Coach’s Clipboard: Defense
Parenting is a lot like playing defense in basketball. Let’s break down the film.
I love the game of basketball. In fact, I’ve often said that my dream job would be to teach and coach high school basketball. I’ve partially achieved that by helping my alma matter out these past few years, but the passion for the game is as strong as it’s ever been.
It’s no surprise that I often draw parallels from basketball to almost any life situation. For example:
- A successful company is like a successful basketball team: first and foremost, you need to have talent. As Steve Kerr said after the Finals, “We had more talent than they did, and talent wins in this league.” Same principal applies in business as well.
- Marriage is like being teammates: Each player has a role to play, and winning teams support each other. When your teammate air balls a 3, good teammates say, “Don’t worry, you’ll get the next one,” while bad teammates say, “Why the f*** did you shoot that you f***ing idiot!” Think about it the next time your spouse does something dumb.
Today, we will deep dive on why raising kids is like playing defense in basketball.
Defense 101: Fundamentals
The most important defensive principle of all is: Always be in defensive stance. That means feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, weight on the balls of your feet, knees bent, hands out.
When you have kids, that’s exactly the mindset you want to adopt as well. Translated in simple terms, what I’m really saying here is: Always be ready.
One of the most important aspects of a strong team defense is having teammates (who aren’t guarding the ball) in proper help side position. This skill in particular is what makes Draymond Green so great. If you’re in help side position, you want your foot on the midline (in other words, don’t hug up on your man if he doesn’t have the ball), pistols out (arms pointing at your man and the ball), and head on a swivel so you’re ready to react as needed.
When you have one child, one parent will often be in help side position. With 2, your constantly rotating between on ball defense and help side position, so you gotta make sure to slide your feet. But just because you’re not actively on baby, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. I remember when Maya was young, I coined the term “standby mode.” Essentially, if Chhavi was with Maya, usually breastfeeding or putting her to sleep, I’d be within a stone’s throw ready to help out…whether it’s tagging in if she’s being difficult, getting a napkin if she spit up, etc. What separates the great defenders from the average ones, however, is their ability to read the situation and anticipate. No joke, I was pretty damn good when I was in Standby Mode. Dare I say, I was the Draymond Green of parenting.
The key thing to remember is that you have to be in stance for the entire possession. If you’re in stance for 34 seconds of the shot clock, you’re going to get beat back door on the 35th second, which could be the difference between winning and losing. (High schools use a 35 second shot clock, FYI)
Defense 201: Team Defense Strategy
In simple terms, there are two types of defense you can play: man-to-man or zone defense. When you have one child, you’re generally playing some version of a zone defense (since there’s 2 parents and only 1 opponent, i.e., your baby). Once the second one arrives, you generally switch to man-to-man: 2 parents, 2 kids…each parent guards one kid.
But in reality, it’s more nuanced than that. For example, sometimes you have to call a trap. Diaper changes are a prime example when a trap may be needed — one parent to pin the baby while the other one changes her. Dinner time is often another great time to employ a trapping defense. Just remember that when you trap, you leave the other player open. You risk a jailbreak situation and giving up an easy conversion down the other end…and by this, I mean your other child destroying your living room, falling down the stairs, or doing god knows what.
While man-to-man is the simplified way of describing a 2 kid defense, you’re actually employing a “matchup-zone” in reality. A matchup zone is essentially a hybrid of a man and zone defense. A “zone” can be a time frame or a certain responsibility (e.g., bathing). Technically, parenting is a “matchup zone” because dads can never breastfeed (though they certainly can bottle-feed), for example. A dad can’t “defend” the newborn at all times and needs to pass baby into mom’s “zone” at times, rendering a pure man-to-man defense impossible in this scenario.
However, dads can occupy almost any other “zone”: Playing with the kids, putting them to sleep, etc. In a matchup zone, when a player in your designated area gets the ball, you “point the ball,” which helps orient the rest of your defense. Sleeping is one of my zones, and I “point” both Maya and Ravi as I put her to sleep around 8PM, then transition to putting Ravi down around 10PM.
One of the other benefits of a matchup-zone is that it confuses the hell out of the opponent — they can’t clearly diagnose what defense you’re in, so they don’t know what offense to run. With kids, anything you can do to confuse them and throw them off their game can only pay dividends. (Sidebar: One mind game I employed with Maya was to start crying whenever she started crying. This reminds me of Shane Battier — sometimes when the opponent called out their play, he would confidently repeat it out loud as if he knew it even if he had no clue what the play actually was. My tactic worked occasionally…and spectacularly backfired other times.)
As I articulated, parenting is no different than playing basketball. So, the next time you’re watching an NBA game, just tell your wife that you’re researching how to be a better parent :)
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