THE PERFECT COACH

Going through my basketball material I came across a message from the late Dick DeVenzio on having the perfect coach, not getting along with your coach and players that have transferred. I would say this was probably written 13-14 years ago. 

Oh Gee, What a Tragedy. You Don’t Have the Perfect Coach.

What a surprise. No one does.

Doesn’t matter where you go. Division one stars like Mike Chappell and Chris Burgess both transferred from Duke. They don’t think Mike Krzyzewski is the best coach in the world.

Not every player at Tennessee thinks Pat Summit knows everything or works perfectly with her personnel. Same with Geno Auriemma at UConn. Or Lute Olson at Arizona. behind the scenes, even at the very best programs, there are disagreements.

if you are an intelligent player, of course you are going to disagree at times with your coach. But that’s the given. All athletes have some things about their coaches that they would like to change. The better the coach, the more likely he or she is to have strange idiosyncrasies and “special” ways (or irritating ways) of doing things.

Be smart enough not to waste time complaining or even thinking about the kinds of things that every athlete has to deal with. So your coach doesn’t do things exactly the way you think he should.

Big deal!

So what?

That’s part of the game.

Everyone has that.

It’s amazing how many athletes will say “If only my coach would do such and such.” The problem with saying and thinking things like that is that athletes get distracted and fail to take time to think about what they need to do themselves. For every 60 seconds you spend thinking about your coach’s problems, you lose a minute thinking about your own solutions.

There are many things you can do to make yourself better as a player, in spite of what your coach does.

So, do yourself a favor; quit thinking about how your coach can improve and spend time thinking about how YOU can be better.

HOOPS135@HOTMAIL.COM

TWITTER: @CoachFinamore