Dear Coaches, Players, Friends,

Today's Quotes:

"Failure to prepare is preparing to fail." - John Wooden
"Nothing will work unless you do." - John Wooden

Featured Articles:  Core Coaching Articles

Your Coaching Philosophy
Each coach must develop his/her own coaching philosophy, or system of beliefs and ideas.  When interviewing for a coaching position, the question almost always comes up, "What is your coaching philosophy?"  This article discusses a number of thoughts relating to this topic..... read more.

Building a Basketball Program
This article discusses some thoughts how to build a basketball program for your school and community. This is not the same as building a college program, which involves many other things not discussed here, such are recruiting, fund-raising, program promotion and others.... read more.

The Assistant Coach
You need to have good assistant coaches.  What makes a good assistant basketball coach?  I have been asked this question a number of times and have finally put together some of my thoughts here.  I have been assistant varsity coach for our very successful high school boys and girls teams for a number of years, so I am speaking directly from that role.  This article addresses mostly high school basketball assistants, as responsibilities may differ considerably for youth level and AAU assistants.... read more.

Planning Practices
"The structure of your practice is the most determining reason for your success or lack of success as a coach." - Bob Knight

You must plan each practice.  John Wooden has said he and his assistants often would spend more time planning a practice than the actual practice itself lasted.  Don't just come to the gym each day without a plan and think you can just "wing it".  You have to plan for success and plan your practices just like a teacher creates a lesson plan for his/her English or math class.  Your practice should be like a classroom and you are the teacher.... read more.

Tom Nordland's "Swish" shooting videos
Tom and I have been Web friends for about 10 years.  His three Swish videos are incomparable.  His knowledge is inspired, not the result of taking notes at a Coaches' Clinics.  And it's the way of our greatest shooters.  Tom's teaching is unique, simple, and most effective.  He feels all the great shooters (Steph Curry, Chris Mullin, Diana Taurasi, Steve Kerr, Becky Hammon, etc) look alike because they have developed it by themselves, without shooting coaches hounding them to Square Up, flip the wrist, not Dip, etc.  Go to swish22.com, sign up for his Newsletter, and buy his inexpensive videos (DVD or VOD format).

To see Steph Curry in slow motion:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IFiyOvUYAwE&feature=youtu.be
From Tom Nordland:  It's the best take on Steph's form I've yet seen, and you can see it's exactly what I've been preaching and demonstrating for 25 years – the repeatable Release with "totally" relaxed wrist and hand.