We all want more practice time. What if the key isn’t more, but smarter?

Everywhere I go, I hear the same thing.
I have been lucky to visit many countries, and coaches tell me the same thing everywhere:

“We don’t have enough time with our team.”
Doesn’t matter the level, age or how many sessions they have every week.

“Too few practices. Too many games. Too little control over the schedule.”
It’s the universal complaint of basketball coaches.

But maybe time isn’t the real problem.
Maybe the problem is focus.

Coaches like to believe they can cover everything in a perfectly balanced week.  And that’s quite a lot ;).
The truth? They can’t.
Nobody can.

Every coaching staff, at every level, is forced to choose.
And that’s where analytics can help us make better choices.

Let the data tell you what matters

I’ve studied the data from last year’s EuroLeague campaign. And the pattern is always the same in modern basketball.

Two types of shots stand out by efficiency: Threes and finishes at the rim.

In fact, finishes at the rim still stands out in terms of points per possession. It’s still the most efficient shot in basketball.

The EuroLeague shot spectrum below says it all:

If this is where the game is decided, it should also be where we spend most of our limited time.

Priorities over routines

Yet a ton of practices still start with the same routine: lay-up lines.
No decision-making, no contact, no speed, no resistance.
Just a ritual to feel productive.

And if you’ve ever read my article “The hard truth about lay-ups“, you already know that these lay-ups don’t exist in games.

We tell ourselves it’s “warm-up”, but in reality it’s a missed opportunity.
If finishing at the rim is the most valuable part of the game, shouldn’t we warm up by training it properly?

That’s where the 80-20 principle sneaks in.
Eighty percent of results come from twenty percent of the work.
The smartest coaches I’ve met know exactly what their 20 percent is — and they protect that time with everything they’ve got.

Turning focus into action

Here are four short clips I’ve shared recently that translate that idea into practice.
They all work on finishing at the rim, but each from a different angle — contact, decision-making, body control, or timing.

Each of them is short, competitive, and realistic — the opposite of a lay-up line.

The real scarcity

Coaches will always feel they don’t have enough time.
But the solution isn’t to ask for more hours — it’s to invest the ones we have in what truly moves the needle.

Analytics can tell us where the game is won.
Our job is to make sure that’s also where we train the most.

Food for thought.  We’ll talk soon!
Pascal.