BASKETBALL THEORY
Look, unless you're an NBA coach, you need to be flexible with your coaching philosophy. Your players actually dictate the type of ball you're going to play from season to season. As individual players' skills develop so will your underlying coaching theory. Your opponents also dictate your coaching philosophy from game to game, sometimes from quarter to quarter and half to half.
Ultimately a team decides it's own destiny. Peer pressure is one of the strongest motivators human beings experience. If you're coaching basketball you have a responsibility to teach, organize, and motivate; but players respond to peer motivation and peer pressure at a much deeper level than any ever achieved by a basketball coaching staff. Some players are better motivators (communicators?) than others; those special players become team captains. A properly prepared team is self policed and self coached. The role of a coach on these properly prepared teams is that of an overseer, a teacher, and a guide; great coaches frequently find themselves, unintentionally, in this position. Some coaches are insightful enough to recruit third parties (parent, girlfriend, boyfriend, teacher, counselor, friend, wife, partner, etc.) to help a future team captain realize that is actually the role that player is destined to play.
Team captains and coaches forge a special bond. When you're coaching basketball you need to help team captains develop. Leadership may seem to come naturally but dealing with unique individuals in a team atmosphere, sometimes under pressures imposed by game situations, are learned behaviors a coach must anticipate and prepare team captains to handle. This preparation includes life lessons other players may not need. Team captains must be educated in carefully choosing words before speaking; the weight of their words exemplifies the gravity of peer pressure more than any other situation. A coach is responsible to lend wisdom to team captains which in turn make team captains wise beyond their years. It is no coincidence that most championship teams are led by the wisest of team captains. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but don't bet against the math.
Team captains become liaisons between a coach and the team. When coaching basketball we are sometimes flabbergasted at the breadth of problems players need to work through in order to be 100% into a game or practice. Frequently players will not divulge these life situations to a coach, but will discuss them with other players. Sometimes, if these players respect the wisdom of the team captain, they will bring these situations forward in hopes the team captain will intuitively know the best way to help a fellow teammate and ultimately the entire team.
All basketball teams are a hodge-podge of players from differing backgrounds, life experiences, and heritages with varying skill levels, abilities, mental and emotional capacities, desires and drives, wants and needs, strengths and weaknesses, and personalities. Basketball theory says the more players learn from, learn about, and understand each other, the more players understand about themselves. As players grow and learn about themselves the more capable they are of communicating with and assisting their teammates in growing; and the circle of life goes around and around and around. As individual teammates grow, transformations take place and a basketball team develops... and basketball theory says a team will beat a collection of ‘super-stars'. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but don't bet against the math.
Basketball's history is weighed down with ‘super' players that do not have ‘championship' attached to their name. This means at any level of play they never experienced feeling like a champion; some of the greatest basketball players ever to lace up basketball shoes have never felt like a champion!
TEAM. Actually that's all there is to basketball theory. There are volumes upon volumes written on passing the basketball, dribbling the basketball, shooting the basketball, and basketball plays. There are volumes upon volumes upon volumes written on basketball offense and basketball defense. However there is not, nor will there ever be, enough information written on the theory of basketball as a team sport. Life is about learning. Teamwork teaches life. The more we know about life the better citizens we become. Good and thoughtful citizens ultimately, by design, are the best teammates. So the theory of living a happy healthy life and basketball theory are distilled down to a common denominator. TEAM. Actually that's all there is.
