Ettore Messina: On Dribble Penetration

“A gifted athlete with poor understanding of the game will be slower to react than a slower player who better understands the game.”

—Ettore Messina

The more dribble penetrations that are allowed, the more help is required and subsequently, more susceptible your team is to offensive rebounds.

In an ideal world, each player on your team could stop their opponent 1v1. In reality, that’s never the case when playing against a good team. So, with that, it’s important to instill in your players – and team – an understanding that “help-recover” *is* the goal, not “help-and-rotate”. Once your teams starts scrambling, the opposition has advantage. And, efficient teams will exploit it.

Observations During the 2010 Euroleague Online Coaching Clinic

This last thought stems from a basketball blog written by Coach Stephen Pottage. Last year, at about this time, Coach Pottage flipped me an email to share some of his basketball clinic notes from the Mastermind Coaching Clinic put on by the Euroleague Basketball Institute. As it turns out, we both shared an interest in the coaching philosophies of Ettore Messina.

Related to that, here are some of Coach Pottage’s posts that may interest you to:

Enjoy ’em… I did!

/sef.