That Basketball Life

 I've spent some time on the topic of confidence building.  Over the many years I have spent coaching I have witnessed all kinds of players.  In general players fall into one of three categories: Player with plenty of skill but no confidence Player with little skill but plenty of confidence Player that has both skill and confidence The ideal category for a player to be in is category 3.  Between the other 2 categories, I would argue that it is better to have a player with confidence without the equivalent skill level.  This is how valuable confidence is.  Confidence can make an average player so much better and on the other hand a lack of confidence can make a very skilled player look bad.  The question then is how can you build confidence in your players?  Just like every other talent bestowed on people, confidence can be ingrained in some while for others it needs to be dragged out.  How can you as a coach make your players more confident i...

 I've spent many hours thinking about this topic over the last few days as I have had some issues with some of the effort some of my players exert during a game/practice.  As a coach it frustrates me greatly when I see a kid out on the basketball floor making no effort at all.  When I see this I always ask myself the same question "If this kid doesn't like to play then why is he wasting his time and money doing this?"  After some thought I have figured out that there are some kids that just don't understand the whole concept of effort.  They don't understand that bringing a ton of energy and effort to a practice or game will make that session so much easier to get through.  What I have to understand is that if a kid does not have this max effort ideal in his DNA I have to nurture it out of him.  I believe that just like anything else effort needs to be taught. Think about it for a second.  For some it's easy and for others it's hard.  Some ha...