My brother is an assistant varsity basketball coach at a school in my son’s league. They are always good and he is very loyal to them. He has been with them for 8 years and they have won the league championship in 5 of those years. He carries out all the duties of an assistant very well, including scouting as many teams as he can during the course of a season.
My son is a freshman and was moved up from the freshman team to the JV team for his school, which is a big honor. I was a little concerned at first about playing time and how he would be received by the other players but he has quickly become acclimated to the group and is the starting 2 guard, playing almost the entire game. I will write an entry on what helped him most to make this team and when it occurred – the answer will surprise you. Anyway, my whole family was very excited about him moving up and playing JV ball this season. It is fun because the games are at night and many times I get to watch a triple header (freshman/JV/Varsity) in one evening. My brother’s team was not scheduled to play our school until the 5th game of the season and my brother came to 3 of the early games to watch my son play and then to scout our varsity team.
My son had a couple of great games early in the season where he made most of his jump shots and scored 19 and 17 respectively. He also had a 7 point effort in one of the games but I am sure he has forgotten about that one by now. I watched my brother take some notes on some offensive and defensive sets, some out of bounds plays and some general shot charting during a couple of quarters of my son’s game – I did not think much about it. Then we played his team…
My brother had given a full scouting report to his JV team on all of the items above including telling them to not have the person guarding my son play any help defense so he would be left open during the game. Everywhere my son went on the floor the defenders all pointed at him and yelled “SHOOTER!” so they would always be aware of where he was and to not let him catch the ball in a position to shoot. It was a big challenge to even get the ball in bounds against his team. Needless to say, my son had a 4 point night and we lost by more than 20 points.
So now I pose the question – would any of you have done this to your own nephew? I was not bothered by it at the time but then I got home and thought about a couple of things…first off – no one scouts JV games…nobody. If my brother had just come to scout the varsity team he would have showed up before the varsity game, watched it and gone home, paying no attention to the JV game. He took advantage of the fact that he was there to enjoy watching my son play to tell his guys all of our plays and who our leading scorer is. They would have figured that out but would likely not have gone the whole game (from the tip-off) yelling and pointing at my son wherever he went. Secondly, he should have kept his info to himself to allow his nephew to enjoy a more fair contest. He could have seen how my son performed in a straight up contest and enjoyed the outcome. That would have been the better play for my brother to have made.
Oh yeah, my brother’s team also won the varsity game.
Gotta go now…I am going to scout the freshman team at my brother’s school...I heard he may have to coach them a few games this year and I want to be sure the opposing team has a good write up. (Ted, you know I am kidding!).
Yours in Hoops,
Coach Chuck
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