On another coaching forum a quote was brought up and a question raised in regards to how accurate you felt it might be. The quote was from Bobby Knight
"Dumb loses more games than smart wins!"
This got me thinking about a number of issues I wanted to discuss. I'll organize my response in to two categories:
- the feeling and my reaction to statement
- the reality of what statements like this imply in terms of player development.
Part II: Implications for player development.
Implication 1: The learned behaviours and choices are still more a product of nature/reactions then they are of practiced habits.
All of the latest and most up to date research in brain development, excellence and learning agrees that there are no "smart" people, or "exceptional" musicians or tennis players that are walking around blessed with ability. All the very best, and brightest in all fields have backgrounds with hundreds and hundreds of hours of quality practice and training in their fields. Generally at younger ages or more condensed time frames based on opportunities others may not have been able to access.
Brain mapping shows that every time we learn or do something new our nervous system grows new synapses in our brain. When we use synapses over and over the myelin build up along synapses make the use of these functions more "automatic" with less effort/ thought. The very best chess players, athletes, musicians in the world just have more pathways built, and those pathways have been used to such a point that they can do things the average person would see as complicated, effortlessly and without thinking about how they do it.
The implication of smart vs. dumb in the basketball world is that some players choices, behaviors and abilities are superior to others (true); the reason being that some kids get it and some don't (false). You have kids who have the practice, experience, coaching, and repetitions of each to be able to execute and function in a desirable way in a given situation and those that don't. As coaches if you are developing players and talent then the focus should be on getting the reps of quality practice at the edge of kids abilities to have them be able to be successful. Instead, because of either the focus on results or our myth driven notions about ability, we see coaches treating players behaviors, abilities, and decisions as right/wrong, good/bad, smart or dumb rather than a product of their training and exposure.
Implication 2: Mistakes hurt you more, so rather than focusing on making smart plays, focus on mistake free basketball.
If you eliminate mistakes it is easier to be successful. Most basketball games are won by the team who makes the fewest mistakes, not the team that makes the most great plays. Its true and sounds good on paper. The application becomes the scary part.
You could be discussing school, social development or just basketball. The North American model for response to failure, mistakes, inability is that these things are to be seen as bad, undesirable, or a sign of weakness. In other cultures though, struggles and strugglers are embraced since difficulty and overcoming it is the corner stone of all deep meaningful learning. What we see is that for short term success or to avoid pain kids, players, coaches, teachers, parents, etc. all want to avoid the perceived negative, rather than embracing it to ensure deeper more meaningful learning.
I'm not proposing you overload kids or crush their spirit, but if they see struggle and failure as part of a process to improvement rather a negative they can develop further faster. The idea of avoiding mistakes in basketball or life, sets you up for short term success but often avoids the deeper and more meaningful experiences/ learning you could have.
In a strictly basketball sense for developing players its easy to let the kids who can dribble- dribble, and put the big kids by the rim and let the kid who can shoot- shoot. Organize defensive and offensive strategies that maximize ability and hide inabilities. All the kids are doing stuff they are good at, all the kids are contributing to team success, no one feels bad and you are probably winning more. Sounds like great coaching. However, for late developing athletes, big kids, and all of your players deeper understanding of the game of basketball they are getting short changed in the big picture.
This model is not creating universally skilled athletes. It is not creating players (and most importantly future coaches, refs, and stakeholders in the basketball community) that understand the purpose of things, decision making, or the most current ideas in terms of learning, skill and sports science. For the developing player working on skills in different modalities and always at the edge of their ability and understanding is far superior to their growth and learning. It does mean more mistakes to practice and play that way. Short term benefits should not outweigh long term benefits.
Implication 3: Winning is more important than learning.
If you are an NBA/pro league player/coach and your job is dependent on winning, then fine I get that. If you are college coach whose job depends on winning, I also accept that. Heck, even if you are a university athlete who's scholarship depends on their short term performance; I think you chose the wrong school and situation, but I understand that too.
For everyone else in the basketball world. Winning should not be more important than developing skilled, understanding stakeholders in the game of basketball. Does less mistakes win you more games? Yes! Should you be playing bucket zone in Kindergarten games cause kids can't shoot and your kids won't get lost chasing the ball and leaving their girl? No! There are more important skills for player development and lessons about learning and long term development you can be teaching players.
The problem is evident. You can talk about hockey parents, youth sports in general or even marks in school. We have a society where the importance is on the result, the number, or the win. Does it have to be at the expense of deep and meaningful experiences? Of course not, the two are not mutually exclusive. That being said with developing players, athletes and people it is much easier to find short cuts to get to a destination, then it is to grind and put in the hours of work that lead to people being exceptional and able to get any result they want.
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