Hard Coaching

Coach K didn’t call out Deron Williams or Carlos Boozer in the locker room. He called out Kobe & Bron. The BEST players have to take hard coaching for the TEAM. If the HC can call YOU out and you accept it, the team will follow. It’s coaching. Never personal.

— Jhasmin Player (@thePLAYERway) October 15, 2022

Great players embrace hard coaching. But what does that mean? 

ACHIEVEMENT = PERFORMANCE x TIME

The formula expresses both the need for practice (not everyone agrees with Gladwell's '10,000 Hours') and sustained excellence. 

Michelangelo finished crafting Pieta when only twenty-four years old. When asked how someone so young had sculpted something so magnificent he explained that he had worked ten hours a day for more than a decade to master his craft. 

At extremes, coaching comes in two flavors, "relationship-oriented" and "task-oriented." That boils down to "players' coaches" and "hard guys." Seldom do coaches fall at either end of the spectrum. 

"Be demanding without being demeaning." We have to 'reach' players to get high performance from individuals and teams. 

• Success comes when player and team goals align.
• That may mean sacrifices of 'touches' and 'shots'.  
• We can't know goals without asking. 

What is hard coaching? 

• Extreme attention to detail
• Insistence on strength and conditioning
• Demanding sacrifice of time for practice and study
• Repetitions and more repetitions
• Setting higher expectations
• Most of all, it's asking for more from players

Yelling isn't hard coaching; it's just yelling. 

Chuck Daly explained, "I'm a salesman." Players have to buy what we're selling. It's unrealistic to think that everyone responds to the same message. We ask players to sacrifice time, effort, BST - blood, sweat, and tears. We might be asking parents to sacrifice money - team fees, gym memberships, strength and conditioning, travel, extra medical costs, and more. 

Players have to see added value. For professionals, "10,000 shots can make you $10,000,000" might work. There's no equivalent for adolescents. Coaches ask for sacrifice in return for uncertain possibilities.  

Lagniappe. Geno knows.