Happy Wednesday - Make sure you’re taking game shots.

The Long Game: Sometimes Your Message Lands Years Later

One of the hardest parts of coaching high schoolers is knowing that most of what you're teaching isn't going to land. At least not right away.

You can preach accountability until you're blue in the face. You can talk about "how you do anything is how you do everything" every single day. You can model leadership, teach competitiveness, emphasize attention to detail…and watch as 90% of your team nods along while clearly not absorbing a word of it. Sometimes you feel like you’re talking to the wall.

It's not that they're bad kids. They're just teenagers. They're immature. They're naturally defiant or apathetic in the way that 17-year-olds are. They don't yet have the life experience to understand why any of this matters beyond winning the next game.

This is the reality of coaching young people, and it can be discouraging. You wonder if you're getting through to anyone. You question whether the "culture stuff" actually matters when half your team seems checked out.

Then, sometimes, if you're lucky, you get a text like the one I received recently from a former player. I want to share it with you in full because it's a reminder of something we all need to hear:

"Hey coach, I hope all is well with you! I just wanted to text and check in and see how you're doing?! I also wanted to let you know that you taught me the most important lessons and leadership advice that as a young junior and a young 17 year old senior I didn't understand and take in too much of what you're saying and didn't take it as seriously because I was immature, but now at my age (especially when you have 2 seasons of losing) I start to incorporate everything you taught us from a leadership perspective because of maturity. My favorite quote from you that we incorporated from our team this year was "how you do anything is how you do everything." This year I feel like we know we haven't worked our hardest and played up to our potential, so from a player perspective we've been stepping up to be more vocal than our coaches and incorporate that we can't afford to have sluggish days and take our foot off the gas just because we are winning. Over the summer, our team sent a new quote everyday to each other and tried to incorporate it with our daily lives, and as a junior vet at this level I understand it more than now what you were trying to establish with our high school team, I just really wish we bought in more to what you said because it would've helped us be more successful. Now I understand everything you ever told us and taught us and will continue to help lead our team in the right direction not only from a vocal perspective, but with accountability and competitiveness as well. I hope you are doing well and just wanted to thank you for all the lessons and everything you did for us"

Read that again. Notice the pattern: "I didn't understand... I was immature... now I understand... I wish we bought in more."

This young man is now playing at the college level, facing adversity, and leading a team. And suddenly, all those conversations about standards and leadership and how you do things make sense. They're not coach talk anymore. They're tools he's using to navigate real challenges.

Here's what I want you to remember: Your messages are seeds, not immediate harvests.

When you're teaching leadership principles to a junior who's rolling his eyes, you're not necessarily reaching the 17-year-old in front of you. You're reaching the 20-something-year-old he's going to become. You're equipping the future college player, the future parent, the future coach, the future leader in whatever field he chooses.

The kid who shrugs off your talk about accountability today might become the team captain who holds everyone to a higher standard in three years. The player who seems checked out during your culture conversations might be the one sending daily motivational quotes to his college teammates. You just won't see it happen in your gym.

This doesn't mean we should stop teaching these lessons. It means we need to trust the process and understand what we're actually doing. We're not just coaching basketball players. We're coaching future adults who will face adversity, lead teams, navigate pressure, and need guidance for how to handle it all.

Your job isn't to make every kid buy in while they're with you. Your job is to plant the seeds and trust that maturity, experience, and adversity will help grow them.

Will every player come back and thank you? No. Majority won't. But that doesn't mean your words didn't land somewhere deep, waiting for the right moment to resurface when they're needed most.

So keep teaching. Keep emphasizing the details. Keep talking about standards and leadership and doing things the right way, even when it feels like no one's listening. Because somewhere down the road, when one of your former players is facing a challenge and needs guidance, your voice will be there. Your lessons will resurface. Your investment will pay off.

You're playing the long game. And that's exactly what coaching is supposed to be.

Let's talk about it: Have you had a former player reach out years later to tell you something finally clicked? What lessons do you emphasize knowing they might not land until much later? Email reply and share your story.

Building Your Coaching Staff: The Foundation of Every Great Program

This is the second in a five-part series on assistant coaches - the most undervalued and crucial component of successful basketball programs.

Part 2: What Actually Makes a Great Assistant Coach

Last week we talked about hiring the right assistants. Now let's dive into what separates good assistants from great ones and how assistants can develop into future head coaches.

The Core Qualities of Elite Assistants:

What's Your Job vs. What's Not Your Job:

One of the most important things I learned as an assistant coach over the years is not necessarily what my job was, but what my role as an assistant IS NOT. Understanding boundaries is crucial for both assistant and head coach success:

Your Job as an Assistant:

Not Your Job as an Assistant:

The gray area: Game management decisions. Great head coaches involve assistants in timeout discussions and strategic decisions, but the final call belongs to the head coach.

Developing Into Head Coach Material

The assistants who become successful head coaches focus on developing additional skills that go beyond day-to-day coaching. They start developing vision beyond the current season, thinking about program building rather than just this year's team. They ask themselves: How do we create systems that work regardless of personnel? This long-term perspective separates program builders from season-to-season managers.

Future head coaches also develop comfort with the administrative side of coaching – learning to handle budgets, scheduling, and facility management. It's the unsexy stuff that makes programs run, but it's crucial for head coaching success. Equally important is their growth in parent and community relations, developing skills in managing adult relationships and expectations, not just player relationships. They practice having the difficult conversations about playing time, behavior, and expectations that head coaches deal with daily. Finally, they evolve from fitting into existing culture to understanding how to build and maintain culture from the ground up. If you become a head coach it will happen fast. You won’t have time to go back and figure all these things out. You’ll need to have the reps and the practice so you are ready when you step into the big chair.

Signs You're Ready for a Head Coaching Opportunity:

Questions for Head Coaches: How do you help your assistants grow and develop into a future head coach?

Questions for Assistant Coaches: Which of these development areas do you need to focus on most?

Next week: Delegation without losing control: How head coaches can empower assistants while maintaining program standards.

The Scouting Report is your weekly dose of resources that can help your coaching. Plays of the Week, videos, drills, etc. What’s the old joke? The best coaches are just the best thieves?

Shared Resources

Highlights for Basketball Nerds:

We’ve all gotten that one message from a parent that makes you pause, blink twice, and say… “Did they really just send that?”

If you’ve got a funny, confusing, or just plain wild message sitting in your inbox, send it in to [email protected]. We’ll feature the best ones anonymously - names and personal info will be removed.

Let’s remind each other we’re not alone in this coaching journey.

That’s a wrap on Episode 27 of Game Shots. Thank you for subscribing.

My mission has always been, and will always be, to support coaches around the world who love the game and want to keep getting better.