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The Basketball Podcast: EP417 on Youth Basketball Coaching Strategies
This conversation was an opportunity to bring a typically offline discussion I have with youth basketball coaches online to share with you. In it, Jared Mocaby from Kansas Select got to ask me a bunch of questions about youth basketball coaching strategies. We discussed solution-based coaching approaches, emphasizing the importance of letting players figure out problems rather than giving direct instructions, and the value of playing full-court transition basketball during practices.
The discussion covered youth basketball topics including shot selection, position development, the balance between winning and player development, and the overuse of tournament play versus focused practice time. Jared Mocaby and Chris explored how to implement constraint-based training and reduce reliance on traditional drills, while addressing the challenges of coaching younger players (10-12 years old) and managing parent expectations. The conversation concluded with recommendations for reducing tournament participation while increasing development-focused practice time, and the importance of monetizing coaching positions to support better player development in youth basketball.
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Jared Mocaby Quotes:
Jared: “One of the biggest things that I take away from the really high-level coaches . . is they don’t have set rules. They more have what makes sense to them, and then they let their players figure it out.”
Chris: “There’s this concept of bandwidth feedback, which basically means that over time the amount of feedback is reduced. In early learning, when you’re teaching things, teaching concepts, let’s say a spacing concept, then you’re stopping it a lot more. But over time you’re stopping it less. I remind them of that all the time, ‘Listen, we’re playing basketball, but I am stopping it a little too much right now. Why? Because this concept, this principle is going to help you play better basketball.’”
Chris: “They’re the best 8th grader in the world, but that doesn’t guarantee they will be the best 16-year-old in the world . . development is non-linear. So, understand that that no matter what you do, it takes time to develop. And some players develop this first, other players develop that first, and some develop physically first. And that’s just the reality of it. The goal is ultimately is to train every single player on your team like they’re a point guard.”
Chris: “If you’re a youth coach that cares about winning, then forget about all this. Put your tallest player in the post. Let your best player handle the ball and go win. None of this conversation matters to you . . but if you don’t care about winning, and if you can convince your parents not to care about winning, then it’s about development . . as coaches, if you don’t care about winning, then rotate players so they all develop in every spot.”
Chris: “I’m not saying winning is not important. We want to compete to win. We want to build winning habits . . we want to understand what it’s like to lose and what it’s like to win, both of those are part of, by nature, being competitive . . That balance [between winning and developing] is hard. So, finding the optimal kind of competition is a big part of that.”
Chris: “Some people would say that early in learning, you do the blocked skills to get the understanding representation of the technique. We’re talking more about technique than skill. I’m not anti-technique, I’m not anti-on-air, I’m not anti-doing blocked things, but I’m just saying don’t start with them. The problem, is that we come into a practice and we start by teaching them pivoting on air, passing on air . . and then we’re going to put them in the game. And you know what, they’re going to struggle anyway in the game. Well, how about if we just start with the game?”
Chris: “Shooting is a hard one because shooting is a late maturation skill . . With my oldest daughter, from the start of shooting, the only thing I worried about with her . . was lifting the ball within her body with no shoulder turn and no hip turn. So, generating force from within your body.”
Jared: “We can freak out about kids playing zone or teams playing zone, but what are we teaching our kids if we don’t say, ‘Hey, things happen. You’ve got to figure it out.’”
Chris: “You can’t separate yourself from the competitiveness. That’s really the hardest part. It’s okay to want to win. It’s okay to want to compete. But there’s got to be perspective, in the sense that, if you just lost, remind yourself, ‘Okay, all that matters is how good they’re going to be at 16 . . everything’s a process to be able to get better.”
Chris: “We know the science behind it: perception-action coupling. You perceive, you decide before you execute a technique. So, if you’re just doing technique-based stuff, then you remove the two most important things that happened before it. And that’s where I say to coaches, this decision is more important than the technique. At 10-12 years old, see if you can get players understanding the decision of when to shoot, when to pass, when to drive on offense, and then it’s a game of opposites on defense. You’re going to improve them, but they might not have the technique yet to be able to complete the plays.”
Chris: “We still idolize and want to learn from these [college] coaches who are brilliant coaches, but their problem is not our problem, and our problem is not their problem . . situations about shot selection are being dictated too much by what’s happening at the highest level. Whereas, at the youngest level, literally an open shot is a good shot. So, the goal on a possession is not to run offense. The goal on the possession is to be able to get an open shot or a gold medal shot at the rim.”
Chris: “You feel as a coach that everyone’s judging you. If your team doesn’t do something right, then it’s a reflection of you. And it’s really hard. There’s no real answer to that other than you have to trust the process. You have to trust that if they’re playing a lot of basketball in practice, they’re going to get better. I’ve never seen a kid not get better by playing basketball in practice. Foundationally, what we’re missing at the youngest levels is development of basketball IQ through them playing more basketball.”
Jared: “Getting kids to play, that’s what they want to do anyway . . We try to do some transition stuff. We’re constantly in transition, and I think that is the best way to teach decisions.”
Chris: “How many situations do we assume they’ve experienced and they’ve never experienced it? They have to be taught, they have to be explained. When you’re playing basketball in practice, all these situations come up organically, and it’s part of your job to educate them about this. And in the game, you can always connect things back to practice as well.”
Chris: “I would say one of the biggest solutions, if you truly want to develop your team, is to skip the tournament model and go to more of what high school coaches have done for years, which is find 3 teams and play against them on a Saturday and play a real type of version of basketball . . And that’s where I share this model of playing 4-on-4 fast break. If you just did an hour of 4-on-4 fast break, you found another team, and you found a coach that’s open to this style, and you get in the gym and you play against another team in 4-on-4 fast break, you’re getting more decisions, more reps, more improvement for those players than anything you’d ever do in a tournament weekend. I’m not saying don’t go play the tournaments. I’m saying play less of the tournaments and more of the development games.”
Jared Mocaby Selected Links from the Podcast:
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