Morgan
Wooten: My Favorite Coaching Concepts
From
"Basketball Beyond the X's and O's; Lessons from the Legends" by Jerry
Krause and Ralph Pim
1. Never lose sight of the impact you are having on young people's lives.
2.
Teach your players the importance of proper priorities that allow for maximum
personal, academic, and athletic development.
3. Evaluate wins and losses
objectively, focusing more on effort and execution than on the outcome of the
game.
4. Instruct, don't dictate.
5. Never humiliate.
6. Communicate
your approach in a style that is comfortable to you and fits your personality
and philosophy.
7. Learn to anticipate problems.
8. Never announce penalty
for rule violations in advance.
9. Enthusiasm creates heroism.
10. If
you make a mistake and fall down, you must get back up.
11. Always have a
"Thought for the Day."
12. You are constantly being judged on what you are
doing and not what you have done.
13. Be yourself.
14. Be eager to learn.
15. Don't play players only because they have potential if they do not hustle,
work hard, and listen.
16. Never discipline to punish, discipline to teach.
17. We are what we continually do.
18. Do to your opponent what you do
not like done to you.
19. Play defense with your feet, eyes, and heart.
20.
If you want the attention of your players, use compliments.
21. I believe
that repetition of fundamentals at any level will make your players winners.
22.
Play hard, play smart, play together, and have fun.
23. You must have total
control of your program.
24. I will never curse my players, and they will
never curse me.
25. I will never embarrass my players, and they will never
embarrass me.
26. Do not assume anything.
27. Listen and learn from your
players.
28. Excellence becomes a habit.
29. Don't ever tell your players
to win.
30. Never write a plan for practice that takes longer than two hours.
31. Make your players sprint over to you to begin practice on a hustling,
enthusiastic note.
32. Inch by inch, life's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's really
hard.
33. Take time to talk individually with the players you are cutting.
34. Have your players write down their academic and athletic goals at the
start of every year.
35. Building team chemistry is the most important thing
you can do as a coach. The
Impact of Coaches
As
coaches we are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity and ability to work
with and positively influence young people.
That is why I suggest following
this rule of thumb:
Be the kind of coach that you would want your sons and
daughters to play for.
All of us should be determined to be that kind of coach.
Never lose sight of the tremendous impact you are having on young people's lives.
We are with people at their emotional heights and their emotional depths, the
times when they are most impressionable.
Teachers of other subjects would
love to have the classroom situation that we do, for we have a class that young
people are pleading to get into and be a part of.
It is our moral responsibility
to use this unique opportunity in a positive manner to help prepare our young
people for life. As a coach, you must always be aware of the influence you have
on your players. Because of their keen interest and emotional involvement in sports,
your athletes will be hanging on every word you say.
Many times, you may think
you're not reaching them, but what you say to them in practice can determine how
good their dinner will taste an how well they will sleep that night.
An incidental
cutting remark, which you forgot about as soon as you said it, can stay with that
young person and be a source of pain for a longer time than you may ever know.
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