The Cross Over Movement Blog

We rank third graders. I don’t know who, because I don’t even look at player rankings anymore after I was involved with a service and saw the disastrous process that led to the rankings, but someone ranks 3rd grade basketball players.

I read some comments about women’s volleyball rankings yesterday. The comments said that women’s volleyball rankings are a far better predictor of college success because only one group ranks players and they do so after their senior year of high school. In basketball, who doesn’t rank players? It is the easiest way to sell subscriptions to a site: rank a bunch of kids and get their parents to buy a subscription to see if they are ranked. It gives people something to argue about on message boards, which keeps them coming back and posting more, which increases the hits and the advertising revenue. It’s all a big business.

The problem with ranking third graders or eight graders is that people want to be right. I trained a player a couple times when he was in eighth grade. He was ranked as one of the top 8th graders in the region and invited to the Area All-Star ShowCase Spectatcular. Good for him. Now, he stopped playing basketball in 10th grade to focus on football. He never played varsity basketball. However, he was invited to the same All-Star Spectacular in 12th Grade! The people never bothered to take his name off the list. He was still considered a top prospect and he did not even play the sport any longer and never really showed anything more than the size needed to excel.

When we rate players at a young age, two things happen: (1) We build high expectations for a kid which puts pressure on the player to perform constantly and justify his lofty ranking every time he steps on the court because the haters are waiting with their wireless internet cards to bash the player as soon as he has a bad game; and (2) We create a self-fulfilling prophesy where the rankers want to see the player do well to show that they are right, so they introduce the player to trainers and AAU teams and get the player free stuff, which creates the Entitlement Affliction: players and parents believe they have something special which means they deserve something in return.

The problem is that precocity is largely a myth. Just because someone excels at nine-years-old or fourteen-years-old does not guarantee success. In the volleyball argument, some suggested that basketball coaches do a much better job developing players than volleyball coaches, which explains why the rankings are more accurate predictors for volleyball. I disagree. Some of it has to do with sex (boys vs. girls) and different ages of maturation, but much of it has to do with inaccurate rankings because rankings do not measure the important things like work ethic, desire, competitiveness and the like because one cannot see those things in a brief glimpse of a player during a game.

Malcolm Gladwell writes:

We think of precociousness as an early form of adult achievement, and, according to Gladwell, that concept is much of the problem. “What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.”

To be a prodigy in music, for example, is to be a mimic, to reproduce what you hear from grown-up musicians. Yet only rarely, according to Gladwell, do child musical prodigies manage to make the necessary transition from mimicry to creating a style of their own. The “prodigy midlife crisis,” as it has been called, proves fatal to all but a handful would-be Mozarts. “Precociousness, in other words, is not necessarily or always a prelude to adult achievement. Sometimes it’s just its own little discrete state.”

A “precocious” third grader is oftentimes almost a year older than his peers and therefore is bigger, stronger and faster. However, over time, these size differences balance out. The future seven-footer is likely gangly and awkward as a nine-year-old or even a 13-year-old. What constitutes an exceptional skill level at nine or 13 differs at 18 or 19-years-old. We get excited when a kid can throw the ball in the basket from the three-point line at nine-years-old: however, does that skill translate when he is fully grown?

Early acquisition of skills — which is often what we mean by precocity — may thus be a misleading indicator of later success, said Gladwell. “Sometimes we call a child precocious because they acquire a certain skill quickly, but that skill turns out to be something where speed of acquisition is not at all important. … We don’t say that someone who learned to walk at four months is a better walker than the rest of us. It’s not really a meaningful category.”

Kids shoot differently at 13-years-old than they will at 18-years-old. They use more legs, they dip the ball to get strength, they shoot from a lower release point. When they shoot consistently at a young age, does that translate to better adult shooting? Or, does it lead to a sense of satisfaction and a desire not to change the shot and learn a higher release or quicker shot?

In music, people point to Mozart. However, “First of all, the music he composes at four isn’t any good,” Gladwell stated bluntly. In the same respect, we get excited about the “best” 4th grader, but does he really play good basketball? When he reaches to get steals because officials do not call fouls or dribbles coast to coast because he is faster, is that goo basketball, at an adult level?

Rather than physical gifts, are there better indicators of future success. In academia, Gladwell points to Einstein:

A better poster child for what precociousness really entails, Gladwell hinted, may thus be the famous intellectual late-bloomer, Einstein. Gladwell cited a biographer’s description of the future physicist, who displayed no remarkable native intelligence as a child but whose success seems to have derived from certain habits and personality traits — curiosity, doggedness, determinedness — that are the less glamorous but perhaps more essential components of genius.

If a 13-year-old is tall and fast, but lacks determination and a work ethic, will he be a top player when he is a senior in high school? Gladwell used his personal example of his running career:

“I was a running prodigy,” he said bluntly. But… being a prodigy didn’t forecast future success in running. After losing a major race at age 15, then enduring other setbacks and loss of interest, Gladwell said, he gave up running for a few years. Taking it up again in college — with the same dedication as before — he faced a disappointing truth: “I realized I wasn’t one of the best in the country … I was simply okay.”

Of the 15 nationally ranked runners in his age class at age 13 or 14, only one of that group had been a top runner in his running prime, at age 24. Indeed, the number-one miler at age 24 was someone Gladwell had known as one of the poorer runners when they were young — Doug Consiglio, a “gawky kid” of whom all the other kids asked “Why does he even bother?”

The early success often leads to a fixed mindset, where the child believes his talent is innate. As long as he is on top, that’s fine. However, when faced with a challenge, or setbacks, the answer is often to give up, as there is no sense in working hard if talent is innate and it has been proven that you are not the chosen one.

Labeling a child precocious creates more pressure to perform than good. I don’t understand the parents who seek opportunities for their child to be rated. People tell me all the time that if a kid is not rated they will not be recruited. I can list a dozen kids I have helped get to college programs who nobody had ever heard of and who had never been ranked. Colleges use rankings to get names. However, nobody gets scholarships based on their ranking. Coaches watch players and make their own decisions. I don’t know any college coaches who care who the top 5th graders are (except maybe Billie Gillespie!). Nobody wins awards for being the top 5th grader. Spending an entire childhood worried about player rankings and college scholarship ruins the childhood experience and confuses the destination with the journey.

To develop talent, it is far more important to impart and develop skills like industriousness, work ethic, desire and competitiveness than to concentrate on maintaining one’s player ranking.

I once wrote on this site that “I am not a drill guy.” I think coaches look to drills to solve problems. I watched Kicking and Screaming the other night and Will Farrell picks up a soccer book and reads from it while trying to organize the kids to practice. It doesn’t work.

Drills are a part of coaching and can be used effectively as a learning tool. However, drills alone do not make a good coach. When I first published Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, coaches emailed and asked for more drills. One businessman contacted me and wanted me to make the book more specific to the point where it became a checklist to follow for good coaching.

I don’t think such things are possible. Coaching is a people business and the most important skills are not technical, but interpersonal. If a coach cannot communicate with his players or fails to understand their learning styles, how can he be a successful coach? Using Coach K’s drills or copying Jim Boeheim’s zone defense from a DVD does not make a great coach. Everyone now has access to the same information. You can watch thousands of basketball games a year on television and buy thousands of DVDs or books. Knowledge does not separate coaches. It’s how a coach uses the information, relates to his players, motivates, inspires, etc.

In How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in life), Don Seidman writes:

Specialized knowledge or expertise differentiates you for a moment in time, but it likely won’t carry us through an entire career. Changing jobs, companies and even industries now often involves adapting knowledge skills to a new set of conditions.

Yet, the drive for differentiation - personalm professional and organizational - lies at the heart of business endeavors…We all still want to stand out, to be bold, to be uniquely valuable, to distinguish ourselves from the competition, to do things others can’t copy and to be number one. We always will. But, in a commoditized world, we are running out of areas in which to do so.

There is one area where tremendous variation and variability exist, however. One place that we have not yet analyzed, quantified, systematized or commoditized, one which, in fact, cannot be commoditized or copied: the realm of human behavior - how we do what we do.

I saw The Visitor yesterday, which I thought was an excellent film. In the beginning, Walter, an older college professor, takes a piano lesson from a woman. The woman offers the same instruction she gives to little kids and ultimately Walter decides to find a new piano teacher. The woman says that it is very hard for a man of Walter’s age to learn a new instrument.

Later, he meets Tariq who teaches him to play the African drum. Tariq explains that playing the African drum is very different than the classical music to which Walter listens. Classical music is based on a four-count while the African drim is based on a three-count. Tariq challenges Walter to keep playing and eventually gets Walter to play with a drum circle in NYC.

While the move was not about learning musical instruments, the approach each takes was very telling. When the woman failed to get through to Walter, she blamed Walter. It was not her inability to instruct, but his age which she saw as the limiting factor. She had a belief that at his age, learning the piano was not something he could do.

Many coaches fall into this trap. When players make mistakes, they blame the players for not paying attention, or maybe suggest that the player lacks the ability to be good at the particular skill. Rarely does the coach address his own short comings in his technique.

The piano teacher tried to reach Walter, a college professor, with the same tools she used with little kids. If nothing else, this is insulting to the man and likely does not provide the same value in terms of the explanation as it does with a kid.

Coaches sometimes do the same thing, trying to use the same teaching style with all players. Teaching a nine-year-old and teaching a college players are different tasks requiring different skills, even though the game is the same. The instruction which makes sense to a nine-year-old does not always make sense to a 20-year-old, or vice versa.

Tariq had no preconceived notions and brought his enthusiasm for the drum to his teaching. The piano teacher showed no enthusiasm for the piano. Tariq’s enthusiasm was contagious and he wanted to share the drum with others. He used an important teaching technique, pointing out the difference between his previous experience with classical music and the drum. Then, he got Walter playing immediately. He did not dwell on details - like the rounded of his fingers when playing the piano - but focused Walter on the sound and the beat.

Tariq showed the goal and gave Walter the opportunity to reach it. He challenged Walter, but did not push him too fast. When they arrived at the drum circle, Walter was nervous. Tariq encouraged him. Walter declined. So, Tariq told him to feel the music and join when he was ready.

Many coaches and parents push their kids before the child is ready for that next step. Tariq provided the challenge, but allowed Walter to take the first step. He did not force the performance onto Walter before he was ready.

Tariq used many of the concepts from Cross Over and LTAD, using his enthusiasm as his greatest teaching tool to a beginner and progressing slowly when Walter was psychologically ready, while the piano teacher, with her formal teaching background, illustrated a cluelessness in terms of learning.

Surfing the Internet this morning to find the winner of the TUF7 from this week because I missed (the show is my one reality show guilty pleasure, though I miss it more than I actually see it), I found an interview with Forrest Griffin talking about training his guys:

It was hard to tailor the workouts to the guys. Matt Brown and Jesse Taylor could do whatever you threw at them and ask for more. Nick Klein would work himself into the ground doing what you asked but it would be overtraining for him and he got worse over the course of the show. He did whatever I asked and never complained but he over trained instead of backing off.

Training a team presents the same problems because each is at a different level and has a different capacity. Some finish practice and are ready for more. Some finish and are done. Coaches have difficulty meeting the individual needs of players while “being fair” to the team. It’s part of the art of coaching, balancing each player’s needs within a team environment. Each player has different physical needs and psychological needs. Some players really need to be pushed while others can push themselves.

Few coachesworry about overtraining, though many player suffer performance plateaus because they train too much or too hard, not because they fail to train. Rest and the taper before competition is as important as the training, as without the rest and taper, the athlete sabotages his training.

It worked out well for some guys and not so well for others. But eventually the guys decided what they were going to do. I gave them workout options and they decided whether or not they were going to do that or go on the treadmill or whatever else they needed.

With older, experienced and mature players, the players should have some control over their environment. This does not undermine the coach’s role, but it does empower the athlete and put the responsibility for improvement with the athlete, rather than the coach. The coach is the guide, not a dictator.

I read an interesting account of Avery Jonhson who was fired today by the Dallas Mavericks. The article mainly describes Johnson’s inability to communicate with his players and his lack of humility. Coching in the NBA is certainly different than coaching high school or college baketball, but it is an interesting example of communication failures.

I believe communication skills are the most important skill for a coach. Mike Fisher writes:

Please note that none of the aforementioned items even approach being about X’s-and-O’s, about benching Kidd in the final seconds of the loss at San Antonio, about Avery’s assemblage of thirty-something “pets’’ who on a whole made few contributions to one of the worst overall seasons experienced in the highly-successful Cuban Era. None of them are even about wins and losses, the recent 3-12 playoff record, for instance – even though Avery struggles in all these areas.

No, these complaints are about dealing with people, about motivation, about relationships, about communication.

The best coaches are not necessarily the best X’s and O’s guys. They are the ones who communicate with their players. ironically, NBA organizations generally hire former NBA players because they believe the former players can communicate with current players better than coaches without NBA playing experience. However, I would argue that the ability to communicate with people is a talent that is unaffected by one’s playing career.

Now, NBA players might respect a former player automatically, while someone who lacks the playing exprience might have to earn the respect, but the players will eventually respect the coach that makes the player and team better and in most cases, that’s the coach who communicates with his or her players.

I have written before that the best ball handling training is to dribble around a couple hyper-active kids who want to chase the ball and play. I also wrote that a dog works too. I saw this about soccer star Ronaldinho:

Ronaldinho has revealed that a dog helped him to learn to play football and to develop the silky skills and tricks that made him into one of the best players ever. The Brazilian explained that a pooch in his neighbourhood in Porto Alegre, Brazil would keep him company after the other boys in the area had gone home and would chase the ball around with him.

On the NorCalPreps message board, I read this comment by a user. This user has a very talented son, I don’t know his ranking, so take it with a grain of salt. However, I do not disagree with any of his comments:

I was in Denver this past weekend for a major AAU/Elite Club Tournament…I saw several top players play this weekend who are RANKED HIGHLY by these various SCOUTING SERVICES and I was alarmed by what I saw and what I read about the PLAYERS’ RANKING!!

I saw Player A, who is ranked, make bonehead decisions, played no defense, and played selfishly, but, Scout A covering the event,
wroted that Player A was “impressive.”

This is what I remembered Player A did that was consistent with what Scout A wrote: Player had one dunk and made a three point shot. So, I said to myself, “So, this what makes a HS BASKETBALL PLAYER, playing on the AAU/Elite Travel Team circuit great?” If you can DUNK, make a 3 POINT SHOT, and score the MOST POINTS, you WILL get RANKED HIGH!”

Not to be overly sensitive to my new found revelation, I continued to watch these HIGHLY RANKED PLAYERS over course of the weekend and true to form, SCOUT A and his buddies validated my aforestated analysis. If you can DUNK a basketball (it shows how athletic you are), make a 3-POINT SHOT (this shows that you are great shooter beyond the arc) and SCORE all the POINTS in the game, you willget RANKED, period!!

It makes no difference to Scout A and his buddies that you do not pass the ball to your teammates, rebound, defend and/or have a BRAIN!! All they (SCOUTS) care about or want to know is this: Can he DUNK? Can he MAKE the 3? Did he SCORE all the POINTS?

MEMO TO HS PLAYERS, COACHES and PARENTS: This is the NEW DEAL: If you want to be a RANKED PLAYER, HE must be able to do the following: DUNK the BALL; MAKE the 3, beyond NBA range (i.e. you do not have to be consistent and you take as many shots you want until you make one) and SCORE all the POINTS in the GAME!! Oh, by the way, SCOUTS do not care if your TEAM WINS of LOSES, just make sure you fulfill the three requirements listed above!!

I have argued with several of the top West Coast scouts from these Internet sites over the years, so I do not disagree that they often make mistakes and typically put too much emphasis on athleticism and scoring. Unfortunately, so do college coaches. I talked to Jim Clayton of Sports City U in Huntington, West Virginia and we talked about many of the same things. Many players peak at 12 or 13-years-old. People believe that they improve as they grow and get older, but for many, they just add size, not skill.

However, my favorite part of the thread is this comment:

I just do not think you can evaluate a kid fully on the AAU level.

Now I am confused. Everytime I question these tournaments and ranking services, I am told that they are important evaluation tools for colleges. The entire system is designed to make recruiting easier for college coaches, so they can go to one place and see many players. And, now people suggest this is not the best way to evaluate players? If we can agree that these games are not the best way for players to improve, and now we agree that they are not the best way to evaluate, why are so many people so sommitted to maintaining the status quo AAU/exposure environment?

I did a coaching clinic in Montreal this weekend, and I started by saying that communication is the most important aspect of coaching. I tend to criticize coaching clinics because coached seem to want the magic drill or play that will solve their problems, but there is no such drill or play.

This morning, while catching up on the news of the last four days, I saw an article about Larry Krystowiak on True Hoop. Krystowiak blamed his problems with the Bucks on his communication:

“As a first-time coach, you know you’re going to be behind in certain elements, which I was, with just the learning curve of the whole situation,” Krystkowiak told the Journal Sentinel. “And kind of looking back on it, I wish I could have focused more attention on communication and some of the emotional issues of some of the players.

Many times, we get distracted by the basketball side of coaching, but coaching is a “people” job and communication, and different things which fall under communication like relating to players, is the most important skill for a coach to develop.

Since Memphis lost in the NCAA Championship Game, everyone has slammed John Calipari for not calling a timeout to tell his team to foul.

I like Calipari’s overall approach. He trusts his players to make plays. That is his coaching style. If you trust your players all season, I think you have to trust them in the final minutes as well. If your style is to call timeout in this situation, like most coaches, then you call timeout. I don’t think you change just because of the situation.

I like coaches who let players make the plays. I think we should encourage coaches who take a step back and give players control over their game and making decisions on the court. It did not work in this case, but Memphis did set the standard for wins in a season.

From the current issue of ESPN the Mag:

“Mike Maddux calls the young American pitchers coming up through the Brewers’ system ‘academy kids’ because they were taught to play by micromanaging coaches on travel-ball teams where the fields were always perfect and the drills always robotic. ‘All they’ve been taught is how to take instruction.”, Mike says. “We were taught how to play the game.’”

The same could be said of basketball players, too.