I need to codify my philosophy of player development a bit more.

While my general thesis is that at the frontiers, the technical-tactical, scientific side of the game has essentially been cracked, and the humanistic side has not…¹ I still pride myself on being an innovator when it comes to on-court player development. I’m proud of that, but I am less-practiced in explaining the “why” to those who are not already on board with my understanding.

Here goes.

Who are we talking about?

I’m mainly talking about middle schoolers here, as that’s who I’ve mainly been coaching this spring and summer. Currently, I’m coaching a 6th grade girls team (12U), and a combined 7th and 8th grade girls team playing at the 8th grade level (14U). My groups are playing games at a level I’d suggest is between rec and AAU; within an hour drive, and usually only one or two games a weekend. Their previous experiences vary from beginner-level rec to more serious AAU than we are playing.

The arguments I’m making here are especially applied to 6th graders, slightly less so but still 7th graders, and a bit less so but still 8th graders. (Also, I’m staying away from generalized universal good coaching practices such as no lines no laps no lectures or maximizing time on task and instead trying to focus on particulars to developing this age group as basketball players.)

Hypotheses:

Coaching middle schoolers well requires playing the long game.

I assume kids want to reach their potential (in as much as that’s conceivably possible), and I assume that looks like peaking at the highest level they want to play at, which will be high school for some, college for others, and for a select few, even pro. Regardless, that is a future far from now. (In economics-speak, I assume that to become such a great player generally requires reaching their “global maximum” as opposed to their “local maximum.”)

When I think of great individual players, in their primes (usually at the high school, college, or pro levels), I think of qualities like Love, Raw Ability, Audacity, and Cerebrality. These qualities can be developed. Coaches can help. Coaches can hurt.

Love: Great players love the game. As a coach of middle schoolers, I take full responsibility for being a steward of their basketball experience. Whenever I start coaching a new player, I have them complete a survey for me, in an attempt to better understand their background in the game, their experience level, and their hopes and dreams. Usually, players have already had negative experiences. Usually those experiences were instigated by a coach (e.g., my coach made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right). As coaches we make or break a child’s experience, and if we really want them to improve, we need their experience to be a positive one that they want more of. A player who loves the game is dedicated to improving themselves, and that early foundation of love becomes the intrinsic motivation needed to continue on when things get tough, which they will.

Raw Abilities: Great players can do things others can’t. Most of us think of talent as something that we cannot influence, i.e. something “God-given.” But we can, and we especially can in middle school. Neuromotor and sensory systems, responsible for allowing our bodies to interact with physical environments, are more plastic than high school (i.e., our ability to become coordinated, spatially aware, more malleable and adaptable and susceptible) at this age, which is why experts call this period a “sensitive window” for development. I’m just scratching the surface here, dusting off my old undergraduate Psychology degree. 

Just like it is easier to learn to play the violin and speak a second language² when you are young, it is easier to learn how to do a range of athletic movements when you are young. And middle school tends to be the time when kids are getting strong enough to actually do it with the professional-sized equipment we usually make kids play with (10-foot rims and the balls the NBA/WNBA play with).

Therefore, I almost think of my role as like making DNA… developing a genetic code that can be called upon and expanded upon at later ages. I want to provide a menu of early-stage raw abilities and resources they can mine later.³ This seems most relevant with footwork and ball handling, but also things like speed, agility, and jumping. I want more exposure to more movements even if it’s to the detriment of less perfection of fewer movements.

(Raw ability depends on long-term health. With injury rates increasing for youth players and the adult players who came up in our domestic system, I seek to prioritize safety in our culture and practices, relevant exercises for injury prevention, and rest and recovery. Sometimes this means sitting a player out who desperately wants to play).

Audacity: Great players go for it. They attempt what others don’t. They’re willing to throw a daring pass, shoot from a distance that to others defies logic, make a risky double-team. Eventually, their reputation precedes them, and teammates and coaches and opponents accommodate their will (Steph Curry only needs to glance at the rim to make his defender jump). They don’t appear embarrassed at mess-ups, and no one around them seems to fault them when it happens. Only an audacious player creates fear in the opponent. Most controversially, I believe great players aren’t primarily motivated by winning per se, though they are motivated by winning. They just want to see what they can do.

Cerebrality: Great players carry a “theory of mind” for the game. Most kids today don’t seem to watch full college and professional games on TV, which is how many of us older than 25 learned the game within the game, the ebbs and flows, historical facts told to us by the telecasters. Kids today watch highlights and short clips on social media, which I compare to candy or dessert, not a full square meal. As a coach seeking to develop a theory of mind for the game, I must present the game as an intellectual subject. This requires give and take, explaining (and asking) the how specific tactics work, and how specific techniques work (e.g., “If you know you want to go that way you need to fake the other way… tell your defender what you want them to do by using your feet, eyes, hips, and shoulders.” or “Their coach just called a timeout to set up a press break. So now we’re going to fall back into half court man, so they can’t apply what their coach just told them”). Other times, it means rooting the game in a history, through small anecdotes such as why the “key” is called the key. I hope to persuade my students that basketball is a game you can benefit from studying. 

Some examples of decision points I make:

Wide range over narrow mastery. In middle school, I would rather have you mildly improve multiple moves or footwork approaches than master one. By high school, sure, reduce and master, where I think it’s more reasonable for coaches to try to win every game and maximize output over potential. In the meantime, I view my role in practice and training as to be expansive. 

No prerequisites. Just because you have not mastered a traditional lay-up does not mean you should not be practicing a non-traditional lay-up.⁴ A plastic brain doesn’t work like that, and if we lean into this, it’s helpful, not harmful, in preparing players to be multi-capable and therefore less predictable. As Brian McCormick says, there is no “wrong foot.” It only becomes wrong if we’ve treated it as such.⁵ It is not like math, where you need to understand addition before you can understand multiplication. 

Stretch assignments are how I think we can reach for audacity and its cousin, resilience. 

In some practices, we shoot “4-pointers,” for instance, even if they consistently airball. I want players to have a nonchalant, even cavalier attitude toward the arbitrary 3-point line. 

It won’t help us win the game this weekend if you practice behind the back passes, or reverse pivot step throughs, but I want you to. 

Another example: I believe the best press break is simply good guard play, so rather than rehearsing press breaks in practice, we just practice handling the ball while severely outnumbered.⁶

I allow messiness in drills. Development need not look good. Performing a drill flawlessly does not equal skill enhancement. I would rather overload you than underload you, so we get to combination dribble moves quickly and practice passing and catching with one hand, even if you have to chase the ball down. 

Most controversially, seemingly, I never do close-range “form” shooting. At its best, I think form shooting is useless beyond placebo. At its worst, deleterious. It may appear clean and the ball may go in a lot, but it’s not helping jump shots from further distances, which require something entirely different. Moreover, I expect that it introduces a subconscious association with shooting as something that should be done very carefully, and again great shooters are audacious and carefree, not careful. (I’d rather have us shoot from too far than too close, because a lot of things get straightened out when you have to transfer so much more energy through the ball.)

Conclusion:

I’m a different kind of coach, but I didn’t come up with all my ideas myself. I’ve been persuaded by some of the foremost innovators in basketball player and coach development…namely the likes of Brian McCormick, Sefu Bernard, Coleston Ayers, Chris Oliver, Micah Lancaster and many others I’ve forgotten. Since beginning my coaching career, I’ve always been curious to push the mold, but lately I’ve been fortunate to explore these sorts of things more explicitly as a researcher, interfacing with some of those folks directly. (For anyone looking to start thinking about player development more critically, I recommend starting with McCormick’s “Fake Fundamentals.”)

That’s a lot of technical blah blah blah. The soul still matters most.

Zach Moo Young (Coach Moo)

📍 Washington, DC

Epilogue

I started playing basketball reluctantly at 3rd grade, and made the jump to AAU in 6th… When I recall how much technical ability I had at that time, I had no business being on that team, but in just months, I became, in my recollection, one of our best players from a raw ability standpoint. My 6th grade coach was special, and he must be a big part of why I love coaching this age and stage.

Strangely, I’ve coached two players as 8th and 9th graders who eventually became McDonald’s All-Americans, each becoming the best at their position (guard) in their respective class by the time they were high school seniors. One made it to the NBA, and the other may soon. I had nothing to do with their success, and certainly did not predict it either, but as much as I’ve been persuaded by academic studies and other forward-thinking coaches, their stories live in me and the way I coach kids, in a visceral way. 

1. Some of the hypotheses I outline below are rooted in more humanistic realms rather than technical, but they do play out in my technical-tactical choices on the court. ↩︎
2. There is evidence that there are some sounds we may never be able to perfectly perceive [hear or speak] if we aren’t exposed to them by a particular developmental window (like the first year of our lives). ↩︎
3. According to this former professional soccer player from Chile, that’s representative of the development philosophy for soccer/football players in South America. ↩︎
4. For my basketball-literate people, think inside hand finishes or reverse lay-ups. The same is true for which foot to jump off of; it’s better that they learn to jump off either, earlier.
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5. When instructing particulars, though, and they complete the task different from my instruction, I’ll say something to the effect of, “That’s also a good move, just not the one we’re focusing on now.” That way, they can learn them as different, not wrong. ↩︎
6. In games in which the other team’s press is too viscous, we will simply lose, but at least we haven’t wasted a bulk of our practice time trying to memorize a press break during practice and remember it during games, without improving our raw abilities. ↩︎