Coaching Team Basketball: A Coach’s Guide to Developing Players With a Team-First Attitude [Paperback]

Tom Crean (Author), Ralph Pim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006

To be #1, your team has to play as one

How many times have you heard, "There is no I in team"? Still, U.S. basketball continues to be dominated by individual play, which has led to a number of embarrassing upsets on the world and Olympic courts. From middle-school to the NBA, there are no championships without teamwork--and there's no teamwork without good coaching.

Get away from the flash and start building your successful team today with this one-of-a-kind, step-by-step guide that helps you to:

• Communicate the core values of integrity and respect
• Create a vision statement
• Recruit team players
• Develop trust and unity with a buddy system
• Inspire your players to embrace teamwork
• Get your five defenders working as one
• Master winning offensive plays that utilize the whole team
• And more

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

To be #1, your team has to play as one

How many times have you heard, "There is no I in team"? Still, U.S. basketball continues to be dominated by individual play, which has led to a number of embarrassing upsets on the world and Olympic courts. From middle-school to the NBA, there are no championships without teamwork--and there's no teamwork without good coaching.

Get away from the flash and start building your successful team today with this one-of-a-kind, step-by-step guide that helps you to:

• Communicate the core values of integrity and respect
• Create a vision statement
• Recruit team players
• Develop trust and unity with a buddy system
• Inspire your players to embrace teamwork
• Get your five defenders working as one
• Master winning offensive plays that utilize the whole team
• And more

About the Author

Tom Crean is the head coach of men's basketball at Marquette University and is widely recognized as one of the best young coaches in college basketball. In 2003 he led his Golden Eagles all the way to the Final Four. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ralph Pim is the division chief for competitive sports in the department of physical education at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He lives in West Point, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071465650
• ISBN-13: 978-0071465656
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #882,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Team is the MOST important thing in basketball!, November 3, 2009

By 

Kevin Sivils - KCS Basketball Enterprises (Katy, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coaching Team Basketball: A Coach’s Guide to Developing Players With a Team-First Attitude (Paperback)

I was excited when I got this book. I have truly come to believe that the single most important key to success in basketball is not individual talent, but being a TEAM! It is also the thing that will make the game more enjoyable for players, coaches and fans.

Coach Crean would certainly agree with the above statement. There is no doubt that his players play as a team when you watch them play on TV. I just wish he had gone into a little more detail, well a lot more detail, about how he creates the environment that fosters this essential key to success in basketball.

Still, I did not feel like I had spent money unwisely. It is a good overview of the topic and certainly there are many coaches WHO NEED to understand that being a team, and not a collection of prima donas is how you succeed in basketball.

Coach Crean is certainly an ambassador for this cause and the book does provoke some big picture thinking about what is important.

Kevin Sivils - author of Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball
Game Strategies and Tactics for Basketball: Bench Coaching for Success

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not great., November 4, 2008

By 

Patrick McClure - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coaching Team Basketball: A Coach’s Guide to Developing Players With a Team-First Attitude (Paperback)

If you are a coach, you will learn a thing or two with Tom Crean's book: Coaching team basketball, but there are far better books for coaches such as Wooden on Leadership, Wooten's Coaching Basketball Successfully, and Bo's Life Lessons by Bo Schembechler. Those books are better at helping a coach develop or rethink their philosophy and how to start a new basketball program. Coach Crean was very broad and talked about what makes a team, but not how to make a team as a coach.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Badger fan review, November 6, 2007

By 

Joe Lukas "Badger # 1" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coaching Team Basketball: A Coach’s Guide to Developing Players With a Team-First Attitude (Paperback)

Coaches Crean and Pim offer very objective and practical lessons in coaching and leadership. Their approach is both extremely detailed and well organized.