Michael Jordan is famously quoted as saying, “I never lost a game, I only ran out of time”. And while the foolishness of his confidence and bravado speak for themselves, he hints at one of the most illusive elements to success. Time. Time can be our friend or our enemy. It is a double-edged sword that if not treated with the respect it deserves, will cut you to pieces. Time, as we measure it in basketball has always been an important element for coaches and players to stay keenly aware of.
As a development coach in Ontario for nearly two decades, I have witnessed the evolution of time in the game as it has dramatically shifted the landscape. As a high school athlete in the 90s, we didn’t have a shot clock. The only measurement of time was the game clock. On a team with some talent, but not much depth, my father used to joke that my coaches ideal game would be a 2-0 win. My high school coach, an intelligent, strategical coach, knew we didn’t have the depth to play an up and down game. We needed to slow down the game, stretch time out to nearly a stand still, in order to not only stay in game against more skilled and deeper teams, but come out with a win every once in a while. To my father’s account, it could be life-drainingly slow at times, as you never knew when someone might actually take a shot, but it was an effective approach.
After my university career, as I started coaching, little had changed in the use and application of time to the game in Ontario. We still didn’t follow FIBA rules, abiding by the U.S.’s NFHS rule set. No shot clock. But the teams that I coached were fast and deep and so we wanted to speed up time, increase possessions and make the games faster for the opposition. As a perennial powerhouse, teams would often take my high school coaches’ approach by trying to slow the game down and stalling with the ball. That allowed them to keep the game within their reach and control, or as we often experienced when we would play in Toronto, it allowed them to hold a small lead for extended periods of time while we raced around on defense trying to speed them up. It felt like a frustrating abuse of the rule set to watch one Toronto team after another go into four corners in the half court and simply hold the ball for minutes at a time. It was however an effective strategy for them to come out with wins. But then one day Ontario caught up to the rest of the basketball world and introduced some of the FIBA rules as it slowly but progressively migrated to a full FIBA rule set.
Once the shot clock was introduced in Ontario the game completely changed. No longer could lesser teams compete with the powerhouses simply by bringing the game to a halt. With the introduction of the shot clock, even its first inception at thirty-five seconds, the playing field was evened. Now teams knew there was a limited amount of time before the team on offense would have to make a possession changing decision, most often in the form of a shot attempt. The weight the lack of shot clock put on the defense to create change was lifted. With both teams now playing with the same measurement of time players and coaches had to give equal consideration to both offense and defense, creating a more flowing dance, back and forth, on the court. As time changed in the game, so too did players then have to change.
One of my favorite lessons that Marial Shayok, our former player turned pro, gives to our players when he speaks to them is, “Stay in the gym”. Not only does it describe the effort required for upcoming players to achieve their pro dreams, it also addresses the element of time. In the past week I had two conversations with players hoping to play pro one day. Both high school juniors (grade 11s), their conception of what is required of them to achieve those lofty goals is detached from the reality. The advantage in having a former player like Marial come back to speak to our players is that he is the living example of what it takes for them to achieve their own success. As with most high school athletes they are oblivious to the double-edged nature of the time they feel they have. While they feel they have lots of it, it is always evaporating before their eyes. Marial’s message works against that because if they just “Stay in the gym” then they will use the time given to them to achieve their personal goals. When I spoke to both players, my message was similar, if you truly want it, you have to use your time effectively to build your skill sets. With the element of time changed in the game, so too did it mean that players could no longer be one dimensional. With the introduction of the twenty-four second shot clock players need a more diverse skill set. As they work towards it, the only question is, will they run out of time?