Page 260 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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In the weeks leading up to our first game, UCLA’s full-court
scrimmages served three purposes: (1) physical conditioning; (2)
preparing players for what they would face in games, that is, the
dynamics of full-court basketball; and (3) evaluating players.
Once the season got underway, the full-court scrimmage was in-
corporated only occasionally, because physical conditioning was at-
tained through our intense and constant drills. There was also no
longer a need to get the team acclimated to full-court play, because
each week’s games took care of that. My evaluation of players con-
tinued in practice and games throughout the entire year. All this
effort reduced the need for utilizing full-court scrimmages.
The primary reason I stopped using full-court scrimmages reg-
ularly once our season began was that I viewed them as an ineffi-
cient format for good teaching. Why? They wasted time. While
players ran from one end of the court to the other, time was being
squandered.
My preferred method of instruction was the whole-part system,
which broke the “whole,” that is, playing basketball, down into
small pieces that could be worked on selectively and perfected.
Those pieces included how to execute a shot correctly, eye move-
ment, hand placement, passing, pivoting, catching, running routes
on plays, the specifics of rebounding, defensive systems, and more.