Basketball Chemistry… Is it Real?
Often you will hear a coach or a player refer to the chemistry that teams either have or don’t have and I get various opinions of how chemistry happens on the team level. While some say that chemistry is about how the players get along together others say that chemistry is strictly related to how well the team actually plays together.
Team A: Goes out to dinner after games and the players play video games at night at each others houses. The team is full of best friends but has a 10-20 record. Does this team have chemistry?
Team B: This team has the same talent as Team A but they don’t hang out after games or talk on the phone or play video games together. This team separates once the game ends and they all go their seperate ways once practice ends also. This team has a 10-20 record. Does this team have chemistry?
Chemistry to me is an overrated trait. I’ve been on several teams where everyone got along well and we meshed as a group but we lost a lot of games. Our chemistry was never questioned in the process of us losing all those games. On the other hand I’ve been on plenty of winning teams where I couldn’t tell you anything about the guys I played with yet we were a great team. Our on court chemistry was critical to our success in my opinion because on those teams, for whatever reason, we really understand what we had to do and we worked hard together to get it done. How can a coach create this?
I don’t think a coach can create chemistry other than trying to add pieces to a team that he knows will mesh well with each other. For example: I could’ve told you that Allen Iverson going to Detroit would work out just the way it is. Iverson is a guy that needs the ball and he’s not in control anymore. Dumars should’ve seen this because all of us could see it. It isn’t Iverson’s fault, but he just doesn’t mesh with the system there.
Have you ever watched the Nuggets play and wonder why Anthony Carter plays? He’s horrible. He can’t shoot at all, he plays cheap shot defense, he’s an average passer. He plays because of all those things. Carter knows his role and he does it. If he came in and shot the ball and tried to be a scorer he would be replaced right away by someone else. When Carter plays it is to get the ball to the scorers and most NBA teams have role players like this.
I will watch some college games sometimes and wonder how certain teams lose. I watch North Carolina this season and wonder how they lost twice already this year because talent wise it shouldn’t happen, but they are missing something and it isn’t all there yet. That something, I believe, is a buy in of the role of each player. I think that somewhere along the way, those kids aren’t buying in to the role that is laid out for them by coach Williams and that’s the last link to great team chemistry. The best coaches get the players to buy in to the team concept and chemistry is created.
