Jiujitsu and Specificity of Language

January 26th, 2011

Note: This article originally appeared in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 5.2.

I took an introductory jiujitsu class this week. Jiujitsu is unlike anything that I have done previously. However, the initial learning curve was made steeper because of unspecific language. Several times, my more experienced partner or the instructor said “put this leg there” or “that arm there.” As a novice trying to imitate an expert’s one or two demonstrations to get a position, the unspecific language made the learning more complex. Which leg is “that one,” my right or my left? When an athlete is confused, “that” or “this” does not simplify the action. When instructing, coaches should use language that is as accurate and specific as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

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Kung Fu Panda Delivers “The Secret”

January 18th, 2011

Note: This originally appeared in the Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 5.1. To read the entire newsletter, go here.

I watched Kung Fu Panda and could not help but think that it was an allegory about coaching today’s generation of children. The panda is chosen as the warrior even though he is fat and out of shape. He has to prove himself to his teacher before he can read the scroll that contains the hidden powers. When he finally reads the scroll, it is a mirror. At first, he is disappointed, as there is no way that he can defeat the more powerful enemy. He feels that it was a mistake that he was chosen. However, he realizes: The secret is that there is no secret. Read the rest of this entry »

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Coaching the Individual Player in Team Sports

January 8th, 2011

In You Haven’t Taught until They Have Learned, Swen Nater’s book about John Wooden’s coaching style, he emphasizes Wooden’s individual approach to each player. In The Fighter’s Mind, Sam Sheridan interviews wrestling great Dan Gable, and Gable emphasizes the same individualized approach. Sheridan interviews former All-American wrestler and current University of Iowa coach Tom Brands:

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Measuring a Coach’s Game Performance

November 19th, 2010

Game coaching is only a small part of the overall job of a coach. However, coaches are measured by results as most people only watch the games, not practices. The effort between games goes unnoticed because its is hidden from view.

One popular measure for a coach’s effectiveness during games is performance during close games, usually games decided by one possession (<3 points) or maybe games decided by five points or less.

Is this a fair measure of a coach? Would Butler’s Brad Stevens be a better coach if Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave found the bottom of the net in the NCAA National Championship Game?

In my research design class, we studied observable score and true score. Essentially, your observable score equals your true score plus the error score. From a coaching standpoint, the error score accounts for lucky shots, unlucky shots, bad calls, off-nights, etc.

In the Butler example, the observable score was a two-point loss. If a coach is measured by performance in one-possession games, Stevens would be 0-1. Is that fair? If Hayward’s shot would have fallen, would it be fair for Coach K to fall 0-1 based on a half-court heave?

It is hard to know how much error there is in a given game. Is it the coach’s fault when a 90% free throw shooter misses two free throws at the end of a loss? What about a missed call or a banked in three-pointer or a shot that rolls in and out? It’s easy to say that it’s a part of the game, and it is, but should a coach’s worth be determined, at least in part, by these situations when the margin of victory and defeat is so small?

When I coached a professional team, we lost several close games on the road with an under-manned team. Ultimately, I was fired. However, I felt being competitive on the road against more talented teams was a sign of good coaching, not bad coaching. We were in the game and one or two plays or one break away from stealing a win.

What if we considered the error score when evaluating a coach’s performance? Rather than decide a coach’s value based on games decided by three points or less, what if we set the error score at five and measured a coach’s record in games decided by more than five points?

Would a coach’s record in games decide by five points or more more accurately reflect a coach’s value than a coach’s record in close games?

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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How to Improve Youth Basketball through Coaching

September 29th, 2010

Everyone appears to have a solution to fix youth basketball and skill development. Some believe in the efficacy of a 24-hour second clock. As the thinking goes, players from Europe have better skills, and leagues in Europe use a 24-hour second clock, so therefore using a 24-hour second clock leads to better skills.

Others want to eliminate parents from coaching teams, as if there was a well of certified and interested volunteers willing to take the parents’ places.

In my opinion, the easiest and most painless change that would have the greatest impact is to expect more from the administrators who organize leagues and hire coaches.

At the higher levels, college athletic directors hire coaches and hope for the best. If the coach flounders, the athletic directors fires the coach, eats the salary and hires a new coach at a higher salary. One college cut several varsity sports while at the same time paying two women’s basketball coaches (a non-revenue sport). How can an athletic director justify cutting a varsity sport because it costs too much, while paying a former coach not to coach because the athletic director made a poor hire?

These days, athletic directors are businesspeople who work their way through the athletic administration bureaucracy. Many work their way through marketing and prove their worth through their fundraising efforts and networking. While fundraising is important, is that the primary mission of a college athletic program?

Where are the expert coaches to mentor and nurture new coaches? Imagine if a college athletic department had an expert coach position to mentor the athletic department’s hires? Would we have better coaches? Would coaches have a better opportunity to succeed if they had a mentor on campus to lean on for advice?

At the youth levels, in a typical recreation program, the league coordinator hires or recruits volunteer coaches and assigns these coaches to the teams. The league may run a coaching certification program, but it typically is a safety program to ensure that there is no child abuse, and to teach basic injury procedures. Once the league starts, the league administrator tracks winners and losers, schedules games, assigns referees, works the clock, etc.

However, the league administrator generally does not ensure the effectiveness of the league’s coaches. Why should leagues view administrators simply as office personnel? Why not require these leagues to hire administrators with extensive coaching experience who can assist teams and coaches?

In a local Asian league, the league director does not coach a team. However, he is in the gym whenever a team practices. He ensures that each coach writes out a practice plan before practice. A practice plan does not ensure a great coach, but it does provide a certain measure of quality control, as the coach must think about the upcoming practice and organize his thoughts and goals. The pre-practice organization often creates better in-practice organization.

The league director mentors all the league coaches. He offers suggestions and advice. Coaches can approach him if they have an issue or if they need a drill to teach a specific skill or if they are unsure of the proper teaching points for a skill.

In this way, the league director insures a certain measure of quality for the coaches at each practice and game, and his mentorship assists with the coach’s development, meaning that the coach likely improves during the season to become a better coach the following season.

While most coaches improve from season to season, especially novice coaches, due to experience, having the additional guidance of an expert r experienced coach enhances the development and adds to the experience. We don’t ask our players to develop without a coach or our students to learn material strictly through trial-and-error without a teacher; why ask coaches to learn simply through trial-and-error without a mentor present to guide the coach’s development?

Every league has a league director or administrator. Why not encourage leagues to use this position as a mentor for coaches rather than just a scheduler of games? While this will not solve every problem, assisting new coaches and mentoring these coaches so they become experienced coaches who remain with the league will elevate the level of instruction.

Changing the philosophy or role of one league director impacts 20-30 coaches who each impacts 8-10 players, which means improving the league for 160-300 players through one relatively simple change.

A 24-hour second clock does not improve instruction at practice and it does not eliminate the Peak by Friday mentality. Eliminating parent-coaches would leave a shortage of coaches and eliminate many of the best coaches who happen to also coach their sons or daughters. While there are many subtle changes that can improve a league, club or team, using the league director as a mentor to control and elevate the quality of instruction and create some consistency among coaches is one painless opportunity for leagues to improve and offer a better product to coaches, players and parents.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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The Intellectual and Moral Virtue of Coaching Basketball

August 10th, 2010

Last week, I saw Shop Class as Soulcraft recommended for incoming college students. As I prepare to re-enter academia, I picked up a copy. Author, philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford includes an extended excerpt from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

The excerpt starts with Pirsig taking his motorcycle to a shop. He sets the scene and says that the mechanic barely listens to the piston slap before diagnosing a problem. When Pirsig returns to pick up his motorcycle, now he hears a bigger problem. He points out the problem to the mechanic who manages to create a bigger problem. When he eventually gets on to the road, “the shop had neglected to bolt the engine back into frame; it was hanging on by a single bolt.”

Pirsig writes:

I found the cause of the seizures a few weeks later, waiting to happen again. It was a little twenty-five-cent pin in the internal oil delivery system that had been sheared…

Why did they butcher it so?…They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it.

…But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easy-going – and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I am a mechanic.’

In reflecting upon Pirsig’s tale, Crwaford points out that the problem (the sheared-off pin) was the same for any mechanic.

But finding this truth requires a certain disposition in the individual: attentiveness, enlivened by a sense of responsibility to the motorcycle. He has to internalize the well working of the motorcycle as an object of passionate concern. The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.

A coach is, in a sense, a craftsmen. Unfortunately, many coaches and trainers are like Pirsig’s mechanic: idle spectators. They are inattentive. I watched one trainer this summer run a workout and commented to him that he could record his instructions and feedback and simply hit play before each drill or workout because his feedback was impersonal and unspecific.

He touched on simple generalizations: faster, harder, lower, etc. It’s not that his comments were incorrect; most players need to work faster, harder and in a better body position. However, his feedback was ineffectual: it became like white noise in the background of the workout as it lacked meaning to any individual.

Before a coach or trainer can reach a player, he has to understand the player. He has to pay attention. There are some vague generalities that any coach or trainer can utter to sound knowledgeable: bend your knees, hold your follow-through, etc.

However, to impact the player, the feedback must be specific and meaningful. If a player bends his knees, and the trainer sees a shot missed short and instructs the player to bend his knees, is he identifying the problem or is he making an idle assumption based on the result, like Pirsig’s mechanic who barely listened to his motorcycle before reaching his (incorrect) conclusion?

Coaching is more than pontificating to illustrate one’s mastery of basketball terms and concepts. Coaching is a personal profession that depends heavily on one’s ability to analyze and assess an individual’s psyche as much as his biomechanics or sport-skill technique. Once one understands the player (or team), he must have the ability to communicate with the player in a way that impacts the player.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Raising our Level of Coaching

July 14th, 2010

I finally received the long-awaited Rain: A Workbook for Players who Really Want to Score Points by Lindell Singleton. For such a small book, there are so many important and interesting points that I did not know where to start. However, since this is a site for coaches and their development, I focused on a chapter (passage) titled “Learning vs. Unlearning (A Paradigm Shift).”

First, Singleton defines bad basketball:

  1. Poor decision-making
  2. Poor (or absent) footwork
  3. L.O.E. – Lack of Effort

He starts the chapter about women’s college basketball, but these rules apply to all basketball. He also adds three universal truths:

  • Players want to be trained
  • Parents want their kids to be trained
  • Coaches crave kids who can play

Again, these are fairly common sense, and most would agree without hesitation. Therefore, if players, parents and coaches want these things, and there are an abundance of resources, why is there such bad basketball?

From a coaching perspective, how can a coach eliminate the three features of bad basketball? How does a coach teach decision-making? Many coaches and the media believe that decision-making is an innate skill – either you make good decisions with or without the ball or you don’t. How do you teach footwork? More to the point, what is footwork as it relates to basketball? Finally, how does a coach ensure that his players play with full effort?

Singleton points out that most basketball is taught “in a linear progression – with clean, Aristotelian logic.” However, he says, “basketball is a game dripping with paradoxes (which firmly collides with Aristotelian logic). I adopted a more GESTALT method of teaching.”

I have made a similar, though less articulate point: most coaches teach in black and white, while basketball is played in multiple shades of grade. If there is always a black or white solution to a situation, what if it does not work?

For instance, take a simple 2v1 fast break. Most players attack as if there is one solution: pass to your teammate. The only question is when to pass, and some seem to have a singular solution: at the free throw line. However, what if the defender defends the pass? There are times when a player should finish and times when the player should pass. There is no black and white solution.

Teach the black and white solutions makes teaching and accountability easier. However, does it improve performance? I spent the season trying to empower my players to make decisions. I wanted them to see the game in shades of grey. There was rarely a right or wrong solution. However, if the decision turned into a turnover or missed shot, then we evaluated it – was it poor execution or a poor decision?

When coaches teach based strictly on outcomes, we miss the difference. If I attack 2v1, shoot the lay-up and miss, and the coach criticizes the play, I am more likely to pass next time. However, what if shooting was the right decision? What if I chose the wrong shot (lay-up rather than a two-foot lay-up)? What if I simply missed a shot that I should make? My reaction should not cause me to pass next time, just because I missed the lay-up. Instead, given the same circumstances, I should shoot again. However, often that is not how things are taught. If A happened (missed shot), it is because of B (should have passed). This is a rigid way of thinking, and teaching, and ineffective for a game like basketball.

If we agree that players and parents want coaching, and coaches want players who can play, where is the breakdown? Why is there a lack of effort?

Somewhere, there is a disconnect between coach and player. Maybe the player wants to learn something, and the coach focuses on something else. Maybe the player is comfortable with one approach, but the coach has a different approach. Maybe the coach teaches to one learning style, but the player has a different learning style.

There are numerous possibilities. However, from a coaching perspective, the coach must step back and see his responsibility in the breakdown. What can he do differently? What type of teaching do the players need? Where is the discord? Do the players understand the objectives? Do I focus too much on the details and not enough on the big picture? Do I focus too much on the big picture and not enough on the details? Do I focus too much on winning or results and not enough on the process? Do the players feel like practice translates to games or is practice just busywork?

How can I as a coach ensure that the players maintain their desire to be trained rather than crushing this desire? While maintaining their desire, how can I emphasize good decision-making, proper footwork and effort?

Please add your comments in the Forum.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development and Developing Basketball Intelligence
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Coaching Basketball and Innovation

June 1st, 2010

USA Volleyball’s John Kessel’s article “We Coach the Way We Were Coached” questions the standard volleyball practice. As a Kessel fan, I used the thoughts last season when I coached volleyball, and some players and the Athletic Director/Girls’ Volleyball Coach acted as though I had no clue.

After reading the article, I found Dan Pink’s blog and saw an interesting factoid from Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson’s See New Now:

“A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”

The factoid made me think about college education: the hardest part of an elite college is getting admitted.

Unfortunately for innovation, the rules of nearly every industry (coaching included) keep out outsiders.

Think of the most innovative coaches. Many come from different backgrounds. Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach was not a football player; St Louis Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan is the only Major League pitching coach who was not a pitcher; Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony’s off-season workout coach is a former lawyer, Idan Ravin; noted track coach and Velocity Sports Performance founder Loren Seagrave was an ice hockey player.

When we narrow our focus too much when hiring coaches, we potentially miss out on the next innovation.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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Coaching Development and the “Special One”

May 24th, 2010

This weekend, Inter won the Champions League trophy completing the treble for the storied Italian club and its Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho, who nicknamed himself the “Special One.” I have been intrigued by Mourinho for some time, and Adrian Flynn from Basketball Scotland recommended an interview from the January 2005 UEFA Newsletter for Coaches.

For someone with an audacious nickname like the “Special One,” he recognizes the long process of becoming a head coach:

“The first step was to study, the next step was to develop young players and the third step was to work alongside a big coach at a pro level. I repeat, the process was step by step.”

Mourinho attended a sports university where he studied and then moved to Scotland to pursue the FA’s Coaching Courses. He started his coaching with U16s.

To improve basketball coaching, we need to alter our perceptions of what it takes to be a good coach. This week, after the fallout from the Hanley Ramirez incident in Florida, Dime Magazine asked if former professional players make better professional coaches. To me, too many former players feel entitled to coaching positions and do not want to engage in a process similar to Mourinho’s. Scottie Pippen famously said that he only wanted to coach the Chicago Bulls, and he felt that his playing career prepared him to step in as the Head Coach without any coaching experience at any level. He may be right. However, his attitude toward coaching suggests that the profession is easy and requires little work or study. I find that insulting.

If the greatest soccer coach on the planet believes in the process starting with studying the the game, the sports science and the coaching methodology and then moving to coaching young players before moving to the professional level as an assistant, why should we expect anything less of our basketball coaches?

Mourinho talks about the different philosophies that he learned during the FA Coaching Course:

“Your methods made me think about methodology in a different way. The way that you used small-sided games to develop technical, tactical and fitness elements – a global view of coaching.”

Many coaches rely on their playing experience to create their own coaching philosophy, so the ideas and practices of past generations are passed to future generations and many practices go unchallenged. Despite no research to suggest that static stretching before basketball reduces injuries or improves performance, most teams continue to static stretch before practice and games. It is part of the basketball culture that is passed down from generation to generation because coaches accept its validity without asking about its efficacy. Unless a coach pursues outside information, how does he change his philosophy and adopt more up to date training principles?

Small-sided games are a valuable tool for basketball development as well, yet many coaches run laps around the track for fitness or use 5v0 drills to teach offensive concepts. Why not use small-sided games? Why do eight and nine-year-olds play full-court, 5v5 games just like professional players? Why not teach the game step-by-step?

Mourinho clearly gets coaching. He says that he tells youngsters who are trying to follow him:

“Don’t accept what I tell you as pure truth.”

Mourinho learned from some of the best minds in soccer, like his opponent this weekend in Louis Van Gaal as well as Bobby Robson, yet he used these experiences to help formulate his own philosophy. He did not copy their methods or ideas. He asked questions. He adopted and adapted. Too many young coaches copy their mentors blindly without questioning methods and methodology or searching for the most effective way. If it was good enough for them as a player, it is good enough for their players – however, don’t we tell players that good enough is never good enough? That good is the enemy of great? Why should a coach accept good enough when he does not accept good enough from his players?

Mourinho professes a global approach to coaching, rather than divide all aspects of the game into segments.

“My fitness coach, for example, works with me on the tactical systems, advising on time, distance, and space.”

In basketball, the strength & conditioning coach is like a separate entity. I know several college coaches who ignore their strength coaches’ recommendations and there is little to no continuity or integration between fitness training and skill development or tactical training. Basketball players now seem to go to a strength coach/personal trainer for their physical development, a shooting coach/skill instructor for the on-court skill development and their team coach for their tactical development. There is little to no integration. Even at the college level where a head coach oversees all aspects, most coaches do individual workouts where they address skill deficiencies and use practice time for team concepts and strategy. There is little integration between fitness, skill development and tactical development.

Mourinho says:

I want to develop tactical aspects of the game: how to press, when to press, transitions, ball possession, positional play. After that, other things come – the physical and psychological aspects are part of the exercises.

Using small-sided games enables a basketball coach to follow a similar philosophy (the foundation of Blitz Basketball) and use a global approach to team, fitness and skill development.

Mourinho believes that he has a flexible management style, but that he is very demanding in training. He understands that different situations call for different tactics. With youth and high school teams, some timeouts and half-times need a calm and reassuring coach, while other times the coach needs to motivate or light a fire under the players.

Mourinho is indeed special. He understands coaching as a profession and as a passion, not just as a disposable job like Pippen. He appreciates the growth of a coach and the process to become a good (great) coach. Unfortunately, in the United States, we rarely see this same type of process, as most move directly from playing to assisting to head coaching without the first two stages. If we value coaching, and player development, we need to create this process of coach development to raise the standard of coaching at every level.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development and Director of Coaching for the Playmakers Basketball Development League.

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Why all the Yelling and Screaming?

May 20th, 2010

On a repeat episode of the Daily Show last night, the guest was famed chef Mario Battali. The discussion moved to Gordon Ramsey and chefs who use their outside voice, and Battali said:

“Typically, chefs who yell at their cooks are expressing their own self-loathing for not having prepared their staff properly.”

Same is true with basketball coaches and players.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, Developing Basketball Intelligence and several other books for coaches.

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