When I was coaching 8th grade basketball I had an extremely long kid named Ira on my team. He reminded me of a young Kevin Garnett. Long, tall, slim, and athletic. He was very headstrong and confident. At times too confident in his abilities. When teams would go into a 2-3 zone we would go into "Zone Break" with my PG at the top of the key, 2 Wings and a baseline runner. I would put Ira in the best scoring position possible, (the soft spot in the zone) right around the free throw line. Half of the time he caught the ball there after swinging/skipping it around the perimeter he could turn and get a lay up. If we executed the play correctly, teams would have to come out of their zone because I had two wing players that were solid 3-point shooters. Ira sometimes wanted to do things his way and would not go to that soft spot in the zone. He would be too close to the baseline runner or too close to one of the wings and spacing became an issue. I would tell him over and over to go to his spot. One time I told them to go there and he decided to do his thing. We turned the ball over. I called an immediate timeout and told him exactly why that turnover happened. At the end of the time out he remained on the bench. We ran the play four possessions in a row after that. We scored on three of those positions because everyone was in the right place. I then told him I was not going to put him back in the game until he ran the play correctly. He learned that day.
