Coached for a long time? What are the questions never asked that need asking?Kevin Durant allegedly asks every day, "how can I improve today?"
Not enough players ask, "how can I contribute more to the team?" On the athleticism-skill-game understanding-resilience continuum, have an answer ready for every player on our team. Rephrase the question for the player, "what specifically can you do to make your teammates better?"
No single best question is never asked.
- What gives coaches the most satisfaction? That depends on the coach, the level coached, the time horizon. Watch the growth of our players. Short-term I'm excited to see player improvement. Intermediate-term I want to see players achieve success in high school. Long-term, players' family, educational, and career success inspires me.
- What unexpected benefits accrue to coaches? Coaching is about relationships and teaching. Coaches meet players, family, and peers with different backgrounds and interests. Most are grateful for efforts to help their growth. Teaching invites coaches to learn more about both basketball and education itself. Without coaching, I would never study books like Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion.
- What unexpected relationships occur? In addition to players and their families, coaches develop relationships with other coaches, networking with college coaches, and officials.
- What does basketball teach you about life? Lessons from other disciplines cross over to basketball. Thomas Edison remarked that inventors need qualities of persistence, imagination, and analogical thinking. Persistence is at the core of basketball training success. Bill Russell remarked, "Imagination leads to innovation, leading to differentiation." Basketball has many analogies to other disciplines such as cooking.
Michelin 3-star chef Thomas Keller shared how he learned the essentials of craft working as a teen dishwasher at his mother's restaurant.
- What is the most underrated lesson that basketball teaches? Amidst many lessons such as sacrifice, sportsmanship, teamwork, and more, basketball teaches the value of discipline. Discipline means developing better habits and sticking to them. Discipline means doing what we don't want to today so that we can do what we want tomorrow. Discipline translates to how we care for our families and communities. As Jim Rohn says, "we choose the pain of discipline or the pain of regret."
- What can coaches do differently to help players? Be consistently specific. It's not enough to say you can play tougher, be in better condition, or shoot a higher percentage. If toughness means taking charges, fighting through screens, or finishing at the rim with a higher percentage, specify. If you want a player to run eight thirty-eight second 220s with 1:20 in-between, say it. If you want players to shoot 50 percent from three to have the green light in games, specify.
Excellence is the exception. By definition, most of us are inescapably average. And we can't magically declare that we exceeded escape velocity to a higher orbit. Do the work and see what happens.
What's your question never asked?
Lagniappe. Spurs Zipper Away, Pindown 3
2. "Deconstructing" your shot to achieve consistency ("form begets function")
- Dave Love defines positive energy
- Change won't occur without intervention
- Use cellphone video to confirm form progress