YBCA

More and more, I think we blame the wrong things for the problems evident in youth sports. For instance, everyone blames AAU for everything bad about basketball, yet school teams often employ the same tactics. With young athletes, we often blame keeping score for the issues that arise.

Neil Swidey writes about the issues of keeping score in his article “What happened to losing?” He touches on the real issue briefly: the loss of play for the sake of play.

Until relatively recently, children tended to get the bulk of their athletic exposure in sandlot games where kids handled the organizing, team selection, rules enforcement, and conflict resolution. Now, from a very young age, kids inhabit and compete in an adult-organized world.

I began playing organized basketball in the fourth grade. But the basketball experiences that shaped me much more were the pickup games played on the courts in the center of town. The action there was intense, yet there was never an adult in sight. We kids ran the show. If one team dominated too much, we just naturally switched up teams. We called our own fouls. And, yes, we certainly kept score, but no one had time to obsess over victories and losses. There was always another game just about to begin. (For many kids today, the only regular exposure to this type of environment is video games, and kids don’t seem scarred from losing at Mario Kart on the Wii.)

Now, if the article veered down this path, I would agree. I played on good teams and bad teams in my various youth leagues. However, much of my athletic development occurred during recess games and summer pick-up games near my house. Pick-up games ensure a competitiveness, as losers sit while winners stay on the court. Arguments often ensue, but disagreements are dealt with quickly and forgotten. While sitting for the next game sucks, it certainly is not the end of the world, and few people keep track of their wins and losses in these pick-up games.

However, the article again returns to the subject of keeping score, handing out trophies and more, while acknowledging that adults often are the source of problems in youth sports.

If adults cause the problems, why not address these issues rather than not putting up a scoreboard? Children and parents keep score; everyone knows who won and lost the game, and the absence of a scoreboard prevents very little.

The problem with many teams and leagues is the over-competitiveness of coaches. Because we evaluate coaches based on what we see – games – coaches strive to make their teams look organized and disciplined during games.

Rather than look at those within one league as associates working together to help a group of children in a specific area, we often view the opposing coaches and teams as adversaries.

When I was young, I played for Fair Oaks Little League. Each season, I played for a different team within F.O.L.L: Dodgers, Orioles, Indians, White Sox. We competed against the other teams in our league, but at the end of the season, the top players played together as the F.O.L.L. All-Star Team against other Little Leagues like Citrus Heights, Sunrise, etc. Most of the players within F.O.L.L. eventually fed into Bella Vista High School.

When viewed in this way, the individual teams were not adversaries: when I played for the Dodgers, the Giants, Reds and others were not the enemy. Ultimately, we were playing to elevate each other’s play and prepare the best players for the Tournament of Champions and All-Star Tournaments. From a long term perspective, we were developing to play high school baseball and turn BV into a winning program.

From this perspective, one way to reduce the competitive egos of the coaches is to make teams and coaches work together. Rather than assign one coach to each team, assign a group of coaches to an age group. These coaches become responsible for the development of all the players in the age group, not just the 12 players on their individual team.

In this way, players play to win the game and compete against the other teams. However, the coaches’ goals differ. Rather than run up the score against a lesser opponent, the coach’s goal is to find a way to challenge each team. Maybe that means that he throws his third-string pitcher against a weaker opponent and risks a defeat. Maybe he switches his outfielders into the infield and vice versa to develop his players’ all-around skills. Maybe he works on situational hitting and gives up an out with a sacrifice when his hitter likely would have driven in the run. This also helps the opponent practice different skills, like hitting against a hittable pitcher and fielding bunts among other skills.

To expand the idea, coaches could switch between teams for practices. In a similar basketball league, what if one coach is an expert at teaching man2man defensive principles while another is an expert shooting instructor? In a traditional league, the 8-12 players on the defensive coach’s team benefit from his defensive instruction, while the 8-12 players on the shooting coach’s team benefit from his shooting instruction. But, in a true developmental league, why not allow the coaches to work together? The defensive coach could run a practice for the two teams focused on defensive principles, while the shooting coach could take a practice and focus on shooting. This way, the players benefit from the best of all the coaches, and the coaches lose a little of the ego involvement because they want to see all the players develop the skill set that they are teaching, rather than focusing only on one team and proving his worth as a coach through their win-loss record.

Back to the article, Swidley makes an important point about cuts with youth teams:

Cutting kids from teams when they’re still in elementary school — or even middle school — simply makes no sense. Truth is, the predictive powers of even experienced coaches to survey a bunch of 10-year-olds and spot the future Division I college stars are about as reliable as a 90-day weather forecast. Athletic prowess at 10 or 11 is largely a function of physical maturity. Getting cut at an early age is no good for the kids who don’t make the roster, yet might otherwise have blossomed. But it’s also no good for the young anointed superstars who get tracked into early specialization of one sport, increasing their chance of burnout. By age 13, some 70 percent of kids have dropped out of youth sports. And imagine how crushing it is for the third-grader dubbed the next Mia Hamm who, after other kids catch up in physical maturity, isn’t even able to make her high school varsity team.

Before high school, all leagues are developmental: the primary focus is fun, learning and improvement. If we believe these are the goals, why cut players? I laugh when I see advertisements for developmental teams seeking 5′10 centers for their u11 team. If you are recruiting certain types of players and cutting others, how is your team developmental?

If we can find ways to include more players; create more unstructured environments for players to play for the sake of playing; and remove the coach’s ego from youth leagues, we will create a better experience for all players and make the experience more enjoyable for coaches who can work with their peers and learn from each other rather than viewing everyone as a competitor or adversary.

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

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Originally published by Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, Summer 2010.

The Internet’s interminable need for new and original content makes web sensations out of five-year-old Little Leaguers and eight-year-old basketball stars. This season, various sports sites, including Yahoo! Sports, promoted dribbling sensation Jaylin Fleming as the world’s greatest nine-year-old basketball player. Last year, 6th grader Jashaun Agosto had his 15 minutes of fame when a Seattle television station’s segment showing him making shot after shot went viral. Not to be outdone, Yahoo! Sports touted New Jersey’s Ariel Antigua as the best five-year-old baseball player ever!

These internet sensations are the outliers, not the norm. Those who appear destined for greatness at an early age rarely reach sustained excellence at a competitive level due to the many varied factors of professional success. For every O.J. Mayo identified in junior high school as a future superstar, there are dozens of Demetrius Walker’s, the former Sports Illustrated cover boy hailed as the next LeBron James in 2005, who recently transferred from Arizona State University to the University of New Mexico after averaging only four points per game in 23 games as a freshman.

Unfortunately, the outliers grab the headlines, distort our perceptions of the path to success and alter our approach to youth sports. Others gravitate to these stories and attempt to emulate their success. We rush the development process and ignore developmentally-appropriate play activities because another child developed a skill a few years earlier than normal, and a television station desperate for feel-good stories featured him in a segment that captivated the Internet.

Childhood is moving quickly from a time of exploration and discovery to a pre-professional training environment. Rather than encourage children to play on their own and engage in self-discovery, parents set appointments with pitching, goalie or shooting coaches to train their offspring so their child can keep pace with the perceived status quo.

Sports, in their most basic form, are a form of play. In Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart Brown, M.D. defines play as an activity possessing the following seven characteristics:

1. Apparent purposelessness – play is done for its own sake
2. Voluntary
3. Inherent attraction – it’s fun
4. Freedom from time – we lose a sense of the passage of time
5. Diminished consciousness of self – we are fully in the moment; we stop worrying about looking awkward or stupid
6. Improvisational potential – no one way to do things
7. Continuation desire – pleasure of the experience drives a desire to continue

Developmentally, many view play as superfluous because it is fun, and therefore not serious practice. However, play offers the same learning experiences that drive the desire for more intense training. When I was young, I shot in my driveway for hours while engaged in self-initiated play. I was not training to be a professional player; I chose to play because I preferred playing outside to sitting at a piano and because shooting free throws cleared my mind.

Playing in my front yard or going to a neighborhood court for 3v3 games was fun. Hours flew by. I made up new moves or copied moves that I saw on television. If I dribbled the ball off my foot or airballed a shot, I chased down the ball and tried again and again until I mastered the move. I did not avoid mistakes but embraced them as challenges.

This play offers the same or better opportunities for skill development as more intense training sessions. In fact, a great trainer manages to engage many of the same characteristics as the child-initiated play. Regardless of the trainer’s knowledge, the child’s learning depends on his self-motivation and desire. If the child does not want to improve or does not value the lesson, he will not invest the time and effort required to learn something new. Play, however, is inherently fun.

Play differs from training because of its purposelessness. When a player moves from playing for the sake of playing to training for sports success, the motivation starts to change from fun to goal-oriented activities. In an athlete’s development, one naturally progresses from a period of play to more training-based activities. This progression is natural and gradual and occurs after a player has played a sport and developed an affinity for the sport and a desire to continue participation at more advanced levels.

The irony in the rush to eliminate these playful periods in favor of more specific training is that the prodigies’ initial skill development occurs through play, as the child explores different ways to manipulate the ball and engages in hours of self-initiated practice.

In 2001, I coached a nine-and-under team with amazing ball handling ability. At the AAU National Championships, we stayed at the same hotel as a 13-and-under team from Minneapolis. As our van pulled out of the hotel to get to one of our games, the players from Minneapolis were outside doing different ball handling drills and tricks. While idling in the driveway waiting for a coach, one of our players jumped out of the van, grabbed a ball and perfectly executed one of the moves that the other players struggled to perform.

Our players did not develop these skills through training-based activities. While we did ball handling drills, we did not do typical drills. One coach led the players through follow-the-leader type drills and incorporated different tricks out of streetball videos. However, these activities only enhanced the players’ motivation. Their development primarily occurred outside of practice.

After almost every practice, our top two ball handlers wasted time while their parents talked by going 1v1 in a hallway, trying to find ways to dribble past or through each other in a small, confined area. Nobody told these players to practice while their parents talked. Instead, they made their own games, and the games happened to enhance their skill development greatly. As they practiced, they did not have some higher goal; they simply wanted to have fun and one-up each other.

When we eliminate play at a young age, drills become tedious as the player loses his freedom, and he engages in more and more adult-initiated activities. Rather than trying new things and exploring different moves through play, players follow the coach’s instructions. Learning follows explicit instructions rather than through self-initiated exploration and imagination.

There is a time in the athletic development spectrum for training and specialized coaching. Unfortunately, more and more, parents seek this specialized training before their child plays the sport and develops the desire to train to be a better player.

By skipping these playful periods, players miss out on the self-discovery and exploration. They develop in an environment of extrinsic motivation and schedules, and an atmosphere of pleasing parents and coaches rather than playing for the sake of playing. They play in competitive environments at an earlier age where people focus on their performance and they worry more about how they look or perform as opposed to staying in the moment and engaging in an activity for the sake of playing. Often, this early training atmosphere leads young athletes to quit the sport at an early age because the sport loses its fun: the sport is no longer play.

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

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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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Steve Nash excelled as a youth soccer player before making his mark as an NBA point guard. Uruguay’s World Cup hero, Diego Forlan, was an age-group tennis champion before pursuing a professional football career. Former NBA All-Star Allen Iverson was an all-state option quarterback before leading the NBA in scoring.

Typically, when mentioning the diverse youth sporting pursuits of elite players, parents and coaches suggest that these players are simply exceptional athletes, and therefore their varied pursuits did not prevent eventual elite performance in their chosen sport.

However, what if their varied sports participation actually enhanced their development and helped them become elite performers?

In “Sport-Specific Practice and the Development of Expert Decision-Making in Team Ball Sports” published in JOURNAL OF APPLIED SPORT PSYCHOLOGY, 15: 12–-25, 2003, Joseph Baker, Jean Cote and Bruce Abernathy write:

An important finding unique to this study is that the range of accumulated hours reported by the expert athletes was highly variable both within and between sports, suggesting factors additional to the total hours of accumulated sport-specific practice influence expertise attainment in team sports. Related practice, in other non-sport-specific contexts, emerges as a prime candidate as an additional factor critical to the acquisition of decision-making expertise in sport.

Rather than practice only basketball skills, this study found a positive correlation between playing other sports and developing expertise in one’s primary sport. These elite performers fell short of the magic 10,000 hours in their specific sport prior to reaching the elite level; however, they reason that the additional hours of participation in different, but similar sports count toward the magic 10,000 hours because the skills transfer between sports.

Participation in other activities may indeed be a functional element in the development of expert decision-making skill. Exposure to practice in other sport settings, especially in generic aspects of pattern recognition and decision-making, may circumvent the need for, or perhaps partially substitute for, some of the many hours of sport-specific practice needed to become an expert in team ball sports. Perhaps, unlike the domain of music, within which Ericsson et al. (1993) developed their theory of deliberate practice, sport expertise in team sports may be sufficiently multi-faceted to permit beneficial learning to occur through settings other than deliberate, task-specific practice.

While playing soccer will not enhance one’s basketball shooting or dribbling skills, playing soccer, lacrosse or another similar sport will enhance the pattern recognition skills that are vital to one’s tactical success.

In recent years, as youth basketball players play more and more basketball and specialize at earlier ages, many critics note that their decision-making skills and game awareness has decreased. Rather than specializing at earlier ages, these players may need more time plying a variety of sports to increase their exposure to and implicit learning of the basic tactical skills that are similar in many sports.

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

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Several years ago, I trained two young players. Joey’s dad was a prominent high school coach. He had perfect shooting technique. His dad did not allow him to play in pick-up games or for an AAU team because he did not want any bad habits. He ran his own mini-clinics for Joey and his friends so they could play, though he structured their play and demanded precise fundamentals throughout.

Walt was different. He played all the time. He played in neighborhood games and on several AAU teams. He worked with me to learn proper shooting technique, as he was a poor free throw shooter even though he got to the free throw line frequently during games. He was not exactly fundamentally sound, but he was an effective young player.

In today’s world of youth basketball, many see players like Walt as a problem, as they lack instructional video-quality fundamentals. These coaches favor Joey’s dad’s approach and believe that through drills and fundamental execution, Walt will develop into the better player. In real life, however, Walt was and is the far superior player.

After winning his last fight, MMA fighter Jon Jones made an interesting observation when asked about his development and progression as a fighter.

“I had (coach) Mike Winklejohn really help me with my foundation, keeping my hands up, punching harder, kicking harder, blocking properly,” Jones told MMAjunkie.com… “But Phil Nurse really exercises my creativity to make sure I’m not becoming too fundamentally sound. It’s just a great combination.”

Fundamentals are important, and every player needs a fundamental base. Jones works on his fundamentals in terms of his blocking punches and keeping his hands high. However, Jones’ strength lies in his unorthodox approach – his long reach, his strength, his creativity. From Judo throws to spinning elbows, you don’t know what to expect from Jones.

In sports, and life, we often see an athlete like Jones and think that if he is this good without proper training, just imagine how good he will be when he learns the right way. However, would Jones be as exciting and effective if he eschewed his fighting style to be more like everyone else? Urijah Faber was the best featherweight in the world as a completely unorthodox fighter before he was knocked out when he tried a spinning elbow and leaped right into a devastating right hook. Now, Faber is more controlled and more like everyone else, and it remains to be seen if being more fundamentally sound can return him to the top.

Boston’s Rajon Rondo is a player who many would say is not fundamentally sound for an NBA point guard. However, he is as effective as any NBA point guard. Would he be more effective if he played like everyone else? If he tempered his creativity, would people place him in the same category as Deron Williams and Chris Paul or would the change make him less effective?

I watched an academy spend entire sessions on straight-line dribbling drills and then none of the players could beat a defender with the dribble. Meanwhile, players at the park who spend their time playing 1v1 appear less skilled in the straight-line drills, but are far more effective against defenders despite their apparent lack of fundamentals.

Every player needs fundamentals. Rondo has a great base from which he builds. He has great footwork, huge hands that make him an exceptional ball handler and a great understanding of the game. He has a sense for how to use his body and fakes to create the desired pass or shot. However, this game sense and the moves that derive from it are not the fundamental moves that most coaches teach. Several coaches tweeted criticism of high school players at summer tournaments because they tried the Euro-Step that Rondo often uses.

Fundamentals should be seen as the starting point. Once players have a fundamental base – shooting technique, ball control, lay-up technique, jump stops, etc. – they need to make the fundamentals their own. They need to use their creativity to expand the basics into their own moves.

Basketball is not about creating robot-like copies of other players or the coach. Instead, creativity is taking the basics and putting one’s own spin on it. Creativity requires a player to internalize the basics and expand upon them to develop one’s own moves, timing and style. Players who expand upon the basics generally outclass those who are more textbook-fundamental.

By Brian McCormick

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

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My thinking differs from most coaches on most aspects of coaching, and these differences often get me in trouble. This weekend, I argued the merits of zone defenses and realized that our difference of opinion had nothing to do with zones specifically, but instead the way that we view the game and approach skill development.

Most coaches view basketball as two elements: skills and strategy. For these coaches, skills represent the technical skills that differentiate basketball: shooting, specific passes, footwork, dribbling and more. Strategy, then, is everything else, typically centering on defenses, plays, press breaks, out of bounds plays and more.

To me, there are four types of skills: athletic, psychological, tactical and technical. When I talk about skill development, I mean more than an individual workout focuses on shooting and ball handling; I believe skill development includes tactical skills like give-and-gos, pick-and-rolls, handling a trap, and more.

The difference between these two viewpoints, I learned, defines one’s coaching philosophy. The more traditional viewpoint favors a block practice environment which combines technical skill practice, typically in individual drills, with strategic practice encompassing the team’s offensive and defensive systems.

For these coaches, plays or offensive systems are specific, and players memorize movements: for instance, the team runs the Flex and players learn to use a screen only in the context of the Flex offense or the team runs the dribble-drive-motion and players learn to move in relation to dribble penetration only in the context of the DDM.

With my viewpoint, players learn these tactical skills generally first and then incorporate different general skills into team offense or the team’s system. In the traditional viewpoint, players learn skills like dribbling and shooting outside the context of the offensive system and then use these skills within the offense. In my approach, not only do players practice technical skills in skill development sessions, but they learn the tactical skills generally.

Before a team runs the Flex, for instance, players learn to use a screen outside the context of the Flex offense. Players learn to read the defense and the screen to make the appropriate cut; for instance, if the defender tries to fight through the screen, the cutter back cuts to the basket. Then, the offensive players apply these lessons to their coach’s system or plays.

The same occurs defensively. Most teams have a primary defense with their specific rules: for instance, force everything sideline-baseline, 3/4 front the post, help defense on the midline. If their primary defense does not work or does not fit against their opponent, they switch defenses: they play a secondary defense, like a 2-3 zone or 3-2 zone.

If players learn to play defense generally first, rather than with specific rules, a team can change its base defense to fit an opponent or situation. This season, we played man-to-man defense; however, against some teams, we denied the wing entry pass while against others, we played more help defense. When we played against a team that relied on dribble penetration, we did not move to a zone; we simply recognized their strength and adjusted slightly.

These adjustments constitute my strategy. From my viewpoint, we develop skills and strategy are the adjustments or game-specific tactics. For instance, how do you defend an opponent with a three-point lead and under 10 seconds to play? Do you foul before they can shoot a three-pointer? Decisions like these are the team’s or coach’s strategy. However, these strategic decisions are not important until players develop their skills generally. If players do not understand how to defend or how to use a screen or how to read the defense, a coach cannot change or employ different strategies. A coach cannot call a timeout to draw up a new play if the players lack the awareness or understanding to implement the strategy.

A narrow definition of skills (essentially technical skills) leads to one way of coaching and teaching, while a broader definition, which I favor, that encompasses four areas of skills leads to a much different approach to coaching.

At the youth level, the broader approach to skill development benefits players because the players learn skills which transfer from season to season, while coaches with a narrow definition may employ different strategies which do not transfer from season to season unless a player happens to play for a coach who runs the same system.

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

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A New York Times article by by Rob Hughes titled “Recipe for Soccer Success: Let Young Talent Blossoms” juxtaposes the efforts of China and the United States to develop its next generation of footballing stars with the development of the world’s best footballer, Lionel Messi.

“He wasn’t trained, he was born like this,” Ernesto Vecchio, the garage mechanic, says in a documentary, “Los Origenes de Messi,” that traces the roots of the world’s most beguiling soccer talent.

Watch that documentary, by Michael Robinson, and marvel at the humility of everyone around Messi, from his parents to his mentors. Essentially, they knew what he was capable of becoming, and they knew that the best they could do was simply let it develop — on the streets, in the parks, on the dusty courtyard where he and the ball were inseparable.

Of course, this approach differs greatly from the common approach in the United States, where structured practices, games and training session start at an early age and create a regimented development program for an aspiring athlete.

Hughes references an out of print book titled Common Sense about Soccer written by Nils Middelboe, a Danish merchant banker who played as an amateur for Chelsea in 1913.

He used the phrase “to systematize is to sterilize” in imploring coaches not to overload kids with theories, not to spoil their joy in letting imagination guide them with the ball. Even then, back in the 1950s and 1960s, Middelboe feared the regimentation of adults’ inflicting their control on kids.

Of course, Middleboe’s fear echoes the refrain from books like Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning and more academic books like Talented Tennagers by Mihalyi Csiszentmihalyi and Benjamin Bloom’s Developing Talent in Young People.

To develop talent in young people, the first stage is a time of exploration and discovery, a time to ignite the youngster’s passion. Technique and “the right way” are of lesser concern. Instead, coaches and parents must create an environment that allows the players the space and freedom to explore and develop an interest in the activity.

Children like to play, it is in their nature to play, try new things, explore, test out new ways to do things and more. Unfortunately, coaching often stifles these instincts and directs players to one way of doing things. Coaches and parents offer a structured environment which, in Middleboe’s words “sterilizes” the athletes.

With young players, details are not important. Instead, keep practices and games active and continue challenging players to learn new things and try new skills. Ignite their passion for the game rather than dampening their enthusiasm. Create a playful environment rather than eliminating play in favor of drills and instruction.

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

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When I speak to groups of coaches, I bring them back to the playground. Most problems with youth sports do not start with the players; they start with the parents and parent-coaches. Players want equal teams, not stacked teams. When I was in junior high school, we had four pretty good players. When we picked teams, two were always on one team and two were on the other. Who wanted a stacked team? Where is the fun?

When writing about LeBron’s decision, Bill Simmons echoed the same refrain about the playground:

As for me, I figured out why the LeBron/Wade alliance bothers everyone beyond the irrefutable “Jordan would have wanted to beat Wade, not play with him” argument. In pickup basketball, there’s an unwritten rule to keep teams relatively equal to maximize the competitiveness of the games. That’s the law. If two players are noticeably better than everyone else, they don’t play together, nor would they want to play together…Joining forces and destroying everyone else would ruin the whole point of having the game…When LeBron and Wade effectively said, “Instead of trying to whup each other, let’s just crush everyone else” and “If these teams end up being uneven, we’re not switching up,” everyone who ever played basketball had the same reaction: “I hate guys like that.”

One big problem with youth sports is the stacked teams. Who benefits? Do the players benefit from beating up on other teams? It is not the players asking to stack their team; instead, it is usually the parents and/or coaches scheming to find ways to stack their son’s team so he wins. What’s the point? Is winning an u10 league championship that important?

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

Early Sunday morning, I walked to the court where I train a 9th grader every weekend. He is generally late and sleepy when he arrives, but today he was on the court and shooting. As soon as I was within earshot, he said, “What do you think of Jeremy Lin?”

For those who do not follow the NBA Summer League or Ivy League basketball, Jeremy Lin is a point guard from Harvard who played with the Dallas Mavericks at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. He is an Asian-American, the son of immigrants from Taiwan. He was overlooked by nearly everyone as a senior in high school despite leading his high school to the California state championship with a win over national powerhouse Mater Dei; even nearby Stanford University offered only an opportunity to walk-on. Now, as an undrafted free agent, he is on the cusp of a guaranteed NBA contract, the holy grail for every young child who picks up a basketball.

While basketball fans concentrate on the athleticism of John Wall or the psychology of DeMarcus Cousins, from a developmental perspective, Jeremy Lin is the most important rookie in the 2010 class. I am rooting for Lin for the impact that his success will have on players like the one that I trained this morning.

While everyone hopes that race is a non-issue in the 21st Century, it is. Living in California, I have trained and coached a number of Asian-American players. While they love to play, there is often a sense of the glass ceiling – regardless of effort or talent, the Division I scholarship or the professional career is beyond their grasp. They look at D1 basketball and the NBA, and they do not see many players who look like them (Irish basketball players suffer from the same issue).

When I was young, many white players suffered from the same self-imposed glass ceiling. It is easier to blame one’s genes or race for one’s inability to achieve his dreams, and this pervades athletic and talent development. We create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I coached at a high school with a heavy academic emphasis and a large concentration of Asian-American students. Few if any actually believe that they could play college basketball. Their teachers, parents and coaches emphasize more realistic pursuits, like the orchestra and advanced calculus. When something must be sacrificed, sports are the first to go because sports are viewed as superfluous, as there is no future in sports. However, is an NBA career any more outrageous than a first chair position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic?

Before Roger Bannister broke the 4:00-mile, it was viewed as a ceiling of sorts. However, once he broke through the barrier, dozens of runners ran under 4:00 in the following months. The 4:00-mile was a mental barrier, not a physical barrier.

As Steve Nash flourishes in the NBA, he inspires white suburban players all over North America. No longer can a white player blame his race or genes, as Nash proves that a white player can excel in the 21st Century NBA without having to be 6′10. Lin has the chance to have the same impact for Asians and Asian-Americans, as to this point, only 7′0 Asians have had much basketball success.

I am not interested in the economic impact of a successful Asian-American player. My focus is developmental. We spend too much time looking at race, and not enough time controlling things within our control – our effort, skill development, practice habits and more. Once one player breaks through the perceived barrier, it becomes easier for others to set higher standards for themselves.

From a developmental perspective, I am interested in eliminating excuses. I want players to create their own positive self-fulfilling prophecies rather than allow prevailing myths to create a perpetually negative self-fulfilling prophecy to limit one’s dreams, goals and effort.

Jeremy Lin may never be an NBA all-star. However, his impact as a player may not be felt immediately; instead, his greatest impact may be felt a generation from now when young Asian-Americans no longer view college or professional basketball as an unattainable dream, but a worthwhile goal to pursue diligently.

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

Note: Originally published in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness, May 2008

We generally do not allow sports science to interfere with our deeply held beliefs, even when the beliefs are more myth than reality. When I coached in Ireland, the young Irish players believed that basketball greatness was not in their genes. They felt that Irishmen were not meant to be great athletes. Meanwhile, the Irish Rugby Team crushed its opponents in its preparation for the 2007 World Cup. While basketball and rugby require different skills, each features fast, quick, agile, strong and coordinated athletes. If Ireland develops world-class rugby talent with these qualities, why do Irish basketball players believe this development is beyond their gene pool?

Few people view rugby and basketball in terms of athletic qualities, so few see the similarities, which impedes our overall athletic development.

Because we view sports in sport-specific terms, coaches encourage early specialization. Some basketball coaches dislike players who play volleyball, as they feel the players fall behind their teammates. However, volleyball and basketball require lateral movement, hand-eye coordination, ball skills and vertical jumping. Blocking a ball transfers to contesting a shot, and moving laterally for a dig transfers to moving laterally to prevent an offensive player’s penetration.

As youth sports grow more competitive, more young athletes rush to specialize. They heed their coach’s advice or follow their parents’ guidance, as parents try to give their child an advantage over the competition.

Early specialization – when an athlete plays one sport year-round to the exclusion of other sports before puberty – leads to immediate sport-specific skill improvements. Coaches and parents see immediate results and follow this path. If the most skilled 10-year-old plays basketball year-round, maybe my son or daughter needs to devote 12 months a year to basketball.

However, athletic development is a process, and sport-specific skill development is only one piece. Before one can be a great player, he must be an athlete, and early specialization impedes overall athletic development. Unfortunately, as with the Irish players, we view sports based on sport-specific skills, not athletic qualities.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of athletic training facilities. While these facilities play to parent’s big league dreams, their success is developing general athletic skills which athletes fail to develop naturally because they specialize and narrow their athletic development. Rather than play multiple sports, which train multiple skills, athletes specialize in one sport and use performance training to compensate for their narrow athletic development.

Kids used to develop these athletic skills by playing multiple sports and neighborhood games, like tag, which develops agility, balance, coordination, evading skills, body control and more.

Now, rather than play tag, children go to facilities and do agility drills so they can change directions, fake, evade and cut when they play basketball, soccer or football.

Athletic development is a process, and early specialization attempts to speed the process. However, what is the goal? Is the goal to dominate as a 10-year-old?

Early specialization leads to early peaks. Players improve their sport-specific skills more rapidly than those who participate in a wide range of activities. However, those who develop deeper and broader athletic skills have a better foundation when they ultimately specialize. While those who specialized early hit a plateau, the others improve as they dedicate more time to enhancing their sport-specific skill.

If one specializes in basketball at 10-years-old, his general athletic development is incomplete. While he likely improves his dribbling, shooting and understanding of the game more rapidly than his peers who play multiple sports, those who play multiple sports develop many other athletic skills. If the others play soccer, they improve their vision, agility, footwork and more; if they play football, they improve acceleration and power. When these athletes specialize in basketball at 15-years-old, they have broader athletic skills and an advantage against the player who specialized early and hit a plateau in his skill development.

Skills – from athletic to tactical to perceptual – transfer from sport to sport. Many coaches and parents insist there is no relation between sports, which gives more credence to early specialization. However, before one excels at a sport, he or she must be an athlete first. The more developed a player’s general athletic skills, the higher the player’s ceiling in his or her chosen sport.

Sports science research contends that specialization before puberty is wholly unnecessary and, in some cases, detrimental to an athlete’s long term success. If the goal is to dominate other 10-year-olds, specialize early. However, if the goal is to nurture healthy children and give them an opportunity to participate in high school and/or college athletics, playing multiple sports offers a child more developmentally than does early specialization.

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