What makes a great coach?

A great coach is innovative and excites talent, your job as a coach isn’t to give a player a path but to guide his journey, meaning that just because a certain style of coaching works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. Coaching isn’t all about teaching them how to play their desired sport but to incorporate real world principles and teach discipline and focus, which can be used in other areas of the world.

No one wants to be the sheep of the herd, as a coach you should be a pioneer of your own methods. That does not mean you can’t take inspiration from other notable coaches throughout history. But you should take pride in experimenting with different techniques and approaches to your team. A great way to build a foundation for your coaching philosophy is to add culture, whether it be your own or a culture you have heard about. Most notably back in 2008 Celtics coach Doc Rivers made the rookies research the term “Ubuntu” which is an ancient African term that means “I am because we are”. When you apply it to a sporting atmosphere it implies, I can only be better if my teammate is better. Doc Rivers executed this in a unique way by having the rookies present this word to the veterans as usually the rookies have very little voice, so it was a great bridge builder between the experienced and the inexperienced. Having a ritual is a great way to get kids together if you make it fun and relatable, whether it be something the kids made up or something you’ve seen. The most effective I’ve seen is when you’re in a huddle and you’re about to break you say to your team “hard work on three”. It doesn’t matter what your phrase is – it could be your team’s name or “rebounding on three” if it’s something the team has to work on. It’s a great way to put emphasis on your speech in timeout, to boost morale, or call the team’s attention to an objective.

The importance of taking threes has gone up exponentially in the past ten years so it is vital to teach your kids good shooting habits, so they don’t fall behind the curve once they get older. A lot of coaches are still stuck in the mindset of only layups or close shots and the occasional mid-range, but what they fail to realise is if you can teach your kids to space the floor (step out to the three point line) it will increase your close shot efficiency ten fold as you will open up driving lanes since the help-defense has to step further out. So, when it comes down to the help defense’s final decision, either they let the primary defender stay with the ball one on one or they go and help with a double which leaves their man wide open at three. The last vital step is realising everyone starts somewhere. In their first season a team might make 15% of their threes, and the next season 18%, and so on. It is better getting them to shoot these shots early so they become efficient by the time other kids have just started taking them.

Another key tip to keep in mind is not to get stuck on always improving your kids’ defensive skills and forgetting about the offensive potential. There’s no point if you can keep a team to ten when you struggle to score ten yourself. Defense is also more of a talent than a skill. Your defensive ability comes down to a few factors: lateral movement, wingspan, height and reaction time. Two out of the four things I just listed cannot be trained. Whereas offense has almost infinite possibilities, whether it be shooting splits (how efficient you can score the ball), different dribbling moves, moves that create space, how effectively you can cut, and the list goes on. There is always something you can learn and improve upon in offense. So, unless your team heavily lacks defense, don’t worry about making sure your kids are keeping teams under 10-15 points when you can orchestrate an offense to score 60 against any team.

Many different factors make up a great coach, which is what makes it interesting. There are many different systems run at domestic college and at the professional level and all of them have their own merits. Knowing that there are hundreds of winning gameplans out there, I believe it is most important for a coach to be flexible and accept that the gameplan needs to fit the kids not that the kids need to be moulded to the game plan.