A Coach's Diary

A great, old-school video about skill development Pony Baden.

In chapter 2 of his book, 11 Rings, Phil Jackson goes through what he  calls his 11 basic principles of mindful leadership that he has developed over the years.  Below are short notes about rules 1-6. 1 - Lead From The Inside Out      2 - Bench The Ego 3 - Let Each Player Discover His Own Destiny I always tried to give each player the freedom to carve out a role for himself within the team structure.  I've seen dozens of player's flame out and disappear not because they couldn't figure out how ot fit into the cookie-cutter model of basketball that pervades the NBA. My approach was always to relate to each player as a whole person, not just as a cog in the basketball machine.  That meant pushing him to discover what distinct qualities he could bring to the game beyond taking shots and making passes. 4 - The Road To Freedom is A Beautiful System It was important for him to find the perfect system that gave his players freedom ...

The following post was borrowed from George Raveling's website at coachgeorgeraveling.com .  It is a really good article about how to approach the interview process.  You can find the article in it's entirety here . George Raveling is currently Nike's director of International Basketball.  He previously served as the head coach at Washington State, Iowa, and USC. Very few coaches go into an interview process with an aggressive mentality, most go with their hat in their hand! Open the interview process w/ a short statement about why you want the job & what unique value you will bring to the job!(MAX 60 sec intro) The best interviews are ‘WOW’ interviews!!!                                          At the end of the interview make sure there’s no doubt ...

I first stumbled across peer pressure drills while searching through the blog of coach legend Gary Colson at garycolson.wordpress.com. Simply put, peer pressure drills are basic drills that you probably use every day, but as a team, you won’t move on to another drill/skill until you have completed a certain number of repetitions to perfection, either in a row or in totality.  For example, every day, we start our practice with zig-zag ball-handling.  We set the cones up and complete four different drills: (1) regular crossovers down and back, (2) between the legs crossovers down and back, (3) behind the back down and back, (4) spin move down and back.  In order for us to move on to the next drill, everybody has to do it correctly and make their lay-up going down and coming back.  One miss, and we do that particular drill over again.      For every miss over one, we have a do...