Lessons From Ganon Baker

Ganon Baker has trained thousands of basketball players the world over — ranging from junior high schoolers to NBA and WNBA players.

Below is an article written about his journey to become one of the most well-known trainers in the world.  Here are a couple of my favorite responses:

DP: If you had 15 minutes with any player, boy or girl, any level, and you had to divide that up, what are the three most important things you could tell them about being a better basketball player?
1 – Show them how to work hard
2 – Show them how important it is to study the game and be mentally prepared
3 – Find their kryptonite and help them overcome it

DP: Are you a fan of anybody in particular?

GB: "The Spurs. Their style, their culture. They buy-in to coaching, they respect the coaches. A lot of teams don't listen to the assistant coaches.  That’s why I love the Spurs.  They do it the right way.”

DP: You're in your 17th year of training. What keeps driving you to do this?
GB: “ I'm helping the kids have a better quality of life by instilling the values of passion, purpose, discipline, honesty, responsibility, grit — there's hundreds of values that I choose to speak about. Obviously, the longer I have with the kid the better ... but I feel they're going to go be a better person and be more attentive in school, to have goals and to be driven in life to do something positive. I use basketball as a platform.”

You can read the article in full below:

Baker, who is hosting his camp at Dickinson High School this week for the second summer in a row, has dedicated his life to the sport and its most dedicated participants in hopes of improving their dribbling and shooting along with their mindset in how they attack the game and everyday life.

Baker, 44, a Hampton, Va., native, put together an impressive playing resume in his younger days. He won a state basketball title with Hampton High School in 1989, and he graduated in 1990; he played one year at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, making the Atlantic Ten's all-rookie team, before transferring to North Carolina-Wilmington, where he graduated in 1995; he played one professional year in Iceland (2000-01) and averaged 33 points per game; he tried out with the NBA's Denver Nuggets in 2002, missing the cut for the Summer League team after a broken finger.

Baker was gracious enough to sit down with The Dickinson Press on Wednesday afternoon to discuss his motivation, how he started his business, his playing past and the direction of the NBA.

DP: Last week when we spoke, you called yourself an entrepreneur, a one-man business. Why have you decided to focus your life, your business, around this game?
GB: "If it was my choice, I'd wish I was still playing. I love playing — I play every day, at least one-on-one. That would be my wish. But I'm a faith-based man, a spiritual man, so when I started my business, I thought this is what God wanted me to do. ... I tried it, and it worked. It wasn't easy, so I learned business as I did it, and it turned into me going to five continents and 48 states."

DP: You're in your 17th year of training. What keeps driving you to do this?
GB: "There's two things that make it for me. One, I'm helping the kids have a better quality of life by instilling the values of passion, purpose, discipline, honesty, responsibility, grit — there's hundreds of values that I choose to speak about. Obviously, the longer I have with the kid the better ... but I feel they're going to go be a better person and be more attentive in school, to have goals and to be driven in life to do something positive. I use basketball as a platform. We're teaching them to dribble, shoot, be a better player, but if you look at the odds, very few high school players are successful. Very few high school players win. One percent go to college and get a scholarship, .001 percent go pro. And most of the players I train are 6-foot and under, and now the percentages of them being successful after high school are even lower. So it's all about helping them, knowing I can make a difference in the world. That's one. The second thing is I'm the head of my household, I'm the breadwinner. It's nice that I can provide for a family of four — my wife and three kids — and they can live comfortably."

DP: When you're first starting this business, how did you go about building your credibility? You have some playing experience, but when you're first trying to put together camps or train elite players, how do you show them that you are worth their time?

GB: "The one way I built this business, without social media, is one kid at a time. Word of mouth spread. I did one video that was sold in catalogs, and that video went global. And with elite players, number one, I showed them. I can dribble better than them. I can shoot better than them. I was quicker with the ball. And the second, I studied the game. I asked them questions they didn't have answers for, but I had the answers. I taught them as I was trying to sell them. I told them, 'Here's what you need to be a great pro, and here's what I know that you don't know. This is what I have to offer.' I had to get one guy on my resume and keep going, and when your resume is good, people want to train with you."

DP: Who was the first guy on your resume?
GB: "It wasn't anybody big, but at the time, a guy named Elton Brown, he played at Virginia, and he was from my area. But I would say John Lucas really changed my resume because he allowed me to help as his pro, pre-draft camp (in 2006). He allowed me to work with him from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, and, man, J.R. Smith, DeAndre Jordan, Patrick Beverley, Stevie Francis, Tracy McGrady, Moochie Norris, Acie Law, (Glen) 'Big Baby' Davis. All these players were in Houston and I got reps with them. ... It's all smoke and mirrors. Just because you train a pro doesn't mean you're a good coach. There's some good coaches in this area that have never trained a pro. Training a pro and having a resume for that is what you need if you're going to do skill development for a living, because you have to have something to sell. I hate that part of it because there are a lot of guys that have pros on their resumes, and I don't think they give a lot to the game. I don't think they work very hard at all. ... And Nike, in 2004, allowed me to train their top high school players (at the Nike Skills Academy in Oregon), so it was Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, Kyle Singler, Andray Blatche, Blake Griffin. I was one of the only independent skill coaches picked by Kevin Eastman and Nike to train these guys, so from there, John Lucas in 2006, and then they made those skill Academies into Kobe's (Bryant) Skill Academy, Amar'e's (Stoudemire) Skill Academy and LeBron's (James) Skill Academy. ... All those guys would see me teach and say, 'After the camp, come with me and train me.' And it just took off."

DP: One thing I remember from last year's camp was your ability to shoot equally well with both hands. You taught yourself to be ambidextrous after an injury when you were younger. Can you take me through the nature of that injury and how it's actually been a blessing?
GB: "I was about 11, going on 12, and I had an injury with my (right) hand, so I remember my parents saying, 'Why aren't you working out?' 'Because I hurt my hand.' 'Well, stupid, do it with your left! It's basketball, you have to use both hands.' So I worked on my left hand — shots, passes for hours, hours hours. I started playing again ... and it became natural. My dad said, 'You have to start playing both sides. You realize nobody in the world can do that?' ... So now as a coach, it's impossible not to believe or listen to me when I talk about shooting, because I'm the only ambidextrous shooting coach in the world that can show you the teaching points of shooting whether you're right-handed or left-handed. ... Nobody doubts my shooting content because I can show them both ways."

DP: If you had 15 minutes with any player, boy or girl, any level, and you had to divide that up, what are the three most important things you could tell them about being a better basketball player?

GB: "I'd show them how hard to work. We'd take a few minutes and be just, 'This is how hard you have to work on your own.' And then I'd take the second part of it to let him know how mentally prepared he needs to be with his goal in life and his goal in basketball. I'd show him my basketball notebook that I did when I was 11. I'm 44 and I still use it, add to it. I'd teach him in a short amount of time how to be a learner, how to get their mind there first before their body can get there. And then the third, I'd probably ask him questions and try to help him out. 'What's your biggest fear? What's the biggest thing you struggle with? What's your kryptonite?' ... I'm a big superhero fan, and every superhero is great, but they all have kryptonite. It would take time for somebody to tell you their kryptonite, but if they opened up, I would say, 'In my experience, here are ways to put boundaries around that kryptonite and make sure it doesn't affect your dream and destiny.'"

DP: So you wouldn't even put a ball in their hands in that 15 minutes?
GB: "No. Why? The ball would be in my hands. I know what hard work is. I need to show him what hard work is."

DP: Whenever you have free time, what do you find yourself doing?

GB: "In my free time, three kids, I spend time with them — 7-year-old girl, 3-year-old boy, 10-month-old boy. And then my wife, date night, beach, hiking, movies. When I'm on the road and have down time, I do business, and when business is done, I do recovery — hot tub, cold tub, stretching, icing — and when I've done all that, I like a good book or a movie that inspires. I hate stupid TV and entertainment reading. I like reading I can learn from or be inspired by."

DP: Do you consume basketball at all? Do you watch it, do you read about it?

GB: "I've been doing this since I was 8, as a player and a coach. I've been coaching kids since I was 19, because my summer job was Five-Star (Basketball camps), and it was four weeks at a camp. ... I've got millions and millions of reps. And I'm not saying I'm burned out. I'll still read, but I'm not consumed by it like I was in my 20s and 30s. ... If there's a game on, man, I'd rather watch 'Shark Tank' or Netflix with my wife. I'm a junkie, but I have a balance now because I have a family."

DP: When you're training a professional player, do you have to look at the direction the league is going, or do you leave the gameplans to the coaches and you take care of the skills?

GB: "When I train pros, I have to stay on top of two things. Number one, their system. So, like, Minnesota is different from the Spurs. And two, the trends. They might not play with that team, but I have to get my guy ready. The trend now in the NBA is less post play. And if there is, the post player has to be able to face up. Big guys have to shoot otherwise they're not going to be as marketable. The NBA is a business, it's money. Everything the NBA does — it's not wrong — but everything it does, like the Jr. NBA, it's not for the community. That's to get more people to buy more product. All the academies the NBA is opening up in different countries, it's not to make the game better in that country. They hope so, but it's a marketing ploy for that country to buy more packages of TV and rights and licensing. So I have to look at those (players) and say, 'This is going to make you more money.'"

DP: When was the last time you were, in person, watching an NBA or WNBA game?

GB: "I would say this past April, the Miami Heat. I live 50 miles away from the Heat arena, so I see them play a lot."

DP: Are you a fan of anybody in particular?

GB: "The Spurs. Their style, their culture. They buy-in to coaching, they respect the coaches. A lot of teams don't listen to the assistant coaches. It's kind of like some high school basketball programs. If a coach is real with a player and the player can't handle it, the player goes home and tells Mom and Pop, and if enough parents believe that, they go to the AD and get the coach fired. Same thing with the pros. A lot of these guys can't take coaching. They make a lot of money and have a lot of influence, so they get the coach fired. That's why I love the Spurs. They do it the right way."

DP: What's the biggest mistake you see youth basketball players making? And what about youth coaches?

GB: "The biggest mistake kids make, in all sports, is that when they have a problem, they go play on another team instead of solving that problem. And coaches, with the elite programs, they're afraid to tell the best players the truth. They're more their friend. They're entertaining them more than educating them. Because then the bigger players, elite players, leave and go play with somebody else. Therefore the shoe contracts that player brings and all the college coaches that player brings goes away, and that player plays for somebody that just manages them instead of teaching them. And other youth coaches, that don't have elite players, they don't learn to teach. They just manage a team, they don't learn how to teach and communicate with youth the right way. Now, I get it, they do it for free, but there's enough people out there that do it for free that have passion that would do it the right way. Like this is great right here — they're doing skills. (At this point, Baker motions to Dickinson High boys basketball head coach Dan Glasser running a group of players through ball-handling drills.) They don't have this at grassroots practices. They would have a three-man weave, or a sprint, and then just roll out the ball. It's crazy."

DP: You're 44 now. How much longer you figure you're going to do this?

GB: "Only God knows. I wish tomorrow I could not work as much. It's hard on my knees, I'm up 8:30 every morning, I do this five, six days a week, five hours a day. My body is a machine because He blessed me, but my body hurts. I'd rather do this when I want, so now I'm trying to scale my business and get an online revenue system and consulting program. But if that doesn't happen, I think I could do this forever, until I'm 70, 75. ... As long as I got my heart and mind, I can do this. I'll find ways to relate to kids 50 years younger than me."

DP: On the opposite side of that, if you woke up tomorrow and were told you couldn't do this, what would you do?

GB: "Pray to find out what's the next step. If I couldn't do basketball, I'd love to be a veterinarian, a zookeeper. I love animals. I'd love to be a fitness trainer. That's what I got my master's in (from Winthrop University) — kinesiology and physical education. That's a great question because this is all I've ever done since I was 8, either played or coached."

DP: I wish you many more years of it. Thanks for taking the time today.

GB: "No problem. Thank you."