As a head coach, one of the hardest decisions you are going to have to make is deciding beforehand how you are going to handle certain situations. You are going to have rules and policies for the players to follow. What happens when the rules and policies are broken? Does the best player on the team get a lesser punishment then the worst player? Those decisions will affect your program not just in the short term but also for years down the road. Now how do you decide on what to do in those situations? I personally have a 3 tiered system in place on how I make those decisions when they come up throughout the season. This process is communicated to the players and parents at the beginning of each season. Parents do not always understand why but as a coach and head of the program it has made my life easier. I make decisions in this order: program first, team second, and player third. Any big decision is made with those three factors and in that order. While it is hard to do at times, it has helped to remove later issues and problems by keeping the decision making process in that order. Now here is the breakdown of each of the 3 factors.
1) Program
I view the program as the entire system of basketball teams throughout the entire school system. This is coming from a one high school district so if you are in a different situation then you may have to adjust this. Everything from youth basketball all the way to varsity basketball is considered. This is what type of offense and defense are you going to run. Are you going to have the junior high and youth teams run the same offense and defense? What skills do you want the players to know and at what age? You may have say in who coaches the junior high and youth teams. You may not have any say on the coaches at the levels under the high school. How do you handle this? There are other aspects that come up dealing with program wide issues that you as the varsity head coach should set the precedent in how each should be handled.
At just the high school level, your program is the freshman, JV and varsity teams as one full unit and not independent teams. How do you handle bus rides? How do you handle missed practices? How do you handle technical fouls? These should be program decisions. A missed practice by the last player on the freshman team should have the same consequences as the star player of the varsity team. Rule breaking should be penalized exactly the same for every player. By placing decision making on the program level then all players and parents have an understanding of penalties given rule breaking by the player. Building this consistency helps to build a winning culture within the program. Favoritism does not play a part in decision making. Being a teacher, students and kids like fairness. They do not want to feel like certain people are shown favoritism. Having this fairness across the board helps to get everybody knowing expectations. And the understanding the program takes precedent over the team or player might help in getting the players to believe in something bigger than themselves.
2) Team
On the next level down, the individual teams are considered next. One of the biggest principals I have is the role of the non-varsity teams. As a JV coach, my job was two-fold. First is develop each players’ skill level. Second, was to get each player ready for varsity basketball. That was my first two concerns. While I wanted to win and the players wanted to win, winning was not the main focus. The JV team would run the same offense as the varsity even if it was not the best offense for the JV team. I did this in case a JV player would get pulled up and start playing some varsity minutes. They needed to be able to go in and play without the varsity team having to adjust their offense to the new player. I worked to make each player better first and foremost. The more skilled each player become, then the more players I would play during games. And the JV team would do things similar to the varsity so the players could move up and be ready to play immediately. If they were not ready to play varsity then I failed my job as JV coach. The JV team should be trying to get JV players noticed to the point where they start earning varsity minutes. The JV team was more important than each individual player in how the JV team operated.
3) Player
Finally the player is considered last. If a decision is made for the benefit of one player but negatively affects the team then problems will eventually arise. One of the biggest issues that comes up is playing time. There are many more but playing time is usually the number one issue. I have a rule where freshman and sophomores that do not start varsity have to play at least one quarter of JV. It is stated at the beginning of each season and everybody knows the rule. The program is put first because the playing time those freshman and sophomores are getting on JV could help develop them quicker for varsity. In this case the JV team should benefit because there are varsity role players playing on the JV team. The varsity team benefits because those players should develop faster and in my time as a coach this has been the case. The individual players are considered last. The varsity players get some more playing time. And those extra minutes can be the difference between playing 12 minutes in a given night and playing 18 to 24 minutes of playing time. A freshman only getting 12 minutes out of 32 minutes playing only varsity is going to hurt the development of that player. Freshman should be playing more each night. The individual varsity player is getting a benefit but the straight JV players are losing out on those 6 to 12 minutes the varsity player is now taking. This is where the individual JV players are considered last. The program takes precedent in this playing time situation. The program and varsity team is considered before the individual JV player.
While this may not seem fair to all people, it is how successful basketball programs are ran. The group is more important than the individual. Likewise the varsity is more important than the JV. Parents do not always agree with it but the consistency in doing it year after year after year will bring an understanding that this is how things are ran and no parent or player will change this. The programs that do not hold these values are the programs always looking for some kind of stability with the coach. Parents and school boards are seemingly changing the staff frequently which never allows the program to fully succeed to their ultimate potential.