I can't tell you how many good men I've lost to basketball related suicides, seems like every week I lose another one.

No problems cupcake! Problem today is to many parents like you make the coaches job hard. My little Johny should play more. If he had a better coach my kid would be a star. The coach has destroyed my sons confidence. Good players find a way to get it done.

Depends on the level.

Sure if you are playing school ball or div 3 or something.

But if you are in a team that has elite level players and your attitude and performance is not at the necessary level, then expect to get told.

You are probably the same kind of parent that will tell a coach that they didn't give a players enough of a chance, or enough feedback whan they get cut.

Easy way top not get yelled at is to do what the coach asks in the first place.

Ah - the old communication problem.

Dictators do not communicate.

Look who runs the game in this state and that sums it all up. Same old problems for 30 years now.

Death of the game must be near

My question is, why are they doing the punishments? Is it because they are making mistakes? making the same mistakes? talking? mucking around? lacking intensity? lack fitness? not making targets?

Do you have an examples?

Do you beleive that parents should be able to smack their young kids?

Are you talking u14s or U18s div 1? In my opinion, very different standards apply for these groups.

Yelling is a rich form of communication. You tell them, teach them, get them to repeat it over and over calmly remind them and then if it still doesnt sink in you might use some richer forms of communication, not swearing (when its kids), just raising your voice a little and getting them to run a little. Penalties are also good for fitness too.

THat is how it works in the real world, with the big boys, too big fella. I've worked with Executives of Billion/Multi Million $$ companies. You have no idea how many F-Bombs I have heard them drop when someone screws up or when they say what will happen if that person screws up. Trust me, when they do this you listen! When they are paying you big bucks they want you to get right.

Same with sport. When you are at a high level sooner or later you gotta get right. If you dont like it then ask to play at a level you wont get yelled at.

I think Bobby Knight puts it best here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0od7spyth_I

Ego can be a dirty word, but sometimes the team needs to harden the F up, and thats when suicides etc are part and parcel of training.

At an elite level, do the hard yards and get things right, or run instead.

Clearly coaches need to monitor why they are setting suicides.

Coaches make teams run because the players break clearly defined rules. In the past coaches had the support of parents. Now kids get excuses from their parents and that undermine the coach. IT IS NO SUPRISE WHY SA BASKETBALL WAS STRONGER IN THE 90s.

I find many coaches yell and scream at training so that on game day all thats needed is a quiet reminder and all players involved will remember what happened at training. This re-enforces the point to them without denting their confidence in times when its needed. Punishments are a form of making people better. If you miss the free throws...you run...if you make them you dont. I can tell you they will practise their FTs coz nobody likes running suicides.

Can you imagine not having punishments at the NBL level?
Training sessions would just be light scrimmages.
The coach would be everybodys' favourite.
Every player would want to play for this coach.
The team would just go out onto the court and run whatever the hell offence they wanted.

Wait a minute..........

A appology to 'Sally's' mum.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith' that I yelled at your daughter. I was unaware that she is not to be held accountable for her actions. That after asking and expaining what was to be expected, that she didn't thinnk it was that important, and thus I she might need to understand just how important it is considered.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith' that I gave your daughter penalties. I did not know that she was allowed to not listen and get away with it. I am sure that it doesn't matter that the other players are doing the right thing. I am sure that if she is allowed to do the wrong thing, the other players will all do the right thing.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith' that the team had to do push ups. I should not expect your daughter to listen to the instruction. When the coach is talking, your daughter should be allowed to disrput other players, and continue to make the same mistakes.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith' for the team having to do a suicides. I am sure that your daughter is so fit that she doesn't need them. And that asking nicely will change her behaviour. I am sure that if I ask her nicely 10 times it will finaly sink in. Don't mind that the other players are being held back because she needs to be told 10 times.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith' that the expectation is too high for your child to meet. Maybe she should consider doing something with lower expectation, so that she doesn't stop other people from reaching their goals.

Sorry 'Mrs Smith', I thought that you would support your child in improving their attitude to reach goals in life by developing their life skills. I am sure that their boss will not yell at them when they do a poor job in the work place. I am sure that they wont need to stay late when they havn't finished a work presentation. I am sure that when they lose their company a large contract because they don't listen to the instructions the client gives them they wont lose their job.

Have a look at what you are allowing your child to become!

And rather than showing them that the way to get your point across is by randomly sniping on a forum, perhaps talking and discussing with the coach why and how you can better reach the level of performance necessary, would be better for them. By the looks of it, your kid should be thankful that somebody is expecting them to do the right thing because you and your action certainly aren't!

I find it strange that having been to heaps of different sporting events involving my kids that basketball seems to be the only sport in which a coach seems to have the god given right to verbally abuse young 12-16 year old girls while everyone stands by and says nothing.

(Don't want to distract from an interesting topic, but gee some of these Google contextual ads are weird - a link unit ad for "Molestation" for example?!)

Probably most teachers would love such punishments...

Isaac I assume this person is the person that started this thread. I am still LOL from the wording. Now let's analyse Mother Theresa's statements. And mother theresa this is for humour purposes only, please dont take this as physical or verbal abuse haha


Basketball and suicides are common and tales of coaches running players to death abound but I wondered if punishing groups is all that effective in the 21 first century.
Good communication skills in basketball is rare and I would have thought it was the key to success not the physical and verbal abuse that proliferates basketball.
Seems that coaches want to instil a fear of making a mistake and don't understand that players worrying about mistakes make more of them, take less chances and don't back their judgement.
Junior sports that positively reinforce effort and understand the value of mistakes are light years ahead of basketball. Yelling and abusing kids is a coaching flaw and irrespective of that type of coaches skill ability leads more away from the game than to it at all levels.
From an era where drinking water while playing sport was limited because they thought you'd cramp to today, only basketball remains ignorant and tolerates kids being abused

WOw, different IP but identical browser string - not guaranteed, but probable.

Thanks for this thread Mrs Fisher.

I don't know why fitness work is used as punishment. Sure, it's often hard work, but you'd think a bigger punishment would be exclusion, and that fitness work would just be standard activity in practices.