Basketball Coaching Great vs. Destructive Teams

This article came from the University of Washington Women’s Newsletter.

If you would like to subscribe, email me and I will forward your interest on to their staff.

Great Teams

“Prepare for every game like you just lost your last game.” – Lon Kruger

There is a difference between readiness and preparation; readiness doesn’t get it done. You must prepare – Marine boot camp philosophy

“Treat people nice, even when they don’t deserve it.”

Have Positive Captains

– Work hard
– Take care of things on the floor
– Let the coaches take care of everything else

Have Great Team Attitudes

– Listen to each other
– Are courteous
– Say what they feel, but watch how they say it.
– Don’t talk behind each others back
– Don’t put each other down

Have players and coaches who accept and appreciate their roles on the team.

Work on skill development.

Share ownership in both victory and defeat.

We before Me Attitude

– Trustworthy
– Disciplined
– Unselfish
– Help teammates up
– Know roles

Push each other in practice to better prepare each other for the next game.

Self Destructive Teams

Your Four Toughest Opponents

– Negative attitudes in your program
– Injuries
– Illness
– Ineligibility

“What is your attitude?”

“What do others perceive as your attitude?”

Have loss the love of the game.

Are not willing to practice everyday, especially when times are tough.

Lose track of their short term and long term goals. – What are the team’s goals?

Are more concerned with individual goals than the team goals.

– Who is starting the game?
– Whose name is in the paper?
– Who gets more playing time?

Lack leaders who will lead by example.
– “Can talk the talk but WON’T walk the walk”

Criticize teammates ”Run each other down rather than lift each other up”

Are not coachable

When you are not getting better each day, you are telling your teammates that you don’t care OUR team.

I recently read the book, “The Power of Negative Thinking” by Bob Knight. I have listed some of my takeaways from it on this post. If you are interested in finding out more about the book or reading a sample, you can do so on the Amazon web site by clicking on the book cover below.

• Coach Knight states that “I’m not arguing for being a strict negativist, for always seeing the dark side, always expecting failure. That is not the intent of the book. Being alert to the possible negative in any situation is the very best way to bring about positive results.
• Paying attention to the potential downside is a difficult but essential quality for achieving long-term success
• Ignoring or failing to spot potential hazards in advance makes failure all the more likely.
• Planning beats repairing.
• Good planning avoids the need for fixing up a project that plowed ahead without thought about potential pitfalls.
• We need to at least consider how our next move could produce an unexpected chain reaction down the line.
• Most basketball games are not won, they are lost.
• When preparing for a game look at ways you can lose. Most have nothing to do with the opponent, but what needs to be correced about our own execution to keep from beating ourselves.
• Ask each season in each game: “What vulnerabilities do we have?” “What can we do to minimize them, get around them, or to survive them?”:
• Ask yourself ” How do you eliminate the wasted energy, and unnecessary mistakes to build a cohesive and a successful team that can play within its strengths?”
• Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.
• Mistakes he sought to eliminate were poor ballhandling, bad shots, slow recovery from offense to defense, bad fouls and poor foul shooting, for blocking out, uncoordinated defense.
• If you play with passion you are more likely to play with precision.
• The difference is not that the winner wanted it more than loser did.
• Discipline is recognizing what has to be done, doing it as well as you can do it, and doing it that way all the time.
• The power of negative thinking comes into play by recognizing, addressing, and removing the obstacles to winning.
• Have a plan to recover after a loss, to learn from a loss, to eliminate those things that caused the loss.
• Bad calls injuries or unusual occurrences are not the reason for losses mistakes are.
• The mark of success or failure in handling victory is what happens the next timeout
• Don’t let the upcoming game take away what you earned the last game.
• The greatest victory is eliminated by lack of follow-up.
• Success is a grind, its perseverance, it is operating at a high level of performance on a constant basis.
• You cannot be distracted by last night . The first job that we have today is putting yesterday aside to be remembered later. Tony LaRussa
• Eliminating ideas that are no longer relevant is essential to growth and achievement
• Part of the art in coaching is changing the game plan when necessary.
• Leadership is getting people out of their comfort zone.
• Asking questions is the essence of learning
• There isn’t always a right way and wrong way that there’s usually a higher percentage way.
• Players need to recognize what they can do in games and good as they can at it. Recognize what they don’t do well now, but that they can do well with work. And finally recognize what they cannot do now or and will never be able to do.
• Coaches Need to think about why they won in a similar way that they think about why they lost.
• The guy who knows all going into a game usually forgets it all in the face of the crisis.
• Pardon one offense and you encourage the commission of many.

Click the play arrow and make sure your sound is on to watch the video. If you are interested in learning more about the basketball coaching DVD that this sample came from, click this link: The Essentials of Coaching Basketball