Focusing on European tactics
Former Gilas and now Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin is opening his second World Hoops Clinic at the New Life Christian Academy gym in BGC today with a distinct emphasis on the tactics and strategies of the European system. The sessions will continue until Sunday.
Foreign coaches Andrea Mazzon of Italy, Paul Henare of New Zealand, Ertugrul Erdogan of Turkey and Vasilis Fragkias of Greece are already in town ready to share their knowledge on teaching, discipline and development. Start of registration is 12 noon today and according to coach Jay Salvador who’s helping out Baldwin, walk-ins are more than welcome. It’s a chance of a lifetime to listen to four of the world’s top exponents of European-style basketball plus Baldwin himself will be in the cast of speakers with Meralco coach Norman Black and Lyceum coach Topex Robinson.
Baldwin explained why the stress is on the European instead of the US game. “The US, being a cultural melting pot for over 300 years, has every demographic in the world within its population,” he said. “Because of this, the talent pool there has become both diverse and deep. Therefore, it is natural for the guidance models in this type of an environment to become talent dependent because it is what works at the highest level. However, while this has produced many great motivators and management style coaches, the tactical side has suffered. Europe, in an effort to be competitive with the US, has made the tactical and intellectual aspects of the game its priorities.”
Of course, it’s not as if the US coaches are brainless when it comes to tactics and strategies. The available talent is just a huge temptation to go with athleticism than the mental nuances of how to win a game. In the NBA, more and more European coaches are being given prominent roles. Italy’s Ettore Messina, for instance, is the lead assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs. Serbia’s Igor Kokoslov was recently named the Phoenix Suns head coach. Ukraine’s Vitaly Potapenko is an assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Other NBA foreign or non-American assistant coaches are Cuba’s Octavio de la Grana of Miami, Swazi-Canadian Jama Mahalela, Nigeria’s Patrick Mutombo and Scotland’s Alex McKechnie of Toronto, Spain’s Jordi Fernandez and Serbia’s Ognjen Stojakovic of Denver, Serbia’s Darko Rajakovic of Oklahoma City, Canada’s Scott Morrison of Boston and Nigeria’s Ime Udoka of San Antonio. And the influx of international talent has become a factor in upgrading the quality of the NBA game, too.
Baldwin said the approach in the Philippines has also been mainly talent dependent. “In 2013, when I came to the Philippines, many coaches were talent dependent,” he said. “Evidence of this is the domination of imports in the PBA when there are many, many talented locals. Imports here put up ridiculous stats as coaches, and referees for that matter, defer to their talent rather than incorporate it into their team mix. Short conferences and minimal preparation times contribute immensely to this so one cannot entirely blame the coaches but it is true nonetheless. The other simplistic observation is the widespread use of the Dribble Drive Offense which is a highly individualistic offensive system.”
Baldwin said coaching the basics at the grassroots level will go a long way in developing better Filipino players. “Because of the depth of talent and the preponderance of guard play here, we have highly competitive and aggressive perimeter players and the style of play reflects this,” he said. “Players here emerge from the provinces, the barangays and the structured school leagues. This highly competitive network yields many good players yet many of those same players are not taught the fundamentals of good team play because they lack sophisticated coaching in their youth. This yields the well-known style of ‘street ball’ so often commented upon as we watch our top leagues. I also believe this is why coaches like Tim Cone, Leo Austria and Norman Black have had a great deal of success. They tend to play with more structure and more discipline as well as continuing to evolve their rosters by acquiring the types of players who fit this style of play.”
Baldwin said to improve the standards of Philippine basketball, he suggests exposing coaches more to the European style which is why he’s conducting the second World Hoops Clinic. “This is exactly what I did with my New Zealand teams and it paid huge dividends with rapid player and coach development,” he said. “We took our beatings, for sure, but we learned to play above our talent level and began to have unparalleled success which still continues today.”