The Cross Over Movement Blog

Power Basketball has a pretty good article about what coaching is versus what coaching is not. Naturally, I have a problem with the article.

According to the article, coaching is:

1. Coaching IS teaching and adjusting during practice and games.
2. Coaching IS patience, knowing your players’ strengths and weaknesses.
3. Coaching IS fitting a system to your players, rather than having a system and hoping that your players fit in it.
4. Coaching IS changing the momentum of a game by having the overall knowledge and guts, to alter your offenses and defenses during the game.
5. Coaching IS executing your knowledge in a common sense way. Drills repeated over and over, the right way, are the only way to assure that your team will perform in the “clutch”.
6. Coaching IS playing the player who gets the job done. (Don’t play politics)

I do not disagree with any of the comments. However, they are all tactical in nature. And, everywhere I go on the Internet and at coaching clinics, tactical and strategic dicussions dominate. On message boards, questions about drills or plays dominate. Searches for basketball plays dominate any other subject related to youth basketball.

I think the discussion misses the important elements of coaching, especially for youth players. The game is more than performing in the clutch or changing the momentum of the game. What about inspiring a love of the game in players? What about teaching players a work ethic? What about teaching elements of sportsmanship? What about teaching players to be leaders? What about teaching basic athletic skills, not to mention fundamentals? What about teaching players how to think on the court?

These are the questions most coaches ignore. However, I think these answers are far more interesting than discovering a system for your personnel or changing the momentum of a game with a press or a timeout.

The descriptions in the article create a coach-centered environment; what about creating a player-directed environment? Unfortunately, most coaches start coaching because they want to test their coaching skills, which usually translates to the tactical skills which are most evident in games. After all, coaches are evaluated during games because games are public, while few people attend practices. However, most coaching occurs outside of games, during practices, in the locker room, on the team bus, in the coach’s office, etc.

Looking back on your playing career, what do you remember most about your coaches? Their use of timeouts? My dad coached me from 5th - 8th grade and if he called a timeout in four years, I don’t remember it. But, I remember our warm-up routine at practice; I remember making 20 lay-ups in a row on each side; I remember practicing our UCLA press; I remember talking with our two coaches after try-outs in eighth grade; I remember so many things from grade school basketball, and very little of it occurred during the games and none of it involved the coaches during games. I remember plays that happened in certain games, I remember teammates doing things, I remember shots, moves and passes. Is my experience unique? I remember our record in 6th grade only because we went undefeated; we won the championship in 8th grade, but I don’t remember our record and I have no idea how we did in 5th or 7th grade, outside the one tournament we won, and I don’t even remember who we beat in the championship game, though I vividly recall the semi-final because it was such a big upset for us.

My point is that youth basketball, for the players, is about so much more than the coach’s strategy. Unfortunately, in an effort to be good coaches, we often forget this. We coach in an effort to impress the other coaches and parents. However, we fail to put ourselves in our players’ shoes. And, the game, after all, is about the players, not the coaches or the parents. We need to remember why we have the games and what the purpose is, and coach in a manner to enhance the players’ experience, not detract from it or ignore it.