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Saturday, September 5, 2026

Messages for Young Coaches

Young coaches succeed spectacularly, fail miserably, and do everything in between. What separates them? 

Philosophy

Have a philosophy that is the program North Star. Mine was teamwork, improvement, and accountability. Yours can be entirely different. It is something to anchor on, winning or losing.  

Temperament

Represent maturity, responsibility, and positivity. Leading young people is both a privilege and responsibility. Being a hothead, out of control, or abusing officials and others is conduct unbecoming. 

Teaching (Character and competence)

"Every day is player development day." Coaches teach sport, teamwork, leadership, sportsmanship, and more. 

"Repetition makes reputations." Coaching includes correction and correction is not criticism. 

Player development

Player development includes both intangibles and specifics of:

  • Skill
  • Strategy 
  • Physical development (e.g. strength and conditioning
  • Psychology (mental toughness, resilience) 

Develop possession enders, players who create scores (assists, scores, rebounds) and stops (defense, turnovers, rebounds, steals, blocks, etc.)

Organization 

A coaching possession doesn't come with a practice schedule, drill book, playbook, tryout plan, game planning, game management, and so on. 

Coaching is also editing. Refine your approach with experience - adding and subtracting. "Via Negativa" means subtraction and less is often more.  

Mentoring 

Find a mentor, someone you can go to with questions or for advice. If you have a mentor, think about Usher's advice, "study your mentor's mentor." 

Curiosity and openness 

Young coaches who are "know-it-alls" invariably end up with "the stock trader's breakfast" - egg on the face. Coach is humbling. Everyone makes mistakes - of omission or commission. As the saying goes, there are two types of coaches - humble and those who will be.

Lagniappe. Players wonder about ways to win. Coaches recognize the many ways to lose.   

Look for "low hanging fruit." Some of the lowest are:

  • Shot selection (stamp out bad shots)
  • Turnovers (value the ball)
  • Foul discipline (stop giving away free throws) 

 

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Friday, September 4, 2026

10 Ways to Win More Basketball Games

Basketball coaches enjoy teaching the game and competing. Coaches understandably ask, “Give me something I can use now." Find something that resonates. 

Adopt the Bill Walsh approach such that, "The Score Takes Care of Itself" when we do the right things at the right time every day. 

Track shot quality

Dean Smith sometimes scrimmaged with "shot quality scoring" such that layup attempts got two, contested jump shots were level, and turnovers earned negative points. 

"Winners are trackers." Shot selection improves under the stress of tracking, fulfilling a Bilas Rule, "It's not your shot, it's our shot."

Beat the Press

Make practice hard so that games are easy. My favorite drill is 5 versus 7, full court, no dribbling. The ball touches the floor and it's a turnover. Success demands a "pass and cut" mentality and it definitely translates to games. 

Special situations

Winning close and late is about execution. We finished each practice with "specials," three possession games (offense-defense-offense) which started with a BOB, SLOB, ATO, or free throw. This created competition, decision-making, and aggressiveness that improved "close and late" performance. 

Never foul a perimeter shot

Pete Newell taught teams to get "more and better shots than opponents." Force "hard twos." One opposite of hard twos is fouling twos and threes sending teams to the stripe. That cannot happen. 

Always condition with a ball

Pete Carril believed in conditioning with a ball. Many drills such as Kentucky layups, 3 x 3 x 3 shooting, and "Racehorse" condition with the ball. And, of course, Argentina...

Racehorse. Full court, full speed (that's a challenge) passing, cutting, and finishing drill. Change passers every minute. 


There's no whip but coaches exhort players, "Go, go faster."  

Free throw rebound defense

Offensive rebounds against free throws are beyond a pet peeve. Sandwich the best rebounder, block out the other low and the shooter and it shouldn't happen. But it does. 

Stop doubling down on stupid fouls

In almost every game, we see "frustration fouls" as a player makes a mistake and compounds it with a foul. It's a FAFO form of losing basketball and discipline breakdown. As Kevin Sivils teaches, "Foul for profit." 

Avoid live ball turnovers

Coach taught us that "the ball is gold." Turnovers lose games, kill dreams, and act as zero percent possessions. Even worse, live ball turnovers translate into high points per possession chances for opponents. A classic is the stolen "wing to top" pass that turns into an open layup - in middle school and pro ball. 

Time out management 

Take a tip from Dean Smith. If possible, reserve three timeouts for the final four minutes. That allows for rest, coaching, and for implementation of your "specials" that practice created advantage. 

Three keys to victory 

Coach provided us with a scouting report (mimeographs for old timers) with hand drawn keys representing what was needed to win. It might be "force turnovers against their suspect guards" or "attack the basket and get them in foul trouble with no depth." We ended up 21-4 with the four losses by a total of seven points...

Lagniappe. It's hard to get as many shooters as we want. This video shows how the Celtics leveraged spacing. 

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Thursday, September 3, 2026

Basketball - "Do Something"

Years ago at Fenway (from a front row, third base-side seat!) I heard first base coach Dave Parker walk by and yell at Jim Leyritz (coming up to bat), "Do something." Having a 6'5" behemoth yell encouragement didn't help.

An important question for players and coaches to address is:

“What does this behavior hope to accomplish?”

Rude, insulting, or passive-aggressive behavior seldom accomplishes the desired intent. "I knew that you'd eventually take a good shot," won't endear you to a player.  

Better communication connects better: separate the person from the problem. Instead of labeling the athlete as lazy, selfish, or negative, ask "what's your why? What are you looking for from this?" That creates more room for change as coaches seek to change behaviors.

Coaches want to raise player and team performance. Understanding their motivation might open a pathway.  

Does a player understand we're on her side?

Does a player understand their position on the performance to potential continuum?

Does a player know her strengths, weaknesses, and chance to add value?  

By the time the player's "at bat" it's too late. Exceptional players want coaching and have already come for it. They know the difference. 

Lagniappe. Approval requires somebody else to complete the transaction. Contribution doesn't. Control whether you add value in domain expertise; we don't control who reads or appreciates it. Good work stands on its own. 

Lagniappe 2. Offense is spacing. Defense contracts and corrupts spacing. 

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Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Basketball - Practical Principles from Memorable Military Figures

Basketball is not war, yet presents metaphorical battles and concepts available to us. More than ten years of Navy service taught valuable lessons. History teaches more. 

"I can learn." 

Bowdoin Professor turned Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain explained how an untrained Rhetoric professor became a hero at Gettysburg. 

Basketball - Promote a learning culture. 

"Always forward."  

General Alexander Suvorov was the "General who never lost." He treated his mean well, was committed to training, and never retreated. 

Basketball - Earn the right to confidence via high performance.

"Every battle is won before it is fought."

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a timeless classic from over 2500 years ago. He believed that preparation and a host of principles set strategic standards. 

Basketball - Preparation, practice, and performance follow intent. 

"We will fight in the shade."

According to the historian Herodotus, a native of Trachis warned Dienekes that the Persian arrows were so numerous they would blot out the sun. Dienekes answered, "Good; then we will fight in the shade."

Basketball - Think "Whatever it takes."

"Duty. Honor. Country."

MacArthur's legendary "Address to Graduates" (West Point) emphasized the core values of the service academy. 

Basketball - Distill standards and values. Character. Sportsmanship. Community. 

 "Find one more thing." 

General Hal Moore argued that there was always "one more thing" that could be done to help earn victory. Include that concept into your philosophy and teach it to our players. 

Basketball - Our basketball training and experience can shape us to become more when we're willing to apply what we know and sometimes to think "outside of the box." 

"You can’t help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can—and you should—try to pass the days between as a good man.” - Sam Damon in "Once an Eagle"

We can't choose our size, our biological limitations, or our upbringing. We can choose our attitude, our choices, and our effort to grow our character and competence.

Basketball - Everyone can't become an exceptional player. We can choose to become an exceptional teammate and the best leader we can be.

Lagniappe. Authentic likability is a skill.  

Lagniappe 2. Believe that by modeling excellence that we can help young people develop both character and competence. Most of us do. 

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Tuesday, September 1, 2026

What Coaches All Want - Establishing "Sustainable Competitive Advantage"

"The wind blows hardest at the top of the mountain." 

Winning is hard. That's why it's valued. 

NBA regular season win leaders for the past ten seasons:

RankTeamWinsGamesWin %
1Boston Celtics530800.663
2Denver Nuggets495801.618
3Milwaukee Bucks486801.607
4LA Clippers466800.583
5Golden State Warriors464793.585

Of course, NBA regular season wins don't necessarily translate to NBA titles, profits, or fan satisfaction. 

An owner's North Star could be profits, publicity, winning or some combination. 

Other levels lack the resources of professional sport. At these levels, coaches apply their own meaning. Winning matters in varsity sports and beyond. Nobody will convince me that winning is the Holy Grail if you coach U14s or U12s. That's the stuff of Springsteen's "Glory Days." 

What is sustainable competitive advantage?

It's consistent winning, not necessarily championships. Wooden didn't win a National Title at UCLA until his 16th season. Dean Smith won a championship in his 21st season at UNC. He said that even without having won a national title that he never felt like a loser. 

How do you get it?

There's an evolution underway. Our local girls' program won ten consecutive league titles including five undefeated regular seasons. That benefited from a coaching stability, a solid youth program, two players from the METCO program, health, and luck. 

Top players left the system for the Prep or Private school world. Wins have become much harder to come by. The strength of the volleyball program attracting elite athletes also mattered.  

Friction

Friction shows up amidst 'the discipline of execution' - the triad of people (coaches and players), strategy, and operations. 

Replacing coaches, changes in the youth program, and improvements in other programs also create friction.  

For years, Coach Ralph Labella and I offered off-season (May to September) twice weekly development sessions. That's history.  

Overcoming Friction

What are some ideas for returning a program to prominence? This is 'spitballing' not proven success.

  • A local coaching summit getting the best ideas from stakeholders, especially coaches in the system.
  • That could only take place in a "safe space" with no blame game attached, just curiosity and openness. 
  • A "campaign" to attract and retain players starting at a young age. 
  • Return to offseason development (who's invested?)
  • A couple of free coaching clinics with paid coaches brought in with booster club funds. 

The Pushback 

Ego is the enemy. Solving a problem requires diagnosis and treatment with "a starting over" approach without a postmortem examination on the past. Almost invariably, bruised feelings emerge, regardless of the intent. 

Without repeating the "talking dog" story, I don't see any of this happening. Happiness is being wrong. 

Lagniappe. Everyone loves a great back door cut. 

Lagniappe 2. What's on your checklist?  

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Monday, August 31, 2026

Basketball - "Learn Every Day"

Coach Nick Saban asked, "Are you spending your time or are you investing it?" 

Ordinary actions (reading, exercise, nutrition, thinking) create extraordinary growth. 

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Our attitude, choices, and effort define our progress. 

James Clear described a friend who writes three pages a day - resulting in publishing three books annually. 

Kobe Bryant took a thousand shots a day during his offseason, fashioning a top ten career. 

Larry Bird shot five hundred free throws daily before school and became one of three members in the 50/40/90 club along with Steve Nash and Kevin Durant...not too shabby for an OG. 

What's our learning framework for basketball or another sport?

Dr. Fergus Connolly favors:

  • Skill
  • Strategy
  • Physicality
  • Psychology
Boost skill with deliberate practice, ideally against competition. "Repetition makes reputations."

Enhance basketball IQ with reading, clinics, and video study. "Video is the truth machine." 

Become more physical with regular strength, conditioning, and recovery. "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care." Remember that sport rewards athleticism. 

Raise your resilience with mental reps and a mindfulness practice. "Have you taken even one mindful breath today?" 

Commit to daily improvement...like Kevin Durant, who wakes and asks, "How do I get better today?"

Lagniappe. How do you warmup? 

 






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Sunday, August 30, 2026

Basketball - Mentoring

"Mentoring is the only shortcut to excellence."

Most of the time, mentoring gets "short shrift" in the big picture. Consider mentoring through history.

Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great. One of history's great thinkers influenced one of history's great doers.

Benjamin Franklin chose the arduous nine-year printing apprenticeship for exposure to voluminous writing on his journey to become a great communicator.

The entertainer Usher discussed mentoring in his MasterClass. He recommended studying your "mentor's mentors." He considered Michael Jackson a mentor, therefore recommending study of James Brown and Gene Kelly. 

Many here know that Phog Allen coached and mentored Dean Smith from 1949 to 1953. Fewer know that James Naismith mentored Phog Allen.

So it goes James Naismith -> Phog Allen -> Dean Smith

Develop a perspective on mentoring:

Many of us consider our high school coaches our first mentors. Pete Newell noted that copying your coach's system often results in "a poor reproduction of the original." 

Mentoring has complexity. John Wooden's father Joshua most shaped his development as a man, while Piggy Lambert, his Purdue coach, influenced his basketball thinking. Lambert emphasized speed, conditioning, passing and aggressive team basketball.

Steve Kerr includes mentoring in his big three influences of mentoring, mindset, and culture. Kerr is part of the Gregg Popovich coaching tree as a player, not as an assistant. 

Joe Mazzulla considers Brad Stevens a mentor. Mazzulla later described being allowed to interview for the Celtics head-coaching position in 2021,  although he wasn't ready -  as “a gift that [Stevens] gave me” because of what he learned from the process.

Mentors are transformational not transactional. The successful mentee eventually becomes unmistakably himself or herself.

Beyond "share something great," one of my core mentoring beliefs is, "make friends with the dead." Only about seven percent of people ever born are alive. That leaves a vast repository of "the departed" available to share, teach, and 'correct' our thinking. Using Artificial Intelligence allows us to have 'representative' conversations with them. 

Knowing the past helps us to understand the present. 

Even if we don't align with a coach or leader, that shouldn't prevent us from learning from them. 

Lagniappe. Every coach can benefit from understanding core concepts from Sun Tzu and his classic, "The Art of War." Most coaches develop familiarity with game concepts and strategies. Elite coaches understand not only technique and tactics but the psychology of leadership and coaching people. 


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Saturday, August 29, 2026

Basketball - Setting Standards

Everyone sets standards in our lives. For example, coaches have non-negotiable standards:

  • Punctuality - be on time for practice, the bus
  • Preparedness - know the playbook 
  • Conditioning - meet conditioning standards (set by coaches)
  • Academics - set individual and team goals - I was proud that our daughters' high school team had all six seniors earn Honor Roll selection
  • Behavior - teamwork, encouragement, social media, substances
Other intangible standards exist too:
  • Sleep (get eight hours minimum)
  • Hydration (athletes need more) - the first sign of dehydration is fatigue not thirst
  • Nutrition (e.g. protein) - 1.0 g/kg/day is a reasonable simple minimum target for an average high-school athlete, but I would teach 1.2–1.5 g/kg/day as a practical target for an athlete training regularly.
Coaches might set analytic targets for their teams as well:
  • No more than three transition hoops 
  • At least 75 percent defensive rebounding percentage
  • Kills (three consecutive stops) seven per half
  • Turnovers (depends on level)... reinforce that they are "zero percent possessions" and live-ball turnovers become high points/possession for opponents
  • Winning quarters. My coach, Ellis Lane, believed that winning quarters led to winning games. That helped him into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. 
Lagniappe. Coach DeMarco shares what he calls "Green Light, Red Light shooting." It's a high volume, timed shooting drill. 

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Friday, August 28, 2026

Basketball - Guiding Principles

"More like a guideline than a rule…" - Pirates of the Caribbean 

Hubris, thy name is coaching. It takes remarkable hubris to believe that my way is the best way. Coaching is adjustment…or at times, no adjustment.

Everyone finds principles that work for them. 

1. “Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” 

2. “Fall in love with easy…especially finding ‘easy’ shots.” The more we ask players to remember, the less likely they'll remember everything. 

3. With superior talent, “the game is meant to be played fast.” Wooden's quote worked for him because he had great talent. 

4. “Win this possession…over and over.” If you could play a game of chance and win $1.50 for heads and lose $1.00 for tails. You should play this game as hard as you can because of favorable expectancy. 

5. Find or develop possession enders, the players who get “scores and stops.” If you’re not an offensive player, you better be a rebounder or a stopper. As Geno Auriemma says, "You have to contribute something." 

6. Getting your defense set shifts advantage towards you. Another great reason to stop transition.

7. Have a reliable inbounder. Failure to do so will bite you in a key moment. 

8. Train ball security. Turnovers are zero percent possessions.

9. The quickest path to improvement runs through shot selection.

10.Team reading - Jay Bilas’s Toughness - make it mandatory. "It's not your shot, it's our shot."

11.”Stamp out bad basketball” including selfishness, softness, and sloth.

12.Get everyone on the same page. Failure to do so will cost us at the biggest moment.

13.Sacrifice - shared vision, shared mission, shared work.

14.Everyone has value. Disallow “kiss up” and “kick down.”

15.Learn to play at different tempos because you can’t always control tempo...plus adjust tempo (play slower to shorten the game and faster to lengthen it.

Lagniappe. All closeouts are not equal. 
Lagniappe 2. "Purpose gets bigger than ego." 





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Thursday, August 27, 2026

Basketball - How Objective Are Our Evaluations?

Most people 'think' they evaluate players objectively. When we hear "performance improvement plan," most people think 'sub-par performance'.

Consultant Dave Kline looks at this differently. "17 leaders scored the same employee. 7 said below expectations. 6 said at. 4 said above. Here's what their disagreement actually revealed."

Immediately, you might think, "what does this have to do with basketball?"

In Kline's analysis, evaluators assessed employees on three dimensions:

  • Volume
  • Quality
  • Cost
If you're selling T-shirts, a quality reduction with enhanced volume and stable cost might win. In healthcare, quality reductions might mean lives lost. A low-quality surgeon or nurse gets cut.

In basketball, we seen lists of "Top Players" or "MVP candidates" all the time. Based on what or based on "the eyeball test?"
  • Wins above replacement
  • Individual offensive metrics
  • Individual defensive metrics
  • Team offense
  • Team defense
I remember reading a local paper about a high school game. "So-and-so" led her team with ten points. It didn't say that she had seven turnovers or played abysmal defense or that it took her 15 shots to get ten points. One might infer that "So-and-so" was star of the game. That wasn't reality.

As an evaluator, want to evaluate a player on her ability to improve the team, to improve players around you, and to impact winning. Those three parameters, per se, are not specific.

Back in the day, I modified Lee Rose's system and used it to track performance...calling it the RPS (Ratings Performance System). It rewarded possessions and efficiency. By no means does it capture everything that happens, especially defensively.

Kline adds context:

Written expectations. Specific measures. A defined bar for success. A scheduled review cadence. A record of what changed and when.

You just put every person on that team on a performance improvement plan. In January. Before anyone was failing. And no one even realized it.

We don't hold sportswriters, columnists, and broadcasters to those standards. And bloggers? It's the Wild West.

Tracking team turnovers and team shooting percentage for middle schoolers reduced turnovers and bad shots. We never reported individual stats, but players knew they were accountable.

Former Bill Belichick assistant Ernie Adams kept a sign on his desk, "STAMP OUT BAD FOOTBALL." The point was clear - bad football loses games and the NFL is a "bottom line" business.

The next time we read "MVP candidates," at the very least we might ask, "says who" and "by what criteria?"

Lagniappe. Matching players to our needs.




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Wednesday, August 26, 2026

More Basketball and Chess

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 What everyday lessons does the game teach us? 

1. Don't be in a hurry to win.

An ill-conceived strategy (e.g. coming out pressing with inferior talent) can expose our limitations before impacting our opponent. Coaches have to read the game, too. 

2. Protect your king. 

Many games are lost not won because of ill-constructed defenses. Exceptional teams invariably balance excellent defenses to complement strong attack. 

3. A pawn can become a queen.

Each player has strategic value and deserves special consideration. That could be on a "press team" or creating a matchup on defense. 

4. The pieces work together.

You cannot win with just a "strong bishop" or a "powerful knight." As in Misaeng, a piece that "has not come into play" can change the game. Work to become that piece.

5. Learn from and love our losses. 

Every loss teaches us lessons if we are curious, open, and thoughtful. 

6. Don't believe you're "the smartest guy in the room." 

Chess taught us that machines (e.g. Deep Blue) could defeat the strongest play. It also taught us that the combination of "man and machine" in Centaur Chess could produce even greater strength. Don't ignore or belittle technology. It is here to help us. 

7. Be on the lookout. 

Watch how our thoughts become words, words become actions, and actions become habits. "Begin with the end in mind" - creating better habits results in better versions of ourselves. 

Lagniappe. Every program benefits from developing its language. 

Lagniappe 2. Develop your 'special situations' practice list. 

 

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