POLL: Good Coaching, or Not Coaching at All? (A Lesson from Coach Dale Denbow)

This might be the most bizarre basketball play I've ever seen. Watch this, and then I'll give you my reaction in my comments below.

A few notes about this play:

1) When I first saw this, I laughed. I thought it was kind of funny. If nothing else, it was pretty creative to even think of something like this.

2) The more I thought about it, I got kind of mad. First of all, the coach teaching his kids to do this is cheating the other team out of a chance to really play an actual basketball game. That's wrong, but more importantly, since he should be worrying about his own team and not the other team, HE'S NOT TEACHING HIS KIDS HOW TO GET BETTER.

3) From a purely coaching standpoint... you have built a cocoon, there can't be a 5 second call because the players are passing the ball back and forth, the defense can't go out of bounds to get to the ball... so it's actually, at least on the surface, kind of a smart way to play keep away.

4) So I put my coaching hat on. Let's throw out the novelty. If another team ran this against me as a true delay game... up one point with a minute to go... how would I guard it? Well, I'm glad you asked.

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Plan A: First of all, I'd just play man to man (the defense here is in a 2-3 zone). This would not allow them to bunch up in their formation in the first place. Second, I would trap. If you paid attention, the very first time they tried to run this play, a player on their team was accidentally standing out of bounds. So when that player touched the ball it was a turnover.

So by playing man to man, I'd bust up that little cocoon. They couldn't get into it in the first place. If they tried, and we were trapping them that close to the sideline, it would put extreme pressure on them to stay inbounds.

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Plan B: I would tell my kids to just stand in the 2-3 zone. Maybe I'd have one guy come and stand over there to put a little pressure on them? Either way, if you listened to the announcer, the home team is up 16-0 already. So if they hold the ball, we're going to win. That's the whole point of the game. Eventually they're going to look absolutely ridiculous if you just sit there and let them hold the ball in such an unorthodox manner.

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Something like this, but not nearly to this degree, actually happened to a team I coached once. We finished that year 29-4 and won the state championship. We were playing a team that was probably the 6th or 7th best team in our conference, the Richland Rebels. They didn't have a true center, and all of their players were comfortable passing and catching and playing on the perimeter. They also had one really good ball handling guard and a second pretty good ball handler.

We played primarily man to man, but we also used a zone press. Richland started the game going 5 out with nobody in the post. They literally were running the old North Carolina "4 corner offense." From the opening tip, their game plan was simple - hold the ball and keep churning through those drive and kicks until they got a layup.

We had beaten Richland by about 35 earlier that season, so looking up at a 6-8 point lead most of the game was really frustrating for my players. I looked at it as a tremendous opportunity for us to get better. They were exploiting a strength (5 guards) against a perceived weakness (we had a true center and a power forward that would have to go defend areas of the court where they weren't as comfortable). They had a terrific coach, Doyle Denbow, and he had a good plan.

I kept telling my players, the key is we have to win each possession. It's bad enough we're having to play defense for 60-70-80 seconds at a time. What's worse is when we guard for that long and they score! So just win that possession, and then going the other way, we have to win that possession also. We have to score, so no silly shots or turnovers!

I kept telling my team, if could just be mentally strong for long enough, eventually we would "flip the script" on them. They would look up with 4-5 minutes left in the game, with us up 10-12 points, and them holding the ball would actually start to work against them.

That's exactly what happened.

My team showed tremendous mental toughness. They kept their composure. We got the lead into double digits. The clock got down inside the last 4 minutes of the game, and sensing that they actually had to try to score, their players abandoned their coach's plan. They took a couple of bad shots. We ended up winning by 15-20.

After the game Coach Denbow apologized to me. He said he was sorry for using such a blatant "stall tactic" for the entire game (literally from tip to buzzer), but that it was the only way to keep us from winning by a wide margin. I told Coach Denbow that no apology was needed, and that I thought his kids had executed his plan very successfully.

He could have just said "oh well, they're going to kill us, so why even try?" or he could have tried some kind of gimmick like we saw in the video. Instead, Coach Denbow did such a good job in teaching his kids a really good delay game (not a gimmick) that his kids really got better in their preparation of that game. They also got better during the actual game itself, and because they executed so well, it forced our team to also get better that night.

So in conclusion, and back to the original video that prompted this whole topic, I don't have a problem with a coach trying to stall if his team is an overwhelming underdog. I just think you have to teach your kids how to play. You owe it to those kids to make them better, and you owe it to the game to respect the game and the other team and the fans that paid their money to watch the game.

Was this coach doing that? Was this good coaching, or is it too much of a gimmick? You tell me.

Dale Denbow was THE MAN! The guy coached in cowboy boots!! He was an awesome guy. Thanks for reading. #JWT