Unit 3: Responsibility

  Coaching basketball provides a great opportunity to teach young players the value of responsibility. Responsibility involves making choices and then accepting the results of the choices that were made. Often, young people allow circumstances to dictate poor choices. Players will often minimize or ignore their power to choose so that they can satisfy short-term wants and needs.

  For example, a player may miss a practice or training session when a perceived better opportunity presents itself in the moment, such as playing video games with friends. This doesn’t necessarily mean the player doesn’t want to improve, but in that moment the player casts aside their long-term goals in basketball to fulfill a short-term desire, which in this case was playing video games instead of practicing. As a coach, it is your duty to consider a player’s long-term growth and impart true responsibility in your players in order to produce long-term results.