A Pen And A Napkin

Every season is a long journey, and the more you can do early in the season to make it as smooth of a trip as possible, the better chance you have to have a great season. In today's podcast, we take the system devised by Bruce Brown to build a team covenant to bind your player's together with their own words and actions. In addition, we use a popular African proverb to help emphasize our talking points, and we discuss the great career of Lon Kruger!

Small-Sided Games, or SSG's, is a new way of saying the old thing that the master's of the game like John Wooden and Bobby Knight have used for years, but it is really important for you to integrate this concept of teaching into your daily practice! We discuss the origins of SSG's today, along with various constraints that can help your players get better. In addition, we've got a great quote about habits from Kerry Patterson, and the coach we discuss today is one of the absolute legends of the game and one of it's greatest teachers, Rick Majerus.

One of the most important things that you are responsible for as a coaching staff is to develop an identity for your program; when people think of your teams, what are they going to think of, both on and off the floor? Today's podcast is all about that identity and how to build it, including the concept of "being great at four things". We got numerous points about program identity, and we also discuss a coach whose teams had a strong identity, Ben Howland.

After each game, how are you evaluating your team and their performance? For our teams, we had a structured system to educate our players on the positives and negatives that occurred in last night's game, and what we needed to do to move forward. Today's pod will go into the steps what we took to create this system, as well as a discussion on failure and how to recover from it. We also take today to discuss the modern Grandmaster of the Hardcourt, Brad Stevens!

Getting your team to really know, accept, embrace and excel at their roles up and down the roster is difficult, but there are some things that you can do to help your team look in the mirror and help players understand their role in a more logical way. In today's podcast, we discuss exercises to help with roles and force your players to look in the mirror at either themselves or the team as a whole. We have a great quote from Leo Tolstoy and we discuss one of the more underrated great coaches in NBA history, Lenny Wilkens!

We had a great time taping our September roundtable (yes, I know it's dropping in October) with Jared Blackwell, GBB HC at Sandy Creek (NE) and Chad Jilek, GBB HC at Johnston (IA)! We discuss the influence of club sports and how to bring players into basketball, keeping our players enjoying the sport, the influence of the shot clock on both sides of the ball and when is the right time to ditch the game plan? Enjoy the pod; we enjoyed taping it!

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Seasons are often swung in one direction or another on special situations, so today's podcast is focused on ten common special situations that every team should be prepared for early in the season. We discuss a calendar as to when you should have covered these situations, as well as tips on how to handle them in practice. In addition, we've got a great quote from Bill Walton, and we discuss one of the greatest winners in the game, Rick Pitino!

People are difficult to deal with in the best of times, but when you have players and/or parents that are deliberately challenging your leadership or the goals of the program, that is a cancer. In today's podcast, we identify different symptoms of players or parents that may be cancers in your program and how to do all you can to ensure that they don't cause even more damage to your program. In addition, we have the wisest of words from Marcus Aurelius on dealing with difficult people, and we discuss the great career and what we can learn from Morgan Wooten of Dematha High School!

We ask our players to evaluate what they did on a daily basis, but are we doing the same thing? In today's podcast, we take a concept from Dan Hughes, the former WNBA head coach, and apply it to our programs with the post practice evaluation form. We discuss how it's organized and what you should be looking for to help make you better every day! We also have a great quote from Al McGuire, and we discuss the career and what to learn from George Karl, the great NBA head coach!

Establishing great practice mantras and sayings are extremely important to the growth and development of this year's team and your program overall. When tough times come around (and they most certainly will), what will you do to right the ship as quickly as possible? What do you stand for? What does your team stand for? That's all in today's podcast, along with a great quote from Coach K and a study of team pillars and how to run a program the right way from Dick and Tony Bennett.