Roy Williams on Basketball Leadership

Written by Coach Peterman

I have coached at the NCAA Division 2 (Southwestern Oklahoma State University), NAIA (USAO), and JUCO Levels (Blinn College and Carl Albert State College) as well as high school. I just felt that fellow coaches especially young coaches need to constantly work on their “game”. Just like the basketball players that we coach. We as coaches need to improve ourselves. That is my story and why I do this blog.

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Basketball Coaching

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August 29, 2013

These basketball notes are on Basketball Leadership, Adjustments, Not going personal, winning teams, talent vs team, and much more. You can learn a lot of little things from these notes.

National Championship Coach UNC Roy Williams on Basketball Leadership

As part of the cutting edge Carolina Leadership Academy, UNC national champion men’s basketball coach Roy Williams recently shared his insights on leadership and team building as well as some behind the scenes stories during Carolina’s run to the 2005 National Championship. Here are some of the highlights from Coach Williams talk with the Tar Heels captains and coaches:

1. Trust is the foundation of basketball leadership

Coach William’s first goal when he made the transition from Kansas to Carolina was to establish a sense of trust with the UNC players. “You’ve got to get your players to believe in you.” Coach Williams immediately scheduled individual meetings with each of the players to begin the trust-building process. Because first impressions are so important, especially when taking over a different program, Coach Williams wanted to start off on the right foot with each of the players.

2. We’ll have a chance to win it all next year…

Coach Williams told the UNC players that if they did exactly what he and his staff asked them to do, they would make the NCAA tournament in the first year and have a chance to win it all in the second year. This inspiring vision gave the players an exciting goal to shoot for as well as a realistic timeline to accomplish it. It set the program’s expectations from the onset and gave them a motivating reason for the daily work they would need to do.

3. Coaching is about adjustments

Your game plan is only good for the first six minutes – the rest is all about adjustments. According to Coach Williams, coaching (and playing for that matter) is all about adjustments. You can and should formulate a game plan going in, but much of your team’s success depends on your ability to make efficient and effective adjustments. As a coach you must be able make the strategically adjustments, but just as important, you must help your team make the mental adjustments that need to be made to manage the momentum of competition.

Click on the pdf link to download the basketball coaching notes on basketball leadership: