Full-court Press
WMMM #082 - This week I share a perspective on competing.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter November 5, 2024 8 min read
Day of Reckoning
Giving it everything they have.
Breathless effort until there is no time left.
Two competitors, two teams battling for the honor.
The stakes could be no higher.
In their minds, this is 100 times bigger than the Super Bowl.
A testing time when the degree of one's success or failure will be revealed.
The 2024 United States presidential election?
No, we are talking about 6th grade basketball.
Rolling Acres versus Northmoor, November 5, 1969.
It's a Kind of Magic
I was born and lived my entire youth in Peoria, a town in central Illinois.
If Texas is a football state, then Illinois is a basketball state.
We weren't basketball-crazed Indiana or North Carolina, but Illinois was a close second.
Kids played basketball year-round.
Organized basketball was the domain of our public school system.
The State of Illinois High School Basketball Tournament decides the state champion every March.
Public and parochial schools competed in the same conferences and the single state tournament.
The winner was truly the state champion.
There was only one.
All this fun wasn't limited to the high schoolers.
Illinois schools started the kids out early.
Fourth through sixth graders played in the starter leagues, while the seventh and eighth graders graduated to the "lightweight" and "heavyweight" leagues.
There was nothing like grade school basketball.
It was magic, especially for a fourth-grader.
You got to wear a uniform, like the ones you see on TV or at the high school games.
On the uniform was a number.
That became your identity.
I wasn't "Jeff" to the referees, I was "33."
Grade school basketball got you access to indoor basketball gymnasiums.
That's where you had your practices and played your games.
You took a shower in a locker room for the first time.
You traveled to other gyms for "away" games.
Nearly every school had its own gym.
The setup rarely varied.
The basketball court was the centerpiece.
Depending on the facility's age, the court was made of natural wood or synthetic tile.
The wood courts were the best.
They felt softer under your feet and gave you the impression that you could jump just a little higher because of the give in the wood.
The baskets weren't on poles in a gym like on a playground.
They were attached to large metal brackets attached to a gym's high ceiling.
When the gym was being used for basketball, the baskets unfolded from the ceiling down to their positions at each end of the court.
On one side of the length of the court, there were bleachers.
People sat there and watched the game.
They were watching you play.
Your classmates were there rooting for you.
Parents and younger kids came too.
We also had older kids waiting to play a game after ours.
They were pulling for you.
That was cool.
On the opposite side, there was usually a stage used for band concerts, plays, etc.
Behind each basket was usually an outer building wall, with gymnastics mats hanging on the interior to protect basketball players from running into a concrete wall.
Indoor gyms had scoreboards.
Electronic scoreboards, as a matter of fact.
They had electronic horns that would indicate the end of a period or the substitution of one player for another.
Just like on TV.
On the ceiling were these large round half-domes that housed the lights.
When the game began, you had this weird sensation of playing in the spotlight, as if you were performing on a stage.
To a grade-schooler, this added to the aura of playing a game in a gym.
Home-court Advantage
By the time you got to sixth grade, you had played enough to notice little things that other teams would use in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage.
Little did I know I was learning lessons to help me for the rest of my life.
Columbia Elementary was a very old inner-city school.
While they had a wood floor, their gym was tiny.
There wasn't even three feet of space around the court boundary.
That made it challenging to inbound the ball.
Their gym also had a unique quirk: the stage was at one end of the court behind one of the baskets.
Their stage was on the width of their court, not the length.
This created a strange optical illusion when shooting the ball at that end of the court.
It also didn't help that the lights in their gym were not the candlepower of most of the newer gyms.
You felt like you were playing in the dark when you played at Columbia.
They devised a strategy that included making the visiting team shoot at the basket in front of the stage first and putting a player in the face of the visiting team player inbounding the ball on all inbound plays.
Rolling Acres was a school in my neighborhood.
While I attended the new Northmoor Elementary, Rolling Acres was the name of the subdivision where I grew up and the original school for that neighborhood.
The team at Rolling Acres had been the best in the league for several years.
They weren't big, but they were quick and good ball handlers.
Each year, they always seemed to have the same kind of players.
The numbers on their red uniforms were the same; the size and skills of the kids were the same, but the names changed.
Their 6th-graders graduated to the 7th-grade league, and Rolling Acres would reload with the incoming 5th and 6th-graders.
Never skipped a beat.
Their gym was almost identical to ours at Northmoor, with one minor wrinkle.
The net on one of the baskets was tighter than the other.
When I state "tighter," I mean that when the ball went through the rim and entered the net, instead of the net merely slowing the ball's exit very slightly, it stopped the ball, only releasing it when the force of gravity won out over the net's attempt to hold the ball.
It was noticeable.
It was only on one of the two baskets.
It was always on the same end of the court.
Why was this a home-court advantage?
The Rolling Acres and Northmoor Rivalry
Rolling Acres developed a game strategy that used a full-court press for the entire game.
This was unusual.
A full-court press places a player on each opposing player wherever they are, not just as they get near the basket they are defending.
It requires an all-out effort on defense that is traditionally only used sparingly and when a team is behind in the game.
This tactic took advantage of the strengths of their players: athleticism, quickness, and good ball-handling.
A full-court press is best deployed after a made-basket by your team.
At that moment, the inbounding team must inbound the ball within 5 seconds, and once inbound, it must advance past half-court in 10 seconds or less.
If the inbounding team can rapidly get the ball inbounds before the defending team can set up their full-court press, they have overcome the first obstacle and hampered the potential success of the tactic.
If one were to slow the ball's exit from the net after a made basket, that would give the pressing team more time to get all their players into position to execute their full-court press.
This is precisely what Rolling Acres discovered and why they tightened the net at one end of their gym.
They optimized every aspect of their game to take advantage of their strengths, including modifying their home court.
Northmoor was the new school in the neighborhood.
No history.
No traditions.
No basketball factory that produced an endless supply of quick athletes who could handle the ball and full-court press for an entire game.
Rolling Acres embarrassed Northmoor in the 1968 game at their gym.
It wasn't much better at our gym, but it felt closer.
When I became a 6th-grader, the Peoria Public Schools initiated a federally-mandated integration program.
It was designed to bring white and black students together in the same classroom.
To do that, black kids from the inner city boarded buses to attend Northmoor, located in the suburb of Richwoods on the north side of town.
Our basketball team received a bonanza of new faces.
Many were good athletes and as quick as those kids over at Rolling Acres.
Maybe quicker.
We also got something Rolling Acres did not have.
Height.
Our coach knew exactly what to do.
He put our tallest player at midcourt.
You want to break a press?
Get the ball to the middle and attack their basket with quick passes.
Instead of playing defensively against the press, we would be on the offensive.
We practiced our passing over and over.
The goal was not to let the ball touch the floor - no dribbling - from when the ball was inbounded until we were shooting a layup at the opposite end.
He had the 7th-grade "lightweights" practice against us using a full-court press.
He was obsessed with us beating the Rolling Acres press.
A funny thing happened.
We got good at inbounding the ball and quickly advancing it for an easy layup.
When the season started and we played games, that became our offense.
We rarely used the different motion plays we learned for a set offense.
We had 1-2-2 and 1-3-1 plays but did not often find ourselves on offense with the other team all back under their basket in a defensive alignment.
We became almost exclusively a fast-break team.
As luck would have it, the first meeting with Rolling Acres that season was a home game at Northmoor's gym.
Both of the nets on our baskets were regulation nylon.
The ball exited rapidly.
This worked well for our fast break and not so well for setting up their full-court press.
While it wasn't a blowout, we won comfortably.
They were shocked.
They were ready for us when we arrived at their gym a couple of weeks later for the return match-up.
It was as intense as a 6th-grade basketball game could or should be.
Northmoor won in a nail-biter.
Strategy and tactics were not the reason this time.
We simply had the better players.
The additions to our team were better, whether it was one-on-one, half-court sets, or fast-break offense.
But that's not enough.
Not in a closely contested game.
We had confidence we would win.
Our confidence was built with all of that practice running the fast break without dribbling.
We had the mental edge from beating them in the first game at our gym.
The balance of power had shifted.
A multi-year rivalry between two schools in the same neighborhood had begun.
Compete Like the Best
Always Compete - dedicate ourselves to continued improvement.
Belief - do things better than they've ever been done before.
Relentlessly pursue a competitive edge.
Positive Mental Attitude - begin each day by expecting the positive (journaling helps this.)
Embrace Change - introduce change to improve.
Influence - every task we perform is an opportunity to influence
Lead generation work
Sales cycle management
Prep calls
Post-call debrief calls
Customer interactions
Negotiation meetings
Forecast calls
CRM entries
Sales meetings.
Practice - repetition creates excellence, trust, and confidence.
Focus - knowing we will win.
Have fun - we perform at our peak level when we are happy.
Just like the 6th-grade basketball team at Northmoor Elementary, update your playbook.
Develop strategies that take advantage of your strengths and expose weakness in your opponent.
If you don't have a Sales Playbook, create one.
The opportunity is infinite.
There is no finish line.
Lessons Learned
1) We can learn life lessons playing 6th-grade basketball.
2) Practice is everything - repetition creates excellence, trust, and confidence.
3) Expect the home-court advantage, but focus on behavior - knowing we will win.
4) Keep a Sales Playbook.
Thank you for reading.
Jeff
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