The forgotten ones?

I have always wondered about how much effort is put in to following youth players that go to the states for high school and college. I`m not talking about the top players from each country they usually everybody has check on, but the other players that maybe will develop much in their USA years.

How much effort is put to finding players in the USA with double citizenships?
Last year....I "found" a player from the USA with a swedish mom and he`s good. He came in to the gym and asked if he could practise and I talked to his mom and dad and found out that he was actually swedish. Born here but moved to the states after a few years.....

His name is Jonas Pollard and plays at Minot State University, he`s a comboguard 6`3,and very athletic.

Stats for this season

Usually reasons for not finding this players are money reason and resources, but you only have to find ONE player in 10 years and it can change the whole success of your nationalteamsprogram no matter what level youth or senior.

I think its a big misstake by federation in "poor" basketball countries like for example Sweden, Denmark not to put the effort in, since the rewards can be tremendous for the nation.

Another player that is forgotten is Swedish 7`1 Jakob Batycki playing highschool ball at Phelps highschool and since he left sweden nobody from nationalteams organizations have even talked to him (what I have heard at least) and thoose 7`1 guys are so many of? Well not.....

He playing HS ball and actually right now is a starter for his team, he will go one more year after this in highschool and without letting out any names I can say that well respected colleges at d1 level have shown interest for him.

He has as a youthplayer done some nationalgames for Sweden, but now forgotten. What happens IF he becomes as good as he can and one of thoose d1 schools takes him, will somebody contact him then, propably yes, but the NEW question will then be;
Will he be interested after being forgotten for several years?

Cryin for me - Wayman Tisdale

Former great basketplayers Wayman Tisdale died in 2009 many years to early as a basketballplayer he ad som glory years and in 2007 he decided to go for music which was his other passion.

You can read more about Tisdales life here

As you see one of his legs is gone in the pic and that knee was amputated after they discorvered cancer in his knee.

He was great friends with artist Toby Keith and he wrote a great song to him after he died.

Listen to this song and you can feel the love and pain between to friends.

A great friday

Had a meeting on the afternoon and after that I went to a gym nearby to have a induvidual workout with a player born 1995, it was the first of several workouts we will have to get him ready for the nationalteam tryouts.

We went for almost an hour which was a little bit to long, but I needed to see certain things in the first workout to be able to plan the others.

He did well and has the heart and inteligens to learn and learn quickly, so thats great since there are lots of small details that he lacks to do certain things very well.

And thats a general problem with players. Many have to skills but they are not polished to their maximum and so they cant get nothing out of them in games.
It could be that they have a perfect crossover, but dotn have the perfect footwork to use with the perfect crossover.

It could be that they have a very quick first step, but they cant use it since they dont bend their legs or once again have the proper footwork to explode past defenders.

It could be they have a great shot, but when they move to shot the ball they almost never score the shots, but standing still...spooting up they are fine.

Maybe they only can use the cross step when they attack, so they can only attack one side of their defender...

The list goes on....but thats where individual traning (WITH CORRECTIONS) is so important with a coach that sees the problem and find some solution to fix it.

The list goes on and on....

Directly after that practise I hade teampratise with my boys98 and we had a great practise getting some teamaspects of the game in place. Adding some tools to their toolbox.....

Directly after that is was time for my new team in boys 93/94 and since it was my second practise witht hem, we have lots of stuff to memorize and put in their toolboxes. It went well and I`m looking forward to next practise.

Now sleep, sleep and sleep :-)

A free lesson with Kobe Bryant

Sittting at home searching on youtube for some basketballclips a came across this video, that I actually hadn`t seen before with Kobe Bryant.

I`m not religous

But GOD has something against me :-)

Just something I thought about while using a whole roll of toilette paper to blow my nose the whole day.
Since I haven`t been out much the last week or so, I decided to take a little walk to a gym near by where I live to get my body som activity and also to check out the gym.

I was suppose to have practises there already in september, but a enormous rainy day smashed that and destroyd the floor in the gym, so this was actually the first time I have been in that gym.

Its a classic schoolgym where you wonder what the arcitechs thought with when they built it and let me tell you it wasn`t their head. Why build a big gym and put the walls 30cm`s from the basketball lines or for handball the wall becomes the line (but who cares).

Its otherwise a perfect gym I dont know about you, but when I walk into a gym a get a feeling of like or dislike directly and this was clearly a like.

When I coached up in Stockholm I had practises in one of the biggest gyms that I have had practises in. It was also a school gym and enormous, but already wlaking into the gym the first time a got that feeling this is not for me since it felt like they had hidden the gym in maze to get to it.

That feeling was correct it was the biggest but also the worst I ever have coached in since the accostics killed you as a coach. You could stand 3 meters away from a player screaming you loungs out and still he/she could`t hear you. The gym just swallowed whatever you tried to say loudly.....

So every time you had something to say you had to get the team together and talk with them, but that took some time to get them in a cirkel because of the accostics.

Why didn`t you use a whistle?
Well, I hate whistles as much as I hate snow. I think some like using whistles and they are called referees and I`m a basketballcoach :-)

Back to the gym again......I will enjoy having practises there it will be my paradise here in Hørsholm, there are bigger, more baskets in other gyms but this had that good feeling about.

Like the headlines says I`m not religous in other ways than I believe that everybody is their own GOD and there are lots of "judas" around :-)

But last night I watched Blake Griffin play with his Clippers and he must be close to a fictionary monster. He just outworks oppenents and hos body strength is out of this world. I would love to see him and our swedish superstar Jonas Jerebko play together in the NBA, that team would be one of the hardest to beat just because of the simple facts that they work harder than the rest.

Last nights game was his 23rd double double in a row......unless he gets injured and stops early in his NBA career I tell you Karl Malone is in trouble.

Point-rebound[7] Rank Name Numbers 1 Malone, KarlKarl Malone* 779 2 O'Neal, ShaquilleShaquille O'Neal^ 726 3 Duncan, TimTim Duncan^ 695 4 Garnett, KevinKevin Garnett^ 681 5 Olajuwon, HakeemHakeem Olajuwon* 673 6 Barkley, CharlesCharles Barkley* 620 7 Ewing, PatrickPatrick Ewing* 563 8 Robinson, DavidDavid Robinson* 543 9 Mutombo, DikembeDikembe Mutombo 469 10 Willis, KevinKevin Willis 454	Point-assist[8] Rank Name Numbers 1 Stockton, JohnJohn Stockton* 696 2 Kidd, JasonJason Kidd^ 397 3 Nash, SteveSteve Nash^ 374 4 Johnson, KevinKevin Johnson 319 5 Hardaway, TimTim Hardaway 279 6 Johnson, MagicMagic Johnson* 277 7 Strickland, RodRod Strickland 271 8 Jackson, MarkMark Jackson 242 8 Payton, GaryGary Payton 242 10 Marbury, StephonStephon Marbury 210

Thats some crazy records :-)

Triple doubles?

Rank	Name	Triple-doubles
1	Robertson, OscarOscar Robertson*	181
2	Johnson, MagicMagic Johnson*	138
3	Kidd, JasonJason Kidd^	106[27]
4	Chamberlain, WiltWilt Chamberlain*	78
5	Bird, LarryLarry Bird*	59
6	Lever, FatFat Lever	43
7	James, LeBronLeBron James^	31[28]
8	Havlicek, JohnJohn Havlicek*	30
9	Hill, GrantGrant Hill^	29[29]
10	Jordan, MichaelMichael Jordan*	28
11	Drexler, ClydeClyde Drexler*	25
12	Frazier, WaltWalt Frazier*	23
13	Webber, ChrisChris Webber	22
14	Richardson, Micheal RayMicheal Ray Richardson	21
15	Barkley, CharlesCharles Barkley*	20

Ricky Rubio
FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship
2006-08-19 August 19, 2006
Spain vs Croatia

Minutes
33 
Points  
19    
Rebounds
10
Assist
13    
Steals
11    
Blocks
0    
Overtime
No

Now that sick!

Back in Denmark

My team participated in the 33th Lundaspelen one of the worlds biggest youth tournament in basketball. I had devided them into to even teams since I think at this age its to early to put all the best in one team.

There is lots of time and to stress it is not something I feel is needed right now. My two teams played a ok tournament with one loosing A-quaterfinal after overtime and the other lost the B semifinal. At this age the hardest things are most of them not on the court, homesickness, sleeping problems, resting time instead of "fun" time, learning to respect others for a couple of days.

I will write more about these things some other day.

After my two teams went out of the tournament we came back to our sleeping quarters and i hooked them up with a great basketball DVD called "The final shoot" - The Hank Gathers Story. We had a nice time allthough we only had to look forward to sleeping, breakfasr, cleaning and the we went to watch the final in hour agegroup whick was between TuS Lichterfelde (Germany) and Norrkoping Dolphins (sweden).

We came home about 13:00 on the 5th and the kids, parents where happy. Myself I was totally hammered by fever, runy noose and sourness in my whole body. My punishment for sleeping on a thin madrass close to the floor in a drafty classroom. Had 2½ days of fever and now still with a bad cold a have to skip watching some great games in our homegym. The danish championships finals for youth teams is played this weekend plus two league games, but with age comes smartness they say and I have stayed home to get well instead, but damm thats hard......I love this game sometimes to much, but rather that than having no passion besides work and family.

So home sick I have been working with things that I can do, planing a pre season tournament

Date is not yet decided

and planing a coach clinic and so far its gone well and I hope to close these two in some days.

If I wake up tomorrow without a runy nose I will be the happiest man alive.....at leats until I start to move and use my shoulder whick is still broken. Its been over 3½ months since the train accident in Sweden where I got the injury and thats just plain sucks that it still is a problem for me.