Basketball Team Goals

When searching for a way to approach creating team rules, I found the following article at http://www.coachlikeapro.com/basketball-team-goals.html, written by Brad Winters.

Basketball team goals are very powerful! Team goals have the power to promote team unity, to create loyalty to the program and to the coach, to improve the intensity and quality of practices, and to create the mind-set that the team is bigger than any one individual.

Establishing and Setting Basketball Team Goals

Simply put, for programs to be successful over the long haul, the coach must set clear goals for himself and his team. These goals incorporate the coach's vision, his mission, and the foundation that his program is built on. Once written down, these goals will provide the coach and his team with a compass that points everyone involved with the program in the right direction. These goals also reveal the amount of hard work, time, and personal sacrifice everyone involved with the program must make in order for the team to achieve its dreams.

It is the coach's job to constantly sell these goals to his players and support group daily. Your ability to sell your vision (team goals) of where you wish your program to go, will eventually determine your success or failure as a coach.

Long-Term Basketball Team Goals

The best coaches make goals that are both long and short-term. Long-term goals give you something to shoot for. For example, "win the state championship."

Short-Term Basketball Team Goals

Short-term goals help you keep on track and allow you to experience success and build confidence as you work towards your long-term goal: "We will hold our opponents to 12 or fewer points per quarter." Short-term goals are the building blocks in which you build your program and what you emphasize every day in practice... This is what you plan to be good at.

Goal setting requires some thought and serious effort. Take time to plan your success journey today. You'll be glad you did!

High School Basketball Team Goals

- Become the leaders of our school.

- Be a positive witness in our community.

- Be the hardest working team in the state, and specialize in playing great defense.

- Hold our opponents to 12 or fewer points a quarter.

- Average 72 points or more per game.

- Shoot 70% or better from the free throw line.

-  Commit less than 10 turnovers per game.

- Win the District Championship.

- Make it back to the Cajun Dome (Top 28 Tournament).

- Win the State Championship.

Shaka Smart: New Coach Put The Fun Back In The Game

I ran across the following article from here as I was doing research for core values for our program.  It’s an article about Shaka Smart’s initial impact on the UT men’s basketball program.  It was written before the start of the basketball season, and you can see the change of ‘energy’ in the program immediately after Smart taking over.

The first 5 paragraphs below with the red font are the first few paragraphs of the article which quickly highlight the immediate impact of Smart and his staff on the UT program.  I then bulleted key takeaways that I saw from the article.  You can read the article in full after the jump.

New coach has put the fun back in the game for his players.

When Smart was introduced, Isaiah Taylor was so fed up with Texas basketball that he couldn’t wait to pack up and leave. The way March ended, could you blame him?

Get me outta here.

Javan Felix, Demarcus Holland, Connor Lammert … go right on down the list. Basketball, at Texas anyway, wasn’t fun anymore. Players weren’t mentally broken, but they were mentally beaten to a pulp. Dispirited.

Last week, Taylor and several of his teammates appeared to be different people. They radiated positive energy. They smiled. Felix boasted about his daily regimen of 600 shots. Holland flexed his arms to show off some bulging biceps. Lammert was dripping with sweat after a midday workout.

-  Longhorns radiate positive energy as they ‘attack the day.’

- Last week, Taylor and several of his teammates appeared to be different people. They radiated positive energy. They smiled. Felix boasted about his daily regimen of 600 shots. Holland flexed his arms to show off some bulging biceps. Lammert was dripping with sweat after a midday workout.

- “I’ve probably been in the gym more in these last two months than I have my whole time at Texas,” said Taylor, who eventually cooled off and ultimately chose to come back for his junior season.

- Can a new coaching staff really make that much of a difference? Perhaps. Especially when it’s a staff that radiates positive energy, preaches values like appreciation and enthusiasm and demands you “attack the day.”

- “Everything he told us from the first day he met with us has been true,” Felix said. “From the time we step out of the bed in the morning, he wants us to be aggressive.”

“I don’t know if coach Smart gives them supplements to get them going or what,” Lammert said. “It seems like they’re on something, I’ll be honest, but it’s contagious.”

-  Best anyone can tell, this may be Smart’s secret to success: enthusiasm. He devotes an entire day to it. Enthusiasm Tuesday. “To me, that should be the easiest one, if you set your mind to it,” Smart said.

-  It’s one of Smart’s five core values, along with appreciation, competitiveness, accountability and something he calls “teamship,” in which players align themselves with team goals. Those five made the cut from an initial list of 19 when Smart was at Virginia Commonwealth.

-  “He told us if you’re going to come to practice and not have energy, you might as well not come,” Holland said. “He said he’s really open to that. Well, I’m not sure he’s totally open to that.”

-  If you show up, you best be ready to compete. Nowadays, everything is a competition. “And they’re keeping score,” Felix said.

-  “He’ll never get mad if you take a wide-open shot,” said Lammert, who has been working on taking one dribble in from the 3-point line before shooting. “If you miss it 10 times in a row, he’ll tell you, ‘Keep getting ready to shoot it with confidence.’ ”

-  “A lot of people probably didn’t believe in themselves,” Taylor said. “I think a lot of people weren’t afraid, but they didn’t want to make a mistake and make anybody mad. This year, Shaka is basically telling us that there are going to be mistakes, but you’ve just got to limit those mistakes. It’s all about positive reinforcement with him.”

-  “If there’s anything in terms of philosophy that our guys hopefully understand after four months that’s important to us as coaches, it’s those five core values,” Smart said. “That doesn’t guarantee you’re going to have purpose or even perform at a high level at those, but they understand what the expectations are.”

-  Attack the day.

Saban on Complacency and the Human Condition

The following article was borrowed from Bob Starskey’s blog, HoopThoughts.BlogSpot.com.

The following were a few takeaways from an article written for USAToday by George Schroeder on Alabama's Nick Saban and his annual battle with complacency:

'People think success is a continuum.  Success is momentary.  And to be really successful you have to have consistency in performance, so you have to do it over the long term.' 

“The challenge is always when you have success, people tend to forget what made them successful, And complacency creates a blatant disregard for doing the right things or continuing to do the things that you’ve always done to help you be successful. So consequently you’re not at the top of your game when that happens.”

“The human condition is to survive. It’s not to win the championship. It’s not to be the best you can be. It’s to survive. … So when you tell me I’ve got to sell this many cars this month and that’s my quota — well, when I sell that many cars I’m ready for a couple of days off and go sit in my chair and, you know, eat Tostitos and cheese. I’m not trying to set the world record.

“That’s the human condition. So it’s actually special to be the other way, to be somebody that wants to win a championship, to be somebody that wants to be the best they can be.”

Love Tough and With a Purpose

Megan Leuick and Kaitlyn Cresencia have created a website titled ‘The Coaching Assist.’  What they do is target various coaches and then do a comprehensive 30 minute interview via telephone and then put those thoughts their website.  They also include book reviews.

They recently interviewed Bob Starkey, the mastermind behind the popular blog Hoop Thoughts. Coach Starkey’s career began at the high school level and includes stints of time on both the men’s and women’s sides of the collegiate game.

The following excerpt is from that interview regarding the importance of establishing strong relationships with today's athletes.  You can find the full article here.

When we asked Coach Starkey if players have changed during his time as a coach, he pointed out that parents are the ones who have changed. Kids today are raised differently than they were 20 years ago, just as society as a whole has changed. From working with people like Dale Brown he has learned, “x’s and o’s are nice and all, but you win through relationships.” Because of this, he makes a consistent effort to develop every relationship. “Every kid has a different ‘why.'”  As a coach, explaining the “why” behind the actions you are asking your players to perform is crucially important. Just as important is understanding why your players play the game.

In terms of his coaching style, he feels that with a foundation of trust, coaches can still be demanding of players and “get after them” when needed. His philosophy behind this is five years from now when some of these players are competing overseas or in the WNBA, or working for a demanding boss, you don’t want that to be the first time they are exposed to toughness. He then alluded to Jon Gordon’s spin on the phrase “Tough Love” that he likes to refer to as “Love Tough.” In Gordon’s article about the subject he explains that love must come first in order for the toughness to be respected.

Our Philosophy

Defense Wins Championships!

1 – Stop and pressure the ball.
2 – Plug all gaps.
3 – Rotate and help the helper.
4 – Contest all shots.
5 – Box out and secure the rebound.
6 – Do all with togetherness, energy and enthusiasm.
                - Best way we can measure that is through our level of communication.

We Have To …

- Be the toughest team to score on.
- Be the loudest team every game.

The Team That Takes, and Makes, The Most ‘Great’ Shots, Wins The Game

1 – Score in transition.
2 – Score in secondary.
3 – Have a possession that ends in a great shot

What Makes a Great Possession

1 – Ball reversals
2 – Scoring actions off the ball
3 – Good spacing
4 – Paint touches | Inside out possessions
5 – Open perimeter shots or shots inside the paint
6 – Second chance shots

We Have To …

1 - Win the turnover battle
2 - Be the best passing team
3 - Set great screens

Communication: Speaking like Twitter vs. Speaking like Facebook

Megan Leuick and Kaitlyn Cresencia have created a website titled ‘The Coaching Assist.’  What they do is target various coaches and then do a comprehensive 30 minute interview via telephone and then put those thoughts their website.  They also include book reviews.

They recently interviewed Bob Starkey, the mastermind behind the popular blog Hoop Thoughts. Coach Starkey’s career began at the high school level and includes stints of time on both the men’s and women’s sides of the collegiate game.

The following excerpt is from that interview regarding the importance of correcting your players in a quick and efficient manner so that they can get the important information and move onto the next play without focusing on the present and future as oppose to previous mistakes.  You can find the full article here.

John Wooden had a rule where he tried his best to never lecture his players or spend too much time making a point; brevity and conciseness were valued during his teaching. 

In Coach Starkey’s experiences he’s seen coaches who will stop practice and talk for extended periods of time and others who are quick and concise. Coach Starkey shared with us the example that Rick Pitino has the “8-second” rule where coaches in his program only have eight seconds to make a coaching correction. 

Coach Bob Knight is also someone he referred to in being able to correct and teach something with as few words as possible. Overall, you don’t want players to harp on the last mistake. To manage this, he used Don Meyer’s famous acronym “N.B.A.” or “Next Best Action.” Neither the score, time on the clock, or even the last play, should steal your concentration from a total focused effort for the next possession.

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"Some coaches are like Twitter and can get it across in 140 characters or less.  Others are like Facebook and need two or three paragraphs."

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Advice For Newcomers

Megan Leuick and Kaitlyn Cresencia have created a website titled ‘The Coaching Assist.’  What they do is target various coaches and then do a comprehensive 30 minute interview via telephone and then put those thoughts their website.  They also include book reviews.

They recently interviewed Bob Starkey, the mastermind behind the popular blog Hoop Thoughts. Coach Starkey’s career began at the high school level and includes stints of time on both the men’s and women’s sides of the collegiate game.

For newcomers to the coaching world, Coach Starkey has the following pieces of advice:

1.  Seek multiple mentors

- Have 5-7 people you can go to at all times
- Inside and outside coaching

2.  Do the best you can and others will notice
- He never had to apply for a job; all of the job changes in his career he was recruited for
- Focus on being the best you can and the opportunities will come

3.  It’s a journey, you can never know enough
- Go out and seek knowledge from other coaches

4.  Have a system of organization
- Learn to categorize in a way that allows you to easily find your resources when you need to.

5.  Don’t allow ‘labels’ to define who you are as a coach or a professional
- Be more than a skill developer, recruiter, or offensive coordinator

6.  Be process-oriented rather than result-oriented
- Don’t stop learning when you get positive results
- Don’t play the scoreboard, play to your potential

7.  Relationships are as important as the X’s and O’s
- Make sure you are building relationships with all of your stakeholders – administrators, fans, other coaches, etc.

Put the Person Before the Player

When asked why she became a coach, Coach Sahar Nusseibeh of Bowling Green referenced her high school coach and his commitment to his team.  She said that the still resonates as one of the best motivators she’s ever met and is responsible for lighting a passion in her for coaching.  “He was extremely committed to us.  I felt as if he would run through a wall for me.

https://thecoachingassist.com/2015/11/02/sahar-nusseibeh-assistant-coach-at-bowling-green/#more-392

‘For sustainable success, you have to put the person before the player.’

Coach Sahar Nusseibeh of Bowling Green has created  a library of resources to provide to her players, along with activities for the players to help apply the concepts that she is looking to emphasize.   For example, if a player is struggling with confidence in her ability, she may find a TED Talk on confidence that the player might relate to.  

Sustainable Development: Person Over the Player