A Coach's Diary

Jamal Murray was a recent guest on the Knuckleheads podcast. They talked about his growth from a youth star in Canada, to Kentucky, to the NBA. QRich asked him how he kept his edge and kept working hard and stayed hungry to stay at the top of his class when a lot of you phenoms get complacent and fall off. Quentin Richardson: The guys are the best at a young age don't always finish that way. You were already one of the best players and one of the most skilled kids on the team in high school, so what made you keep working and keep feeling like you had to prove yourself? Jamal Murray: I put a lot of work into my craft. I'm not out here just trying to get better - I am trying to be the best player every time I step on the court. I put the work in, and coming from Canada, it was the guys in the states with the hype and the mixtapes, and I know I am better than this kid, I just know that he has the cameras and the support behind him. It is just a matter of me going out there and pro...

I was talking to a father of a youth soccer player. His son had just received his first mid-year evaluation. His son is 10 or 11 and a multi-sport athlete on a team where most other kids are full-time soccer players. Dad said that the coach killed his kid in the evaluation, and part of it had to do with the fact that his son split time with other sports. Player evaluations from coaches, even at this age, can be tough. A lot of the time, it's the first time someone outside of the home is critical of an athlete, and it can be tough for a kid, and parent, to hear. Dad's response to his son was spot-on. He told his athlete that he had two choices: he could either get his head down, pout, and feel sorry for himself, or he could learn from what the coach told him and use it to fuel him and get better. Hearing this reminded me of the quote, "Prepare your child instead of preparing the path for your child." Part of a coach's job is to tell you what you need to hear to get...

We often hear the quote, "The grass isn't always greener on the other side." I recently heard a coach add to the quote, "The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but the water bills are probably higher too." I have seen so many kids switch teams or transfer because they think another situation might be better for them.   Sometimes they are right and making that switch was the best move for them. I have seen athletes leave one environment for another and thrive. I have seen kids who were JV players struggling to stay on the team in high school transfer to a different school, blossom in the right environment with the right opportunities, and work themselves into becoming college athletes. Sometimes they were wrong, and the grass wasn't greener. They changed the situation but they didn't make the changes that they needed to make internally, so the same problems followed them. When there is a lack of character, toughness, work ethic, grit, an...

One of your most important 'abilities' is your ability to be coached. "How well can you take in, learn, and apply new information?" The better you are at that, the more skills that you can add to your game, the better the player you can be. Every practice we teach and learn. The goal is to learn it so well that the next practice, we can build on what we learned.  It's like climbing a ladder. We start at the bottom, and every time we learn something new, we take one step up the ladder. The only way we can move up is by learning, applying, and remembering that information. If we can't remember or apply it, we are stuck at the same level. Keep climbing the ladder of learning, and you will keep climbing the ladder of success. But it starts with listening, learning, and knowing that you don't know everything.

This is a mindset that I grew up on. When I was in middle school, I would have my parents drop me off at the rec or the park so that I could play against the high school kids and men. I have to admit that I used to be scared to get on the court, but I knew that playing against the older guys would help me get better. One thing that really helped me was that one of the older guys was a good friend of mine who encouraged me and gave me the confidence to get out there. He just told me that I could play with them, he kept pushing me to get out there, and he would pick me to play on his team. There were good days, bad days, and ugly days. On a Monday, I would have a great day of playing and feel like I made it, and then a couple of days later, I would get laughed out of the gym. There were so many ups and downs and emotions, but I just stuck with it. Over time, I became one of the older guys. It became 'my' gym. I became a leader. But I did it because I didn't stop. I didn't...

Growing up, we were taught to finish what you start. If you want to play this season, we aren't going to quit in the middle of it just because things aren't going our way. At the beginning of one season, I had a JV parent call me and tell me that she was going to pull her daughter from the team. She and her daughter were upset that she wasn't getting the in-game opportunities that they wanted, and it was affecting her life outside of basketball to the point where they felt it was best if they cut ties now. To her surprise, I told her that this might be the best move for everybody. What mom didn't see (or hear) was that her athlete wasn't giving any effort in practice and that she was telling her teammates that she didn't really like basketball and that she doesn't want to play. Mom was upset that I wasn't on board with making her stick it out, but this wasn't the right environment for her, and because she didn't want to be there, it hurt the team...

When I was growing up, there was a school down the street from my house, and I used to spend a lot of time on their basketball court. I was there on nights before big games. I was there during the summer mornings getting work in before most people woke up. I was there most summer nights. I was there when life just got hard, times were tough, and I need to get away. Now, I am there on Friday nights with my daughters and their teammates, pushing them a little harder than they probably want to be pushed, but trying to help them get ahead and stay ahead. Little reminders like this help me remember what these Friday nights are really about - falling in love with the game. The court has always been my safe space. Winning is fun. The games are great. But nothing is better than the sport itself. Nothing is better than having a ball and a hoop.