"There are still so many players we must protect. I had a different goal from yours, It wasn't winning the championship. It was to have a team that hates to lose, then goes out to win the next day. To become a team that plays persistently hard, to wear out the opponents even when it loses big time." - Operations Manager Lee in Hot Stove League
Giving anything less than your best should be anathema for you. Part of giving your best includes protecting the team.
In Win Forever, Carroll reduced team culture to three rules:
Always protect the team.
No whining, no complaining, no excuses.
Be early.
Bill Belichick's rules similarly revolve around the team:
Know your job.
Do your job.
Pay attention to detail.
Put the team first.
Passion
"Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm." Passion is a critical component of performance, wanting to excel.
Pride
Great advances in history occur through collaboration. Team accomplishments always mean shared success.
Professionalism
Professionalism includes promptness, preparation, and focus. Attention is a skill. Hard work is a skill.
Professionalism appears in the weight room, the practice field, and in the training room when rehab is needed.
Professionals protect the team on and off the court. They do the work at home, in class, and aren't involved in off-field incidents.
Professionals protect the team. You don't have to be an adult to be a professional.
Protect the team.
Lagniappe. SSGs were a regular part of practice - creating communication, competition and more touches.
Coaching lessons seldom come cheap. "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." Can the ambitious coach accelerate the coaching process?
1. "Look for the Helpers." - Mr. Rogers
The Internet has a firehose of information. Among the most useful are YouTube videos and FIBA resources. They share coaching clinics, player development videos, and much more.
2. Watch game video.
Condensed game highlights, including NBA Summer League are available on YouTube. Learn to watch video.
3. Coaching anthologies
Among the best is the Netflix series "The Playbook" which profiles five well-known coaches including Dawn Staley and Doc Rivers.
4. Mentoring (Find a mentor)
"Mentoring is the only shortcut to excellence."
Become a volunteer assistant. Study great coaches applying whatever standard you use. Among the best (alphabetically):
Red Auerbach
Geno Auriemma
Phil Jackson
Bob Knight
Mike Krzyzewski
John McLendon
Etorre Messina
Pete Newell
Zeljko Obradovic
Gregg Popovich
Dave Smart
Dean Smith
Dawn Staley
Pat Summitt
John Wooden
Here are some I've profiled. Don't confine yourself to basketball. Other legendary coaches/educators include Bill Belichick, Jack Clark, Anson Dorrance, Ed Smith, Bill Walsh.
5. Podcasts
There are too many to mention. Chris Oliver has hundreds that are excellent.
A defensive strategy used by the late-1980s/early-1990s Detroit Pistons against Michael Jordan.
The famous book The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith about the early championship-era Chicago Bulls.
For coaches, the defensive rules are usually what people mean.
The Core Idea
The Pistons concluded:
"Jordan can score 40. What he cannot do is beat us with 40 while making everyone else better."
Their goal was not necessarily to stop Jordan. Their goal was to stop the Bulls.
Key Jordan Rules
1. Force Him Left
Jordan preferred attacking to his right.
Defenders shaded him left whenever possible.
Not because he couldn't go left, but because it was slightly less efficient and more predictable.
2. No Clean Drives
Whenever Jordan penetrated:
help came early
help came hard
help came from multiple defenders
The Pistons wanted him seeing bodies.
3. Make Every Touch Physical
In another era, the Pistons were notorious for:
bumps
holds
body contact
hard fouls
The objective was cumulative fatigue. Not one hard hit. Hundreds of small ones - trying to wear him down.
4. Trap in Specific Areas
They often trapped Jordan:
near the baseline
in the corners
near the sideline
The sideline became an extra defender.
5. No Layups
Perhaps the most famous rule. If Jordan got to the rim: Make him earn it at the free-throw line. Easy baskets were unacceptable.
6. Force Others to Beat You
The Pistons were willing to live with:
John Paxson jumpers
Bill Cartwright touches
role-player shots
They were not willing to allow Jordan to dictate everything.
Why It Worked
The strategy helped the Pistons eliminate the Bulls in 1988, 1989, 1990 before Chicago finally broke through in 1991.
But there is an important coaching lesson: The Jordan Rules did not ultimately fail because the defense got worse. They failed because the Bulls got better.
Under Phil Jackson and the Triangle Offense, Chicago developed:
better spacing
better ball movement
more offensive balance
Jordan evolved from:
"I must beat you" to "we will beat you."
Coaching Takeaway
One of the great lessons from the Jordan Rules is:
Every dominant player eventually forces opponents to choose between stopping the star and stopping the team.
The best players are not merely great scorers. They become so dangerous that defensive attention creates opportunities for everyone else.
That's a principle that applies equally to basketball, volleyball, and virtually every team sport. The ultimate counter to a "Jordan Rule" is not individual brilliance—it's collective execution.
Maybe you’ve heard them. Maybe not. Advice that works. Find some that will work for you.
1. Better shot selection is the quickest path to improvement. Showing grainy, black and white film, Coach Ellis Lane called them, "Sh*t shots." After a film session, players better take fewer the next game.
2. Better late than early off a screen - Say, “Wait, wait, wait.”
3. Big reasons why offenses fail is lack of urgent cutting. In a set play, you might not have much initial choice. Your effort is your choice.
4. Turnovers kill dreams. We learned, “The ball is gold.”
5. "Spacing is offense and offense is spacing." The three-point line is the spacing line. Bad high school teams often have bad spacing.
6. "Shout praise and whisper criticism." We choose whether to lose games and lose players who tune us out.
7. “The ball is a camera.” If it can’t see you, then it can’t find you. And if the ballhandler can't see you, your cut won't help.
8. The ball is the smartest thing on the court. It finds scorers, rebounders, assist guys, shot blockers, and defeat who get deflections and steals.
9. Find guys who prioritize the scoreboard over the scorebook.
10. Fouls negate hustle. Kevin Sivils preaches, “Foul for profit.”
11. “Think shot first.” - Don Kelbick The shooter is most open when she first catches the ball.
12. “What does it feel like to be coached by me?" Parents aren’t always wrong…if we "bury" a player in a doghouse, do we expect praise?
Lagniappe. Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly said, "I'm a salesman." We sell every day at home, at school, at work, on the court, in print. If we don't add value, that's a hard sell...
Coaching Interview Strategies
1. Don’t mention your AAU or JV record; sell your philosophy. 2. Make "eye contact" with every single person in the room. 3. State realistic goals; promise improved play, not championships.
What can we learn from from a "how-to-book" from the greatest Samurai warrior? Process. Education, training, application.
Miyamoto Musashi literally wrote the book (The Book of Five Rings) about the Way of the Sword, about four hundred years ago.
Key lessons resonate.
Self-control
Emotion can fuel victory or out-of-control defeats. Musashi fought sixty times with a 'final' outcome of victory. He believed most warriors lack strategy, lack self-discipline. Attitude matters. Respect all opponents, fear none. Compete relentlessly, focused without distraction.
Anticipation
He believed that he could 'see what happens before it happens'. Charles Barkley showed clips of former player Zach Randolph who always went left. Randolph deserved credit for using his strength, but Barkley felt "dummies" didn't know that it was coming.
Breathing
Controlled breathing reduces stress. It allows suppressive signals to flow from the frontal cortex to the stress centers (amygdala).
He advocated for a four second inhalation, a short pause, six second exhalation, and short pause.
Breathing as part of mindfulness is known to reduce circulating stress hormones (cortisol).
Purpose (some say passion)
Sports facilitate competition and the ability to demonstrate where we lie on the "mastery" scale.
I counseled players not to play for the coach, the community, or your school, but the girls next to you - the teammates with shared mission, shared vision, and shared sacrifice.
The training needed to become an exceptional player is rigorous and exhausting, especially in summer heat. Special players find the intrinsic motivation to do what it takes.
Lagniappe. Many players return. Others are on the competitive cusp. There aren't "minutes" for all players, so "Stay Ready Players" have to work hard and long (temperature and time) without any guarantees of regular minutes.
I have boatloads of respect for the player who shows up and competes hard every day. During her freshman year at American, Cecilia had a teammate who had been an All-State player and played little. But the player told her that she would show up every day and 'bring it' because she earned her scholarship and she owed the team her best. That's professionalism.
Lagniappe 2. Ultimately, you become "your own coach" as a player, a spouse, parent, entrepreneur, etc. You own your role.
20 years as a head coach will teach you things no clinic ever will.
Maybe one sticks.
28 Lessons Learned.
1. Coaching is all about relationships. Work to build relationships with your players.
2. Play the long game with culture. There are no shortcuts to success.
Who wouldn't want a simple, concrete, credible, and accurate "number" to attach to a player? This can’t resolve controversy but might enlighten it.
The Holy Grail (HG) would reflect contribution to winning, impact on teammates, team offense and team defense.
It would not 'curve fit' to stratify players to conform to an analyst who "likes" someone's game and has misgivings about someone else's. And it won't say whether so-and-so is the fifth best guard in a league or the tenth.
The supporting cast also impacts a player's effectiveness. If you're on the floor with better cutters and shooters, then you might have more assists. If you're on the court with 'selfish players' then you won't get as many touches. Offensive and Defensive ratings depends on those on the floor with you as well.
As a basketball analyst, I'd rather have 2026:
On/Off data
Assist-to-turnover data
TS%
Defensive rebounding
Steals
and minutes played
than a single 'contribution' number. That partially reconstructs the "scores and stops" framework.
Let's use a concrete example, Jalen Brunson, NBA Finals MVP and LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets.
I asked ChatGPT Plus to develop a tabular comparison:
Category
Jalen Brunson
LaMelo Ball
Scoring Volume
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scoring Efficiency
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐
Playmaking
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Turnover Control
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐
Rebounding
⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Offensive Impact
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Defensive Reliability
⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐
Decision Making
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐
Availability/Durability
⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐
Coach Trust Factor
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐
Overall Total Contribution
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Usage measures responsibility, not selfishness. It also impacts the usage of other players.
There's no precise "apples to apples" comparison available but analytics staffs are working on that.
One statistic I'd love to invent:
Knowing your interest in "Coaches' Total Contribution" and holistic evaluation, I'd create a metric called Possession Value Added (PVA).
Rather than asking: "How many points did he score?," I'd ask, "How much better is every possession because this player was involved?"
Morgan Housel wrote the best seller, The Psychology of Money. Apply lessons about psychology to winning sport and basketball.
Psychology applies to everything of 'value'. Studies show that losing feels twice as painful as winning feels good.
We Hate Losing More Than We Enjoy Winning
"Studies suggest losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good."
Basketball examples:
Parents panic after a few losses.
Coaches abandon player development after one bad weekend.
Players stop taking open shots after missing two.
Good programs understand that avoiding pain is not the same as pursuing excellence.
Everyone Thinks Their Story Is Normal
"Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story." - John Barth
Every coach believes:
Officials are against them
Injuries were unusually bad
Parents don't understand
Our situation is unique
It rarely is. Top coaches study the game. This is where Norway fits beautifully. Rather than asking: "How do we win the U12 championship," they asked: "How do we produce adults who love sport?"
Luck Matters More Than We Want to Admit
This is one of Housel's dominant themes.
Basketball examples practically write themselves.
Kevin Durant's size 18 foot on the line.
A favorable NCAA bracket helps.
An injury crushes us.
The Halliburton Bounce goes in.
The lesson: Judge processes and decisions more than outcomes.
Winning Is in Our DNA
People naturally keep score. Children race. Adults compare salaries. Athletes compare stats.
Wanting to win isn't the problem. Adults deciding that winning at age 10 is more important than development is the problem.
"Never be a child's last coach."
The Big Picture Beats the Highlight
A Housel recurring theme is that people confuse visible success with the invisible process behind it.
Fans remember:
buzzer beaters
dunks
championships
They don't see:
culture
player development
communication
accountability
thousands of ordinary practices
The "Prime Spurs" didn't become the Spurs because they passed well. They passed well because they spent years creating a culture that rewarded unselfishness.
Managing Risk Is Part of Winning
"All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination."
Championship teams manage risk.
Examples:
avoiding foul trouble
preserving depth (antifragility)
suppressing ego
load management
maintaining culture
The NBA's new salary aprons are almost a perfect analogy.
Just as investors can become overconcentrated in one stock, teams can become overconcentrated in one or two contracts. When something goes wrong...there is no margin for error.
Staying Great Is Harder Than Becoming Great
Winning is hard. Continuing to win is even harder.
Butler making the Finals was remarkable. Doing it the next season seemed impossible.
Eight straight NBA champions have failed to repeat. The lesson isn't that dynasties are impossible. It's that maintaining excellence requires constant adaptation.
Humility Wins
The best coaches accept:
They don't know everything
Circumstances change
Rosters continually turn over
Yesterday's solution may not solve tomorrow's problem.
Reasonable beats brilliant.
The teams that succeed for decades aren't usually the smartest. They're the ones that consistently avoid catastrophic mistakes.
Championship teams avoid beating themselves.
They limit turnovers. They share the ball. They "foul for profit" and excel at shot selection.
They have few recruiting mistakes and strong cultures that can overcome the mistakes they make.
Get players to embrace coaching truth: winning is often less about extraordinary plays than about consistently avoiding ordinary errors.
Lagniappe. Great horns examples from Coach Peterman.
Need new ideas out of Horns? This video has 48 different Horns actions from college basketball in just over 8 minutes. If you love studying offense, you'll find plenty to steal. 👏 Huge shoutout to @SamDailey for another incredible breakdown. Do yourself a favor and give… pic.twitter.com/KQrtCPePUw
Six of the most important intangibles that coaches look for in players: 1. High character 2. Great attitude 3. Work ethic 4. Mental toughness 5. Leadership 6. Intelligence
— Sports Psychology (@SportPsychTips) July 7, 2026
Traffic in specifics. Don't say, "I play hard." Explain. "I communicate. I'm first to the floor. I'm first to pick a teammate up off the court." Examples:
High character
Teamwork
Selflessness (Team first)
Great attitude
Positivity
Coachability
Work ethic
"Never cheats the drill."
Relentless
Mental toughness
Performs under situational duress (pressure)
Performs when not physically at peak
Leadership
Models excellence (home, school, sport)
Resource for teammates ("available")
Intelligence
Makes the right play consistently
Reads plays to become a step quicker
Lagniappe. "Hindsight held a level of perfection that real-time decision-making could not provide." - David Baldacci in "Long Road to Mercy"
Lagniappe 2. How are we making a difference in development?
In an episode of “The Bear,” Sydney makes an omelet for Sugar, the restaurant manager. Her work shows effort and precision. It’s crafted not cooked.
Your work reflects your attitude towards it. If “A” work matters, then bring “A” attitude and “A” investment.
Austin Kleon, author of Show Your Work, shares valuable quotes:
“To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping the artwork.” Process matters. Be a tracker because winners track the process.
“Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you'll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It's that simple.” The variety and breadth of workout activities published leaves no excuse for "I didn't know what to do."
In this clip, Jayson Tatum illustrates separation with "attack off the catch" or STAMPEDE.
"Basketball is a game of separation..." Players create separation with cutting, screening, and dribbling with 'change of direction, change of pace, and deceleration.
The "negative step" is another separating technique. It provides a "launch step" to attack the basket. It may also draw a defender closer.
Be a technician. Be relentless. Be a dog.
Lagniappe. What does our culture look like?
Nick Saban said, "We can't have complacency, we can't have selfishness, and we can't lose our accountability."
Because that's how culture dies.
It doesn't collapse overnight - It crumbles quietly.
Here are 5 silent culture killers every team must avoid:
Cars, televisions, and even air purifiers come with an "Owner's Manual." Basketball players do not.
If we were constructing an owner's manual, how would it look? What absolutes belong and what "options" make our player and program more valuable?
Choose whether to be a lumper or a splitter. Lumpers have broad categories and splitters seek more granular divisions.
1. Character
"Character is job one." - Etorre Messina
"The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." Coach Nick Saban says players create value for themselves with their choices.
Find your guys. "Moss displayed another Belichick staple: mental toughness, which the Patriots define as “doing what is best for the team when it might not be best for you.”In New England, Moss was a “program guy”: someone who works hard, is a supportive teammate, and cares deeply about winning. In other words, someone with football character." - Michael Lombardi in Gridiron Genius
You know the saying, "If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas."
When you bring a player into your culture, you bring their baggage and sometimes their 'entourage', friends and family.
2. Coachability
"Do the right things, the right way, all the time."
Players hear a lot of voices - their own, their posse's, and coaches. The exceptional player wants coaching, wants to improve, and wants to hear the truth. Exceptional players travel "the extra mile."
Coachability includes focus which includes the ability to avoid distractions. Is a player about the work or "the life?" Is she committed to making the team better, the people around her better, or "the scorebook?"
3. Resilience
"Good teams play harder for longer." - Dave Smart
Themes repeat and resonate.
Adversity is inevitable in both personal and athletic life.
How do we measure resilience? We can be captive to sample size. A good or a bad performance under pressure shouldn't be dismissed but placed in context.
Coaches want players we can trust to "see the game" and make consistent, positive decisions and execute. Use an AI consult:
The most reliable identification methods (based on research)
1. Scenario-based decision testing
Use video or VR simulations to evaluate decision-making under stress.
This method is empirically shown to reveal cognitive flexibility and resilience.
2. Adversity-based drills
Create controlled adversity: bad calls, uneven numbers, fatigue spikes.
Observe adaptation speed, communication, and emotional regulation.
Validated tools from resilience research paired with real-time observation give a fuller picture.
Resilience is multifactorial—motivation, coping, optimism, hope.
4. Coach/peer feedback loops
Players who elevate team resilience (leadership, identity, positivity) are consistently high performers under pressure.
The most comprehensive framework comes from a 2022 systematic review synthesizing 92 studies. It proposes a resilience filter made of biopsychosocial protective factors that determine how strongly adversity impacts an athlete.
Social factors — Coaching quality, mentorship, team culture, family support. (How a player treats her family can predict how they interact with teammates and coaches)
4. Development Arc
Legendary North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance described wanting players with "continual ascension." Examine a player's development history and their capacity to "become their own coach."
When players improve, many factors intersect.
Resources. Training is expensive.
Family support (beyond resources)
Mentoring (the only shortcut to excellence)
"Competitive character" - intrinsic motivation
"Paper trail"... training plan, tracking, video, etc. "success leaves fingerprints"
There is no Owner's Manual. The road is long, highly competitive, and needs will and skill to overcome the obstacles.
Summary:
There's no one pathway to success.
"Character is job one."
Coachability is necessary and underrated.
Resilience is needed and trainable.
Competitive arcs need planning.
Lagniappe. The well-coached team...do we check the boxes?
Content should come with a disclaimer - likely useful, neutral, waste of time. That would help both readers and author. Pay attention to this. It's not enough to read...process the content.
Most content is noise not signal. Filter!
Rolf Dobelli, author of The Not to Do List, suggests refining your reading palette.
1. Stay within your Circle of Competence - your lane or area of expertise. Even within our Circle, there’s an abundance of material.
2. Produce more than you consume. I don’t believe this because it limits our exposure to diversity of ideas. Exposure to ideas doesn't oblige us to become either advocates or critics.
3. Engage deeply. Society seldom rewards superficial knowledge leading to analysis of complex areas. Scoring off service might distill to putting opponents in a disadvantage but you need specifics. Prosperity requires effective responses, not just information. Study, take notes, develop a plan and find whether better process changes outcomes.
4. Reread the best content. Imprint the lessons available in what you found to be the best content. Some of the books I've read multiple times include:
Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense (Dean Smith)
Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
Legacy (James Kerr)
Search Inside Yourself (Chade-Meng Tan)
In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle (Madeleine Blais)
The Score Takes Care of Itself (Bill Walsh)
Chop Wood, Carry Water (Joshua Medcalf)
The goal isn't curating a library of 5,000 books, but to read excellent books and take away worthy lessons.
Focus synthesizes awareness of surroundings- time, space, and situation - and the ability to make decisions under pressure.
We did a drill in high school with a passer and a line of receivers about 12-15 feet away. The passer would start by passing a medicine ball to the next person in line and the "line" would be passing a basketball back. Two balls in play. Pay attention or risk getting a medicine ball in the kisser (it happened!).
The Focus Spectrum
Focus includes the ability to prepare, to learn the playbook, assignments, and the scouting report. Restated, focus happens long before you ever step onto the court for games.
Focus is knowing where your scorers thrive with the ball, how an opponent wants to attack. Focus is being able to play "harder for longer." Focus is learning to "see the game" by being coachable and through video study.
Teams without focus are often "not on the same page" and unlikely to execute. Conversely, players and teams that execute have proven their ability to focus.
Keep it simple
Focus includes "wide focus" about what happens in the geometry and player motion and "narrow focus," being able to read a defender (e.g. attack the front hand/foot) or go for a steal as it leaves a dribbler's hand (e.g. Kawhi) or returns after bouncing off the floor.
Games are won and lost because of missed assignments or loss of focus, where players "got lost" during a timeout.
Charles Barkley noted that Zach Randolph scored partly because of "Dummies."
Training Focus
Mindfulness
Asteroids is a cheap version of high tech training available
No free shooting...add focus with constraints...time, scoring requirement and a hand in the face
Focus isn't a solitary skill. Sometimes it requires intense physical training and at others the ability to sit your butt in a chair to study a playbook, opponent video, or American history.
Lagniappe. "If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you’ve lost your focus." - Michael Jordan
Kobe Bryant defined focus through singular, unwavering attention to a specific goal, "I focus on one thing and one thing only - that's trying to win as many championships as I can."
One of the greatest advantages coaches have today is access to information. Books, podcasts, clinics, videos, and social media provide a wealth of ideas.
The challenge is no longer finding information. The challenge is extraction, improving our 'yield' from available resources.
One process that has helped me is to reverse engineer what outstanding coaches, teachers, and leaders do. Rather than asking, "Should I copy this?" ask, "Why does this work?"
Here's one approach.
An Alternative Learning Process
Find an outstanding book—basketball, leadership, psychology, or teaching.
Read the Table of Contents before reading the first chapter.
Ask yourself, "What do I already believe about these topics?"
Read the book carefully.
Return to the Table of Contents and mentally reconstruct the major lessons without opening the chapters.
If you can explain each chapter in your own words, you've moved beyond reading to learning.
Example Habits That Make a Champion (Allistair McCaw)
What does being 'coachable' mean to you?
If you were teaching a player or team about a coachable player, what lessons and examples would you emphasize?
High level of commitment
Listener
Tries to follow instructions as presented
Embraces feedback
Applies lessons to make others better
Excerpts:
Repackage the lessons in a way meets your philosophy of developing character and competence.
You may not believe that being an early riser adds value, thinking that getting more sleep is what matters more for recovery. Nothing obliges us to adopt everything from other coaches. But it raises valuable questions.
What principle is the author trying to teach?
That's the value of reverse engineering. We don't have to adopt everything we read. Understand why successful coaches believe what they believe.
Every great book becomes another tool in our coaching toolbox. Some tools recur daily. Others stay in the drawer for years until the right player or situation appears.
The goal isn't to become another coach. Become a better version of yourself.
Lagniappe. Finishing at the rim against high "contestedness" isn't easy. Do the reps.
USE YOUR STEPS
Players that have good size and length can instantly be better finishers at the rim when they learn how to use their full 2 steps at the rim
Here we are working on taking a bump and then covering as much ground as possible (in any direction) with our last 2… pic.twitter.com/khRA6syV0S
