Professional Development

Some notes and links for your back to school reading list.

These basketball coaching thoughts came from Army Men’s Assistant Zak Boisvert’s PickandPop.net site.

The site has a lot of quality coaching ideas and information.  Definitely worth a look!

Click this link to see his entire 34 page June coaching notebook.

Notes from From The Art of the Cut (The Athletic)
-When the Sixers call a play that involves J.J. Redick running off a screen, he doesn’t view it as his turn to shoot. Instead, he phrases it as “a time to move bodies and potentially move the ball.” From there, it’s up to the Sixers to figure out what the defense is giving them.

Notes from Brad Stevens and the Celtics have a special brand of toughness (ESPN.com)
-Brett Brown, the Philadelphia 76ers head coach, is fond of saying, “The pass is king.” Celtics staffers have their own version: “Toughness is king.” The definition of toughness Stevens found recently in a book (he can’t recall which one; he reads a lot): “Toughness is being able to physically and emotionally perform your task through any condition.” -“If things are going really well in a home game, do you get caught up in that, or do you keep playing the right way?” “If things are going like they were in the second quarter last night [when the Sixers went on a run], do you say, ‘I have a job to do and I’m going to do it, and I don’t care that everyone is going nuts over this Embiid dunk?’ That is toughness. It sounds cliché, but the hardest thing to do is stay in the moment and do your job.”

-Gather enough tough players and it can have an exponential effect on a team’s collective toughness. They inspire each other to more intense fury. They hold everyone accountable; even brief moments of lethargy and weakness are unacceptable.

-In Boston’s seventh game of the season, Shane Larkin failed to pursue a loose ball along the left sideline. Stevens removed Larkin at the next stoppage. He didn’t play again until garbage time. “I learned right away,” Larkin said. “If you don’t get a 50-50 ball, you are coming out.” Stevens didn’t upbraid Larkin. He approached him calmly and told Larkin why he had been taken out.

-In evaluating players, both during games and in film sessions, Stevens is careful with language. He focuses on actions: We didn’t get this rebound. You should have made this rotation earlier. The criticism is never about the player’s character. No one is labeled lazy or stupid or selfish. Stevens simply describes what did or did not happen, and what should happen next time. That has gone a long way in securing buy-in, players say. They feel Stevens is with them, even as he holds them — and himself — to almost impossible standards. That is a hard balance to strike.

-Stevens’ placidity is intentional. Frantic, screaming, gesticulating coaches can raise panic in players who might be prone to it. Some players tune out everything. Some follow the lead of authority figures. They look at Stevens and see assurance. They see, “Next play.” “Some players have a tendency to get frazzled or emotional,” Ainge said. “Brad helps with that.”

Notes from Jayson Tatum is at the door. ‘He has a passion to be great’ (Boston Globe)
-Jayson doesn’t practice things until he gets them right. He practices until he can’t get them wrong.”

Notes from:Michael Lombardi on Decision Making (Farnam Street)
-Bill Walsh to a 24-year-old Lombardi: “You have to think differently; a lot of people in the NFL are not the best and brightest. You’ve got to work outside your comfort zone. You’ve got to read people like Tom Peters. Read people like Bob Waterman. Learn from Warren Bennis. Learn from Peter Drucker.”
-Einstein’s five levels of intelligence: Smart, Intelligent, Brilliant, Genius and Simple.
-Belichick: Takes complicated problems and makes them really simple.
-Belichick stays in Quadrant 1 all the time. He works with nothing but Urgent-and-Important.
-Belichick’s ego is never involved in the decision. He does what’s best for the team.

-Belichick goes to work every single day with the same appetite and the same desire to improve and the same curiosity.
-False duality: We all think it’s A or B. The Belichick’s of the world see the C, D, E and F.
-Part of decision making really comes partly from preparation. You don’t know when you’re going to use it. You have no idea when you’re going to use that knowledge you just gained.
-They’ve never dedicated a monument to a committee. You can’t answer to everybody. You can’t have a bunch of people try to determine what you need to make the decision for.
-Lucy theory: The path of least resistance is the path of the loser. We all make decisions. We can make the easy decisions or we can make the hard ones.

-Parcells’ nickname for Belichick was “Doom” because he never believed things were going to work out. He was always preparing for the worst. He doesn’t tell that to the team but that’s his perspective.
-Jeff Oss: “The biggest mistake is that you have a losing strategy when you think you have a winning one.” That’s what Belichick does – he pokes holes in his strategy to make sure it’s not a losing one.
-The wise man doesn’t give the right answers; he asks the right questions. (8)
-In New England, after every single game, win or lose, the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator, the special teams coach, have to fill out a sheet: what we did well and what we did bad. How we handled the situations. Did we prepare properly? Did we not? There’s an autopsy on every game. The scoreboard doesn’t matter. What matters is learning from the game.
-Whenever you make a decision and it happens to go your way or it goes the other way and you ignore it and you don’t go back and do an autopsy on it, you’re just going to make other mistakes. That’s why I think he wins more than anybody.

-The key to being successful is to gure out what you did. Don’t look at just the score. Look at what happened. That’s the most important thing. That’s where Belichick gains all of his advantage. That’s where great leaders gain all of their advantage. They look at the result. It’s not result based; it’s how you went through the process.
-Experience doesn’t help us. Experience teaches us.
-Decision making to me, what I’ve learned from all of those guys, (Belichick, Walsh, Al Davis) was if you take ego out of it, you’re going to make a lot of good decisions.
-Walsh: If we’re all thinking alike, no one is thinking.

For Spurs, defending without fouling a way of life (San Antonio Express News)
-Coach Mike Budenholzer, a Spurs assistant for 20 years before joining the Hawks. “They talk about it regularly. They drill it. They show film on it. Everybody knows how important it is to them being so good defensively that they defend without fouling. It’s been that way from the beginning, really.”
-Popovich paints the Spurs’ emphasis on defending without fouling as a matter of brains over brawn. “You’ve got to teach it,” Popovich said. “It’s all between the ears. You’ve got to take the macho out of it, put more of the brain power into it. It’s a major emphasis of ours.”

Other

-When there is a void in communication, negativity will fill it – Jon Gordon quote

-“Lower the bar and you lose the winners. Raise the bar and you’ll lose the losers.” (Phil Beckner – twitter)
-How do we create MOMENTS for our players?
-“Greatness Is 3% Of What Everyone Sees Under The Bright Lights & 97% Of Your Hustle In The Dark.” – Josh Medcalf
-Richie Riley, South Alabama: Your program’s culture is defined by what you accept. It’s not about words or signs in a locker room. It’s about everyday actions and accountability.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project.

Last week I received the following email (edited for anonymity). We get calls and emails like this quite often from amazing, passionate coaches who are trying to make a difference. Take a read:

Dear John,

I’m currently a head football coach…I took over the program last January after being on staff for the previous 10 years. We had a great offseason and a solid summer. We started the season off with a come from behind victory. Everything was going well. However, these past 10 days have made me question everything. We had a below average week of practice last week and got crushed by our arch rival. Our best player got ejected for fighting and…his brother also received a personal foul and cursed me on the sideline when I tried to reason with him. We have had an equally poor week of practice this week.

Since I took over, my main concern has been trying to change the culture here. I am at a low socioeconomic urban school. Many of my players have no father figure in their life. Many of them are poor. Many of them don’t eat lunch. Many of them aren’t disciplined at home because their single mothers are just trying to survive. I knew all this coming in, so my main goal has been trying to get them to be better humans.

I have seen several of our kids grow on and off the field but I feel like we’re starting to slip back into the abyss. Our practices have been flat. The kids are starting to seem uninterested. They are so used to being the ugly duckling of our district and the perennial loser that I don’t think they know any better. It’s like they are okay with it because that’s the way it’s always been. What can I do to turn this around?”

Sincerely, Coach B

Wouldn’t you want a coach this dedicated to your kids to be their coach? I know I would. Coach B cares about the person, not the athlete. He sees sport as a vehicle that will give them the life skills to better their life situation. For him, it is not about the wins and losses, but the willingness to compete the right way. This is a great coach. So how can we help?

Recently I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “The Talent Equation” with Stuart Armstrong. Stuart’s guest was his coaching mentor, Mark Bennett, M.B.E. Mark is the founder of Performance Development Systems Coaching, and a mentor to high-performance and professional coaches across the globe. Mark is a former British Commandos trainer and originally developed his PDS system as a way to shape the behavior of elite soldiers. Since then he has worked with professional coaching staffs from the NBA, professional rugby, golf, and elite NCAA teams, shaping coaches so they can shape their athletes.

His wise words during the podcast were the exact advice I needed to pass onto Coach B:

Performance is a behavior, NOT an outcome.

We get so focused on scoreboards and standings that we lose sight of the foundational element of coaching: shaping behavior. When we get the behavior right, when we get our athletes to take ownership of the standards for each and every little thing they do, the magic happens.

Athletes rise to the standard.

They hold each other accountable.

They define what are acceptable levels of focus, effort, and execution.

They train more effectively.

Great results follow.

When you get the behavior right, the scoreboard starts to take care of itself. Athletes control the controllables, make more effective plays, and those small plays add up to big wins.

Coaches, first and foremost, we are shapers of behavior. When we get the behavior to the required and agreed upon standard, results start taking care of themselves. This is my advice to Coach B: focus on behavior first.

This seems simple, but in reality, most coaches do it backward. They focus first on the outcome and hope that the behavior will follow. They install new defenses and trick offensive plays, they teach tactics and technique, they up the fitness expectations, and then come game time, they roam the sidelines yelling “But we went over this in practice!”

They have no idea if learning took place. Just because we taught it, doesn’t mean they learned it. The coaches have no idea if the athletes were listening. And often, when the game gets tight and the pressure ramps up, their teams crumble under the stress of focusing on the scoreboard. They revert to the old norm. Players fight the opponent. They yell at officials. They argue with each other. They stop controlling the controllables, and eventually they lose regardless of talent.

Great coaches and elite athletes understand that performance is a behavior, not an outcome. It is doing the little things correctly, moment to moment, day after day. But how do we do this in our teams?

First, you must clearly define your core values, your standards, the list of “this is how we do things here.” In conjunction with your athletes (as we have written about here), you take the time and define the standards of effort, focus, execution, respect, humility, selflessness, and more. You allow your athletes to define who they want to be and how they want to do it. You get them to sign their names and commit to being the type of teammate described by those values. I recently did this work with a team I am coaching, here are our values:

Next, before every practice, you must get your athletes to own the level of performance – the behaviors – for the day. Mark Bennett recommends that his coaches have the athletes define what acceptable, unacceptable, and exceptional looks like for the chosen activity. This includes not only values based things such as effort and communication, but tactical and technical elements such as spacing, movement, speed of play, and whatever else you are trying to teach. The athletes define and own what is good enough, what is great, and most importantly, what is not good enough and warrants a stoppage of play and a reset.

Bennett challenges them by asking “how long can we sustain acceptable and exceptional,” thus giving the athletes a goal to shoot for. The activity starts and continues as long as the behavior level is acceptable or exceptional, and stops when the level becomes unacceptable. Usually, your players will overestimate how long is sustainable, but over time, with consistent reinforcement, their behavior – and thus their performance – starts to change. Most importantly,  the athletes own this process. They define the standards, they define acceptable behaviors, and when it all clicks, they identify unacceptable, call each other out on it, and hit the reset button and do it right.

Within your culture, you may have individuals that still do not buy into the behavior, even as the team as a whole progresses. This is the situation with the coach I wrote about above. In this case individual intervention is warranted. Sit the athlete down and follow these three steps:

1. Have the athlete define the team values, and identify which one he or she is not adhering to. Many coaches do this in front of the team for the benefit of 1 or 2 kids. Do it individually so that the specific kids know you are speaking to them, and their teammates don’t think they are being called out for the actions of a few.
2. Help the athlete see their behavior through other people’s’ eyes. “How do you think it makes your teammates feel when they are giving maximum effort and you are going through the motions?” “How do you think it makes your coaches feel when we rely on you as a leader and you disrespect your teammates?” Most kids never think of this.
3. Help your athlete change by asking “Is that who you want to be?” If the answer is no (which it is 99% of the time) ask them “how can I help you change?” When you see their new behaviors, catch them being good. If you want the good behavior to continue, you have to acknowledge and reward it.

Sadly, you will from time to time have individuals that will not get on the bus, and you have to make a decision whether it is time to let them off and move on without them, regardless of talent. You must understand culture trumps talent in any environment, and even the most talented players will slowly destroy an entire culture if they are not a good fit and they are behaving counterintuitively to the cultural standards.

Finally, shaping behavior is not a sometime thing; it is an all time thing. As Bennett says “Changing behavior takes time, and the quickest way to change behavior and make progress is to do it every time you step on the field, not just once in awhile.” It is confusing for kids when failure to meet the standards is ignored by coaches time after time and then when coach is having a bad day, he loses it and yells at everyone for the same behavior that was OK the previous week. If it is not OK, we must say so. If we let it go today, we are saying that it is not really a standard. You condone what you do not confront. You must intentionally cultivate the right behaviors and you must intentionally confront the wrong ones.

Coaches, our team’s performance is a behavior, not an outcome. This is my advice to the coach who wrote us last week. How we play is shaped by our standards and our accountability. Identify your standards, agree upon them and define them with your team, and agree upon what happens when we fall below the standard. Hold everyone accountable, and get them to hold each other accountable. Identify the individuals that still don’t get it, and either get them to change their behavior or get them off the bus.

When do you do this?

Every. Single. Day.

When you realize that performance is a behavior, the result takes care of itself.

Good luck Coach B, and to all of you as well.

Changing the Game Project was founded John O’Sullivan. Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.

This video is with PGC Basketball Directors TJ Rosene, Micah Hayes, and Graham Maxwell.

Tj (Head Men’s Basketball Coach) Micah, and Graham (Assistant Men’s Basketball Coaches) coach at Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia.

In addition to the All In portion of the video, the second part describes a concept of “GO GO–Get open or get out.”

This video is a part of the 20 Week PGC Coaches Circle. You can sign up for free at this link: PGC Coaches Circle

The last few minutes of the video shows a segment of their practice. The video shows players moving to rebound the shots taken in the drill. You might be able to apply that concept to your shooting drills in a way that fits what you want to do regarding rebounding a shot from the corner.

You can see more drills and posts from PGC Basketball by visiting their Basketball Blog

Please make sure that your sound is on and click on the video to play.

Click the play arrow to view the video.

The video is a YouTube video, so you need to be on a network that does not block YouTube access.

This article was contributed by:

Justin Matthew Brandt
[email protected]
CoachJB.weebly.com
Here is a link to his YouTube channel

Here is a link to his Instagram

Attention to detail and paying attention in general is a problem that all coaches battle with their athletes during practice, film sessions, games, etc.

Whether it’s the occasional side conversation while you’re speaking, wandering eyes to the floor or the opposite sex being present in the gymnasium, you have had something challenge their attention from you at some point in time.

The question we will attempt to answer today is, how can we effectively keep our athlete’s attention when it is needed?

I do not believe there are a lot of people out there that will challenge the statement that people tend to focus their attention on the topics they are interested in. Many times we find that our student athletes struggle with the little details because they are not fun or entertaining. Take the example provided below. Most students see a biology book and roll their eyes because they see it as a required class and it can be challenging. What they do not see is an opportunity to get a good grade in an important class that will boost their GPA and increase their chances at getting into the school they want to attend or eventually landing them the job they want.

Now I am NOT suggesting that everything we coach/teach needs to be fun or entertaining. The fact is that the majority of the jobs in the world do not involve fun games and at some point in their lives they need to figure out how to continue to focus and be productive. With the same argument, us as coaches and/or teachers cannot use the same excuse of their complacency to not help this generation of student athletes. Sometimes, it is our own laziness or comfort of conventionalism that hinders us from helping them. While we may very well want to say to them, “suck it up and pay attention, that’s what I had to do” you may find your job a bit easier if you meet them halfway.

Studies show that 78% of Americans aged 12 to 17 have a cell phone, 95% use the internet and 81% use social media outlets. This means that well over half of that teen population that we work with spends the majority of their time gathering information from entertaining sources. So the information you are trying to convey to them via a ten-minute talk, it probably isn’t reaching home.

65% of teens report that they have either participated in, or have been affected by, cyber bullying. This takes us into a complete different issue, conflict resolution. Ask the majority of people what a conflict is and their mind goes to something serious or even physical in nature. However, conflict by definition is a disagreement (n.) or something to be incompatible or at variance (v.). Is this not what we see whenever we redirect an athlete or inform them they are not performing the way we expect them to?

The issue here lies in the fact that they simply are not used to communicating and coping with criticism face to face where appropriate and immediate reaction is required. When presented with a challenging statement via an electronic source, users are given the safety net of time and privacy to respond with freedom in private. Consequences are dealt in a delayed format which promotes bravery in both actions and speech. Think about this the next time you try to challenge an athlete on their performance and they give you that look as if to say, “Who me!?”

So how can we help our athletes focus better and get most out of them?

Firstly, it should be noted that the goldfish won the competition when it comes to adults’ attention span when browsing the internet, so don’t stress too hard over the fun fact above. However, the first 8 seconds is CRITICAL to capturing the audience’s attention. If you do not grab their attention in the first 8 seconds, you’re going to have a big struggle on your hand. Movie makers have known this for years and that’s why they introduce a new stimulus every few seconds to keep their audience’s attention throughout the entire movie. This is why during this article you have seen the introduction of either new fonts, colors or pictures every few seconds or minutes.

*Fun fact – it took teens on average 6.3 seconds to read the first sentence of this article*

The perfect adult attention span lasts around 20 minutes with the average down to around 5 minutes. However, scientists have noticed that your attention tends to dwindle or reset every couple of minutes. So in summation, MAKE YOUR INFORMATION SHORT AND TRANSFERABLE!

Great research Coach, but how do I actually apply this on the court or in the classroom?

You can apply the information provided in this article in a variety of ways. The easiest and least invasive to your coaching/teaching strategies to apply this knowledge is to simply change your tone or positioning while speaking. If you have been explaining something for more than a couple of minutes, and you have other coaches present, get someone else to pick up in the middle of the talk. If you have already done this, another simple way to keep their attention is to change your court location. Doing this not only provides a stimulus of eye focus location, but it causes changes in heart rate which naturally demands the body’s attention.

For a more challenging and invasive approach of how you can better your practices, review the following practice plans.

Editor’s Note from Brian. This is an EXAMPLE to give you thinking about how your practice times for your skills and drills can be broken up to include less time for each segment and to include more segments and more transitions. This is not an exact plan that is meant for you to use as is. Also, regarding the break in the second plan: Our games have timeouts, halftimes, or quarter and official’s monitor reviews depending on the level that you coach. Since those short breaks are a part of our games, it is worth considering including them in practice.

Traditional Practice Plan

10 minutes Warm Up
20 minutes Set Plays
15 minutes Press Offense
15 minutes Press Defense

60 Minutes Total Time

 Attention Based Practice Plan

10 minutes Warm Up
6 minutes Set Plays Basket #1
2 minutes 1 on 1 All Baskets
6 minutes Set Plays Basket #2
2 minutes 2 on 2 All Baskets
6 minutes Press Offense Full Court, 2 sets of Retreat Dribble Series Sideline
6 minutes Press Offense Full Court
3 minutes Break/Shoot Around
4 minutes Press Defense Full Court, 2 sets of Defensive Slides All Baskets
4 minutes Press Defense Full Court, 2 sets of Triangle Closeouts All Baskets
3 minutes Press Defense Full Court

58 minutes Total Time

As you can see both practice plans have an agenda and will accomplish their tasks for the day. However, as you can see from the attention based practice plan, the team has accomplished their tasks, they have promoted personal growth while focusing on a team oriented workout, they have changed locations, promoted a demand for attention changes (one activity to the next) and allowed time for attention resets no longer than six minutes.

One last point that I would like to make is focused on the highlighted section above, “promoted a demand for attention changes”. Many coaches would deem this as a little chaotic for the practice liking and rightfully so. However, I would like to remind coaches that basketball is a very fast paced and chaotic sport. During the 2015-2016 NCAA Division I season, the team that averaged the most amount of possessions per game was the Citadel with 83ppg. The lowest team, the University of Virginia, had 62.7ppg, that’s a league median of 71.1 possessions per game. With those statistics in mind, would you rather have a “traditional practice” that transitioned from one activity to the next four times or an “attention based practice plan” that transitioned 14 times?

Attention to detail or paying attention in general is truly a characteristic that we all struggle with in today’s society. Whether it be us as coaches trying to demand our student athletes’ attention, or us trying to pay attention when we’re sitting through a meeting. If we have the opportunity to enhance our attention skills, we should meet that head on as it will help us be more successful down the road. In closing I ask you to remember what Shane Battier stated about analytics, “Analytics aren’t something that you solely rely on, they are a tool to your success.”

This article was contributed by:

Justin Matthew Brandt
[email protected]
CoachJB.weebly.com
Here is a link to his YouTube channel
Here is a link to his Instagram

One of the best pieces of advice I can give any person is to find a mentor. Notice I did NOT say student, athlete or aspiring coach. This bit of advice should be applied by everyone, both young and old, experienced and novice. SEEK OUT MENTORSHIP! We do a fantastic job of telling our youth that they should go to college, find a trade or join the military. However, what we tend to fail to suggest, is to find someone who has experience in our desired field or holds a position in which we hold in high regard.

As the great Andre “3000” Benjamin once said, “they say selling is a sin. Well so is telling young men that selling is a sin, if you don’t offer new ways to win.”

The fact is that knowledge in itself is NOT power. The application of knowledge is power, and if we do not seek out opportunities to apply the knowledge we acquire, we are then wasting precious prospective moments to grow and reach our highest potential. A simple way to apply your knowledge while growing more, is seeking out mentorship and always asking how you can help. Yes, the idea behind mentorship is for you to learn, grow and gain some real-world application of knowledge. Conversely, being selfish and always taking from your mentor will only help you lose the trust of your mentor quickly. Remember, relationships are a two-way street. It’s not about what you know, nor is it about who you know, but it’s about who knows you and thinks highly of you, OR, even best, who thinks of you when they are in a time of need.

Anytime you can help lighten your mentor’s workload, you are doing a great deal of good in your personal development. Consider the following…

• Your mentor asks you to cut some film for them. While this may seem like a long painstaking process, you have the opportunity to watch the game, take any kind of notes on the current objective (offense, defense, player development) and learn the process behind cutting film if you’ve never done it before. Not to mention, if you mess up or haven’t done it correctly, your mentor will offer advice as opposed to you drastically getting something wrong for your boss.
• Your mentor asks you to run the NBA (youngest age group) section of camp. Again, this may seem like a long painstaking process, BUT THIS IS A COMPLIMENT! Anyone and everyone can coach or work with people who excel at their job. But it takes someone special to do the little things that others do not care to do. In addition, working with people who do not already have a refined skillset allows you to learn how to teach them the smaller nuances of the craft and how to make it enjoyable!

These will be critical moments for your personal and professional growth. Remember, be the person that people think of when they are in a time of need. This past week I reached out to my mentor by sharing with them a motivational quote and journal prompt that I use for the classes that I teach.

Emphasis of the Day: “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” – Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter)

Journal Prompt: How did the person you look up to get to where they are today?

Like clockwork my mentor responds with a solid gold nugget.

I will give my feedback Give me your thoughts

Introspective Questions a leader should ask themselves.

• What impacts winning? Why?
• Is culture important? Why?
• What is culture?
• Do believe in rules or standards?
• Is there a difference?
• How do you create “believe in/buy in”?
• Coach k his team the five fingers of hand. What 5  adjectives would you use to describe your ideal team?
• What value on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest would you put on these 5 traits: 1. High character. 2. Talent. 3. Work ethic. 4. Being a great teammate. 5. Winner. 6. Coach-ability.
• Two types of character skills: performance and moral skills are important I feel. Write down 5 performance skills and 5 moral skills that are important to you.
• Now define in your words what those 5 performance and 5 moral skills mean.

This is the quintessential example of how the mentor/protégé relationship works. The protégé shares information with the mentor that they believe the mentor might enjoy, and the mentor responds with a critical thought provoking response that has a direct correlation to progressing in their chosen career, in this case, as a coach.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that education is vital and that you will not get far in this world without some type of a degree. However, please be reminiscent of the adage, “knowledge is not power, it’s the application of knowledge that is power.” If you attain higher education but do not apply it in your daily life or throughout your career, how can you expect to reach your highest potential? Likewise, if you do attain that higher level of education but then get complacent, you will be surpassed by those individuals who continue to grow/learn and do a tremendous disservice to those whom you coach, teach or mentor.

I would like to end this by saying thank you to my mentor, Coach Kevin Sutton. Coach Sutton has continually helped me throughout my career despite what is going on in his. There has never been a time where I have not been able to count on him responding to my phone calls, e-mails or text messages. I hope that one day I will be able to leave as great of a positive impact on another person’s career/life as he has mine.

This post was submitted by Coach Tom Kelsey.  Coach Kelsey has been a Head Coach at Belhaven University, Faulkner University, and Greater Atlanta Christian High School.  He has also been an assistant at LSU, Alabama, Murray State, and Lipscomb.  He played at Lipscomb under Coach Don Meyer.

Editor’s note from Brian.  Coach Kelsey has coached Men’s program and his list is written use the male gender, but the list is not gender specific.

Here are questions I have used when recruiting student-athletes. Not only for me but my staff.

This way when a coach comes back to tell a coach about the player there is more meat than, “He or She can really play.”

Use these for your end of the year evaluations. Makes those meetings more productive and gives players something tangible, instead of saying, “Well, you need to work harder.” Giving them drills and resources is a valuable way to help them improve.

The questions are also valuable for self-evaluation of the players on your current team.

Player Evaluation

Practice

1. What time does player arrive for practice?
2. What is his pre-practice routine?
3. Where does he shoot the ball from when he begins his practice/workout?
4. How soon does he get going full speed once practice starts?
5. How does he work in breakdown drills?
6. What is his competitive level? (does he go the same speed against each player on the team?)
7. How is he on defensive fundamental drills?
8. How is he on offensive fundamental drills?
9. When working on shooting drills what is level of intensity (1-10)?
10. When working on shell drills how well does he get into help position and communicate?
11. On Zig-Zag drills how is his effort?
12. When they work on transition drills how hard does he run the floor?
13. When they work on 5-0 offense how hard does he move without the ball?
14. Once they start playing/scrimmage how is level of intensity (1-10)?
15. Does he communicate with the other players?
16. When he is off the floor, what is his body language?
17. Does he take coaching from the head coach?
18. Does he take coaching from each member of the staff or only one member or two members?
19. Does he play favorites on the team or get along with everyone?
20. What does he do after practice?
21. If he stays after practice, what is the routine? (Just playing or working on his game)

Games

22. What time does he get on the floor compared to the rest of the team?
23. Where does he take his shots from when they have free/open shooting during warm-ups?
24. Does he shots from spots on the floor where he will get his shots?
25. What is his effort like in warm-ups?
26. Does he get the other player engaged?
27. Is he self-focused or team-focused?
28. When the game is going on where does he drift if the ball is not in his hands?
29. Does he get back down the floor full speed, pick up his man, and talk to his teammates?
30. Does he deny the ball?
31. Does he get into help side?
32. Does he get to help early or just there to block the shot?
33. Does he block out?
34. Does he cover down when helping?
35. When he helps does he find the closest man to block out?
36. Is he hungry to block out or hungry to rebound the ball?
37. Does he secure the ball?
38. How well does he run the floor on the offensive end?
39. Will he fill the lane and get out in front of the ball?
40. Does he move efficiently without the ball?
41. Does he screen well when the play is not called for him?
42. Does he go to rebound on the offensive end? When is away from the ball? When he is the lane? When he gets blocked out initially?
43. Does he get upset if he doesn’t get the ball when open?
44. Will he fight for a loose ball? Does he watch others fight for the ball?
45. How aggressive is he on FT block outs (both ends)?
46. How does he participate in timeouts?
47. What does he do immediately after a timeout? (does he talk with his teammates or go off on his own)
48. When coming out of the game, does he stay in the game mentally?
49. When on the bench does he encourage the players on the floor?
50. Does he take coaching during the game?