Setting Goals For Your Team, Part 2

Today is part two of our discussion on setting goals for your basketball team. Listen to part one.

Here’s a quick summary of both episodes..

Making goals is good. You need to do it for your players, your team, the parents and the coaches (including yourself).

With your players, make individual, achievable goals. You can tie them to performance if you want – get five assists today, grab ten rebounds, limit yourself to two turnovers – and you can also tie them to attitude, body language, effort or leadership. They should all lead to individual development.

With your team, make the goals known and talk about them a lot. Goals can be within practice drills – make ten layups in 30 seconds, hit 20 shots in a shooting drill – or they can be game related – win the rebounding battle, get 30 fast break points, nobody jogs back on defense. The team goals should all lead to team improvement.

With the parents, let them in on what their child’s goals are. Make it a conversation piece for the family. Get them to remain positive – remind them it’s their job to be involved but it’s your job to coach. This is a tough one, make sure the parents know the difference. Sometimes you may even need goals for parents that are tied to complaining about refs or coaching decisions.

With your coaches, if you have assistants, ask them to make goals for the season. Maybe they want to become more vocal in practice, or take over during a time out, or record game stats.

With yourself… this takes self-awareness. Look in the mirror – what do you need to get better at? If you’re not sure ask people to submit suggestions anonymously, but don’t take it personally. The intent is to become aware and improve.

Most importantly, when setting goals for your basketball team – revisit them, make everyone accountable for their performance and actions. Adjust the goals if needed one way or the other but you must revisit them otherwise it’s just lip service and you’re wasting your time.

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