My Path to becoming a Basketball Coach

Ever since I first touched a basketball I have loved this game.  Growing up in Chicago and being able to witness the Michael Jordan years cemented my love for the game.  Rain or shine, cold or snow, sunshine or darkness, I would always be outside shooting hoops in the backyard.  My neighbors must have thought I was nuts but nobody ever complained.  Through all of the practice, I did manage to become a decent basketball player and I could hold my own in most pick up games, but I made the huge mistake of not trying out for my high school team.  As a greek kid growing up in the US, your identity comes from the church you attend.  I attended Holy Trinity church in Chicago and made most of my friends and acquaintances at the church.  It was because of this that my loyalty belonged to the church and I made my choice to play basketball in a church league instead of in high school.  Now don't get me wrong, I was never good enough to play ball beyond the high school level but in hindsight it would have been fun to see how I could have done against better competition in the high school ranks.


When I graduated high school I continued playing as much as I could.  I continued spending a lot of my time at my church which had a nice gym and in order to keep playing I decided to give coaching a try.  From that point on I fell in love with the strategy of the game.  How can I make my players better?  What kind of drills can I come up with to keep things interesting but yet continue to reinforce the basics? These were just some of the questions I would ask myself.  I continued to coach for the next 12 years and spent a lot of my free time researching what some of the best coaches in college basketball would do in practice for pointers and ideas.    I would also take the time to ask questions to some of the more successful coaches I new personally.

Fifteen years have passed since that time and not a day has gone by where I haven't thought about the game.  I'm back in coaching now, this time coaching my son's team.  I'm having a great time coaching these young kids and I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can build this group of kids into a cohesive group of basketball players.  The one thing that has changed since the last time I coached is the introduction and proliferation of the internet.  The internet makes researching about drills and strategies so much easier and cheaper than it used to be.  The only bad thing is you have to be knowledgeable enough to know crap when you read it and believe me there is a lot of crap out there.

With my son and daughter both still very young, I look forward to coaching for a very long time, God willing, and I am very excited about it.