#6 Teaching Points to Identify and Reduce Turnovers

The first step to cutting down on turnovers is for the players to understand the cause of their turnovers. The second step is then to develop a plan of action to eliminate the problem areas. It is also essential that the players understand the significance of each turnover. An average team scores around one point per possession, so every turnover is essentially giving away one point.

I have listed some of my thoughts about recognizing why turnovers are made along with ideas to improve your team’s “sureness” with the basketball.  This list is not written to be all inclusive, but is offered as a place for your to put some sustained thought to generating your own processes to cut down on the number of turnovers that your team makes.

Poor recognition, lack of concentration, or lack of awareness

1.  Player doesn’t recognize the type of defense, don’t understand what the objective of the defense is, and what is the best way to beat that particular defense. For example doesn’t recognize and distinguish a half court trap as opposed to a man to man defense. 

To reduce these turnovers:

• The coaches can help in recognizing defenses in games and from bench
• Film study with players to teach tendencies of pack defense, pressure, switch, zone, etc..
• Practice against changing defenses to promote recognition of different defenses.

To reduce these turnovers

3.  Having tunnel vision when making a pass.  Just because there is no defender around a teammate, does not mean that the teammate is open. Other helping defenders deflect and steal passes–not just the defender guarding the receiver. Players must be aware and have vision of all defenders.

4.   Throwing the ball to where you think a teammate should be rather than seeing that he is there before throwing the pass.  If you are running a set play or a continuity this can be a problem area for some players.

Poor Execution of fundamentals and principles

1. Player picks up their dribble without having an available pass. 

To reduce these turnovers:  Every time a player picks up the dribble in practice, other than to avoid a 5 second count, without a pass–it is an automatic turnover or an automatic 2 points for the other team in a practice scrimmage. 

2.  Players want to make a difficult, highlight, or fancy pass.  Somewhere along the line, certain players develop the belief that the more difficult of a pass they can complete, the better passer they are.  Actually, the best pass is the next easy pass because the best pass is one that is caught by a teammate.  Every pass does not need to be an assist pass.  The pass leading to a pass that leads to a pass that leads to an assist is just as important as any pass in that chain.  Whether you use the term or track “hockey assists,” doesn’t matter.  You just need to find a way to emphasize this point.

3,  Player catches in or dribbles to a coffin corner. (Intersection of timeline and sideline, or sideline and baseline).  Players must understand that the out of bounds lines are nothing more than extra defenders. You dribble toward the sideline and you are dribbling into a double team.  You dribble to the coffin corner, you are choosing to dribble into a triple team.

4. Lack of pass fakes to move the defense to an area that is advantageous for the offense. Utilize pass fakes to put the defenders on their heels!   Fake a pass to make a pass!

5.  Putting the ball above your head and giving your leverage to your defender

6.  Feet too close together when holding or pivoting with the ball leading to poor balance, poor leverage, and overall lack of body control

7. Not making a proper stop-whether you teach stride stop or jump stop.

8. Not catching a pass with two hands, two feet (meeting the pass), and watching it through the catch with two eyes.  (Ask your players if they have ever tried to catch a basketball with their eyes closed.  Ask them if they would like to try…)

9.  Going to fast and being out of control on the dribble.  It is still as true as when Coach Wooden was preaching it… Be quick but don’t hurry.

10.  Not passing the ball away from the defense.

11.  Not getting set or leaning into the defense when setting a screen and being called for an illegal screen.

12.  Being too far away from the defensive man who is guarding you when passing. You have to get the ball by the defense before releasing it to make a pass. If the man guarding a passer is a couple of feet off, he has time to react and deflect the pass. Break the glass on the pass” That is think of the plane of the defender as a sheet of glass and put the ball through the glass (your hand and the ball by the defender).

Lack of Toughness (Both Physical Toughness and Mental Toughness)

1.  Contact from the defense is NEVER an excuse to lose the basketball.   We do not ever blame the official for a player losing the ball. Losing the basketball is a live ball turnover which is very tough to convert to defense in time to stop the other team from scoring.

While I don’t want these either, when a player receives contact from the defender these are better than losing a live basketball.  These are all dead ball turnovers and we can set our defense.

1) Offensive foul

2) Traveling

3) Held Ball

Of course the best outcome is to be tough enough that when you do receive contact from the defense, you are tough enough to maintain possession of the basketball and maintain your balance until you can find an open teammate.

2. Being flustered mentally and loss of poise leads to bad decisions and turnovers.

3.  Being afraid to make a play leads to indecision and turnovers.

Poor Skills

1. Player can’t hold, pivot, the ball with their head up.

2.  Player can’t dribble the ball under control going full speed.

3. Player can’t dribble or pass with non-dominant hand.

4.  Can’t catch a game speed pass.

Team turnovers

1. Teammates not getting open causing a five second count.

2. Poor spacing

3. Poor timing on cuts

4. Do not fake backdoor–the passer cannot read your mind. If you start a cut backdoor, you go
all the way to the basket.

Physical superiority by defense.

1. Strength

2. Quickness

3. Height

4. Weight

Bad decision making

1.  A bad shot that has very little chance of going in and that no one on our team is prepared to rebound is the same as a turnover because it leads to a fast break by our opponent.  Jay Bilas says “A bad shot is the first pass for your opponent’s fast break.  In the stats, a bad shot does not show up as a turnover, but it has the same affect.  Some people say you can’t score if you don’t shoot.  I say you won’t win if you take bad shots.  I don’t believe you can make enough bad shots for the whole game to beat a good team.  Sometimes you can make enough shots to beat a bad team, but not a good one.

2.  Forcing a pass into a crowded area.

3. Dribbling into a crowd.

4. Jumping in the air to pass.

5. Attempting a pass that has to be thrown too far giving the defense time to adjust and make an interception.

6. Missing a pass to a player who is open and then trying to pass him the ball when it is too late to make up for it after the defense has recovered.

What we can do to improve

1.  Don’t Put a player in a position that she is not able to handle.  Don’t ask a poor ballhandler to be a primary ballhandler.  Don’t ask a poor decision maker to inbound the ball.  Don’t put a player who does not handle game score pressure well into a tight game.  Don’t put a player who is underdeveloped physically into a game against older, bigger, stronger opponents.

2. Set reasonable, but demanding goals for turnovers in games. In a 32 minute high school game, our goal is single digit turnovers.  A hard number is easier for players to comprehend than a percentage of turnovers per possession.  You can determine the number of possessions you normally have and what a good number would be given the percentage goal you want to achieve.

3.  Keep stats on turnovers in practice just like you do in a game and report them to the players so that they will know if they are improving or not.

4.  Blow the whistle to teach in practice when a play happens that usually results in a turnover in a game–even if it doesn’t result in a turnover in practice. Examples–not making a jump stop, catching a pass with one hand, not meeting passes.  More than likely, your first team can beat the second team in practice and still make plays that would not work on game night.  Coach them in practice to play the way they need to play to win against other schools, not to win in practice against the reserves.

5. Call traveling tight in practice. Don’t allow players to get away with anything that would draw a whistle in a game.

 

6.  Emphasize turnovers in practice by more than talk. Have penalties for turnovers—points for the other team in scrimmages when the first team makes a turnover, making plays that would be a turnover in a game against comparable talent (ex: dribbling to the corner and picking the ball up) a turnover against the second unit in practice–even if a turnover doesn’t occur, blow the whistle and give the basketball to the other team.

7. Make practices tougher than games so that players can carry over skills from practice to games. Examples: Allow the second unit to hand check the dribbler, put 2 defenders on dribblers in zig zag dribbling, 2 on 1 split the trap drills–allowing clean but physical fouling.

8.  Teach players the rules and also to play the game the way it is called.  It doesn’t matter if you didn’t travel when you were out of control.  It was called.  Play a clean and under control game so that the officials don’t have to make difficult calls and decisions.

9. Discuss what can be learned for the future for every turnover made in a game. I don’t believe in having the players watch and entire game video, but you can cut out the turnovers and teach how to avoid them in the future.

10. Dead ball turnovers (travel, 10 seconds, holding for a five count) are better than a bad pass because we can set our defense on a dead ball, but it is hard to defend when chasing the ball from behind. We’ll take a shot that we have a 50% chance to make. We won’t throw a pass that has a 50% chance of being caught.

My least favorite turnovers  I dislike all turnovers, but have never seen a game where there weren’t a few.  I believe that the turnovers below can and should be avoided with good coaching.

1. Lobbing the ball to the post from the baseline

2. Putting the ball above our head on the catch and being stripped

3. Turning the ball over on a 2 on 1 situation.  These situations can be either in transition, or in your half court offense.  Regardless of where they occur, you get very few of these situations each game.  You need to score or get fouled EVERY TIME. You need to have a specific way to teach this situation and practice it frequently.  IMO, the best way to teach it is that the player dribbling should drive to score until they are stopped by the defense.  That is the time to make the pass.  The two offensive players should be spaced lane line apart, with the player without the basketball cutting to the side of the rim once they reach the ft line.  

You can teach lob (if you have the players to do that, dribble inside hand and bounce pass in front of defense with inside hand, or baseline bounce pass with outside hand.  What is important is that your players understand the importance of always scoring when you have a 2 on 1 numbers advantage.

4  Not making a two foot stop and traveling

5. Trying to dribble a loose ball and not grabbing it with two hands and chinning it for leverage

6. Not chinning a defensive rebound and getting stripped

7. Not meeting a pass and having it stolen