That Basketball Life

There are 4 ways to build a player's confidence.  The 4 are listed and explained in detail below. Talk about the butterflies in the stomach - Explain to your athletes that butterflies in the stomach is the fight or flight response reaction your body is giving you due to the task at hand.  You're body is telling you to evaluate the situation at hand and letting you know that whether you choose to run or fight it is ready to give you everything it has to help you out.  Your body is basically telling you "hey I know there is a challenging situation your are about to face, so I want to let you know that I'm ready to run or stay and fight.  It's your choice." Preparation - When you talk to pro players about what goes through their mind when they are preparing to take the last shot of a game, almost all of them say that they fall back on the 100s of hours they have spent in the gym taking shot after shot in preparation for this moment.  What calms them down is all t

 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 in themselves? To answer this question wi

I have a player who has been with me for a very long time.  He has been with me since he was in kindergarten and I have seen this boy turn into a pretty good ball player throughout the years.  Each year he has added another piece to his game including this year when he added a left hand finish to his arsenal.  This boy wants to be a good player.  He works hard and never complains.  He's getting to the point where his skill level is really good.  I would say it is above average for a kid his age.  The issue is that he doesn't dominate games like he should and he is starting to realize it.  He recently came up to me and told me that he doesn't think he could compete with some of the better players he faces in our league.  This crushed me because I saw that he was broken and discouraged which could lead to a confidence breaking slide.  I quickly reminded him about all of the progress he has made and encouraged him to keep working.  The question is how do I get this player to b

One of your responsibilities as a coach is to make sure that every player on your roster is pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone.  As we've discussed many times in the past it is outside the comfort zone where a player will increase their chances of making significant improvements.  How do you consistently push your players to their limit without pushing too hard?  A lot of that lies in each player.  Some players just naturally want to get better and will push themselves hard.  Other players are less motivated and need pushing to get up to speed.  Your job as a coach, is to know your team and do what needs to be done for your team to improve. The best way to do this is to stress competition.  You need to show your kids how valuable competition is and make them thrive in it.  I like to do this in 3 ways:  Talk to them in before our first practice.  What I like to tell them is  "We will play many games this year.  In some we will be losing, in others we will

I've been coaching kids for many years and one of the things that always amazes me is the difference in confidence from one kid to the next.  On the same team you will have kids who no matter what they do wrong they can bounce back immediately and others who can get shattered by making one simple mistake.  Confidence is a very fragile thing and can be lost even in the best of players.  Take a look at sports on TV.  How many times have you seen an extremely confident player at the beginning of the year turn to be just a shell of himself by the end.  Along with confidence comes aggressiveness.  A player will not be aggressive if he is not confident.  This is why I think that some of these drills that you see on the internet as drills that help your team become aggressive are questionable.  I'm all for having kids get comfortable chasing loose balls on the floor but to have these kids beat up on each other in practice so they can "build aggressiveness" is somewhat suspec

As a coach there are many hats that you need to wear.  You need to be an organizer, a salesman, a tireless worker, a teacher and most importantly of all, a motivator.  Kids go through many hurdles as they grow up in the game.  There are setbacks.  There are bad games.  There are games against great teams. And there are days where the kids just don't have it.  You as a coach don't have the luxury of having an off day.  It isn't fair to the kids you coach to have an off day.  One bad day and you could lose your kids for the rest of the season.  The balance you need to maintain lies between pushing your players to go beyond their comfort zone which can be exhausting and uncomfortable for them and instilling confidence in them that each and every day they push themselves they are getting better.  It isn't easy but it needs to be done. 

As a coach you wear many hats.  It is your job to be able to manage the team, prepare the team, get the team up from lows, and keep them from getting overconfident.  It's your job to make them understand what the goals of the team are, teach them how the team is going to get there, and then keep them focused on the task during the long hard grind of a season.  It's like a tight rope that you need to carefully manage.  One false move and you will fall off.  The price you pay when you do fall off is that you lose your team.  From the outside looking in, some may think that coaching a team of players is easy but it's not.  In many ways you are like a good symphony conductor who is able to bring all of the wonderful talent that surrounds him into harmony. So how do you get started on this task of bringing a group of players and form a team?

Coaching young kids under the age of 10 is a huge responsibility and one that should be taken seriously.  There are a lot of decisions that need to be made.  You need to teach them fundamentals at that age but how do you go about doing it?  How fast should you go?  How do you keep them interested?  Do you toss in coordination drills as well?  How often do you have them play a game?  Should those games be played 5 a side or with less players.  How about defense?  Do you teach them man to man principles from a young age and have them build on that or do you teach them a zone? Finally what about offense?  Do you teach them a structured offense or do you teach them about floor balance and pass and move basketball?  This post is aimed to addressing all of these questions.

Basketball is a game and a game is supposed to be fun.  As a coach you can't lose sight of that. The main reason why your players play is because they want to have fun.  When the game stops being fun then you've lost your players.

The Comfort Threshold As a coach I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to push players to improve.   Whether it be ball handling, shooting, passing, defense, rebounding, or footwork there is a natural tendency for a player to stay in his/her comfort level when playing basketball.   I call this comfort level the comfort threshold and it is the point where a trigger occurs in a player’s mind which warns the player that if you go beyond this point there is no guarantee of success and the odds of failure are greatly increased.