There’s a well-known exchange between a journalist and the infamous NCAAM coach Bob Knight that goes something like this:

Journalist: Coach Knight, why have you never coached in the NBA?
Knight: Because I don’t think players should be paid more than coaches.

A while ago I attended a seminar on Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) run by the national sports coaching organisation. The seminar was primarily (as you’d expect) centred on athletes but during the latter part of the session they discussed coaching during the ‘retention’ phase of the development process. Coaching seemed to be included as an afterthought to elite performance. Once the player has been through all the stages of development they can just ‘go into coaching’ and stay in the sport. In my opinion, this system is surely devaluing the coaching profession and perpetuates the (obviously false) view that to be a great coach, you must first have been a great player.

Second Team All-Brooklyn Player Red Auerbach

So why does this even matter? Well it matters because for coaches to be able to coach successfully, they need the buy-in and respect from their players. They can get this by having a successful coaching track record, or a successful playing track record. These two dynamics seem to operate differently depending on the age of the coach. A young coach must have had a successful playing career for the players to respect his judgements and strategy, despite the coaching experience and success he may have had. Several months ago the then Kansas City Chiefs Running Back Larry Johnson used his twitter account to make the following comments about Head Coach Todd Haley:

“My father got more creditentials than most of these pro coaches.”

“My father played for the coach from ‘rememeber the titans’. Our coach played golf. My father played for redskins briefley. Our coach. Nuthn.”

My response to Larry Johnson, if he’s interested, and to anyone else that holds this view, is this:

Who cares? Coaching and playing are totally different occupations requiring almost totally different personal skills and abilities.

A look at the greatest 10 NBA coaches of all time shows that 5 of the 10 have never played professional basketball, let alone in the NBA. Only 1 of the 10 is also on the greatest 50 players of all time list. Of the other 4 that did play in the NBA, much of their action was as reserve (albeit on generally successful teams). However these days things seem to be different, only 8 coaches in the whole league have no NBA playing experience. I would find it easy to believe that is simply difficult to get into NBA coaching without having previously spent time around the league, and players are firmly at the centre of the NBA circle. However I don’t know why this is. GMs are (usually) smart guys and surely want the best hire for their team? When recruiting a CEO for Chrysler or Ford, do you headhunt the best auto engineer? Or the best manager of auto engineers? There are a great many programs for developing elite players in every sport, but how many programs designed to develop elite coaches?

At coaching development camps and clinics in Spain, young prospective coaches are told ‘you can be a player, or a coach, not both’. This sentiment clearly expresses Spain’s (and mainland Europe as a whole’s) commitment to coaching development and their attitude of taking coaching seriously. A cursory glance at the Wikipedia sites for prominent European coaches Ettore Messina, Zvi Sherf and Bogdan Tanjevich reveals no playing information at all. This either means they have no noteworthy playing experience, or it is acknowledged that playing information has no relevance to their coaching careers. I admit to my own ignorance in this area because I don’t know the case for these coaches, however both cases would back up my argument as they would reinforce the idea that playing experience is not seen as a neccessary component of being a high-level coach in the European game.

The only position in basketball that has the neccessary transferable skills to coaching is point guard. Obviously players who play other positions may possess the skills, but point guard demands these skills to be successful. It is therefore no coicidence that many of the successful player-to-coach stories have been achieved by players who occupied that position in their playing days. The three key skills for coaching are excellent communication, leadership, and a strong ability to analyse and read the game. All of these skills can be acquired without even playing basketball (even the ability to read the game, and I will cover this in another post), let alone playing at a high level. It is for this reason that so many coaches look across sports at other coaching styles and techniques to learn from and raise their own levels. Leadership and communication skills are universal and coaches like Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino make significant sums of money giving leadership seminars to corporate clients from the business world, far removed from the basketball court.

It is time for players, media and sporting bodies to respect the profession of coaching and acknowledge that playing ability has little or nothing to do with coaching ability. Coaches should be judged on their ability to successfully lead and motivate their players and to formulate winning strategies for their team.