Coach: Developing a Center
Each week, HOOPSWORLD NBA analyst and coach Anthony Macri opens his notebook and offers an assortment of observations on games, players, and teams from throughout the league. Coach Macri serves as a player development consultant for the Pro Training Center and Coach David Thorpe, working with a variety of NBA players on their skills and game understanding. The Coach’s Notebook appears on HOOPSWORLD every Thursday.
This is the first part in a series of articles on offseason player development at the NBA level. Right about now, every year, players contact trainers and skill development coaches to help them take their games to the next level for the coming year. This may be even more prevalent in this “lockout-enhanced” offseason. The majority of players contacting us at the Pro Training Center are about to enter a contract year and are looking to put themselves in the best position to maximize their value for future negotiations. For this series, I will examine how we might put together an offseason skill development plan for players at the five positions on the floor, utilizing players who will enter the free agent market in 2012 as examples. Let’s get to it…
Developing a Center
No matter who the prospect is, the first thing we concern ourselves with is making them a beast. They have to be ready to compete as an absolute animal whenever they are between the lines. This reality is no more necessary than with a center who comes into the gym. The constant battle underneath the rim requires a player who does not back down from anyone, and the willingness and ability to mix it up is an automatic value-added for any post player.
On both ends of the floor a center has to possess the disposition to dominate. To create that sense of urgency, our first order of business will be making that player work harder than they have in the past. We would spend a lot of time working around the rim, working on repetitive explosive jumping, quick finishes and rebounding in and out of area. Imagine the most strenuous plyometric workout you’ve seen (or done), add in a basketball and even more intensity, and that would be roughly what a player would go through for the first twenty minutes of most workouts.
The idea is to open the player up to playing more explosively than they normally do. The vast majority of players do not take full advantage of their athleticism around the rim, and they have never pushed themselves hard enough to recognize how good they can be. Once they see how effective they can be around the rim by focusing on jumping high and quick, they make it a priority to play that way.
This approach would happen for nearly any post player who came into our gym, and we would base most of what we do around playing more athletically. Imagine Brook Lopez, a restricted free agent in 2012, focusing most of his time on being an aggressive beast around the rim. He is capable of stronger play than he showed this year, and one of our areas of concentration would be getting him to that point.
Another area of focus for any center would be the development of an offensive plan, especially in (but not limited to) the post area. While Lopez already seems to have some idea of what he is doing, refinement would be the key for our offseason focus. One of the largest problems a player like Lopez has is valuing locations on the floor. He settles for catches outside the paint and allows himself to get pushed too far from the rim. We would spend a lot of time drilling and discussing the value of position prior to receiving the ball. The main teaching point would be catching with his back to the baseline (not back to the basket), which improves vision of the middle of the floor, with the inside foot as close to the lane line (if not in the lane) as possible.
On the catch, we would be looking to minimize the quantity of ideas and movements and streamline his approach. Nearly every attack move we teach would involve an attack toward the middle of the floor, building in just one or two counters toward the baseline. The main goal would be helping Brook understand the area right at the front of the rim and in the middle of the lane is “prime real estate” and needs to be valued as such.
{AUTHOR_BOX}The approach would be the same for another 2012 restricted free agent like JaVale McGee. In McGee’s case, while we would spend the same time working on the idea of beasting it around the rim, our objectives when it comes to having an offensive plan would change significantly. Just as with Lopez, catching in the appropriate spots on the floor would be critical, and while the idea of attacking the middle first would not change, we would not progress to any counters for at least the first two weeks on the court. The primary goal would be to create one go-to-the-middle move he could be comfortable executing in his sleep.
McGee plays entirely too fast with the ball in his hands, making rash, uninformed decisions, so part of our offseason plan would be developing an ability to read the floor and act accordingly. Watching a lot of tape would be on the menu, observing more veteran players who attack with intelligence (Tim Duncan and LaMarcus Aldridge would be important), but the real idea would be limiting mistakes.
In that spirit, McGee’s best role model for how to play is a lot more like Tyson Chandler than any other player in the league. Chandler had some similar issues as a younger player, and if we could get McGee to slow down and find opportunities to sneak and flash effectively, beast it around the rim, and not make mistakes when given an offensive opportunity, he could look at a similar payday to what Chandler will likely receive when the current lockout ends.
While many other smaller points would be included in any development plan for either player, one more major aspect of the game would be high on the list of priorities – performance on the defensive end. In both cases an emphasis on building a strong, stable base of physical defense would be extremely important. In Lopez’ case, the focus would be on quickness and being more light on his feet – the ability to get from one side of the lane to the other, on help and recovery, and on guarding a yard in either direction. For McGee, learning how to contest from a point of stability would be a huge positive: we would work constantly on seeking help blocks (where he moves to block the shot of a player he is not guarding) but staying grounded when he challenges the player he is guarding, then using his body to gather a defensive rebound.
By the time these players had spent time in our gym, their awareness of the broader basketball world around them will have increased significantly, and their confidence in their own bodies and games would be through the roof. Throughout the year, assuming they stay on as students, we would constantly remind them of lessons learned and fine-tune their individual approaches. Improving on their current strengths and doing what we can to help them move past their weaknesses—becoming a true professional—would be the ultimate goal.
Have questions for Coach Macri? Be sure and drop by HOOPSWORLD on Mondays at 2PM Eastern for the Coach’s weekly basketball chat! You can also follow Coach Macri on Twitter @CoachMacri.
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