Bill Self is talking about reducing turnovers -
http://cjonline.com/sports/2014-01-23/self-kus-offense-should-be-better ↗ ↗
A high rate of turnovers seem to be the norm for a Bill Self team. That fact seems to contradict the success Bill Self brings with him every year, or does it?
Why do Bill Self teams turn the ball over at a high rate?
Because in the early part of the season, Bill's focus is less on reducing turnovers and more on increasing ball movement in his offense. The first sin in Bill's book is having a ball "stick."
Bill allows some tradeoff of turnovers in preference for rapid ball movement, and in doing so, accepting this tradeoff is vintage "Self-ball" and partially responsible for his winning success.
It is apparent that Bill's philosophy is to teach his team to keep the ball moving quickly to create better opportunities to attack and score. And if he can teach a quicker pace of movement early on in a season, it is easier to maintain it all year and under various circumstances. His philosophy is that turnovers will reduce over time as his team masters the pace of the ball speed. Eventually, players will feel the game slowing down because their own pace has been sped up all season.
But does Bill's theory hold true? If the true measurement for success of this theory is winning percentage, it seems to be a valid theory most of the time.
Is Bill's theory consistently true? After a certain point in the season, does it stop breaking down and does his team stop having big turnover games? From looking at Bill's legacy, it doesn't always appear to be consistent. Kansas is capable of having high turnover games towards the end of the season.
Is there something he can teach that will eliminate most or all of those late-season high-turnover games? This is the million-dollar question, and very likely the biggest determinant on how far Kansas will go in March. This is especially important with the current Jayhawk team that definitely has not protected the ball well for most of this season.
What lessons can be taught to help this team reduce turnovers?
A. Passer reduces telegraph. Sometimes this year, I've already hollered out an expletive even before the steal has occurred. Every player on this team sometimes telegraphs their passes. There are three aspects of a telegraph; where the pass is going, when the pass is going, and trajectory of the pass. The best prevention of a telegraph is to disguise all aspects, but in the least, one must always be disguised. The eyes give away who the ball is going to be passed to, and is a simple fix by looking towards another player or area right before making the pass. As far as masking the timing of the pass, the best method to do that is to have a very quick release of the pass, or use a pump fake to make the defense react and then look for a new passing opportunity. And using the right trajectory is more important than trying to mask it. Players need to know when to use the bounce pass, lob and bullet pass and mesh that with the right path.
B. Receiver anticipates pass. The receiver of the pass has to have good anticipation for when the pass will arrive and by what path. Anticipation skills are developed through plenty of reps in practice. By anticipating properly the receiver needs to make sure the path is there for the ball to arrive safely. Sometimes that means stepping towards the passer even before the pass is made. And once the pass is made, the receiver has to be aggressive and go fight for the reception (when necessary).
C. Maintaining poise. It is easy to get rattled sometimes. Maybe it is brought on by the crowd noise of an away game. Maybe it is brought on by the uptick in enthusiasm of the opponent. What has to be realized is that every turnover creates the possibility for more turnovers to occur on the next possessions. Turnovers tend to snowball into more turnovers because the opposition gains confidence (and energy) and looks more for opportunities to steal, while the offense losses confidence and builds anxiety. Sometimes over-confidence on defense can be taken advantage of by running backdoor lobs.
D. Safe outlet. Players should always be trained on where the safest outlet is under every circumstance and knowing what outlets carry the most risk (like cross court passes). Possessing good basketball IQ will help reduce turnovers in high-pressure double-teams, backcourt clock crunches and other situations that typically help create more turnovers.
E. Keep the defense honest. If we don't attack defenses that are overplaying passing lanes and double-teaming the ball, eventually we are allowing them to succeed at their strategy. There should be risk in playing so aggressively, but if we don't attack on these opportunities we allow teams to play for steals without having risk.
These are some of the basics... but in order for this team to execute safer basketball it has to work on execution in practice first. And in order to replicate a real game situation in practice, both blue and red teams must aggressively go after steals, another part of our game which has been lacking execution.
So while we learn how to protect the ball we have to learn how to play for the steal at the same time. We can't practice one without the other.
If we become a better steal team, we will become better at ball security.
The key to our improvement is to play more aggressive for steals in practice. If we can improve in practice we can reduce our turnovers while increasing our steals, leaving us with a net gain in two areas that will give us more scoring opportunities in every game!
