Motivating Players

As we near the season, the topic of player motivation has been coming up more and more in subscriber questions. including a very common theme of how to motivate well-off suburban kids who might lack the motivation that inner city kids have. I can sympathize with the feeling of having a perhaps over-privileged group of kids and feeling like they don’t have to work as hard for some things as other, less fortunate kids. To be honest, I don’t think there are any easy answers or magic buttons to push.

• Acting like a drill sergeant when that style is a bad match to your personality definitely wont fix things – if anything, players will pick up on what you’re doing and start to lose respect for you because they can see that you’re using a canned approach instead of treating them as people.

Aside from the most obvious answers – be consistent, be yourself, and maintain your passion I think that I might be able to offer a perspective on the suburbs vs. inner city debate that other can’t based on where I’ve coached.

I spent a couple of years coaching at Mercer Island High School. That probably means nothing to most people, buy Mercer Island is an island just east of south Seattle. It is the wealthiest population of people in the United States, per capita. More than any other group of kids I’ve ever worked with, Mercer Island athletes didn’t need basketball, and any motivation they have to play the game had n-o-t-h-i-n-g to do with “bettering their circumstances” or “getting an education”.

Here’s an unrelated point that should drive home what I’m getting at – I work for Child Protective Services when I am not writing about basketball. A standard child neglect case usually involves poverty, the use of some kind of drug like meth, and/or the parent having a history as a victim that makes them think it’s normal to abuse or neglect children. The kids are usually malnourished on some level – and they will never in a million years have enough stability in their lives to play on a basketball team.

On Mercer Island – a standard child neglect case usually has to do with the child bonding more closely with the maid than the parents due to the parents schedules, or from having an entire wing of a house to themselves. Social problems on Mercer Island stem from having too much money.

I left Mercer Island to coach at Evergreen High School in White Center, the most diverse (and one of the poorest) neighborhoods in the state. There are over 44 languages spoken in the neighborhood. Its definitely not suburban – and to state it plainly, it can be pretty damn ghetto. I never knew that you could steal the tabs off of somebody’s license plates, or that practicing with armed security guards was a possibility, until I coached at Evergreen. I also never thought I would coach a practice where I was the only person in the gym who spoke English as a primary language – or that I would ever see a mother slap her son because she is a blood and he claimed crip during a parking lot fight.

I’m being a little but melodramatic – but all of those things did happen – and they aren’t anywhere close to the most difficult situations I came across at the school. Coach Carter actually comes really close to capturing the high school experience I saw a lot of kids have at Evergreen. My point … the problems at Evergreen have nothing in common with problems that ‘suburban’ teams and coaches face.

Coming back to the original point of the post (motivating suburban kids) – my experience was that the Mercer Island kids were more committed to the game, more focused on getting better and much, much, much more consistent with the basketball program. Most of us have made statements at some point about our kids being soft – or about suburban kids being soft. It’s important to remember that toughness can be taught. Suburban schools have a huge advantage when they provide the social stability needed for kids to become part of a program and to grow from it.

There’s a pretty good chance that part of you is thinking, “Ok…that social studies lesson didn’t give me anything to take to the floor with my team. Here are a couple of core concepts for increasing aggressiveness in practice.

• Include as many competitive situation as humanly possible in to practices. It important to develop a culture where every moment on the floor, there is a winner and a loser. You’re trying to make winning a habit – and also provide just enough negative reinforcement to keep losing from being a consideration.

• I’ll be a little “controversial” here – stop conditioning with the ball and just run. a lot. If you’re main concern is to build toughness – than focus on building toughness. by prioritizing it.
• More than anything – always look to teach the game better – communicate the material in a way that your audience can do something with.

Filed Under: Basketball Coaching Tips

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