BOOKS
Practice Design
These books focus on designing better practices and individual workouts for players to maximize player and team development.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT
These books focus on the practice, development, and instruction of specific skills.
TACTICAL SKILLS & STRATEGY
These books focus on offensive strategy and skill development from a tactical perspective.
Long Term Athlete Development
These books are broad and general in topics and cover dozens of factors that contribute to talent development over the course of one’s childhood.
Brian T. McCormick, PhD is a professional basketball coach, consultant, and clinician. McCormick has coached professionally in Denmark, Ireland, and Sweden, taking a team to the finals in Denmark's 1st Division and being selected to coach in Sweden's Damligan All-Star Game. He has coached CYO, AAU, high school, junior college, and college basketball in the United States, and worked as a strength and conditioning coach for two junior-college basketball programs. McCormick has directed clinics in Canada, China, Greece, Ghana, India, Macedonia, Trinidad & Tobago, and throughout the United States, and spoken at coaching, strength & conditioning, and sports psychology conferences in the United States and Canada. McCormick completed his PhD in Exercise and Sports Science at the University of Utah, and has had peer-reviewed papers published in the International Journal of Exercise Science, International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, and Strength & Conditioning Journal.
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McCormick has published 20 books for basketball coaches, many of which have spent time on Amazon's top 10 books for basketball. The books have been well-received and recommended by prominent coaches such as Fran Fraschilla and Mike Dunlap.
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McCormick has directed camps and clinics for players and coaches around the world, most recently in Jackson Hole, WY and Waddington, NY. He also has been a speaker at clinics for Basketball BC, Basketball Manitoba, and USA Basketball.
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McCormick has coached youth, high school, college, and professional teams; he has coached boys and girls, men and women. He has coached in championship series, AAU National Tournaments, and all-star games. He currently is the head coach of a women's junior college team.
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McCormick has consulted with numerous high school, college, and professional coaches and players on skill development, practice design, and strength & conditioning.
Latest news
Steve Nash on Mike D’Antoni’s Genius
When I presented for Positive Coaching Alliance working with Ray Lokar, he often said that coaches work in the fish bowl; everyone watches the coach from the outside, often without knowledge of the environment, but the coach always is in front of an audience. This pressure from the fish bowl shapes many of the negative behaviors that we see from coaches: I once watched a coach who would yell loud enough for everyone in the audience to hear him, “Player, we practiced that yesterday for 20 minutes. How can you make that mistake?” There was no information; in essence, he was saying, “Look, I did everything that I could at practice and it is your child who is messing up, not me.” I was appalled, but I see this behavior to some degree fairly often. Read more about Steve Nash on Mike D’Antoni’s Genius
We need to develop players like in Europe
People often discuss player development and European basketball with me. Often, I am told, and I read, that we (coaches in the United States) need to develop players like in Europe. I don’t necessarily agree with the premise, but I often will engage in the discussions. When I do, it seems as though the coaches want a magic potion, because every change based on my experiences that I offer, they dismiss as unnecessary or impractical. Possible changes based on my experience: Read more about We need to develop players like in Europe
Put away the cones
Play dodgeball instead… Read more about Put away the cones
Beginner drills and progressions versus play
All of our well-designed simple to complex, easy to hard progressions ignore how children play before they ever begin to train.
— Brian McCormick, PhD (@brianmccormick) June 19, 2017
Read more about Beginner drills and progressions versus play
Coach development, not coach education or certification
I imagine the following is based directly or indirectly on the writings of Mark O’Sullivan, Mark Upton, Richard Bailey, Stuart Armstrong, and others. If you spend enough time on social media and basketball blogs, someone will suggest that the United States is falling behind in basketball because of a lack of coach education. Now, there Read more about Coach development, not coach education or certification[…]
Making sense of generational arguments about skill development
I don’t understand the following argument:
“Players from previous generations had more skill.”
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“Players from previous generations were three-sport athletes.”
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“Players from previous generations played more pickup games.”
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“Players need to specialize earlier and train privately with individual coaches to improve their skills.” Read more about Making sense of generational arguments about skill development
The unpredictability of talent identification and development
Chris Devenski is a reliever for the Houston Astros. He has been one of the best relievers this season on the best team in baseball. Read more about The unpredictability of talent identification and development
Offseason leagues and empowerment
I coach an u16 boys team in a small, local league. The teams are unbalanced and range from u15s to teams filled with graduating seniors who are college bound on basketball scholarships. Read more about Offseason leagues and empowerment
Luck and landing a college coaching job
Seventeen years after I first was hired as an assistant college basketball coach, I was hired as a part-time head coach at the junior college level. I would like to think that I have earned the opportunity with my work and persistence, but the actual process of landing the job was good fortune and luck. Because many people ask how to get such and such job, here is my story (following my story of how I was hired to coach in Europe). Read more about Luck and landing a college coaching job
Two-ball drills, transfer and inspiration
Originally published in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 6.4. Now available in Kindle and paperback. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter here.
After their practice on Monday, two teenagers from our women’s team worked along the baseline on a two-ball drill that I had introduced the previous week. This is my primary purpose for introducing challenging dribbling drills: To inspire players to practice on their own. We do not spend much time on dribbling. My men’s team generally practices dribbling on Thursdays when we have fewer players. With our skill workouts, we usually work on general dribbling in one of the two workouts per week. In the 11-12 hours of practice and workouts each week, we spend roughly 20 minutes on dribbling (of course, other drills, games, and scrimmages incorporate dribbling). Read more about Two-ball drills, transfer and inspiration