I’ve coached or co-coached my son’s basketball teams for about nine years, from when he started with the Blue Star Wars to his squad for the last few seasons, the Falcons. What have I learned? Kids are endlessly irritating and you’ll go hoarse yelling some variation on “Can you please — please — just stop dribbling for, like, two seconds?” But it has also been pretty fun.
I’m not bragging when I say our teams have done pretty well. I actually am bragging, but it’s also a fact. We’ve finished most years in first place. We’ve played two games so far in what will be my final season on the bench, unless I unexpectedly — and, honestly, much to my chagrin, but I’m sure I’ll learn to love him or her — father another child. We’ve won both by more than 20 points. Since this is it for me, I’ll let you in on how I do it. It’s pretty simple.
- Play zone, exclusively. Almost no coach prepares their kids to play against a zone and though every kid wants to be Steph Curry, almost none of them are good enough to force you to play man-to-man. Even if one of them is, or close enough, I just go box-and-one and have my best defender chase that kid around while the others play zone. This is almost fool-proof. And zone is easy to coach.
- Focus on defense. Kids don’t love playing defense, so this is where all the coaching work (read: herding cats) comes in. But you’ll be glad you put in the effort, because there aren’t a ton of kids under 14 with a great handle and even fewer with top-notch decision-making skills, so a little bit goes a long way. I tell them before every game: “Work hard on defense and do whatever you want on offense.” Speaking of …
- Don’t bother with any complicated plays. Show them how to set picks and cut to the basket and a few basic things. Don’t try to install some kind of motion offense or whatever. You saw a play you liked during a Mavs game? Awesome. I hope you get to meet Rick Carlisle and tell him about it one day. Kids don’t care, probably won’t remember, and you’ll just end doing what we do anyway. But we practice like that, so we already know.
That’s it. Will you lose sometimes? Sure. That’s life. But you’ll win more often than not and you won’t get too stressed doing it. Also: don’t holler at the refs. You just look like a jerk.
