Anyone who has ever picked up a clipboard and whistle will have their own set of basketball coaching tips to offer you. I guess I'm no different. The following aspects of coaching the game of basketball are, to me, the bedrock of a successful season. You can survive without them, and you may even win a few basketball games without them. But you cannot win consistently, and you will not win against strong teams, unless you - the coach - are able to do these things.

There are many other skills a basketball coach needs, of course - what can you expect when you are looked upon as an expert, a father figure, a guidance counselor, a voice of calm amid the panic? When your pronouncements in practice and in the heat of battle are assumed gospel? There’s a reason why so few coaches are able to rise to the top of the rankings and stay there year after year!

While very few of us will ever approach the status of a man like John Wooden, there are some things we should all do to approach the game in the right manner. So here's some basketball coaching tips to get you started.

Basketball Coaching Tip #1: Be Organized and Prepared

Good organization begins way before the season begins. Even before basketball tryouts are scheduled, you need to develop:

• a long-term view of what you want to accomplish
  • e.g., the team is able to successfully run an offensive play

• smaller "stepping stone goals" that support each long-term goal
  • e.g., players are able to set effective screens

• practice plans that teach how to perform these stepping stones
  • e.g., teach stance and positioning for setting a screen
  • then run a skills drill in which a player sets a screen for a partner
  • then adjust your skills drill to imitate the motion in the offensive play

And so on.

This is a terribly important basketball coaching tip - I have seen so many coaches out on the court with a vague idea of what they want to do but no plan. Sometimes they win, but that's due almost solely to the natural abilities of the players. If you want to make a difference, always be prepared and organized.

This is such an important point that I added another section just on organizing - check out Season Organization.

Basketball Coaching Tip #2: Maintain Discipline and Focus

Practices need to be learning experiences, and not just about how to shoot a basketball or how to pass (although they are important!). Attitude is more important than skill, especially if you look at the larger picture, at what we want our players to take from their experience with us into the world after basketball.

Practice sessions are not just for learning physical skills - they're also for learning mental skills. If our players can't focus in the practice, that ability won’t magically appear in the game. Start each practice with a brief outline of what you want to focus on – e.g., improve passing skills – so players know what you are looking for. And keep them on task.

Players need to work hard and remained focused for the entire practice. They can have fun, enjoy what they are doing, as long as they are working hard and trying to improve to the best of their ability. You only have so many practices before the season begins, and you can’t afford to waste any – be guaranteed your competition will not. And by improving their ability to focus in practice, your players will be able to focus better in the game, where it really counts.

To carry this idea further, going into every game you should develop game goals for the team - outcomes or actions you want the team to focus on (perhaps this is another basketball coaching tip all on it's own, but I'll mention it here anyway.) Maybe it's a rebounding target, or reducing turnovers. It's whatever you think the team needs to work on the most. Whatever the game goals, your players need to be focused on achieving them, while at the same time doing everything else the game of basketball requires of them.

Basketball Coaching Tip #3: Model Proper Behavior

Regardless of the coaching philosophy we follow, and what we believe to be important, we need to realize that the coach's attitude sets the tone for the rest of the team. Consider what we want our players to do:

• show up 15 minutes early to work on their own weak points
• stay focused throughout the entire practice and work hard
• stay ten minutes after practice just to squeeze in a little more time on what they’ve learned
• work on skills in their spare time, of their own initiative
• respect the game and the officials and their opponents
• respect themselves and their teammates

But players will emulate their coach. If the coach screams at the refs, throws chairs, screams at his players, or makes snide comments on the bench, you can bet this will carry over to the players, and bad attitudes and technical fouls start to fly all over the court.

The coach needs to be the model of appropriate behavior, disciplined during practices, collected during games, the foundation upon which the team is built.

Basketball Coaching Tip #4: Every Player is an Individual

Coaching isn’t easy, and it’s never finished. Every player is different, and each of the various basketball positions requires a focus on different skills, and so each player's development has to be handled individually. Just as you set goals for the team to accomplish during pre-season (e.g., run a proper fast break, effectively execute plays), you need to set goals for individual players as well.

Individual player goals will mostly take the form of skill improvement, whereas team goals will be more along the lines of teamwork and execution of team strategy. Specific goals will help players focus clearly on what they are trying to accomplish, and will make them more likely to achieve success.

But you can't be producing a dozen practice plans for every practice. Include drills in your practice plan that allow these skills to be developed, these goals to be worked on. And perhaps more important, encourage (demand?) players to be at practice 15 minutes early to work on whatever skills they need individually – i.e., the goals you have set for them.

Begin with player evaluations at the beginning of the pre-season. This is a practice-long evaluation session, but it will be worth it if you carry through with the indicated coaching afterwards. Once you have evaluated your players, assign each of them a prioritized list of skills they need to work on, in order to build up their individual abilities. Check periodically to see if the players are improving as you want them to – through practice observation as well as using game stats. Make adjustments as you go along, tweaking instructions according to how your players are progressing, and when they finally succeed at reaching their goal, acknowledge their achievements and then set new goals and start all over.

Another basketball coaching tip on game stats: they can be useful in identifying improvement and weak spots, but don’t become a slave to them and don’t let your players become obsessed with their stats. Learn how to use your stats wisely.

Basketball Coaching Tip #5: Be a Team Builder

This is a team game, and while your players’ development is important, the team must be able to trust each other and act as one. This may be the most important basketball coaching tip - and the most difficult to accomplish. Coaches tend to be focused on the game - the skills and strategies. Turning the focus to a "soft skill" like building relationships doesn't come naturally to a lot of us.

Here's some possible ways to accomplish this:

• Start every season right after tryouts with a team retreat. It doesn't need to be anything extravagant, just a day or two where the team is together and plays games (not necessariy basketball) and works together.
  
  
• Build team camaraderie through activities such as fundraising. This serves another, more obvious purpose that is important in its own right – raising money to pay for various expenses – but having your players involved in the planning and execution of the fund raising activities also gives them a sense of collective purpose and will help them gel in the process.
  
  
• Host a basketball tournament. Again, this serves more than one purpose - playing the tournament gives your team more playing experience so that they become a stronger team, but preparing for it and managing the various activities that go along with it help the team become more of a team.
  
  
• Set up a “fan appreciation” night, where your players can barbeque hot dogs or something for fans before a dance. Hand out booster buttons to anyone who buys – this will serve as a community building activity as well as a team building activity. Ask parents to help if you want, but the focus needs to be on the players.
  
  
• Be liberal with organizing team building activities, such as Christmas parties, and maybe use some of that fundraising money on affinity gear for the team – and for more fundraising by selling more of that affinity gear to fans.
  

Whenever possible, give your players a sense of ownership of the team – with a more personal stake in the team’s success and image, they’ll work harder and perform better. Get them involved.

Basketball Coaching Tip #6: Never Stop Learning

If you want to grow something, you need to water it on a regular basis. If you want your coaching skills to improve, you have to continuously be striving to improve your knowledge and your system - the things you do and the way you do things.

Always be reading up on how other basketball coaches have done things, experiment with new approaches, new basketball strategies, take note of what worked and what didn't, keep the good and drop the bad, always be refining the system.

As Coach John Wooden said, "It's what we learn after we know it all that counts."

There are plenty of more basketball coaching tips out there, and I'll continue to revise and add as time goes on. But these few are a good place to start.

Happy Coaching!