A Coach's Diary

“Steve Jobs has a really good quote.  It says that you cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking back.” In the video below, Golden State Warriors GM Bob Myers began talking about his success with Warriors by referencing the above Steve Jobs quote and how each stop along his journey has helped prepare him for the position his is in now. While we have goals for our teams and our careers, we often look up and our realities our different than planned.   All we can really do is show up, work hard, be persistent, and have faith that our dots are connecting in a way that one day we will be grateful for. He also talked about the culture of the Warriors and how important it is to have people around you who are passionate and deeply care about basketball. From Forbes : It simple terms:   Trust Yourself .  Trust yourself to think big, make a difference and have an impact in ev...

So many games are won and loss by how we as coaches handle late game timeouts and special situations.  Many times its the last 5 or 6 plays of the game and the adjustments you make as a coach in those situations that separates the winners and losers, and it is important to stay sharp in this area in the off-season.   To keep myself and my coaching staff sharp in our ability to recall plays quickly and efficiently, we have a little activity that we use.  We have identified certain situations that we need to be ready for, and we have written them down on small pieces of paper.  We put them in a bowl and several times a week we pull on one and quickly draw out a play that fits the situation.  We also like to talk about how we would guard that particular action so that we are always thinking about how to put our guys in position defensively to have success against anything somebody might throw at us. These are the situations we have written down to ...

This is a video that I like to show my guys, especially in the off-season where we don't have the excitement or purpose of preparing for competition.  In the off-season, our guys can sometimes get bored with the skills and drills that we do to improve their fundamentals, so a little perspective and added motivation is always great to get them going and to provide importance and relevance to what we do. Here, the guys at NBA Open Court are talking about the importance of teaching and learning the fundamentals of the game and how mastering the fundamentals is a difference maker between being good and being great.  They use Tracy McGrady, Michael Jordan, and Larry Bird as examples.  As good a player that Tracy McGrady was, and for as much talent as he had, he was much maligned for never being able to get out of the 1st round of the playoffs. The guys mentioned that college, and more importantly mastering the fundamentals of the game, is something that might have held him...

Here, The Grantland guys talk about the value of the 'camaraderie' the Golden State Warriors have and its role in their early season success.  Bill Simmons goes on to talk about their unselfishness, how they pull for each other, and how the bench stands to celebrate their success. It is important to find ways to build camaraderie and togetherness in your team's culture.  Of course, everybody is not going to always 'like' each other.  But if you can get guys to truly celebrate the successes of their teammates and enjoy the process of growing, building, and winning together, it can be just one more competitive advantage that will greatly help your guys out.

This is a clip from an episode titled “ What Could Have Been”   from NBA TV’s “ Open Court.”   In this clip, they are discussing the career of Tracy McGrady.  Tracy McGrady was a very talented and versatile scorer and star in the NBA from 1997 – 2013.  He was a 7 time all-star and led the league in scoring twice.  He was also known as a big time superstar, who in his prime, could not lead his team out of the first round of the NBA playoffs. In the clip, Steve Kerr questions McGrady’s ‘fire’ and suggests that this lack of ‘fire’ kept him from being greater than what he was. Some of the other guys jump to McGrady’s defense, expressing that him being able to do what he did as a professional in the NBA shows that he did indeed have that ‘fire.’  McGrady skipped college, jumping straight to the NBA out Mt. Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina.  Kenny Smith said something very interesting about the growth in learning that you get from goin...