The game of basketball is over coached and under taught; too few coaches are minding the gym at the entry level of the game as the instruction of fundamentals has slipped badly. There has been a premium put on athleticism over skill development, which is reflected at the youth level and the high school level. Kids play games. They don't work at the game."
-- Hall of Fame Coach Pete Newell

In our opinion today’s youth’s sport culture has been taken over by two very distinct mindsets:

• winning is more important than learning how to play the game
• a team needs to revolve around a superstar in order to be effective

We really disagree with both of these statements. Yes we all like to win as much as the next coach does but we believe that if you look beyond the immediate gratification of winning a few games today and instead focus on building a complete player you will win many more in future. Our primary goal actually is not focused on our teams winning many basketball games much at all, but rather it is focused on teaching the players who come to us how to play the game so that they can achieve their own personal sports dream. We believe that every player on our teams should be fundamentally sound and have a high basketball IQ (tactical understanding of the game). With that in mind everything we teach supports developing the fundamental skills of the game and how to use them in a competitive situation.

The style of basketball we teach is based upon an up-tempo, attacking philosophy. Our teams play tenacious full court defense and fast break as much as possible. While this style of play may look disorganized, it is actually far from it. In reality just about everything we do is based upon rules that the players implement to react to game situations. In order to be successful with this style, every player must be involved and able to contribute. This puts a strong emphasis on each player’s ability to read the game and react. We incorporate a similar philosophy into our half court offense. It is based upon forcing the defense to react and then finding the open shot. In the flow of our offense, at any one time there is almost always more than one shot available so everyone is involved and has an opportunity to score. What we have found is that our players really enjoy playing in this style and since they are having fun they actually work harder at improving their game.

A cornerstone of our style of basketball is the belief that every player should be an offensive threat. We don’t limit what a player is allowed to do on the court by assigning role specific tasks and disallowing players not in that role from performing them. We believe that in order for the team to be successful each player must be able to handle the ball with both hands, pass proficiently, and shoot. We work on fundamentals in each practice and actively teach their proper execution. Not only do we have a strong technical understanding of the game’s fundamental skills, we have the ability to break them down and teach them to our players.

In today’s game, many coaches seem to put much more of an emphasis on athleticism than skill. We see this a lot with players coming out of the various youth systems. It is not uncommon at all to see players whose entire game is built upon simply running by someone or towering over them. These players seem to have very little understanding of how to either maximize their physical gifts or minimize their limitations. Unfortunately this sort of player is bound to come up against another player who is more athletic than them and is destined to failure if jumping over or accelerating by someone is the only way they know how to play. We believe that game intelligence coupled with our style of play can really neutralize a player’s physical limitations or maximize their gifts. We spend a lot of time in practice working on basketball IQ. We use highly focused, small sided games (1 v 1, 2 v 2, 3 v 3), to teach the players how to read the game and react appropriately. A significant by product of this is that our players end up to be more polished than their peers and can go out and then play in just about any type of system as they progress in their basketball careers.

Our sense of accomplishment is tied to the development of the players in our program and the individual success that they achieve. All of the adults associated with the program have accomplished things in the realm of sports. We are not involved so that we can pad our resumes or feed our egos. This is about giving back to game that we love. We are passionate about what we do.

Paul Heinsohn
Director