Coaching Philosophy and Career Enhancement

With the summer months approaching, it becomes critical for players to work on their individual skills and to come back better players. We hope will this will allow us to be a more talented and skilled year than the year before, but that doesn’t guarantee that we will be a better team. I think the [...]

We’re all going to be in a number of games where we have to come back on a team. We get down big for whatever reason and we have to find a way to come back and turn it into a game again. First and foremost, your team has to understand that doing everything faster [...]

I think it’s important that players know that you know that basketball isn’t a game of perfect. They also need to know that though there may be mistakes, a coach’s job is to limit or eliminate those mistakes. A coach needs to constantly identify the mistakes and come up with solutions so that those mistakes [...]

So many things happen during the course of a game, the course of a season, and even the course of a player’s career. Without question, some of what happens is going to be negative in nature. No one, in any field, should ever think they will be problem free. Success doesn’t work that way. The [...]

We see stories on “overnight sensations” all the time, and every time I see one I read it because I want to find out the true story. What I usually find out is that there are very few truly “overnight” successes. There may be names that many people haven’t heard, but there are very few [...]

Seasons are over, evaluations are taking place, meetings are being called day after day. But what is truly being accomplished? Is all of this looking back or looking ahead? Although I think both need to enter into the conversation, I think you look back to identify but you have to look ahead to improve. Maybe [...]

We see players in all sports being suspended. My first thought every time is that I’d like to ask the player, “Did your action that got you suspended help your team or did it just help you feel good? Are you a team player or just a player who’s on a team? Are you willing [...]

I was reading an article the other day about Larry Brown — always trying to learn more about successful coaches. A comment he made about himself was very revealing and a great lesson for all coaches, no matter how successful they may be. He said, “I love practice. My biggest fear is I haven’t done [...]

There’s no question that defense wins championships. I know first hand, as our 2008-2009 team won the NBA Championship with a defensive mindset. We weren’t going to give our opponent anything easy. Every possession became a personal challenge of our defense vs. your offense. The pride we took in our defense was incredible, which is [...]

So many of us viewed last night’s NCAA Championship game and were just amazed at the competitiveness and excitement that surrounded one of the best NCAA Championship Finals games of all time. Now it’s time to pick out some of the many lessons learned. One of the key things for me dealt with the baseline [...]

We all have our defensive systems and we all have keys to making our defense successful. Many coaches talk about the technical aspects of defense that create their success, but let me offer three mental components that we feel are critical to our defensive success. FOCUS: The ability to maintain our defensive fundamentals every possession [...]

By the end of the game, you can tell a lot about a team, its character and what its players believe in. How are they playing? How are they acting? How are they dealing with that night’s end of the game? We were getting blown out in a recent game. Nothing was going right for [...]

Whatever you are, that’s how your team has to play night in and night out in order to win games. Every team has an identity that has been established based on that group of players that year. If you have an established program, you may be fortunate to be that team every year. With the [...]

A motivational speaker I often refer to said, “We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons — inspiration or desperation.” Since reading that quote from Jim Rohn, I’ve tried very hard to make sure that the changes I make are more from inspiring thoughts and actions rather than from desperation. In the coaching profession [...]