Chris Hackett
Read below Chris Hackett's response to the recent comments made in interviews published by Future Stars about the poor coaching of young players in America. Chris Hackett speaks from the perpsective of someone who has been involved in both American and European Basketball. Born and raised in England, Hackett has 8 years experience of playing club basketball before travelling to the USA where he has spent the last 13 years coaching at high school, junior college and NCAA level. Hackett has directed camps and coaching clinics in Europe and has spent time observing several European professional and national teams. Chris Hackett is the current Head coach of Frank Phillips College in Texas.
Chris Hackett's response:
I don’t disagree with the comments made by either of the coaches (Bozidar Malkovic and Audie Norris ). I do believe that the fundamental skills are taught far more effectively by many European countries, than in the US. I have recruited players from Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Latvia and they have all had more superior skills, in terms of footwork, technique, shooting and passing ability.
I feel that there are three main reasons why the USA is behind in the coaching of fundamentals.
1) Winners Mentality
The American mentality tends to be one that is focused on being a “winner”. Too much emphasis is placed in winning in youth basketball. I understand that at the professional and college level, (maybe even at the high school level), a coach is going to be judged primarily on wins and losses. However at the youth level, the focus should be solely on the teaching of fundamentals and player development. This is too often not the case. I have seen coaches and parents at the U9 level screaming at the players and referees, having players that never get in the game and coaching the game with only one goal; to win. European coaching tends to be with a long-term vision; that while you may lose some games in the short-term while players and teams develop, you reap the rewards in the future.
The other thing that I see a lot in the US that you don’t see as much in Europe is putting players into a certain position at a young age, when you have no idea how that player will develop physically. I have seen many players that developed early and were much bigger than everyone else being taught only to play inside. Then when the rest of the age group catches up, they have neither the size to play inside nor the skills to play outside. I could give you a long list of 6’3'' centres at the high school level!
2) Schedule
In the US, teams play many more games in a much shorter season. By comparison… ENGLAND: North EBL Premier U18’s Team = 20 games played between October 2nd and March 10th. USA: TX High School Team = 28 games played between November 15th and February 14th.
My own team at Frank Phillips College played 9 games during the first 18 days of the season. This is not conducive to player development as there simply isn’t enough practice time to devote to teaching skills and fundamentals. When you take into account the toll that the games take on the player’s bodies and that we have to take off one day per week for rest; during the first three weeks of the season, we had 7 light practices and 9 games! That ratio allows for little more than some shooting, review of our offensive and defensive schemes and opponent scouting and preparation.
European clubs, even at the professional level, usually only play once per week. Twice at the most. This allows for much more practice time and you then have the ability to spend a portion of your week teaching the individual players, rather than just coaching the team.
3) Athleticism
The final factor I believe affects player development is that, on average, the US produces much more athletic players. While this is not an excuse for poor fundamentals, there are many examples where a player with poor technique outplays a player with perfect technique, simply because they are so superior physically. The adjustment that my European players have had to make when coming to the US is learning to handle the speed, physicality and athleticism of the game here.
I think that many coaches that have gifted athletes overlook teaching footwork, etc. because they feel that they “don’t need to.” This obviously catches up with them later in their playing career. Even with the exceptional athletes that the US produces. I think that those that end up reaching the very top usually have excellent fundamentals.
While agreeing with the comments that were made, I hope this has given some insight on some of the reasons why I think that it happens. I have had the unique opportunity to have spent considerable time in both systems and I think there are positives and negatives to both. I like to think that I have been able to take the best parts of each system and put them together to create a successful philosophy.
12.01.12