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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. 






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