Eyes in the sky.
This is what would be yelled by the first teammate that saw our coach watching from an unlit room overlooking the gym.
In NCAA basketball, the coaches are only allowed a certain amount of time on the court with the players. They are also only allowed different amounts of time at different parts of the year.
This time allowance changes after the season. Usually, the coaches give you a week or so off. It is great to get some rest but we all love to play basketball so we soon start to play some pick-up. Pick-up is an informal game where you just pick teams.
The first pick-up games of basketball back after our rest, everyone is fresh and running and jumping higher than we have all year. Rest is a wonderful thing.
I loved playing basketball. Some of my best basketball memories were while I was playing Div 1 college basketball in the US. The teammates, the challenges, the pressure, the praise, it was great.
However, there were some interesting challenges that I didn’t see coming. That being the coaches.
A Kingdom unto themselves
College basketball coaches are lunatics. I can’t speak to other sports but basketball coaches lose their minds. They become tyrants and dictators. It is easy to see why. It is not their fault to start with.
They coach in the manner they see fit. They push the players a little bit and they get better results. They are also doing other things while pushing them, like coaching shooting, dribbling, and defence. They are making sure the chemistry between the players works and teaching them about basketball philosophy.
If they win it reinforces what they are doing. But, they can only coach so much technique so they push the players harder.
And they keep winning.
More pushing, more better.
If they succeed, i.e win some games, then no one questions their methods. Everyone actually endorses them. They are teaching these kids to be resilient and to work through adversity.
No one questions a winning coach.
The Downside
When things start to go badly, the coach doesn’t question their methods for what was successful and what was luck, they double down on more pushing because more pushing is what made them successful.
It is why the coaches would get so mad during the pick-up games. They couldn’t understand why we were running fast and jumping high here and not during the season.
No awareness that their pushing was making us worse. They were not preparing us to be in an optimal position to play, they were making us worse.
But more pushing, more better right?
Re-Thinking
Here is the difficult thing for the coaches. What if more pushing isn’t more better?
This requires the coach to re-think how they think they are gaining success? This process can be helpful for everyone.
What elements of your strategy and process have diminishing returns?
What parts of your strategy actually contribute to success rather than what you think contributes to it?
Who is giving you good feedback rather than stroking your ego?
Do you have people who critically challenge your thinking?
The coaches obviously want to do a good job, but with success comes yes men. People who tell you that you are great because they are butt kissers or because they are afraid to give you honest feedback for fear of losing their job.
You can be your first layer of defence by being critical of your own assumptions.
Running and Jumping
My Coach would always get mad at us when he watched us play pick-up. He would think we weren’t trying hard during the season.
He couldn’t re-think his position on more pushing, more better.
Despite the evidence right in front of him that we perform better when we are not exhausted he couldn’t shake his belief that he had to work us harder.
He is no longer coaching.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 