Expert Advice on Basketball Conditioning "How Former NBA Coach, Paul Westhead, had so much success at Loyola Marymount because of his intense focus on conditioning" -by Coach Brian Schofield http://www.hoopskills.com
While I was playing high school basketball a team came out of nowhere in California to catch college basketball by storm. Loyola Marymount University was an amazing team to watch. I grew up in Utah and would stay up as late at night just to watch them play on television. It was a show. The thing that made them most unique was their desire to score lots of points and to put lots of shots up. They wanted to average a shot every 6 seconds. They had great players like the late Hank Gathers, Bo Kimble and a baseball player named Terrell Lowery. They would full-court press, run as fast as possible and score lots of points. They had a shooting guard named Jeff Frier and he was my idol. He was my idol because he was able to shoot whenever and wherever he wanted to. It was crazy to watch. They were coached by Paul Westhead who used to coach the Los Angeles Lakers when Magic Johnson was playing. Westhead was interviewed on ESPN and gave his secret to how his team could play this way. It was no surprise that the answer was conditioning. How he conditioned them was what set them apart from all the other Division 1 college basketball teams. Westhead described making conditioning something that wasn't associated with punishment. Instead he tied it to playing time. Nobody could play on his team if they weren't in shape. If you ever watched them you know what I'm talking about. His off-season workouts were grueling, but the players knew if they wanted to play that had they had to sacrifice.
1 Expert Advice on Basketball Conditioning-hoopskills.com