Have a crystal ball and use it. Postmortem examinations or 'after action reviews' examine why situations failed. Premortem exams anticipate what could go wrong, working to anticipate failure and prevent it.
Imagine the forthcoming season, potential roster, style of play, and so forth. Ignore random factors like illness and injuries. Local rules may limit your contact/coaching with players (coaches can't coach their team in the offseason in Massachusetts).
Roster. Reason. Resilience. Ignore these tools; failure follows.
Roster.
- Recruiting starts at home. Private schools attract top talent from public and other private schools. Use gravity to retain stars. Players make coaches. Cultivate relationships as a coach and as a program.
- "Every day is player development day." What opportunities are available to players re: summer league, individual and/or group workouts, camps, strength and conditioning? "Repetitions make reputations." If players focus on other sports or lack interest, development won't happen. Players who committed to ninety minute, twice weekly workouts separated themselves.
Reason. Coaches are teachers.
- Use the 'truth machine'. Train players to study video. Review last season's games. Why did possessions succeed or fail? Understand how to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Focus on topics such as spacing, transition defense, and shot selection. Share illustrative clips. Soccer maven Anson Dorrance recommends positive clips to reinforce good decisions and execution. Highlight effort plays and excellent team play (multiple actions). Use the Socratic Method. Explore deeply? Was that a good shot? Why? Was there another choice available for you or the team?
- Assign reading. Select from classics like Jay Bilas's "Toughness." Some coaches review books as a group. Book summaries often identify key teaching points.
Resilience.
- Basketball is eighty percent mental. Cultivate mentally stronger players. Here's a link to a summary of Jason Selk's "10-Minute Toughness." Controlled breathing, identity and performance statements, and mental highlight reels have helped his clients.
- Learn Mindfulness. Mindful meditation isn't time consuming, is apolitical, and doesn't step on anyone's belief systems. It's shown to increase focus, improve standardized test scores and grades, lower stress hormones, improve sleep, and reduce anxiety and depression. Who uses it? Virtually every professional and Olympic teams do. The UCLA Guided Meditation site has many free scripts.
Summary:
- Train skill, educate, and develop mentally stronger players.
- Retain and recruit your best players.
- "Every day is player development day."
- Teach film study.
- Assign reading.
- Harden players mentally with sport psychology and mindfulness.
- Be specific.
Lagniappe (something extra). From Jay Bilas's 'Toughness' article.
"Talk on defense: The toughest players talk on defense, and communicate with their teammates. It is almost impossible to talk on defense and not be in a stance, down and ready, with a vision of man and ball. If you talk, you let your teammates know you are there, and make them and yourself better defenders. It also lets your opponent know that you are fully engaged."
Lagniappe 2. Don't practice exclusively when you're fresh.