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Friday, September 26, 2025

Coaching Is Teaching: Six Lessons for Basketball

Doug Lemov’s The Coach’s Guide to Teaching emphasizes that coaching is teaching. The best coaches aren’t drill instructors; they shape how players think, learn, and remember. Here are six lessons from his work, transferred to the basketball court.

1. Attention Is the Starting Point

In basketball, the ball creates energy. Coaches who keep players’ eyes and minds sharp get the most from practice. Mike Krzyzewski used to start Duke practices by demanding laser focus from the first drill. If a player drifted—even on a warm-up passing line—he stopped it cold. Why? Because attention on the “easy” reps translates to attention when the game is on the line.

What we did. Energize practice with ballhandling first. Dribble tag inside the arc with constraints, such as one minute opposite hand intervals, builds skill and competition. 

2. Memory Drives Learning

A player doesn’t improve because they did a drill once. They improve because they return to it, recall it, and use it. John Wooden called this “repetition without repetition.” His UCLA teams worked on the same fundamentals daily, but always with small tweaks. That way, players weren’t just going through the motions—they built recall that held up in different contexts, like a guard recognizing the angle of a screen in real time.

What we did. We added constraints. Pressure full-court scrimmaging went five versus seven, sometimes without dribbling allowed to demand pass and cut mentality. 

3. Feedback Must Be Precise and Manageable

“Stay low,” “active hands,” “see both - ball and man.” Short, specific cues land. Brad Stevens at Butler practiced calm, surgical feedback. During timeouts, he’d often give one adjustment—“force baseline here”—and trust his players to execute. Too much feedback overwhelms. Feedback has to match the pace of the game.

What we did. We often provided written feedback via parents using 'sandwich technique', a correction or coaching point between praise.

4. Transfer Matters More Than Drill Mastery

Hitting fifteen free throws in a row at practice feels good. But can you knock one down after sprinting the floor and getting fouled hard? Geno Auriemma designs UConn practices where the drill ends with fatigue, contact, and chaos—because that’s where real games live. Skills mastered randomly help win championships.

What we did. Players love to compete - scrimmaging, drills with winners, and underdogs with a chance to beat 'star' players in shooting contests. 

5. Culture Shapes Learning

Great basketball programs aren’t just teaching plays—they’re teaching players how to learn. The 2008 Boston Celtics lived by Ubuntu, a culture of trust and unselfishness. Kevin Garnett demanded effort, Paul Pierce demanded precision, and Doc Rivers demanded accountability. Teammates pushed each other because the culture made mistakes safe but effort non-negotiable. Turn practice into progress.

What we did. We shared achievement stories, often about women. Arlene Blum climbing Annapurna (over 8,000 meters) with an all-female crew. Frances Perkins became the first woman cabinet secretary (Labor) during the FDR administration. Rosalind Franklin, the less well-known scientist owned DNA discovery, separate from Watson and Crick. 

6. Teaching Is Deliberate

Basketball demands core technique, but also improvisation like jazz. Wooden famously scripted practices down to the minute. Every rep had a purpose, every drill an emphasis. Even huddles were planned—what to prioritize and reinforce. Coaches as teachers raise not only players’ skills but their basketball IQ.

What we did. 

Basketball isn’t just a game of talent. It’s a game of attention, memory, and transfer. Coaching is teaching, and we provided laminated handouts for key teaching points and composition notebooks for notetaking. 

Lagniappe. Coach Tony Miller shares a great culture idea from his program. "What have you done?" 

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