Great games today

If you dont have TV channels that show the games you wanna watch, there is a lot of great streams on the internet. This is todays basketball games online :-)

(If you klick on the picture you will come to the page with links, the links you find to the right of  each game where the arrow is)

Iverson in Besiktas

Well, no news that he is there, but it was nice to see Allen Iverson play real basketball for a change and not the NBA style of play. He had a OK game 15p in 23minutes, but he is not in gameshape really, but he will be I hope.

I watched a little of the swedish womens league game between Solna and Norrkoping, but I became quickly bored af all the dribbling without anycause at all.
So went back to see most of Besiktas vs Hemofarm instead a game thart besiktas had in their backpack, but the coach made som really stupid changes and he kepted Iverson in the bench until like 5 minutes left of the game.
What happened was that they had a comfortable lead, when a of a sudden Hemofarm became on fire from beoynd the threepointline and whoops, they where back in the game and of course with a long 3pointer went up by 2points.
Lesson learned in basketball a 15p lead goes away very quickly, dont celabrate until the game is over. The coaches helped with strange changes and hesitated to change back.
Besiktas learned there lesson with a loss in this game, a very unecessery loss as I see it.

Went back to womens game and all of a sudden Norrkoping came back from 20points down to making it excitning again, but the players in Solna that should take their team on their shoulders did and Solna got the win.

There was a big win in Sweden for Norrkoping Dolphins mens team who beat Turk Telekom in Euro challenge.

Norrköping Dolphins - Turk Telekom 101-89
(41-21, 25-21, 18-20, 17-27)
Norrköping: George Gervin 16, Mikael Linduist 15, Oladapo Ayuba 14, Joakim Kjellbom 14, Tomas Gaidamavicius 12, Anton Saks 10, Polivas Sakinis 9, Joe Mcnaull 6, Andrew Mitchell 5.
Turk Telekom: Anthony Gaffney 24, Yunus Cankaya 23, Heiko Chaffartzik 11, K'zell Wesson 7, Mehmet Yagmur 6, Ceyhun Altay 6, Sani Becirovic 4, Gregory Stiemsma 4, Ümit Türkoglu 2, Adem Ören 2.
Publik: 1 803 (Stadium Arena)

What has Iron Man to do with basketball?

Well, at first of course nothing but when you start to look into it, you will find lots of common stuff. Tonight I will have the pleasure of listening to Torbjørn Sindballe a double world champion in Iron Man competition I tell you thats one tought son of b*tch.

One of the things that we can learn of the non teamsports is their mental toughness and how they dont blame other for failure.Normally the non teamsports athleets have much better selfawarness and mentally they are stronger. The have like I wrote no one else the blame, so the better be prepaired.

Another thing is that they often take much more responsability in their own training, if they dont train the will fail, they have nobody to hide behind or to change with on a bad day.

Hopefully most of our 50 coaches in the club will come and listen tonight.

Danish talent on the way....

Sitting in Farum Arena in Denmark and are enjoying one of the most talented danish youth nationalteams ever practising. What this team has is rare in the nordic countries and its size, I`m talking real size and thats not enough they can move too.

The coaches of this nationalteam really has some unpolished diamands to handle in the next couple of month.  Right now they have about 30 players in the group, where 3 players will arrive at a later stage during the summer since they play in USA, Croatia.
So they of natural causes cant practise during the season. But they will be ready....

Of the players at Farum Arena 1 player gets me a little extra fired up and that is Sami Elaraki.

 Sami  (210cm fra Aalborg) is a huge talent with a great body and has great hands, but somebody needs to teach him how to shoot the ball the technic is horrible, but if somebody will teach him. He will be one of the most talented players coming out of Denmark ever.

In  the arena there are one coach and one member of the federation watching the practise, which is a great learning tool for coaches.For clubcoaches to see what the NT works with and how the will play and so on, will help their player reaching his dreams.
Its almost always the same in Sweden coaches stay away and thats just sad.

Coaches Steen Guido, Morten Thomsen and Roberto Velosa have a great group to work with, there is lots to discuss

Watching coach Morten Thomsen at work he is propably one coach with a record of different coachingpositions, he moves, sits, stands, semi stands, one knee, D-positions and more,  its pure enjoyment to watch him coach in practises. Clear instructions (shown and spoken) and very involved and if the players listen they will learn!

Question is will they?

And next question will their clubteams work on the same things to help the nationalteam and danish basketball to be succesful ?, well maybe :-)

Chapter 4: Dealing with players and parents as a new coach

This is a chapter that I propably could write on and on and on about, but I will try to get just some of the essentials into this text.

Dealing with parents
First of all starting out as a new coach there are many things that is hard in the beginning until you get a way of dealing with the certain situations. Some you make rules for, some you hand out info to parents and players, so no questions need to be asked later on. The problem is no matter how great you are at writting down rules, instructions and more, there will always be questions and inputs from players and parents.

This are the situations that are very hard as a new coach since, now its not a pen and a piece of papper but LIVE IRL in real life communication. Communication is the key, but  is also normally something you get better at by experience and age.
When I started out I was lucky I had great parents in my first team and they where supporters and not assistent coaches. I mean with that they let me coach and them being supporters and transportation organizers and more.

If you are unlucky you get  a lot of "assistent coaches" and of course they know everything since they played sports 10-15 years ago. Clubs need to help new coaches being organized to deal with parents its not always very easy. And its so important since all clubs in at least the nordic countries needs parents to be involved.

Normally the parents that have some sportsbackground maybe in the heat of moment dont understand, but when they calm down the realize it.

The hardest parents as I see to deal with as a new coach is the parents without any sports background and still they have 1000 opinions about most things you do with the team, all from practise, to games, playing time is normally a big factor for them........and for some reason moste of these non sport parents all seem to think a like. Everything should be fair, equal, but sport isn`t like that and I tell you after 33 years in life, life is not equal or fair but there is for some reasons thoughts of that utopia.

Well, to me sports are very "fair, equal", but you dont get it for free or easy, you will have to fight, sweat, cry, have pain, bleed, to do what you wanna do. This is something you have with you whenever in life and to me (us) that have great sport passion this is obvious, but you need to realize as a new coach, that the non sport parents dont see it as this. They haven`t lived it, so to them its a alien thing.....

One last thing about parents adn of course like I started with I could write page after page after page, but the last thing about parents is something that is a problem every year since I started coaching 17 years ago.

Parents priorities dont always go hand and hand with the players/kids
Well, this could go in either way....the parents want their kid to be great and basketball, but the kids doesn´t he just likes basketball.
But I will write from the point that the kid wants to be great. Parents need to sit down and talk with their kid about there basketball playing and how importants its for the kid. Just as coaches need individual talks parents need to talk to their kids. I have seen so many kids torn up because the parents just dont have any respect for their kids playing sports. They just plan totally egoistic there travelling or visits or shopping when their kids has a game or tournament.
Well, you might say they are the parents the decide and thats totally right. But a kid is just a kid one time and there are 365 days in a year. There are "babysitters", friends of family and so in, maybe he doesn´t need to go with the parents.

So this is something that needs to be communicated to the parents and thats not easy for a new coach I promise you that.

One tip!
For all new coaches or experienced coaches find the parent that 90% respects and listens too, every team has one. Try to get him/her as teamleader organizing the parents its great if this parents has sports background also, then he will get many questions from the other parents and answer them so you will not even hear the questions.

Today there is a "new" problem to deal with known as "curling parents". It aint new, but the % of a teams parents that are "curling" are so much higher more on that in another chapter.


Dealing with players
Handling players as new coach is just as hard as handling parents and maybe harder in way since you meet the players a lot more often.

I have always actually worked from a big point in my philosphy and that is dont LIE to the kids. I totally hate, when coaches sugercoat what they say or totally flat out just LIE, to avoid the conflict with the kid/parents.

But here is the thing as a new coach its very hard to get your point out without saying the wrong thing or not getting the players to understand what you mean and he/she takes it very very hard, since they didn` t really understood what you said.

Players will always gain more and be tougher athletes if you are honest with them and to me this is a big thing. I have during the years heard so many lies at every level of the game and to me thats just messed up.  

HOW, do you look yourself int he mirror at night?

Well maybe they dont have a mirror :-)

As soon as you can have short minitalks with the players and times when you have the possibility. It doesn`t have to be this superorganized indiviueal talks with charts, and more. Just, get talking with the players before, after practises during breaks in practises, during a drill take som time ask some questions and more. The tip here is use the time you have, its easy to be to ambitous and fail beacuse lack of time since work, school. Do it in the time you already have booked for that team and do it great instead of 50% of what it could have been.

Attitude problem players is something that needs to be adressed directly one way or the other this needs to change or there will problems for the whole team further on. Many hours may be spent to get that kid on the right track, remember bad attitude directed in the right direction will be fuel instead of shit in the system. Thats where you as a coach come in, to guide this "bad kid" they right way and as a new coach this is extremelly hard, especially since often the kids with bad attitude is one or the best player on the team. And if that problem isnt handled it can stop his/hers chances to become  what he/she could have become.

If new and unexperienced coaches are put on team, the club needs to have somebody responsable to deal with these kinds of problems, if not well then you really dont care about the kids.

Well I will stop here and propably come back to this huge subject at a later stage.

Next chapter 5 will be about: Yearly plan and practise plans, what to do?

Chapter 1 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Empty book"

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

Chapter 3 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Will to win is to loud, the kids cant hear you"

The train has left the station

In Sweden the highest league is being divided into Norrkoping Dolphins and LF basket (former Plannja) and the rest of the league. All though LF basket has gone down in their budget their budget is still much bigger than the rest.

But for real the train has left and on it is Norrkoping and LF basket tries to follow. Norrkoping is playing european leagues not only with the mens team, but also with their wheelchair team I think thats great. The swedish federation also thinks thats great and have supported the club with at total of 10 000 euro for this season. The Swedish federation started doing this with clubs that set higher goals and play internationally which of course is very important for swedish basketball and its development.

Norrkopings built a new arena not to long ago and has dramatically increased their budget as a club from before the arena (770 000euro) to now last year (3,6 million euro). Thats a big change and their arena had a + result last year of 130 000 euro

(My numbers are just estimated from the article in swedish newspapper, they are not precise)
You can read the article here

They have swedens first arena for BASKETBALL, the building is built so it fits for basketballplayers with higher ceeling indoors and dressingsrooms and more built for basketball.

View of Stadium arena basketballcourt

This is connected to the arena also new

 
For next year they will go much, much more +in their budget and what they can use that money to do for Norrkoping and Swedish basketball will be incrediable.

The train has left the station will some other club get on the rails and try to follow for real or will swedish league be a one team league.
One team that only can loose if the players dont give a *blip* or half the team gets injured?

Do you or your club have a Camp?

Hello Basketball lovers,

Do you or your club have a basketball camp?

Well if you have and want me to put it in the page email  me info or write here in comments.

I will publish alla camps on this part of the page:
Basketball Camps

Please, write what ages and if its both for girls and boys. The camp can be from all over the world, so make sure you have some info in english about your camp. Wouldn`t it be fun, with campers from other countries on your camp this year?

Well thats hard if nobody knows absout it :-)

Sincerely
Coachholmgran