to what my high school coach did: I drop all pretenses of teaching the game and drill my players to run plays like a bunch of little robots. And sure enough, my players became very good at running plays but not learning how to play. Once we got into post-season tournament play, all of my tricky plays were scouted and you can imagine the rest. When little Johnny can’t pass from point A to point B, then he passes to anyone (hopefully with the same color jersey) who uses his 1-on-5 skills to force up a shot. I then pray that my football players, who are just now getting used to a ROUND ball, can rebound some of the misses and put them back in.

Do I sound like I was frustrated? I needed the summers “off” in order to recover and convince myself that I could do a better job the next year. Every spring I was even more motivated to go to every coaching clinic my 1975 Ford Maverick could get me to. I would take copious notes on the 15 set plays and quickhitters of the current NCAA champion who used them to win with his 18 former high school All-Americans that he had hand-picked to fit his now famous “Fabulous Fifteen Set Plays and Counters Offense.” I was so sure that little Johnny and teammates back home could run this championship offense with its 100 counters to trapping, helping, rotating man-to-man defenses!

Of course, next year, 19 of my 20 opponents would run zones.

MOST PLAYS DON’T WORK ANYWAY! (Or, HOW I REACHED MY TURNING POINT)

In the mid-to-late-90’s, three incidents came together to create a turning point in my thinking.
1. After a rather average season, my assistant asked me if I was happy. I replied, “Not particularly.” He asked what I would do differently if I could scrap our entire program and start all over. I said that I would teach our kids how to play the entire game by principle. He then asked, “Why don’t you do it?” The honest answer is: I didn’t know how. I had a lot of pieces; a lot of 2-man and 3-man game principles, but not the entire thing. That seemed like a pretty tall order: to create a seamless offensive system that would encompass transition, man-to-man, and zone without contradiction. Also, it could not be limited to only one “set” like 5 OUT, nor could it be limited to only one type of players, or to a particular style of play.
2. Using the previous season’s videotapes, I charted all the points we scored from free throws, offensive rebounds, fast breaks, set plays, broken plays, etc. and found an unsettlingly ratio. 80% of our points came from broken plays, transition, and other PRINCIPLED basketball. We only scored the way our set plays were designed about 20% of the time. But in practice, the ratio was the opposite: we spent 80% of our time on set plays and less than 20% of the time on PRINCIPLED basketball. I had to ask myself why I was spending 80% of our time on only 20% of our point production?
3. At about the same time, I experienced some success with a team built around 6 players who played together from 7th grade to 12th grade. Their 5-year record was 125 wins and 13 losses. Were they talented? Yes, but not to the extent you might think. Only two went on to play on the college level. Their real talent was their coordinated effort. They “knew” each other. They moved like a school of fish. Was I responsible for this? Had I suddenly become a coaching genius? No. Our success was due mostly to the fact that they had played together for 5 years. In fact, each year they were in the program was characterized by fewer plays and more principles.

WHY DON’T THESE PLAYERS KNOW MORE WHEN THEY GET TO MY LEVEL!!!

Why do the players entering my program have such an incomplete set of skills? Why don’t they know more? Why do I have to start all over with every new player? Here’s why:

Let’s step back and take a look at the big picture: In the USA, there is no unifying system of teaching the game to players from their youth up. And because of that, a 10 year old might have 10 or 12 different coaches by the time they’re 18. This can create problems like the following:
1. Each coach might teach different things that often don’t build on each other from year to year, and sometimes the things taught might even contradict each other.
2. Some teach too much too early and overwhelm the kids. The players become “Jack of all trades and masters of none”.
3. Some teach only what was taught to them by their former coaches. This would be OK if their former coaches were great teachers of the game. But what if they weren’t? A poor technique might be passed on from generation to generation just because “it’s what my coach taught me.”
4. Most of the time, each coach starts over and tries to teach the game from the ground up. But with time limitations, each coach can only get so far. Therefore the player only develops so far.

I can speak confidently about these problems because I’ve done each one at some point in my career.

Instead of each coach at each level starting over and teaching the game from the ground up, I have a vision of coaches, at each level, standing on the shoulders of those before them.

But before we get too deeply into my vision, we have to admit that part of the problem is not simply a matter of what’s been going on in the past. Another part of the problem is that most of the youth coaches in our country are simply parents who see a void and want to help. So, what do they teach? Where’s their curriculum? I really feel for these “parent/coaches”: Here’s a ball, 12 kids, two goals and you’ve got one hour, twice per week. Teach them how to play right now, because games will begin in a couple of weeks. What an impossible task!

Can you imagine if we tried to run a school this way? Give a group of first graders to someone who’s not a trained teacher, has no curriculum and can only teach a couple of times per week for only a few months? How could we expect them to get to the second grade? And if they do, second grade starts over with a different system! It’s no wonder that even at our highest levels of basketball, you see 4 players standing and watching one teammate play one-on-one until he or she forces up a shot against 3 defenders! That’s what they were doing on the playground in the first grade, AND that’s what they’re still doing in the 12th grade!

You see, under our current system, as each player gets a year older, it usually means a change of teams, a change of coaches AND therefore, a change of systems. But what if all parties involved were teaching the game via the same basketball system? What if this system had layers of skills and levels of game principles that coincided with the players’ age or years of experience in the system? Imagine what would happen if each coach at each level were on the same page, using the same terminology: Each coach would not have to start over. He or she could pick up where the previous coach left off and add the next layer of skills and principles. In this manner, we could truly stand on each other’s shoulders and our players would reach new heights.

And can you imagine what the coaches at higher levels could do when they apply their knowledge of the game to players brought up through this type of system? I know for a fact that we don’t see what many coaches have up their sleeves because the players they inherit or recruit have a mish-mash of incomplete skills, habits, fundamentals and game principles. The coaches are forced to try to catch players up or fill in missing gaps in their games or their fundamentals. Many times the coach must settle on an offense can best be defined by what their players can’t do!

THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEMS: THE READ & REACT OFFENSIVE SYSTEM

I have a solution to these problems called the READ & REACT OFFENSIVE SYSTEM. And I propose to you that with my system, any coach can teach any group of players to play offense by principle only. While developing this system, I had to ask myself, am I being unreasonable? I don’t think so. Consider this: Players are expected to know how to play one-on-one or two-on-two by principle, but not 5-on-5. Why is that? We expect them to play 5-on-5 defense by principle. Why not offense?

I admit, there’s a certain amount of CHAOS in the game. But it’s what makes the game exciting and unpredictable. Can we train our players for it? If not, then how do coaches get players who “just know how to play”; who have “basketball savvy” or “high basketball I.Q.” If you’re a coach at the college or higher level, then you recruit them. If you’re coaching below the college level, then you wait and hope. For the most part, that makes us opportunist and not teachers.

I honestly believe that most coaches want to develop their players to have “that high basketball I.Q.” The R&R System will teach your players how to play and develop their basketball I.Q. No longer will you have to wait or hope that you accidentally get some players with basketball savvy.

It is possible that the entire R&R Offensive System could be taught to high-level players in a single season. But it could also be taught to our youth; a layer at a time; a year at a time. Can you imagine what our basketball games would look like in a few years if all organizations that deal with different age levels began to teach R&R to all of their teams? The 10 year olds get the first 2 layers, the 11 year olds add the next layer, so forth and so on. The players would have an entire season to “cook” the skills and principles of that particular year until they become “habits of play.” By the time a player was age 15 or 16, R&R would not be AN OFFENSE. It would simply be “offense”; how players play anytime and anywhere!

IS THIS ANOTHER MOTION OFFENSE?

Motion offenses are principled offenses, but most demand a high basketball I.Q. and a complete set of skills by all of the players in order to run it. In the traditional type of principled offense, the players without the ball have an almost infinite amount of options depending on where they are, what the ball is doing, and what the situation is. Most players suffer paralysis by analysis and do nothing; at least nothing good.

The R&R System removes the thought process from the movement of the players without the ball. Each player has one and only one reaction to what the ballhandler does. Let me say it another way: each player without the ball READS the teammate with ball and REACTS accordingly with one predetermined movement. This means that the entire offense is built upon very simple, very teachable 2-PLAYER READS & REACTIONS.

ADVANTAGES OF BUILDING AN OFFENSE IN THIS MANNER:

These 2-PLAYER READS & REACTIONS that make up the offense are taught through a series of drills. These drills (that come with the offense, even down to the detail of how to rotate through each drill) can be run by as few as 2 players and 1 coach. What good is that? These drills can make up your entire pre-season or off-season workouts. Not only will your players be getting in the needed reps for shooting, dribbling, passing, screening, etc., but you’ll be building your offense at the same time. In this manner you can have 90% of you man-to-man and zone offense engrained in your players before season begins!

These 2-PLAYER READS & REACTIONS must become HABITS in order for the offense to work. HABITS do not require thinking. They require repetition. The advantage is obvious: ANYONE can be taught a HABIT with enough drill and repetition.

Once these HABITS are instilled in your players, the READ & REACT OFFENSE will never require the players to break those habits as the system is developed to higher and higher levels. If your players learned these habits at age 10, they’ll be the same habits needed for the offense when they’re 20 years old!

The glue that ties these 2-PLAYER READS & REACTIONS together into a coordinated 5-PLAYER Offense are contained in a few simple rules described as LAYERS in the offense. These layers build upon each other, which means:
1. New layers will not contradict previous layers.
2. The sum of the layers is greater than each layer in itself. Which means we’re building coordination of the WHOLE offensive game, not just some specialized parts.
3. Each new habit of each new layer dovetails into the previous habits learned by your players. It’s a progression and it’s easy to explain “why” to your players. When players and coach are on the same page, good things happen.
4. A team can begin to play together and experience success with as few as the first 3 layers of the 17-layered system! In other words, mastery of the whole is not required in order to see immediate success.
5. A player who has mastered the first 3 layers (as an example) can still play with a teammate who’s mastered the first 5 layers. The less-developed player will not hinder the abilities of the more developed player. Now your team is no longer only as strong as your weakest link.

What will you have when you’re team has successfully learned the R&R System:

1. You’ll have a FRAMEWORK out of which your players can play in any situation.
2. No opponent can scout you successfully again.
3. You’ll have an offense that only gets better with time.
4. Your defense will be better than ever because they can’t “play the play” during practice ever again! They must honestly defend each moment in practice.
5. You’ll have an offense that allows players to naturally hide their weaknesses and play to their strengths.
6. Your offense will accommodate any style of play and any combination of players. If you have a strong inside game, then you never have to play 5-OUT. On the other hand, if 5 guards are your best players, then no problem: Having one or more dominant post players is not required.
7. If you like or need set plays, then run them. They will not hurt the R&R offense. Look at it this way: If your play doesn’t work (and we know how many times that happens in a game), then your players aren’t lost. They can take advantage of whatever opportunity is there, or whatever the defense has taken away, and still play together in a coordinated 5-player attack.

To conclude, the READ & REACT OFFENSIVE SYSTEM should be the bedrock of every team’s offense. The coaches already using it will tell you that the reason they like it is the same reason the players like it: “In the final analysis, its just basketball”. Players have a chance to “be all that they can be”, and coaches will have the methods, drills, structure and most importantly, the time to teach the game they love.