Est. reading time: 4 min

Hey Coach,

If you're reading this, chances are you or someone close to you loves basketball.

I mean lays-awake-at-night loves it. Plays-past-exhaustion loves it. Feels-great-all-day-after-playing loves it. Will-sacrifice-almost-anything-to-be-good loves it.

If that's you, then you know a large part of how I feel about this game. My dad has told me my whole life he doesn't know how anyone could love basketball more than me. I've played into my 40s, long after my college teammates hung it up. Few things in life have brought me joy like chasing mastery in this game.

And few things have broken my heart like most of my coaches did.

In 8th grade, my AAU coach told me - after a loss - that I'd never play varsity. That I should quit now, because I was slow, small, and didn't have the "it" factor.

As a sophomore in high school, my varsity coach told me I'd never start for him. The star player had my position, and I didn't have a shot. He told me to transfer if I wanted any chance at playing in college.

As a junior, I was told I'd never play in college - just athletic enough. I drifted through the season riddled with self-doubt.

As a senior, I was told to shoot less. If I missed, I got yelled at. If I made a mistake, I got pulled. I spent the season fighting my coaches for room to play and enjoy the game.

I got a scholarship to play in college. The coach who recruited me resigned before I played a single game for him.

As a sophomore, I was asked to leave the team to make room for a transfer who played my position. I transferred and started over — again.

As a senior, I was told that if I missed a shot, I couldn't shoot again for the rest of the game. I played that whole season in fear.

My shot at playing professionally was short, and joyless.

Despite all of it, I showed up to every practice excited to play the game I loved. Most days I left battered - frustrated that it wasn't anything like what I'd hoped for. It felt less like a team and more like a war for my entire organized career.

My most joy-filled basketball, by far, happened without coaches. Full days of pickup in the offseason. Open gyms all through college. Competitive runs through my 20s and 30s. Games in a Bahamian prison. Years of high-level pickup at PGC camps around the world. Games with Marines on base in Japan. Everything in between.

That was the poetry.

So why did organized basketball feel like a battle, and pickup feel like poetry?

The answer is coaches. Most of us were coached in a way that's adversarial to players - that doesn't value the player's experience, and puts love of the game somewhere near the bottom of the list.

That's why SAVI exists.

We're on a mission to revolutionize the way the game gets taught and played. We believe in helping players become everything they're meant to be. We believe basketball should be fun. We believe in an identity of worth that exists outside the game.

That's not just a mission statement anymore. One of our newest members joined SAVI before she'd even coached her first season. She grew up around the game the way most of us did - running drills the traditional way - and says finding this community changed the mistakes she would've made without ever knowing they were mistakes. And her team is showing up for it: undefeated so far, in the gym all summer without being told to, eager to learn. In her own words, "they had fun all summer, because I found SAVI."

It took me a couple decades and a stack of broken-hearted memories to find this way of coaching. She found it before year one and is already reaping the rewards.

We coach coaches to be the coach I wish I'd had.

We build systems that let players create something closer to poetry than to war.

If you want to be that coach, you're in the right place.

This week, catch yourself in the a moment you're about to coach from fear instead of love. And choose the other one.

I’d love to hear how that choice changes the energy in your gym.

Stay SAVI,

Tyler

P.S. If any part of this hit home — if you want to build the kind of program you wish you'd played for, join us in SAVI Basketball (first 7-days are free).