Women's Basketball: The Post Player's Handbook [Paperback]

Anne Donovan (Author), Nell Fortner (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2001

A team's post play can help to win or lose ball games. Anne Donovan, one of the greats of post play and WNBA coach, enables coaches to maximise their players' skills.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Anne Donovan is the assistant coach of the WNBA Indiana Fever and one of the greatest post players in the history of the women's game. Inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995, Donovan was a member of the gold medal winning 1984 and 1988 USA Olympic Teams, as well as the 1980 Olympic team, making her one of only four male or female USA players to have been named to three Olympic squads. A member of a remarkable 12 USA Basketball teams and one of the most decorated players in USA Basketball history, she also played on the sliver medal 1983 and gold medal 1986 World Championship teams, the 1983 and 1987 Pan American Games squads that earned golds, the silver medal winning 1981 World University Games team, as well as the gold medal 1978 and 1979 Olympic Festival East teams. All told, of a possible 11 medals, she has captured nine golds and two silvers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Wish Publishing; 1 edition (September 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930546467
• ISBN-13: 978-1930546462
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #855,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GOOD FOR PLAYERS AND COACHES, October 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Women's Basketball: The Post Player's Handbook (Paperback)

I WAS LOOKING FOR A RESOURCE FOR MY DAUGHTER, WHO IS A TALL POST PLAYER, BUT ALSO A BOOK THAT I COULD ALSO USE AS A COACH. THIS BOOK WAS EXCELLENT FOR BOTH! IN FACT, I ORDERED 7 MORE COPIES TO GIVE TO SEVERAL COACHES AND PLAYERS IN MY TOWNSHIP TEAMS AND LEAGUES!! WRITTEN IN EASY STYLE FOR ALL AGES WITH PRACTICAL TIPS FOR ALL PLAYERS I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. COACHES, YOU WILL GAVE A GREAT REFERENCE GUIDE TO USE AT PRACTICES...GREAT DRILLS.

1.0 out of 5 stars Very dissapointing for such a successful coach, October 19, 2007

By 

George Atwood "Coach7" (Willits (Norcal) CA. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women's Basketball: The Post Player's Handbook (Paperback)

No doubt Anne Donovan was a great player and is a very successful coach. But it's clear to me she didn't let her strength & conditioning coach review her conditioning chapter. The fact is that basketball is an anaerobic sport, not an aerobic sport. And long distance running trains an athlete to run slow. LD running works the slow twitch muscles. Basketball is a sport involving short duration high intensity bursts of speed requiring maximum output, followed by several seconds, or minutes of rest. This cycle repeats over and over until the game is over. Jogging -off season or not- trains the athlete to run slow, to be slow. The most current research clearly shows us this. Her brief section on interval training should have been expanded, while tossing the rest out.

I was very surprised to find a highly regarded D1 college coach claiming that running suicides is a good thing. As Coach Hubie Brown says, nobody except the coach likes suicides. Players see it as punishment no matter how the coach calls for the suicides. There are far more effective ways to condition, including numerous drills that are fun, and the players may not even be aware that they are conditioning. What good is the stop & start action when the players know exactly where they have to change direction? Far better to make it more "game like" and line them up and have them run for a pre designated time (40 sec), and have them change direction on the coaches whistle. That way they can't anticipate, and it's much more game like.

Donovan's thoughts about stretching really show where her strength & conditioning knowledge is not current. Empirical evidence from controlled studies have concluded that a static type stretch prior to competition or practice actually diminishes speed & jumping in the short term. Modern programs are using a "Dynamic Warm Up" in place of the old fashioned cold static stretch on the floor. Don't take my word for it, just type "dynamic stretch versus static stretch" into your favorite search engine. There is still a place for static stretching, but it's after a work out, not before.

I was pleased to see Donovan recommends weight training both in season and out. And while she notes that female athletes do in fact have a higher occurrence of traumatic knee injuries, she does terrible disservice to current research and ways to mitigate this factor. She says "By concentrating on equally developing both hamstring and quadriceps strength, many believe many believe this can reduce the risk of injury." Who is "many?" I am constantly researching for more information on this so I can better help the female athletes I coach, and I've never heard that, or read that anywhere. Maybe she was referring to muscle imbalances? In any case, most strength and conditioning coaches look first at running technique, jumping technique, change of direction technique, and making sure athletes in a "ready position" stance do not have their knees locked straight; because flaws in those movements are the single biggest factor which can be improved to reduce the risk of injury. Finally, if you're going to leave an athlete alone in the weight room, then yes, machines are best for safety reasons. But strength & conditioning coach's will tell you that free weights are best, and "Olympic Style" lifts are best for athletes.

The rest of Donovan's book is fairly good. However it's nothing that can't be found in any number of post player books. A post is a post, male of female. The game is played the same and refereed the same. The women's game is just slower and lower. Overall, I found the book to be very disappointing.