Athletic Greatness and Coaching

In an article titled “It’s not Bragging” in the July 13 ESPN the Magazine about British cyclist Mark Cavendish, writer Chris Jones tells the story of Cavendish stopping on a training ride because something is wrong with his cycle. The coach and mechanic disagree. Finally, they bring out a level and find that Cavendish is right; the saddle is off by 1-degree.

Jones relates this story about an oft told story of Tiger Woods. As the story goes, Nike sent Woods five drivers. Woods sent them back and said he liked the heaviest one. The designers were perplexed, as they were supposed to be the same weight. Woods was correct; he favored one that was the slightest bit heavier than the others.

Jones offers these stories as an example of their athletic brilliance and writes:

But being trapped inside a a body so hyperaware has its costs, too. Athletes that fine-tuned must contend with constant disappointment, forever being let down by mediocrity around them. They must always win and perfectly, without compassion, without remorse. They are among the last people on earth with whom you would want to share a lifeboat.

Often, we assume the best players automatically make the best coaches. However, this paragraph describes why a player like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and especially Michael Jordan are not great coaches.

The characteristics which make a great athlete – being so finely-tuned that you notice a 1-degree difference in your saddle or an ounce difference in a golf club; being a perfectionist; being let down by mediocrity, etc – differ from those characteristics that describe a great coach.

Andy Roddick’s Development: Coaching outside the Rectangle

Before Andy Roddick’s epic Wimbledon Final against Roger Federer, the L.A. Times featured an article about the legacy of coaches and players leading to Roddick’s current coach Larry Stefanski.

Stefanski played for former Cal coach Tom Stow about whom Stefanski said:

“His principles and understanding of footwork and absorbing speed is second to none. He was a true master in that regard . . . he understood this game played in a rectangular box better than anyone I have ever come across.”

Stow approached the game differently:

He studied dance and tried to get them to move like Fred Astaire. He studied boxing, hoping to have them press forward with the steadiness of Joe Louis. Sometimes he’d force his students to spend their afternoons hitting balls while sitting in a chair, to teach the feel of being grounded.

Finding Solutions to the Youth Basketball Development Quandry

While I was out of town last week, several people emailed me an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal about AAU basketball. While articles that dismiss AAU basketball certainly stoke the fire of high school coaches, what do these articles achieve? Do they offer solutions or answers to the problems?

The article states that “AAU helps American kids flunk basketball 101.” As I wrote last week, however, why is all the blame on AAU coaches? How do kids forget to play basketball during the summer if they are so well-schooled during the high school season?

One system that prepares young American players for the pros, the Amateur Athletic Union, is, by most accounts, broken…America’s basketball gems increasingly get their training from teams affiliated with the Amateur Athletic Union, a vast national youth-basketball circuit that has groomed many of the sport’s top stars.

Again, this is only half-true. American players, especially the elite players, get their training through three methods: (1) high school program; (2) AAU/club program; and (3) individual skill trainers.

If U.S. players do not know how to play the game, all three methods deserve the blame, not just club basketball coaches.

Before I continue, let me reiterate:

There are, without question, horrible club coaches. However, there are also, without question, outstanding club programs with model coaches. The same goes for high school coaches and individual skills trainers: some are very good, some are very bad and the vast majority are just okay. It is the bell curve which describes almost everything in life.

For some time, coaches have grumbled that the AAU’s emphasis on building stars and playing games over practicing produces a lot of talented prospects who have great physical skills but limited knowledge of the fundamentals.

I think I was one of the first coaches to tackle this subject online. The myth is that players spend a great deal of time developing fundamentals during the high school season. A typical high school week features three practices and two games; coaches spend a large percentage of the time preparing for the two games, which leaves little time to develop fundamentals. Coaches are evaluated by their winning percentage, so they coach to win games. This does not preclude fundamental skill development, but on a team with 12-15 players with vastly different skill levels, it is often difficult to prepare for games and challenge the top players to improve their skills while not losing the lesser skilled players.

Michael Beasley of the Miami Heat, finally conceded a fundamental flaw: No one, at any level in his basketball career, had asked him to play defense. And especially not in AAU. “If you’re playing defense in AAU, you don’t need to be playing,” he says. “I’ve honestly never seen anyone play defense in AAU.”

First, one player’s experience is not indicative of an entire system. I coached AAU basketball and we played defense and parents and opponents commented on our players’ defense. Second, I attended many high school games and depending on how technical you want to get, I saw a lot of games lacking good defense.

“It’s a bad system for developing players,” says Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. “They aren’t learning to handle the ball, they aren’t learning to make plays against pressure. The emphasis with our high-school players is to get exposure and play as many games as you can and show everybody how great you are. If I can win the 11-and-12 year old league and tell all my friends about it, that is a whole lot more important than if my kids actually get any better or learn anything about the game.”

Is Van Gundy speaking strictly about AAU basketball or about youth basketball in general? I think his indictment is true of all youth basketball, not just AAU basketball (although there are good programs and good coaches in both AAU and school basketball who do focus on fundamentals).

In Europe, Mr. Van Gundy says, “those guys are doing five or six practices for every game. They are spending a lot of time in the gym working on individual skills. It’s reversed here.”

Again, this is true of school basketball as well as club basketball. Most schools practice 3 times per week for 2 games, or 1.5 practices/per game.  In this regard, I agree with Van Gundy’s assessment. However, I do not agree that this means that AAU or club basketball causes U.S. kids to lack fundamentals – I think his statement is an indictment of the entire youth basketball system which emphasizes winning over development.

As I wrote last week, when a coach knows that he is likely to coach a player for only one season, it is hard to focus on the player’s long term development. One coach might focus on his players’ long term development, but if they do not win enough, the parents might force out the coach or leave to join a winning program. I saw this scenario play out several times.

I know a good youth coach who watched as players left his program year after year to find “better coaching,” “elite competition,” or “better chance to go to Nationals.” After several years bouncing from program to program and playing high school basketball, parents would confess to the coach that he was the best coach that their kids had and they never should have left his program.

But, as a coach, what do you do? Do you keep focusing on long term development and lose players before your long term emphasis can have an effect? Or, do you change to a more win-now mentality to keep players in your program? Is it fair to criticize the coaches for changing mentalities, or do the parents who jump from program to program deserve some of the blame for creating a dysfunctional system?

Mr. Beasley, on the other hand, says he can’t remember any specific defensive drills his AAU teams ran. “If you put structure into AAU,” he says, “no one would play.”

This is not true at all, and probably says more about Beasley as a player than about club basketball. Do players quit high school basketball because their coach does the shell drill? Players want to play. The majority of players are coachable, especially if the coach is able to develop an understanding with his players.

On the other hand, if players stopped playing AAU basketball during the summer, and instead spent more time on individual workouts and playing unstructured pick-up games without coaches, they may develop better fundamentals and a higher I.Q. This idea that players need to run set plays to develop a basketball I.Q. is false. In many ways, coaches use set plays to mask their players lack of basketball I.Q. because it is easier to teach a player a set play and have him memorize the play than to develop a basketball I.Q. However, in a pick-up game, there are no set plays and players have to learn to play the game or they will not get picked up next game.

His [Brandon Jennings] time in Europe began with a rare stretch for an AAU product: He went weeks without touching a basketball. His team spent the preseason running across Roman parks and soccer fields.

What? How does running through parks and soccer fields help a player develop a basketball I.Q.? Does this mean that U.S. players should join the cross country team to develop their basketball I.Q. so they can be like their counterparts in Europe?

As I have written many times, the problem is not club basketball or high school basketball. It is the overall disorganization of the system. The problem is the individual coach who does not value fundamentals. However, these problems develop before high school. Players need to have access to better trained coaches at the youth levels because players develop their practice and game habits early in their participation years, and if they develop bad habits, it is hard to change later.

The issue is not that club basketball coaches do not emphasize defense. The issue is that players play in a year-round competitive season and there is no real off-season for skill development. High school coaches are as guilty as club coaches. I know many high school programs that finish in mid-March and play their first off-season game by the end of March, play until August and start again in September when school starts. This is as problematic as the club programs, and when players play on a club team and a high school team during the “off-season” it only exacerbates the problems.

If the powers-that-be want to make changes, they should outlaw spring leagues and tournaments for high school and high school-aged club programs, creating a true off-season from the end of the high school season until June. Allow a six-week window from mid-June to July for summer leagues and exposure tournaments and then prohibit leagues and tournaments until the high school season starts, creating another off-season from August to November.

The other answer is to extend the competitive season during the winter, starting practice earlier in the school years and finishing later to mimic the length of the college season (October to April), limit the number of games per week to one, and eliminate games and leagues during the summer time.

Of course, these changes will never happen because there is too much money to lose. As long as people can make money running off-season leagues and tournaments, the powers-that-be will not make huge changes to the system. This is not an AAU/club issue; this is also a high school issue, as more and more high school federations allow year-round access to high school players for the high school coaches.

The fundamental answer is to devise a system that emphasizes fundamentals. This requires a true off-season without competition and a better practice:game ratio (4:1) during the competitive season. Until the high school federations and the club teams adopt this type of mentality, it will be up to individual coaches to decide how to run their teams and the ones that attract the most players are the ones that win, so from a marketing standpoint, the win-now mentality often wins out.

Hedo Turkoglu and a Coach’s Importance

Often, I think we overrate a coach’s or trainer’s impact on a player’s development because the individual has to make the decision to be a great player with his work ethic, determination, coping skills and coachability. However, in many ways, we underestimate a coach’s role too, especially in ways that go unnoticaed like the way a coach handles a young player’s mistakes or the ability to develop a passion for the game.

While reading about Hedo Turkoglu and whether he will or will not fit in Portland, I found an earlier article on True Hoop about his development in Turkey.

The coach Leyla Caliskan, taught him to be a play-maker. She even accepted his mistakes and she expected him to be a point guard. Hedo made it. He was so tall but he learned to play as a point guard. The importance of coaches and infrastructure was clearly made again. If Leyla Caliskan forced him to play as a center, he would have never become such a valuable player. With the foresight of his coach, young Hedo played as a point guard.

Hedo’s coach noticed a quality in the young player that would make Hedo a good playmaker. She regarded this quality more heavily than his size and gave him an opportunity to develop this quality and the requisite skills.

Too many times, coaches select players for positions by their height, rather than their qualities for a position. I trained a player for several years whose coach refused to play him as a point guard because he was one of the tallest players on his team. Luckily, he played point guard for his club team and will likely start as a college point guard next season, even though his high school coach stifled his development.

Yesterday, I trained a player who said his coach makes him play center and tells him not to dribble because he is the tallest player on his team. He is a soon-to-be freshman, is six-feet tall and is already taller than his father. He has no future as a post player. He argues that he dribbles as well as anyone on his team and he played as a point guard in junior high school. If his coach continues to play him in the post, and prohibit him from dribbling, he likely will not make it to the junior varsity because he will be a short post player and will spend a great deal of time involved with the school program not developing the skills that he will need to remain in the competitive stream.

Positions, especially with young players, are so much more than height. In youth basketball, there really is no need for positions – every player should develop every skill so that he can play any position at the high school level. When creating roles and deciding on positions when players reach the (varsity) high school level, qualities and skills should matter more than size.

Ideally, every coach wants a big, strong post player. However, what is the best use of a player like Turkoglu? Should the coach have forced him to be a post player, spending hours trying to toughen up the player and keep on the low block? There are some shorter players who are great post players because of their toughness, footwork, quickness, width and more. Players like Paul Milsap, Leon Powe, Glenn Davis, Carlos Boozer, Charles Barkley and others are shorter than Turkoglu, but they are far more useful as post players than Hedo, while they would struggle if asked to play on the wing because they are “too small” to play inside.

In some ways, a global approach to skill development has become an excuse not to develop post players. However, true global skill development would mean that ALL players develop ALL skills, not just that tall players develop guard skills. Then, when you have a player with Turkoglu’s playmaking ability, he can excel on the perimeter, while a shorter player like Barkley can excel in the post because of his mentality.

Coaching for Performance

Over the last several months, I have written several blogs about the traits, characteristics, talents and skills of a good coach. In a recent Sacramento Bee article, John Schumacher profiles Sacramento River Cats hitting coach Brian McArn and the things that make him a successful hitting coach.

Individuality

“The thing I love about him … he’s not cookie cutter,” outfielder-infielder Eric Patterson said. “He takes what you do and what you do well, and he works with it and he works to improve it.

“He kind of gives you freedom: ‘OK, if that’s what you want to do, let’s work toward getting yourself in good position to make that successful.’ “

A lot of coaches base their coaching on their own careers, so they attempt to replicate their success through the same technique. However, players differ. Just because Patrick Ewing coaches Dwight Howard does not mean that Howard should play like Ewing. The coach has to adapt his instruction to the player. Some players need to change their technique to improve; others need more confidence or more practice. Evaluating each player and outlining the right approach are two important skills for a coach.

Personal Relationship

River Cats manager Tony DeFrancesco said, “He has a relationship with each player, finds out what each player is trying to do. He keeps it simple.”

Reaching each player at a personal level has a great impact on the coach-player relationship, and the player’s trust in his coach. As the old adage goes, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Simplicity

Outfielder Danny Putnam said, “He does a good job of bringing things back to a few basic principles that work.”

Sometimes, coaches focus on the complex skills and ignore the basics. However, everything builds on the basics. Without a solid grasp of fundamentals, more complex instructions fall short. To execute a great set play, you need the passing, shooting and ball handling skills to make the play successful.

Psychology

“Their confidence a lot of times is more important than what their swing is doing. If I just concentrate on what they’re doing right … They’ve got the ability to make adjustments and get back to where they need to be.”

Sometimes coaches spend so much time correcting mistakes that we forget to comment on the positives. By focusing on the positives – the things that we want to see replicated – we build confidence.

Conclusion

In this article, the comments suggest that a successful coach does four things:

1. He focuses on the individual player and learning about him, rather than trying to make a player fit a mold.
2. He develops a personal relatonship with each player.
3. He keeps things simple.
4. He builds confidence by focusing on the things that they do right, rather than focusing on the mistakes.

The Process of Player Development

Last week, someone asked me to explain the “Cross Over Movement.” In its simplest terms, I said:

The Cross Over Movement is an effort to create the best process for player development.

In 2006, when I published Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, that was my idea of how to create the best possible process. The Cross Over Movement is an attempt to engage others in a conversation to build upon or replace my ideas with a better process.

The best process does not guarantee results and the best results do not necessarily come from the best process.

Starbucks has the best process for making and selling a cup of coffee. However, does that make Starbucks the best cup of coffee? If I decided to open a coffee shop to compete with Starbucks, I could improve the coffee buying experience by hiring better staff and providing better training; creating more variety; or using better coffee beans.

However, even if I hired and trained a better staff and used better beans to create a better tasting coffee, I probably would not be able to duplicate Starbucks success because at this point, people buy the brand.

Once a product saturates the market, people buy the brand as much as the product. If you measure by sales, McDonald’s has the best hamburgers in the world. However, do they taste the best?

Plenty of places have better tasting hamburgers because they are fresh and are made with better ingredients. In-n-Out competes in the same market as McDonald’s (low-priced fast food) and their burgers taste much better. However, one reason that they do not expand as heavily as McDonald’s is their process: they do not want to freeze their ingredients, so they do not want stores too far from their distribution centers. By using fresh ingredients, they make a better burger. But, their insistence on quality impacts their ability to compete with McDonald’s on quantity.

In basketball, the same thing happens. Parents and players choose a brand for the brand, not because the brand represents the best quality. When parents seek an AAU/club program, they want the best program. But, what is the best program? How would one know the best program if he found it?

Developing a basketball player is different than making a hamburger or a cup of coffee. Starbucks can use the same type of beans for every cup of coffee (or sell premium beans at a higher price); McDonald’s and In-n-Out get he same grade of beef.

A basketball coach gets different ingredients with every player, which is why results cannot be guaranteed. A couple years ago, a number of girls started to train with one trainer because the trainer worked with a highly rated player. This is a marketing tool that many trainers use – they train  really good player for free and then tell the masses that they train so-and-so as their marketing.

The idea is that if a trainer works with one great player, then he should be able to do the same with others. The problem is the ingredients.

If a trainer gets an athletic 6′3 girl, he has a very high probability that she will be a Division I player. However, the trainer’s ability to help her reach a Division I program does not mean that he can do the same with a 5′6 shooting guard. Different ingredients.

However, even though the results differ, my goal is to discover the best process for player development. Most organizations concentrate on the end-product and do not worry about the process: USA Basketball dos not care how the talented 12 players on a national team develop as long as they have 12 players to choose. The NBA does not care where or how players develop so long as they have the requisite size, athleticism and talent when they reach 19-years-old. The NCAA does not care how players develop, so long as March Madness is exciting. Many top level AAU programs (and some high school programs) do not care how their players developed as long as they can identify and recruit the talented ones to their team.

These organizations do not care about the initial ingredients or the process that led to the finished product. They simply care about finding the restaurant with the best tasting hamburger.

However, nobody eats a good hamburger without a good process. The NBA does not sustain its level of play without the youth coaches, high school coaches and trainers who develop young athletes into solid basketball players. So, what is the best process for development?

Because Kobe Bryant or LeBron James is the most talented player in the NBA, should we copy his developmental path? If so, does that mean all kids should spend time during their youth living in Europe? Or, all players should play high school football? Or, would LeBron and Kobe reached the NBA regardless of their developmental programs because of their combination of desire, work ethic, genes, size, athleticism and skill?

If we cannot copy the process of the best of the best, what process should we copy?

That is the question that keeps me writing on this site. If I ever find the answer, I’ll move on. The long term athlete development model outlined in Cross Over is my best effort to date, but I know it is not perfect. If I thought it was perfect, I would stop searching.

My goal is a process that creates an environment for the development of the elite talents which also creates an environment to maximize the development of the developmental athletes and the experience for the recreational athletes. My focus is not the end result, but the beginning: creating the process for all young athletes regardless of their future or potential.

Measuring a Coach – the AAU vs. High School Argument

For a couple weeks, I have followed a fairly one-sided argument about AAU vs. high school coaches. Obviously 95% of those partaking in the conversation were high school coaches or former high school coaches and they were not fond of AAU/club coaches or AAU basketball in general.

Again, high school coaches generally argue that players return from AAU/club basketball with bad habits or they are harder to coach.

Then, I read another coach who posted on another site about high school games that he had watched recently and the litany of basic fundamental errors plaguing high school games.

My purpose is not to take sides. However, I think there is an important point to be made:

When a player develops good habits or learns to play the game the right way, he maintains these lessons and habits. A good coach, imo, develops players who not only fit his system or play well in his system,but who fit and play well in any system or situation.

After 8th grade, I played in a summer league with very little coaching. It was mainly an opportunity to play pick-up games in a gym with the same teams each day.

However, despite the general lack of coaching and organization, I did not forget the lessons that I learned. I found the open man, made open shots, got back on defense, etc. I used all the fundamentals that I learned from my school coaches in 5th – 8th grade.

I played recently with a bunch of guys in their 20’s and 30’s who grew up in the same 5th – 8th grade league, the Sacramento PAL. The group featured no high school basketball stars, and some guys who never even played basketball in high school. However, every player had good fundamentals – we hedged on ball screens, made left-handed lay-ups, made the extra pass, etc. If some high school players had played with us – as many of us did when we were in high school and played against older players and adults – the kids could have learned some things in terms of how to play the game.

My point, however, is that just because our basketball playing careers are reduced to pick-up games in the park or recreation leagues, we have not forgotten all the lessons that we learned. We take some bad shots and foul more, but that says more about a loss of athleticism and conditioning than selfishness or diminishing basketball IQ.

Several years ago, on the site where I followed the high school coaches’ discussion, I suggested that, in a sense, I would like to develop players with the basketball IQ to fit into pick-up games. I wrote this after growing frustrated with the games that I was playing with younger players because they did not know how to play the game – they did not talk on defense, box out, make the extra pass, use their weak hand, etc.

The high school coaches thought that was laughable. Who cares how a player plays on the playground?

However, if a player plays well on the playground with other good players, he likely has a solid fundamental base. With this base, he can fit into different systems or play for different coaches. A well-coached player does not lose his fundamentals in a summer of club basketball or by playing a couple afternoons of pick-up ball at the park. This player uses his learned skills and awareness on the court regardless of setting.

The problem, in my eyes, is that in this era of win-now, year-round basketball, many coaches expect someone else to be the coach developing these fundamental skills. There are many great coaches as well. However, there appears to be many coaches – club and school – focused so intently on winning games that they do not demand the same type of fundamental skills and knowledge expected of players of my generation in the PAL.

Again, the issue is not club or school, the issue is philosophy. Players, parents and coaches lack patience. They want to win now. They want to be good now. They want their kid starting on varsity now. It’s hard for a coach to make a stand and emphasize proper fundamental execution, possibly losing a couple games in the process, because the top player might transfer schools or switch clubs. We are stuck in an environment where coaches often have to choose between holding firm to their beliefs and risking losing their top talents, or sacrificing to accommodate top players in an effort to win more games.

The Internet, of course, does not help, as parents use anonymous message boards to criticize coaches for any number of reasons. One local school ran out a varsity head coach who one college assistant told me ran the best practice of any school that the assistant visited this year. However, in a tough league, he had a mediocre record, so the parents pushed out the coach in an effort to win more next season.

How? How does a team win more by getting rid of a good coach? The answer is easy: by hiring a coach with connections to more good players. It’s not a matter of finding coaches to develop the school’s talent – instead, you’re better off finding a coach who can attract better talent into the school. It’s  college coaching gravitating to the high school level in the club and school sides.

Parenting through the Athletic Process

When I was a child, parenting a wannabe athlete was much easier: in the fall, I played soccer for the club affiliated with my church; in winter, I played basketball for my school; in spring, I played Little League at the league five minutes from my house; and, during the summer, I was fortunate to attend a camp or two around family vacations and going to the local pool and basketball courts.

These days, there are so many choices and, with the advent of the Internet, so much more information and misinformation. There are so many different sporting opportunities. Heck, there is a professional soccer league, poker players on television and mainstream mixed martial arts. There is NJB, AAU, YBOA, BCI and other youth basketball organizations; there are youth strength training facilities; private basketball skill trainers; private basketball facilities; showcase events and more. How does a parent navigate his or her son or daughter through the youth athlete development process?

The Sacramento Bee recently ran an article with the father of two collegiate golfers. While golf is different than basketball in numerous ways, the advice and examples that he offers parallels in many ways the research conducted on talented teenagers and expert performers by sports psychologists and educators like K. Anders Ericsson, Benjamin Bloom, and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

My biggest regret – and greatest warning to others – is letting golf become the center of the family to the exclusion of the needs and desires of other family members.

Looking back, the scheduling of golf tournaments should have been subordinate to the scheduling of family vacations. There’s always another tournament to play.

When they were 15, the boys quit going on our church’s week-long youth camping trip because they needed that time to practice for the U.S. Junior tournament…

Interestingly, the closest either of them came to qualifying for the U.S. Junior was the day after they returned from church camp – with no practice – when they were freshmen.

I always see advertisements for big AAU Tournaments that seem to coincide with family-type days: Mother’s Day Madness, Easter Classic, Father’s Day Spectacular. It seems like those would be the best times not to schedule a tournament and to give the players (and families) a week off. As the dad says, there is always another tournament to play. Unfortunately, it seems like we have this mentality that if you miss a week, you will fall behind.

In the athlete development process, we place too much emphasis on the on-court action and ignore the idea of the 24-hour athlete: if we assume that an athlete trains two hours per day, the things that he or she does in the other 22 hours per day has as much of an effect on his or her success. If the player lacks proper nutrition or does not sleep or otherwise does not take care of his or her body and mind, the player undermines his or her on-court training. Skipping a weekend tournament to celebrate Father’s Day or missing a week of summer league to go on a family vacation is not going to stunt a player’s career, but going 52 weeks straight may affect the player’s drive and motivation.

Next, the father suggests:

Find your child a great instructor who can help them as they grow and who understands their swing.

You can look at this in two ways with basketball, either a coach or a trainer. The benefit of a trainer is that you can stay with a trainer as you change coaches. I’ve worked with a player for several years and he has probably played for 10 different team coaches in that time. It is hard for any one of those coaches to take a long term view of the player’s development if he only coaches the player for a short season or a couple months before he moves to the next league or moves to the next level at his school.

On the other hand, some programs do a good job of keeping players together over the course of a number of years. For youth club/AAU programs, I think this should be the goal, as opposed to recruiting new players. Many parents however are persuaded to leave a good club for various reasons. I worked with a club that was a great learning environment with very good coaches who cared about the players and all the players got along really well. However, one parent was nudged by an outside influence and she decided to move her daughter to a more prominent club, and the club started to fall apart competitively. I have seen this happen several times. Most of the time, the local club with caring coaches, plenty of playing time and friendly teammates is a better overall experience than chasing a better coach or more competitive program.

If you find a program with players who stick together over a period of several years with coaches who care and work hard, consider yourself lucky. Don’t mess up by thinking that there is something better out there. The grass ain’t always greener.

If your child has a goofy swing, grip or ball flight, fix it sooner rather than later. At the college level, you won’t see “four-knuckle” grips or big hookers or slicers.

On the basketball side, I see this all the time. Players spending a great amount of time playing the game and training to become better, but they have incredible shooting flaws. If your son or daughter loves the game enough to train – as opposed to playing for fun – find someone who can teach him or her to shoot properly. Now, a couple lessons are not enough. To correct a player’s shooting technique requires a lot of time and concentration, and the player must be motivated to work on his or her own, not just play games or train with a trainer.

When I train players, I help them for an hour or two per week, but the development has to come on their own in the in-between times. If I am a good trainer, I help the player learn the correct feel so that he can self-correct when he works out on his own. But, if the player does not practice in between sessions, my impact is minimal unless their budget is endless and they want to hire me five days a week. Players who want to be great do not need basketball babysitters – they are motivated to work on their own.

If your kid goes from shooting in the mid-80s to a scratch golfer in a few years or less, it doesn’t mean scores in the mid-60s are just around the corner. Sometimes shooting par or the mid-70s is as good as a kid will get. This is especially true if the items above are ignored.

This is an important and neglected point. I hear from parents, players and coaches who seem to think that the hours and money invested in youth basketball mean that the player deserves a scholarship. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Colleges recruit based on needs and talent. While a college scholarship is a reward, in a sense, it really isn’t. It is a reward in the same sense that when you graduate from college and get a job, you are rewarded for your effort in school. It is not a reward in the same way that being voted all-league is a reward. A college scholarship is the beginning, not the end. Coaches recruit based on what they believe you will do in the future, not what you have done in the past.

Improvement is not a continual forward, upward line. There are hills and valleys. How a player handles the struggles ultimately determines, to a great degree, the eventual success of the player. One of the most important skills for a player to develop is the coping skills to handle mistakes, failure or rejection.

Navigating youth sports is different for parents today than it was during their youth. Unfortunately, there are many questions, but few places to turn for real answers. Most answers on message boards and through the media are tinged with bias and agendas, and most people follow the herd, figuring that if Player A earned a scholarship and went through XYZ, then XYZ is the path to a scholarship. However, the process for one person may not be the right process for another – many players reach a level of success in spite of the road that they took, not because of it.

For more information, read:

• Parent’s Guide to Talent Development
• Developing your Son or Daughter into an Athletic Superstar
• Developing your Son or Daughter into an Athletic Superstar, Part II

Perceptions of College Basketball

Earlier this season, I wrote a blog in reaction to comments made by a father in relation to his son’s college basketball decision.

I know college is a pre-professional environment. However, if everyone willingly acknowledges that the purpose of college is to showcase players’ skills, why not allow players to go directly to the NBA? If the point is to showcase skills, college is no longer a developmental or learning level.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, I read about Mater Dei’s Gary Franklin re-opening his recruitment after a prior verbal commitment to USC. Now, I believe a player should have the right to change his mind, especially when there is a coaching change, and I also am not a fan of the early verbal commitments.

However, Franklin’s comments struck me as factually inaccurate, and also as a troubling sign of players’ dedication or lack thereof.

Santa Ana Mater Dei guard Gary Franklin, a 2010 commitment, said today he would look elsewhere.

“Coach O’Neill’s style is more defensive,” said Franklin, who will be a high school senior in the fall. “I don’t think he is like [former Arizona coach] Lute Olson or Tim Floyd, letting players run up and down the court. That’s not a style I see myself playing in.”

First, I have no idea how he concluded that Tim Floyd “lets players run up and down the court.” I think Floyd would be concerned about such a characterization. Floyd is as defensive-minded as any coach in college basketball, and he won numerous games through his junk defenses.

Second, Franklin’s comments mirror those comments made by Darren Daye to which I reacted in the original blog post.

A coach asked me via twitter about kids at a camp who rushed through drills because they just want to play. The perception is that ALL American kids are like this now. I argue against this characterization, as I know players who are very coachable and very hard workers who train diligently and do drills all day.

But, then I read comments like Daye’s and Franklin’s. Rather than develop skills at the college level, they seem more interested in showcasing their skills.

I don’t understand this mentality. Fairly or unfairly, North Carolina has the reputation as a team that runs up and down the court. And, fairly or unfairly, this system does not seem to showcase its players skills in a manner that enhances their draft prospects. Tyler Hansborough completed one of the best college basketball careers ever and is slotted from #15-28 in the NBA Draft. Ty Lawson was clearly the best college point guard last season, but is considered no better than the fifth and maybe the seventh best point guard in the NBA Draft. Wayne Ellington was the starting shooting guard for the national champions, yet he is a borderline first round pick.

Meanwhile, the entourages of players like Jrue Holiday, Kevin Love and Arron Afflalo have commented about Ben Howland’s system hurting their draft status, yet Russell Westbrook and Love were picked higher than most believed, and Holiday is expected to be a lottery pick despite a statistical disappointment as a freshmen. More importantly, Jordan Farmar, Love, Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute,  a 2nd Round pick, were prepared to contribute immediately in the NBA.

I do not understand this mentality that top high school players seemingly want an environment which does not challenge them and instead allows them to “run up and down” or score a lot of points. It is bad enough that the one-and-done system makes a mockery of a university’s educational mission, but now it seems like players and their advisers are unconcerned with a program’s ability to further the player’s on-court development, and only want a college who improves their draft prospects, even if they are unsure or confused about the best approach in this regard.

Learning the Game

On True Hoop, I saw a link to an interview with James Gist, the former Maryland Terrapin and San Antonio Spurs draft pick who played for Angelica Biella in Italy this season. Last year, when rumors surfaced that Brandon Jennings was headed to Italy, I suggested that his advisers should contact Angelica Biella and sign there. The club, right now, has a good reputation for its development of young professional players.

In the interview, Gist says:

Europe is perfect for learning how to play the game right. Knowing when to make the right passes, when to run on a fast break or slow the tempo down, who to get the ball to when the time is right, all comes in to play when you play team basketball.

Unfortunately, this is the growing perception. In fact, I wrote Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development because I tired of hearing people complain about the lack of development without supplying answers.

While this is the perception, I am unsure why people accept this as a matter of fact. I learned these things through playing pick-up games before I reached high school. My 8th grade coach never told me to slow down in a game – I knew when to break and when to run some clock. Our coach rarely called strategic timeouts to set up plays or press breaks or switch defenses. We just played, and we had a great understanding of the game.

I don’t see why a player needs to go to Europe to learn when to slow the tempo. I think there are plenty of good coaches and good opportunities to learn in the States. However, if former college players continue to go to Europe and make similar remarks, where is the break down?

• Are elite players given too much freedom by youth, high school and college coaches so they do not learn the nuances of the game?
• Do they rely too heavily on physical talent and they do not need to develop the mental side until they reach professional basketball?
• Are coaches too restrictive and too authoritarian, making all decisions and eliminating players’ decision-making opportunities?
• Are coaches too focused on game preparation and not enough on developing skills and basketball I.Q.?

What is going on that leads former college players who played for well-respected high school and college coaches to say that they are learning fairly basic concepts when going to Europe?