When it comes to improving at basketball there’s very few things as important as coachability and your mindset. You can be physically gifted and a great athlete, but at higher levels almost everyone is a top tier athlete so that’s unlikely enough to make you great. At higher competition levels, to be a great player you need to understand the game better than your opponents. You need to be more savvy and more fundamentally sound – basically you need sharper skills and more nuanced understanding.
A big key to being able to gain the level of skill and of understanding is to have the humility to accept that you don’t know everything just yet. For players, this trait of humility and willingness to be taught is referred to as coachability. Coachability is how well you accept corrections and suggestions from others – especially those outside your own inner circle. To learn in life, one must admit there they don’t know everything there is to know, and must be willing to be taught. And the more willing a person is to accept teaching for what it is (rather than criticism or being picked on) the more opportunities that person will have to improve without having to figure it out for themselves.
Being Coachable Makes Coaches Want You
According to the article What Do Coaches Look for in a Player one of the things high level coaches look for when recruiting is coachability. That’s right, if you want to get recruited you need the skill of coachability. The article defines being coachable as:
Coachability: Ready to learn and to achieve goals, self-motivated, attentive and receptive, willingness, interested, spontaneous, committing themselves, likes to discuss problems, hard worker, self-disciplined, creative, constructive, progressive.
I want to be clear. Coachability is not about how well do you learn! You might have great learning skills. Maybe you can watch game film and learn from your own view of that. You see yourself make a play that didn’t turn out well and you key in on it and come up with ways to improve on it. That’s powerful, but it’s not what we’re talking about.
It takes nothing special for someone to see themselves fail and try to come up some idea about how to do it better. That’s a rational but in the end basically self-focused behavior. You don’t want to fail, you see yourself fail, you come up with how to do it better. Imagine if you actually succeeded and your coach told you it was lucky or a bad idea because of some reason. If you can accept that feedback without anger and resentment… that’s coachability. Being coachable makes coaches want to work with you which increases your opportunities to improve as well as the opportunities to play at your desired locations.
Here’s a nice table if you’re more into that sort of thing:
Coachable Players Make Their Team Better
In my time as a coach I’ve coached various age and skill groups. In every group (not every team) there’s always one or two that are just not all that interested in the ideas i have to help them improve. These players are almost always one of the best players on their team. And for this reason, they think they’re a king. Everything they do is good enough they think. They wonder why they would try a different way than the way that’s worked for them in the past (against inferior players).
Good players sometimes wonder why the coach is pointing out their follies when they’re the best player on the team – maybe even the best player they know. “I’m no fool” they think. “I won’t be treated as a fool or have my ideas challenged” they think. “I’m too good to listen to this guy” is another. They quite literally think they are the like a king who can simply declare that everything they do is the best option and that they don’t need not take advice!
In every case the team suffers for it and the player is left with unrealized potential. How?
- They makes the same silly mistake all year and fouls out of the big game while swatting at balls to get blocks no matter how many times they are reminded that they can get the same block (and control the ball) without swatting.
- Repeatedly they end up playing 1v3 on offense and taking a poor shot no matter how many times they are reminded that the easiest way to an easy bucket is to pass it and get it back.
- Shooting fadeaways is the choice they make even though they’re the biggest player and they’re catching the ball in the paint. Somehow their teammates with lesser abilities and physical gifts are able to attack the rim successfully, but the king won’t be bothered to work on the footwork necessary to do so.
I’m not blaming those players. The ones who played for me that I wasn’t able to turn – I always view those failed efforts as my fault. i I believe that as a coach it’s my job to find a way to communicate, encourage, and educate players so they convince themselves that the way that I’m suggesting really might be better than their current way.
Still even as I accept the blame there’s still room to consider that their own issues could also be a part of the situation. Some players believe that they know so much that some guy 20 or 30 years older than them cant possibly be able to tell them anything. Others believe that anyone correcting them must be picking on them. Still others believe they’re so good they don’t have to listen because even without doing so they’ll still be the best player on the team which might be true – but it’s irrelevant!
Being coachable doesn’t mean being the best player on your team. It means you will be getting better by allowing yourself to learn from others and allowing them to speak into your game. Best on the team? Not necessarily. Best for the team? Highly likely. Better than you were before? Also highly likely.
Coachability is a Skill and a Mindset
As people mature their mindset and attitude generally go one of the following ways:
- They view themselves as a king, and they have nothing to learn from everyone else who is below them
- They understand they are fools, that they don’t know everything – and they want to transform themselves which they realize they can do by learning – by becoming less foolish.
In order to become less foolish you MUST be willing to accept the idea that other people have ideas or knowledge that you do not have, and that the best way to get that knowledge is to willingly allow them to share it with you. It’s okay to reject their ideas after truly considering them (that’s just thinking), but being humble enough to hear others ideas and to consider that your own thoughts are either insufficient or wrong is a huge step.
If you want to be great as player, the best path to greatness is to be humble enough to know that there is room to improve. Then just wait around for someone (or ask) to point out to you something that you can do better. It might be something new that you don’t do at all or it might be suggesting you change something you already do.
Self Check for Coachability
Take a moment and ask yourself how do you react when your coach tells you something that feels counter to what you want to do. Really think about it. Do you reject them outright because you feel like you know more about today’s game than your coach who is wanting you to do something a different way? Do you feel like they’re just singling you out? If so, that’s not being coachable and you’re hurting your team and yourself – guaranteed. Instead listening and trying to really understand what is being asked, and then incorporating it into your game is being coachable. Doing so will lead to you becoming a better leader, teammate, and player.
Final Thoughts to become more Coachable
Some players are not naturally good at accepting feedback that was meant to be constructive, and that’s understandable. For some it will be hard at first, but just like any basketball skill, being coachable can be practiced. You can intentionally choose to listen even though your initial reaction is to reject. Once you get a few successful reps in you’ll find it’s easier, and once you apply the knowledge you’re game and relationships will likely improve creating a wonderful cycle.
Be sure check out this collection of basketball concepts good players should know next. Best of luck in your journey!
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