IMPORTANT: Donvale Dunkers emphasizes an ‘equal time’ culture where ‘game time’ during grading and regular games (excluding semi finals and finals) are shared between all players during the game. This helps with building team spirit and player engagement as a whole.

Some tips for helping promote ‘equal time’ culture during grading games and regular games (for Under 9 and above. Under 8 teams have full regular games):

• Use the grading games (first 6 games where points don’t matter) to explore strenghts of different players (exampls: how strong is a player with the fundamentals of rebounding, passing, playing man to man defense and scoring). Remind the players that for the first 6 grading games, the points don’t matter and what matters is they enjoy and learn to play well as a whole team. Being in an appropriate grade after the first 6 grading games will help greatly for the whole season as coaches can ask to be moved up or down a grade during grading time (subject to competition organizer MEBA approval).
• Use time intervals like every 4 minutes to organize substitutions.
• As you learn more about each player’s strengths, you can plan a balanced team of 5 players on the court during every substitution (example: 2 players who are strong on rebounding, 2 players who are strong on scoring, 1 player who is strong on defending and man marking) so that at every substitution the team is quite balanced.
• If the team is up by 20 points during a grading game or regular game, you can try to encourage some players to take on a different role for a 4 minute interval to improve in some areas (example: encourage some players to take on the primary rebounding role or primary scoring role). This will helps challenge and improve players.