Becoming a basketballcoach Chapter 2 "Doing wrong, when doing right"

Maybe sounds strange to you, but there are many ways of doing wrong, when doing right. As a new coach you always have the greatest intentions with your practises and your game tactics. Most of the times you practise the things you need to win the games coming up or after a game where you hade many bad passes, next practise a lot of passing drills, or bad shooting at a game, then next practise many shooting drills.

So whats wrong with this?
Well, yes you are doing the right things but with youth teams you still are doing it wrong as I see it. I think every new coach needs help with their yearly plan and what to be taught and HOW?!

If not, the season will be a long road of quick fixes and when you are on fix number 12 its time to fix the first problem again. Most of time some very important foundamentals will never be practised, cause its lacking is not shown in the games at the moment. They will first be shown as weaknesses in 2,3,4,5 years, if not taught now.
This is of course very hard for a new coach to understand and even harder to find out if nobody tells the new coach about it. Every club, should have somebody that is incharge of basketball quality and this person cant be afraid of speaking the truth to the coaches. If you as a coach are doing most things wrong and maybe also you are winning a lot of games and nobdy tells you. Well, then of course you as a new coach think you are doing everything like you should.

An example from when I started was that I wanted structure in offense, nothing wrong with that, but I wanted easy scores of course. I put in a stationary highpost and made the guards make two cuts after eachother in grade six thats a score on the second cut 7/10 times. As I see it I was doing right, but I did it at the wrong time, the players needed other stuff at that time than easy score from higpost scrubcuts.

I taught my team a 1-2-1-1 zonpress and I thought I was briljant, because it worked so great in games. We won our game in the south of Sweden with an average of 43,3 points/game and moste games was over in 4-5 minutes then we where in the lead with +25p and had to play defense from halfcourt.

In these ages all kinds of zonpresses are deadly weapons since most kids hasn`t developed court vision yet and can only focus in "one" direction. As everybody knows zonpresses when adults on the higher levels very rarely get you anything else then seconds of the shootclock, still so many youth coaches put in so many hours to work on their different zonpresses to take advantage of not yet developed kids.

I was undeafeted for 3½ years in the south of Sweden with my first headcoach experience and I did so many wrongs that on another level would be many right things instead. If you are new ask, watch and find out what to teach, dont do same wrongs as I did, when I thought I was doing right.

Look for chapter 3  
"Will to win is to loud - The kids cant hear you"

/Coachholmgran

Becoming a basketballcoachChapter 1 "Empty book"

First part the Empty book - new coach on the block

Well I think my story is similar to many coaches in the world, but I will try to share my experiences in a couple of chapters here on the page.

First part I call "Empty book" when I talk with other coaches about the first years as a coach.
I felt like I got a huge book and I started to have practises and looked in the book and there was no text in it. Well, what do you do then as a newborn coach, yes of course you do the things that you did as player often much to hard for the group you have.

The empty book should not be a empty book if the clubs really cares about the youth teams, as most people know we humans are creations of habits and good or bad habits can really make or break the players dreams of a basketballcareer.

Myself I didn`t have many coaches to bounch ideàs with when I stared as a 15 years old. And with that empty book and not so many to talk with the odds that it will be an optimal experience for the kids is slim to none.

So what do you as a new coach on block do then?
Well, I really already back then loved the game, so I wanted to improve as a coach.
So I started filling out the empty pages in my huge book, how?

Well, I remember I started with going to the library in my hometown and well lets just say that they hade 2 basketballbooks. One of the books was about 25 years old and well   alot had already happened with the game in that time. Well, I rented them and started reading about the game.....I filled out some more pages in my huge book.

Internet was pretty new and 56k speed dialup modem was the sh*t" back then I cant even try to tell you how many hours/days/months I sat in front of the screen searching for more stuff to add to my book. I found a lot of stuff, but when you are new you need guidance, since you have hard time realizing whats right for the age that you are coaching. Maybe you find great stuff on the net, in books but it is suitable for your team?
Thats a question I think is asked not often enough.

I realized that by watching other coaches have practises you could learn a lot and get tips how to do stuff the "right" way. Same thing here, you can find a lot of great stuff on other coaches practises, but it is suitable for your team?

I think all club should have a "manual" - These are the things we teach in different ages, to some of you that coach in serbia, greece and more. Right now you are scratching your heads maybe, but its not very common in Sweden, Denmark that the clubs has that. (so its more or less up to each coach to do his thing)
In Sweden have started a manual called "Players development manuel" its I think only 3 years old as a creation, but very important.

As a new coach you need guidance and you also need som "this you have to do" drills and pointers to the players. I think that clubs which have very few experienced coaches should have what I call "minutes that belongs to the club". What I mean with that is, if the team has practise for 1 hours, 30 minutes belongs to the club and that means the clubs drills are done with the clubs teaching "methods". That way you can always guarantee that 50% of the practises are in the clubs development direction.

Not everybody can become a good basketballcoach and I really hate when clubs try to get everybody that is not blesssed with becoming a great basketballplayers to become coaches for youth team. Its very easy at least for me to see who can become a good coach, and who can`t. How many parents are happy with having a new teacher for their kid in school, that has no authority or leadership or passion for teaching?

It all comes down to leadership. ( I will not go in to leadership in this part 1, since it will come in a later) chapter.

Well some time has passed and that empty book you started up with has gotten a lot of text, pictures, tips, tactical, pshyical tips and more in it. Now, you are starting to feel more like a coach and you philosphy has started to grow, but growing towars something good or are you on the wrong track?

More about this in next chapter "Doing wrong, when doing right"

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