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.

~ by Brian McCormick on July 3, 2009.