Hey Coach,
There's an old line that basketball is the most over-coached and under-taught game there is. Last week, we broke down the five coaching archetypes, and more of you identified as The Teacher than any other type.
Here's the problem. Most coaches who think they're great teachers aren't. They have all the basketball knowledge. They've been to the clinics. They know the X's and O's. But their teams still don't transfer what happens in practice to what happens in the game.
That gap is a teaching problem, not a knowledge problem. This week, Mark and I break down what actually separates a great teacher of the game from a coach who just knows a lot.
Key Takeaways
Coaching is not teaching. Most coaches have plenty of basketball knowledge. What separates the best is the ability to transfer it. If your team looks great in drills but falls apart in games, that's not a talent or culture problem. That's a teaching problem.
The three skills of a great teacher: communication, methodology, and adaptability. Communication is clarity and cadence. Methodology involves multiple ways to teach the same thing (questions, game-based, modeling, constraints) instead of just running the same drill harder. Adaptability is meeting each player where they are. Watching Alex Hormozi answer 50 different business owners with 50 different levels of depth, that's adaptability.
Be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage. Teaching isn't about displaying your knowledge. It's creating change in the learner. The sage stands above the group and dictates truth. The guide works shoulder to shoulder, shapes the environment, and lets the game do most of the teaching. Small change in how you see your role, big change in what your players actually learn.
Teach one-on-one more than you teach the team. Group instruction should be brief and corrective. The real teaching happens in side conversations: when you pull one player aside, give them three reps with specific feedback, then send them back in. The best teachers teach Mark to shoot differently from how they teach Tyler.
Teach principles, not absolutes. "Always pass to the high post first." "Never shoot until you reverse the ball." Absolutes work in controlled drills and fall apart in the chaos of a game. Principles like "find space with the ball" or "be available in the headlights or tail lights" apply across every situation. Principles build basketball IQ. Absolutes build memorization.
One Action Item
Pull your practice plan from this week and circle every "always" and "never" you've been teaching. Then take the five biggest ones and try to rewrite them as a single principle.
If you're teaching three different rules for baseline drives, middle drives, and lane-line drives, those probably collapse into a single principle about spacing. Fewer rules, more thinking. That's the unlock.
Stay SAVI,
-Tyler
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