That Basketball Life

 The 5th of the 5 Pillars of Process is Trust.  Trust is a 2 way street.  The players on the team have to trust the coach and the coach needs to trust the players.  There is no compromise in this relationship between players and coaches.  If a player does not trust the coach the pillars and the team crumbles and vice versa.  This entry is about this trust and how to build, and nurture it. To start with, players need to trust the coach.  Players begin to trust the coach when they hear his voice and respect and are willing to do what he wants them to do.  Every practice drill the players do, they do with effort and skill because they want to please the coach and do everything they can to stand out.  When the coach is in the room and ready to speak they are ready to listen and adsorb everything that he has to say.  How does a coach gain such respect from his team?  Below are a few criteria: Set expectations and rules from the very firs...

The 4th Pillar of Process is teamwork.  Like all of the pillars, teamwork is very important.  With teamwork, the group of individuals which make the team form one cohesive unit.  Without teamwork, the group of parts remains a group of individual parts not coming together for a common goal.  The biggest destroyer of teamwork is hidden agendas, followed by cliques, selfish individuals, and coaches with hidden agendas.  These team wreckers can cause huge problems with your team and you need to be aware of them and nip them in the bud.  Let's talk about each of them individually and then discuss how we can build teamwork and nurture it. Hidden Agendas - Hidden agendas are plots by players on the team to exclude or undermine the success of one or more of their teammates.  The reason for such actions can be jealousy, uneasiness that the other player may shine and be better than them, or simply bullying in another form.  Whatever the reason, it needs to ...

 The 3rd Pillar of Process is evaluation.  Evaluation is a very important pillar because as a coach you need to be evaluating your team, it's individual players, and yourself objectively very often during the year.  The evaluation needs to be brutally honest but delivered in a way where it does not disturb the energy of the team.  In short, execution + evaluation = progress and that is what we strive for. There are 3 areas of evaluation involved when talking about the pillars.  The 3 areas of evaluation are the team, the individuals, and the coaching staff.   When dealing with the team, the coach needs to evaluate 2 areas.  The first is if the identity of the team has been properly identified and that the team style of play we are implementing properly highlights the teams strengths while concealing it's weaknesses.  When evaluating this part of the of the team before the season starts you have to look at scrimmages carefully.  Put the k...

Pillar 2 of the Pillars of Process is Execution.  Execution is broken down into a few categories.  First are the fundamentals which are broken down into team and individual. After that the fundamentals can be broken down into the physical and the mental.  The next item to be addressed is establishing the identity of your team.  The final point of discussion will be the idea of stacking good games and practices together in an effort to improve. The fundamentals can be broken down into the team and the individual.  Execution is very important to take place on both levels but the 2 are taken care of differently.  On the team level, the whole idea is to play fast so you want to keep things simple and make sure the first layer is grasped before you proceed to a more difficult layer.  If  layer is introduced too early, it can cause the team to bog down and start thinking too much.  When you think on the court, you tend to slow down which is somethi...

In expanding our conversation on the 5 Pillars of Process, we are starting with Pillar 1 which is Energy.  As mentioned earlier, energy can be useful and it could be dangerous.  Energy can be used effectively or it can sap strength from a team.  With this post we will discuss all of this and how to nurture and make energy the tool it needs to be on your team. The first thing we need to understand is what do we mean by "bringing positive energy to the game."  Some of the questions I might ask are: Are we diving for loose balls? Are we fighting for rebounds? Are we moving our feet when playing on ball defense or looking to switch everything? Are we pushing the ball up the floor or walking it up? Are we getting beat down the floor during defensive transition? Are we sprinting to the bench during timeouts? Are we sprinting down the floor during a change in possession? There are keys I look at in practice also: Are we doing the drills hard? Are we hustling getting from o...

 

 With my last blog entry we introduced the idea of the process.  I also mentioned the 5 pillars of the process and how important it was for every player on the team to focus on the process and to let the wins take care of themselves.  Getting into more detail I mentioned that the process has 5 pillars: effort, execution, evaluation, teamwork, and trust.  What I will do next is discuss these 5 pillars in more detail. Energy: Energy is very important and hard work will affect both practice and games in a positive way just like laziness will infect both practice and games.  I've had good teams that were lazy and lost and I've had average teams that worked hard and overachieved.  The one thing a coach needs to realize is that players cannot turn effort on and off.  Players will play the way they practice.  If you practice with effort you will play with effort.  As a coach you need to make sure this pillar permeates all aspects of practice.  ...