Basketball: Coaching Is Teaching

Some books 'belong' in our coaching library.

Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense (Dean Smith)

Legacy (James Kerr)

Game Changer (Dr. Fergus Connolly)

Coach's Guide to Teaching (Doug Lemov) - Read the summary provided if not the whole book. 

The Score Takes Care of Itself (Bill Walsh)

If stranded on a desert island, any one would provide a lifetime of reading pleasure. 

Let's focus on Coach's Guide to Teaching. As a physician, I'm a teacher. Education changes behavior, but it's tough. It's about habit formation and consistency. During medical training, doctors combine learning and mentoring younger doctors. During my six years of training - residency, chief residency, fellowship - teaching was a daily responsibility. Even the youngest doctors, interns, have a big responsibility to teach medical students. I was voted best resident teacher at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the Lieutenant Neil Holland Award. I shared the two best answers in medicine to all:

• "I don't know but I'll find out."
• "That's a good idea. We should do that." 

Coaches need to apply these concepts:

Three types of training activities leaders should do:

• Skill-acquisition - Learning to execute a skill, under pressure without thinking.

• Game-based - Applying skills within the context of a constrained game environment. For example, a game of 11 vs 8 or a smaller pitch.

• Tactical - Recreating specific situations that may occur during a match.

Here are a few quotes:

"There no difference between playing fast and being fast..." players with better game understanding and vision play faster.

"guessing is not critical thinking"

"What do you see?"

"It is the coach's job to build knowledge."

"If you start with a clear vision...the problem-solving is much more effective."

"Teaching technical vocabulary...is one of the fastest ways to accelerate learning." 

"The good coach should recognize the need for a variety of exercises to build perception..." 

"An athlete must be able to recall her knowledge very quickly at a high level under pressure."

"I have six different layers that I use to add variability: distance, speed, movement, dribbles and catches, defenders, and decisions." 

Reviewing notes reminds me that rereading excellent books adds more value than reading many books. 

Lagniappe.