Rick Torbett is the lead instructor on the Better Basketball videos, and is often regarded among the best teachers of the game of basketball in the world today. He has received honors from prestigious organizations including ESPN and The Atlanta Tip-Off Club - the group that annually presents the James Naismith Awards.The foremost quality that makes Coach Torbett special is his ability to take advanced techniques and explain them in an engaging way that even young players can understand. In fact, his system is studied and used at all levels of basketball. Even NBA and ULEB coaches have admitted to picking up new techniques from the Better Basketball DVDs. But Coach Torbett explains his concepts in such a simple and entertaining manner that even kids are able to learn and apply the skills on the Better Basketball videos!
Coach Torbett earned his reputation as a successful high school coach for 24 years, compiling an overall winning percentage of over 70% at four different schools, and helping countless players earn scholarships to premier collegiate basketball programs. Before entering the coaching profession, Torbett starred at Cleveland State and Bryan College, graduating with a math degree and a 3.5 GPA in 1979. He finished his stellar collegiate career shooting 48.8% from the field, with an outstanding free throw percentage of 88%.
Rick Torbett has become a household name in the basketball world. Please tell us a little bit about your early passion for the game and how translated into a career for you. Who inspired you along the way and what keeps you going?
COACH TORBETT: Regarding my early passion for the game, I don’t think that I was much different than anyone else who loved to play. I simply wanted to play and to play competitively as long as possible, which for me was through college. My passion was to get better every time I was on the court. Loving the game and wanting to be around it led me into coaching. I was not an instant success, which meant I had to approach coaching the same way I did as a player: try to get better every time I step on the court.
There were plenty who inspired me along the way; too many to list, some whom you’ve heard of, and some whom you probably haven’t. My high school coach, Jim Cornwall, made a huge impression along with his assistant Mike Hodge. But when I look back over the years, the underlying current that keeps me going and inspires me to get better every day must be credited to my father. There was something that he put in me as a youth that said, “The road to getting better (in any area of my life) is always under construction. The day you put those tools away will be the day you die.” And that competition has been and will continue to be with myself, not with other people.
How did your relationship with Better Basketball begin and what is on the horizon for the brand?
COACH TORBETT: Better Basketball began as the brainchild of a former assistant coach of mine. Therefore my relationship with Better Basketball can be summed up with my relationship with him. We found through our coaching relationship that we shared the same passion for helping players to improve. So Better Basketball was a natural fit for both of us.
The future of Better Basketball is as broad as it is long, being closely tied to our company goal: To do whatever we can to help players improve and to equip coaches at all levels to succeed.
As a coach who has been invited to numerous camps and clinics all over the world to speak about a variety of topics related to basketball, what do you consider to be your signature speech topic? Or, what is the common denominator in the vast majority of your speeches?
COACH TORBETT: The most common topic right now is the offensive system I developed about 5 years ago and recently released a DVD series on, The Read & React Offense. Of course, player development subjects such as Shooting, One-on-One, etc are also popular. But the common denominator with all of the topics is TEACHING PROGRESSION. There’s very little in the game that’s “new under the sun”. So the most common question for any topic is HOW do you break the subject down to it’s simplest parts and build up the player or the offense in a logical step-by-step method that’s easy to teach and easy to understand and cuts to the natural instincts of the players.
Please describe the Read and React Offense in a nutshell. What makes it so effective? And what teams – that you know of – have successfully implemented the offense in their game plans?
COACH TORBETT: Describing the Read & React Offense in twenty-five words or less is a difficult if not impossible task. Here’s a pretty big nutshell: If a team runs set plays, then the team has 5-player-coordination, but very little “Principled basketball” that can take advantage of the chaos that makes up a real game. A Motion offense has plenty of “Principled basketball” but usually it results in very little 5-player-coordination. The Read & React Offense is BOTH principled offense (in terms of its freedom and flexibility) and yet always results in 5-player-coordination. There are no requirements for types of players or style of play and it can be used in any formation against a man or zone defense.
Unless you think that this is some fancy form of free-lance basketball, let me explain it this way: When 5 players do what each think is best, mass confusion results and spacing is compromised. To eliminate the confusion and create 5-player-coordination, I gave each player without the ball one and only one reaction to the ballhandler. This simplifies playing without the ball because the players without the ball need only to read the ballhandler and no one else. The players without the ball are not required to read their other teammates or even the defense (that comes later). Sticking to this formula means I could always insure that the team is coordinated in terms of spacing and movement. This also meant that I could drill the reactionary habits into each player and I could do it with very simple 2 or 3-player drills. With this being the case, the offense could even be built in the off-season and help solve some of the time-crunch problems that are part-and-parcel to every coach’s season.
There are lots of reasons that the Read & React Offense is effective; it cuts to the players’ natural instincts, it allows great players to coordinate with “less developed” players, and the sequence of actions can come in any order. But its effectiveness can be summed up with the following: (1) Player Movement, (2) Spacing, (3) Ball Movement, and (4) the Inability to be Scouted.
On our website www.betterbasketball.com you’ll find a section for the Read & React Offense where you can hear from coaches who have successfully implemented the R&R, and learn a lot more about it. In addition to youth programs and high schools, there are also current college teams on all levels, NAIA, NCAA division 1, both men and women, who are enjoying success with the system. In addition to the United States, I’m receiving fantastic feedback from teams in Canada, Norway, UK, Malaysia, Australia, Ireland, Belgium, etc. It seems that the Read & React Offensive System is filling a common need in our basketball community all over the world!
What does the future hold for Coach Rick Torbett? Is there a possibility that we'll we see you on the sidelines again or are you fully content on conveying your knowledge via video and at camps/clinics?
COACH TORBETT: Like any coach, I miss the relationships with the players, the laboratory of each practice, and the competition of each game. But what I’ve gained in the relationship with coaches at all levels, all over the world through the medium of Better Basketball, has more than made up for it. I get as much pleasure out of helping other coaches and watching them succeed as I would if it was my own team. What can’t be measured is how much I learn from other coaches on a daily basis. It would be hard to give that up. If I can pass that knowledge on via video and clinics, then I feel like I’m making a difference. I see so much more that can be done and that makes the future exciting!
