Coaching Toolblog

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Hopefully, this year’s NBA finals will serve as an example to basketball players at all levels as to the importance of mental toughness and putting the team first over individual statistics, flashiness, and publicity.

I believe that the Celtics ultimately won the championship on grit and unselfishness. There is no denying that they do have offense talent, but in my mind, it is not as superior to the Lakers’ talent as the scores would indicate. I don’t know what the stats are for the hustle and toughness plays, but those scores would be even more lopsided than the actual scores of the games. To me, grit and unselfishness are two parts of the foundation of a great defense.

The mental toughness to stay focused on the prize despite all obstacles was a joy to watch. Every time one of the players from the bench was called on, he contributed. It did not matter if he hadn’t played or played very little the game before, I did not see pouting and moping. They stayed ready and it showed in their play. I thought it took a lot of mental toughness for Ray Allen to come out of his shooting slump from the earlier rounds of the playoffs and shoot as well as he did in the finals. Paul Pierce took the ball hard to the basket time after time knowing that he was going to get hit, but he continued to go to the basket, rather than settling for mid-range jump shots. Perkins coming back from his injury to play. We could go on and on, but one of the most impressive things to me was the way the Celtics bench was into every play of every game. Not many players can help a team from the bench, but the Celtics seem to have found a handful of them.

Doc Rivers and his staff certainly deserve a lot of credit for keeping the team together and focused on what it took to win the championship. That was a great job of basketball coaching. I believe that as long as the basketball plays you run and the defensive rules you use are sound, there are many ways to approach those the Xs and Os of basketball that will work. But, there is no substitute for mental and physical toughness and putting the team first.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

While we were waiting on the Finals to start a couple of weeks ago, ESPN showed Game 6 of the 1987 NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Lakers. One of the things that stuck me was the number of players from that game who were now in the NBA as head basketball coaches, assistant coaches, or NBA executives.

I could be missing a couple, but here is the list to the best of my ability off the top of my head. Please let me know who I have missed.

Boston had Danny Ainge, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Rick Carlisle, Sam Vincent, and Dennis Johnson who all continued their careers in basketball as head coaches, assistant coaches, or front office personnel. Los Angeles had Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kurt Rambis, and Byron Scott.

I guess you could also throw in Tom Tolbert (LA) and Bill Walton (Boston) to the mix as they have become television analysts.

I guess that begs the question, Were those teams successful because they had players who thought the game and loved it, or did they become coaches and executives because they were a part of the success that both of those franchises enjoyed during their careers?

It is with mixed emotions that I talk to players when they ask about or want to discuss getting in to teaching and coaching. It reminds me of the time in my life when I was so excited about getting started in the profession and it has certainly led to a lot of joy and positive relationships in my life. On the other hand, I know how consuming it can become and how much time it takes to do the job right, so I worry about that aspect of their desire to coach.

However, I do know that all of the players who wanted to coach were easy to coach and did seem to think and understand the game at a higher level, even as high school players. One of the nicest things you can have in coaching is when a former player joins your staff. It makes you feel like you are doing something right. They also understand what you stand for, what your program is about, and they are as loyal as anyone could be.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Our Teleseminar Guest for Friday June 13 is University of Illinois Men’s Coach Bruce Weber–his topic is making basketball practices competitive and he has some great ideas to offer. It is not wonder that his teams have always competed hard. From his days as an assistant to Gene Keady at Purdue, then has head coach at Southern Illinois, and now with all of the success he has enjoyed at Illinois, one thing has remained constant–his teams compete! Current Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter was Coach Weber’s assistant at Southern Illinois and I thought that the 07-08 Purdue team was one of the hardest playing teams that I have seen.

His 04-05 Illinois team did have talent, but you don’t make it to the last game of the regular season without losing unless you can compete. You will definitely want to be prepared to take notes and listen to this interview a couple of times. Thanks Coach Weber for taking some time for our visitors!

In order to listen, all you need to do is to register for the Tool of the Day and you can do that with this link: Teleseminar Access.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

It seems like sometimes when you are observing from afar and you say or write nice about someone, you end up being proven wrong shortly thereafter. I am going to take that chance today and write some kind words about some of the things that I have observed and that have been presented by the broadcasters of the finals. Certainly, there is no doubt that talent is the most significant factor in winning, but in my opinion, these two teams are examples that the intangibles make a differene too. Feel free to disagree and leave a post stating so, but this is the way it looks to me. I am sure that there are other people I am leaving out, but these are the ones that the media has mentioned this postseaso

I am focusing this post on the unselfishness and team play of the Celtics, but that is not to say that the Lakers don’t have that as well. I would like to mention one Laker in particular. I don’t think that it is a coiincidence that Derek Fisher left in 03-04 and that the Lakers have struggled since. I realize that 03-04 was also Shaq’s last year in LA and that with Bynum playing well early this season and then adding Gasol in Februrary have given them the best inside presence since then. But, it just looks like Fisher is a solid team first guy who also has skills. It is hard not to root for someone who came back to LA for his family, even though the team was in turmoil at the time. He doesn’t seam to mind playing fifth fiddle. To me, every team needs a guy like him.

I know that Sam Cassell has had some problems throughout his career, but it looks like he is fitting in very well with the Celtics. When called upon, he has scored as they have needed and when on the bench, it looks like he is providing leadership and support for those who are on the floor. I would guess that the Celtics knew what they were getting when they signed him late in the season.

Along those same lines, Ray Allen’s scoring average is down about 10 points per game from last year and it is the lowest PPG that he has had in almost a decade. It does not seem to be bothering him. It is nice to see that he is coming out of his slump from earlier in the playoffs. I think most of us like to root for guys that show unselfishness.

I really know very little about Eddie House, but you have to hand it to him for not playing in several of the early round playoff games after playing more minutes during most of the regular season. I thought that his hustle in game 7 against Cleveland was key. That is not to downplay Paul Pierce’s scoring, but I thought that House contributed all he could when it would have been very easy to mope and pout.

When I saw the halftime piece on Leon Powe, it is hard to not look at him in the same way. I did not follow the regular season and did not even know who he was until the playoffs. Even during the first rounds, he didn’t do much to distinguish himself. But after seeing him interviewed about growing up homeless and losing his mother four days prior to playing in the high school state championship, you just want to see him succeed. At least I do.

Certainly there are more talented players than these guys, but I respect their toughness. I hope that I haven’t jinxed them and they are all going to do something to show that my assessment is wrong. I just think that it is nice to look at some good things because there are times when players who feel entitled forget that this is a team game and cross that line of fierce vs. furious.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

I am ashamed to admit this, but I just saw the movie “Coach Carter” for the first time this past Friday night. As a basketball coach, I should have made the effort to see it long before now. I both enjoyed and was inspired by the movie. I watched it on network TV with two commentators (neither of whom knew much about basketball) giving their two cents before and after each commercial. There were quick (too quick for me) snippets of comments from the real Coach Carter mixed in with the commentary. Regardless of how much poetic license was taken with the actual game action and conversations that are portrayed, I saw the movie as an inspiration to coaches everywhere. Yes, there were some flaws in the way the games were choreographed, such as the officials calling the school’s name rather than jersey color when the ball went out of bounds, but, to me anyway, those were forgivable due to the powerful mission that the movie portrayed.

As the saying goes in business, “No margin, no mission.” (The same can be said for websites ) Even though winning is not the most important thing in high school basketball, it does make a difference in the types of lessons that coaches can instill in their players. If the Richmond Oilers had not been winning, the players would not have bought into Coach Carter’s system of discipline, nor to his academic requirements. Nor would they have showed the type of genuine respect that he earned from them by the end of the season. Second, had he not been winning big, there would have been no community turmoil created by his choice to “bench the team,” in order to correct their academic problems. Finally, had they had the same record the year before, the meeting regarding the lockout would have been to dismiss him rather than stop the lockout.

Every basketball coach, regardless of where s/he coaches, is going to come under criticism at one time or another–it is inevitable. There are just to many special interest groups that have an opportunity to take pot shot at you. To me, Coach Carter decided that he would stand for education first and that he was willing to stand up to any criticism that those outside forces wanted to throw his way. I have a lot of respect for that.

To me, the bottom line is that winning is not only something that quenches our competitive fires as coaches, but it is also the most potent tool that we have to influence our athletes, our schools, our communities, and in the rare case of Coach Carter, anyone who has seen the movie.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Maybe it is just me, but it apperars as though the Detroit Pistons are a little rough on basketball coaches. Rick Carlisle wins Coach of the Year and goes to the conference finals and is fired to Bring in Larry Brown. When Brown led them to the NBA championship, it didn’t look like such a bad move. Then, Larry Brown is run out by the players to Bring in Flip Saunders. Now , those same players “need a new voice” after Flip Saunders has three seasons and the best lifetime winning percentage of any Detroit Coach in their 50 years in Detroit and three straight appearances in the Conference Finals.

Top 4 Detroit Piston Winningest Coaches

Flip Saunders .715

Larry Brown .659

Chuck Daily .633 (another pretty good coach)

Rick Carlisle .610 Coach of the year ( in 50 years only two Detroit coaches have won that award)

Dick Vitale did coach the Pistons for a little over a year, but did not make the list.

If they aren’t going to listen to the coach with the best winning percentage in franchise history, then who are they going to listen to? My feeling is that hey will listen to any coach who lets them have their way and lets the basketball players be in charge.

Showing videos of the players paying no attention to Flip Saunders is not an indictment of him. These are (over)paid professionals. It is their job to listen. It is not their job to run the show. In my mind, Larry Brown, an old school do it the way it has to be done to win type of basketball coach is just what they needed and it showed with a championship. But, he rubbed the players the wrong way. I don’t know about you, but those players, especially Rasheed Wallace, rub me the wrong way. It gives me even more respect for Dean Smith that he was able to keep a lid on Wallace at North Carolina.

In our of our tools of the day, I mentioned that Saunders had a card that he kept with the players pre-season commitments. Wallace’s was to be a leader. What kind of a leader comes within one of being suspended for the number of technical fouls he is assessed with in the playoffs? What kind of a leader is laughing with the other team seconds before he blows a game winning shot like he did in the Philadelphia series.

I hope that they get what they deserve. A coach who lets the players run the team in to the ground. I guess the salary will attract some coaches, but my feeling is that most would not want to touch that job.

Regardless of how passionate someone is about coaching basketball or the money, it doesn’t seem like the headaches would even amount to one dollar per, nor would there be much coaching one could do.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

We stated that one of our goals for The Coaching Toolbox in May was to increase the traffic on the Toolblog. We did that, and went through a couple of set backs. We lost all of the comments that you left, which was one of the setbacks. We appreciated those comments very much and it was not our intention to delete them. I am not sure what happened, but my theory is that I did it accidentally when trying to delete some spam. I am looking into how I can back up our blog data, even though it is hosted on our server and not on my system that I do the posts from. Live and learn. I better go back and read my Tool of the Day dealing with playing through mistakes. Anyway, we are working to make this a useful site to all of you and again, thanks for the comments while they lasted. We hope to get those flowing again this month.

Last week our focus was on posting some ideas to make your basketball practices better with ideas for establishing the mindset of a champion in everyone that takes the practice floor every day in your program. This week it will be back to the random ramblings, just like normal…

Just to keep in the spirit of the NBA finals, starting last Thursday, our basketball quotes will be from Laker and Celtic greats–we will alternate each day until the finals are over. I guess we are lucky that they both have a history of quotable players and coaches. I really enjoyed those matchups in the 80s, probably partly because we in Indiana were proud of Larry Bird. Prior to that I remember rooting against the Celtics when I was very young because I was a Milwaukee Buck fan as another one of our Hoosier legends, Oscar Robertson, was finishing up his pro career. I don’t really have a favorite in this series, I would just like to see it go seven games and go down to the last possession of the last game. That isn’t too much to ask for, is it?

Thanks to all of you for supporting The Coaching Toolbox. We are striving to keep posting useful ideas that we have come across for you. It just isn’t going up as fast as we would like, but I guess that striving to improve and become the best you can be is really what basketball is all about.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

This is the final post in the week long series from The Coaching Toolbox on The Basketball Practice Mindset.

10. Basketball Coaches must not accept excuses from themselves, their staff, or team members. By making excuses for player or team failures, one relinquishes control of their influence over the outcome.

11. Coaches should take pride in the design of their practices and players need to develop pride in the way they practice. Pride is an attitude that separates excellence from mediocrity. Mediocre practices produce mediocre results.

12. Plan your practice as if your career depends on it, because it does.

The remaining practice principles that we have identified as critical to success are: efficiency in executing practice, establishing habits, making practices competitive, team building, incorporating game planning, and covering everything with thoroughness. However, without the proper mindset, none of those principles alone will bring out the best in your team.

More information on the complete basketball practice e-book, “130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice,” is available at The Coaching Toolbox.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Finally, the NBA Finals will start tonight. Probably will hurt our traffic, but I guess I can’t complain, I will be watching too instead of working on The Coaching Toolbox.

Here are three more of our twelve thoughts on the mindset it takes to have basketball practices at the championship level.

7. The practice court is a classroom. Practice is one of several classes that students attend each day. Like all classes, the students should expect to be taught something each day. Basketball Coaches should have clear objectives for the day and a well planned lesson designed to help the players achieve those objectives.

8. Coaches should enter practice with the mindset that if players are making mistakes, the reason they are making mistakes is that the coach has not taught them properly. Coaches need to make adjustments in how they are communicating their ideas. Yelling the same instruction louder does not facilitate the teaching process. Coaches must believe that everything that happens on the court happens as a result of their actions. A good coach is like a good teacher. If the student is not learning, the teacher must change the teaching methods.

9. Coaches must believe that they can win with their team, regardless of the team’s shortcomings or perceived shortcomings. It does not matter whether the team is too short, too slow, too inexperienced or lacking in basic skills. Coaches must believe that they can overcome all obstacles placed in front of them. There are ways to play when your team is too slow and too short. Young players can be taught and skills can be practiced. If you do not believe that you can win, you will not.

Tomorrow’s post will finish off the first principle of our 130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

The Coaching Toolbox 12 ideas to develop the mindset of a champion to take into basketball practice is moving along. After today’s post, we will have half of the list on the Toolblog.

4. Basketball Players will do in the games by habit what they learn, rehearse, and are held accountable for in practice. If a coach allows cutting corners in practice, that is what s/he will get in games. Don Meyer says that coaches can be demanding without being demeaning. We believe that type of interaction with players is imperative to success. For example, we believe that placing the ball under your chin after a rebound is an important fundamental. Therefore, in practice situations we blow the whistle and call a turnover if a player falls to chin a rebound. By consistently demanding that basketball fundamentals be executed, you will begin to see it occur more frequently. We want to create the mindset that doing things properly leads to increased success.

5. The players’ goal for each basketball practice should be to improve themselves for the good of the team. A coach’s goal should be to instill that goal in the players and plan practice to make it happen. Spend time making sure that your players see that as their goal.

6. Everyone involved in your basketball practice must know the expectations that you have as a coach for the level of performance and effort. Frustration and conflict which lead to team turmoil are always present when players individually and the team collectively are being coached to a higher standard than they are currently able to reach. The tension can be reduced greatly when everyone knows what the expectations are and why those expectations are so high.

We hope that these ideas are contributing to your basketball coaching thoughts and ideas. To read or downolad all 12, just click either one that you would rather do. For an overview of our book that contains 130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice, just click the link.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.