Annotated Thoughts from Coach Cal

I believe that we all evolve according to our willingness to change, our relationships, and the books we read. We interpret and share our distillate. Ideally we enhance the original product. Sometimes, yes...sometimes no.

Everyone doesn't admire Kentucky Coach John Calipari. But he adheres to his first principles of doing right by his team and his players. Has he stretched the envelope at times? Yes. But his results speak volumes. 

In "Basketball's Half-court Offense" Coach John Calipari shares his philosophy, his process in developing offense, not re: transition but half-court scoring. He highlights the development of early offense, motion, set plays, and isolation (some might call this bailouts). Players need structure and clarity before they can execute.

He reminds us that he doesn't want a 'buffalo' led offense, with one leading the herd, but the 'geese' approach, where skilled individuals divide the load among leaders and followers.

In his new book, "Players First", he shares other conversations about both basketball and life.

• “When it comes to how we make up our staff, I need positive people around me. People with a “we can do this” mentality. I’m not saying everybody has to be whistling and skipping every day, but they have to look at things with an idea that we can tackle anything together.” Attitude comes first. We don't control the conditions, the officiating, the media hype...but we control what we can.
  
• “I need people who look at adversity as a challenge and failure as a learning opportunity.” Persistence, regardless of the situation, gives us a chance both to grow and to overcome the inevitable hurdles before us. 
• “It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you think you’ve accomplished. You don’t know everything. If you let your success harden into stubbornness, you may actually know less as the years go on. You get stupider because you stop listening. Nobody can tell you anything.” Teachers are also learners. Coach Wooden expressed it another way, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."  I question myself with 'what would you do in this situation?' For example, how would your team work against a 'box and one'? First, I would design my team to get diversified scoring, but second, I trust that my best players would have multiple ways to score, including in transition and coming off perimeter screens. 

Basketball shares so many parallels with achievement by the individual, family, community, and society. Developing a consistent process with feedback, adjustments, repetition, and deliberate practice gives us a chance to succeed at each progressive level.

Originally published at www.MelroseGirlsBasketball.com/blog