A non-stop full-court press gives weak basketball teams a chance against far stronger teams. Why have so few adopted it?
John emailed me an excellent article from The New Yorker:
HOW DAVID BEATS GOLIATH
When underdogs break the rules.
by Malcolm Gladwell
While not specific to gymnastics, it’s an excellent read for all sports coaches.
I love the story of how Vivek Ranadivé, with no basketball experience, decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team.
… They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening. Most of them were, as Ranadivé says, “little blond girls” from Menlo Park and Redwood City, the heart of Silicon Valley. These were the daughters of computer programmers and people with graduate degrees. They worked on science projects, and read books, and went on ski vacations with their parents, and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists. Ranadivé knew that if they played the conventional way—if they let their opponents dribble the ball up the court without opposition—they would almost certainly lose to the girls for whom basketball was a passion. …
Not knowing any better, Coach told the girls to play a full court press defence for the entire game, every game.
Read the article to find out what happened – HOW DAVID BEATS GOLIATH
Gymnastics Coaching.com 