The Process

You’re a High School/College coach sitting there in your office thinking to yourself, “Why are so few players coming to me at the ages of 15-18 not having mastered the basic fundamental?” Well, there may be a solution to that question…

The joy of being involved in sports is the ability to witness others grow into outstanding people, not just athletes. For the sake of this conversation, we are going to focus on the development of an athlete’s ability to improve as a player.

Your answer to the previously aforementioned question above may lie in the USA Basketball model. USA Basketball has a Coaching License program that you can become a part of, on a yearly basis. Once you pass their exam, you receive access to all of their content and the best source of material is the Youth Development Guidebook. In a nutshell (there are almost 200 pages), there are four levels of development: Introductory, Foundational, Advanced and Performance. Each level progressively adds basketball-specific skills and movements, in a logical order.

To give an example of a European model used to track and hold everyone accountable, below is a piece from an interview I listened to recently.

In a recent interview of Sefu Bernard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrF20cVLpk) he recounts time spent in Italy a number of years ago and how appealing the experience was. The model this program follows is that the assistant coach of the Division 1 team is the Head Coach of the Junior U21 team. The top assistant for that Junior team is the Head Coach for the U17 team. The assistant for the U17 team is the Head Coach for the U15 team and it progressively works its way down to the youth levels, U7. With this model, each coach knew what was expected of the next and the one before.

For instance, an example Sefu gave was his experience observing a U9 workout on shooting. In this particular workout, Sefu noted the specific athletes upper body form was all over the place, and proceeded to ask the coach why was he not correcting the players’ form. The coach wasn’t concerned about the details of the upper body during a shot. Why, you may ask? The coach’s response was that at this age group, their focus was on balance, footwork and the full extension of the follow through. The coach knew that once he passed the athletes on to the next level, they would focus on other details of the shot. This method of creating building blocks and instilling habits progressively are key. If a player was not equipped with a specific habit, the coach knew who to go back too and ask questions on why so and so does not have proper balance or is inconsistent in their shooting footwork etc. Talk about being able to hold each other accountable. This model of teaching is a foreign language to America because everyone has their own agenda, players are hearing different methodologies on how to perform a certain skill and quite frankly, players just do not have the bandwidth to process and maintain all of this information from numerous coaches. We confuse the athletes more than we provide valuable, concrete teachings.

It is a wide known belief that the European model is better than the American model of development. Europeans produce highly skilled players that are able to dribble, shoot and pass regardless of size. It is no surprise the San Antonio Spurs, majority of their team are international players, have dominated the NBA landscape for the last 17 years. Greg Popovich is a fairly transparent individual and countless times has spoken on the notion that Europeans are more skilled and are more concerned with “we” over “me.”

As a coach, we have a responsibility to teach players the basic fundamentals, in a progressive manner, especially if we are teaching players ages 8-14. We as Americans can be so concerned with the end result that we skip the process. At these critical ages, the sole focus should be on development over wins. By your will to win, you implement ideas such as zones, traps, sets, all things that are not necessary at these particular stages of a player’s development. You’re not expecting an 11-year-old kid to know how to manage a bank account without the preceding math skills required to do so. Do NOT skip steps on the way to success.

In pressure situations, players revert back to their old habits. Basketball is a game played at a fast pace that require players to have habits instilled that allow them to make quick decisions and in times of crisis. The only way to build those habits is to work on them constantly as the athlete progresses through the years.

Let us all unite to help Grow The Game. A standard curriculum mandatory for every coach to follow at the youth level will only benefit the game we all love. America has always had the best athletes in the world. Lets now combined that athletic ability with the best skilled players in the world.

“Brick by brick, work on your craft everyday. A brick wall can’t stand up and be sturdy without carefully placed bricks that were laid one at a time with diligent detail.” – Alan Stein.