Rethinking Timeout Strategies, How To Develop and Maintain High Standards, and Compete by Dan Abrahams

... about how you call your timeouts.

And then, you know, calling timeouts is an art, I think, and mostly people treat it in the same way.

So it's like, you know, I'm gonna draw a square and, and everyone's drawing a square and then trying to make it art, and I, just what I mean is there are lots of ways to use your timeouts, and I think we all use them pretty much the same all the time, and that's, like, most common is basically the emergency timeouts.

Right.

Right? Saving your team when the other team's going on a big run.

They're on a run.

Right, exactly.

Right? Their server's on a run.

Exactly.

I'm slowing this down.

Right, and everyone says, you know, "Let's, let's use our timeouts for that.

We gotta save some in case that happens," and I don't think that's a bad idea, right? But I do think if you can use these other timeout strategies that I'm gonna get, if you can use them effectively or even just try them out, they can, A, disrupt the, the flow of the o- of the opponent's game, and B, they can teach your team how to respond in different situations.

Okay.

Okay?

I like that.

And my big thing is as a team that is going to win, you come, you become accustomed to sort of the pattern and the flow of teams taking the timeouts against you, right? So you'll get a, let's say this would be the typical pattern.

Now tell me if you agree with this.

We're playing maybe the first 12 or so points, first team to 12.

I'm down fi- four, five, depending on the level, right? I'm gonna call a timeout around then.

We'll play a few more points.

If I'm still down and it's starting to get late, I'll call another timeout.

That's sort of the pattern.

Yep.

Right? And what I think that actually does is it can kind of empower the other team because they know what's gonna happen, and it actually gives them time to make some adjustments during the timeout, and they're already in the lead.

So sometimes you need to take your timeouts differently than that.