Baller 21

Brian McCormick Interview // Coach, Trainer, Author

by Chris Harvey on 07/08/09

Brian McCormick is a basketball coach, trainer, author and entrepreneur.

He is the Performance Director for Train for Hoops, the creator of 180 Shooter, and author of Crossover: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development.

McCormick has coached professionally in Sweden and Ireland, and coached and trained youth, high school and college teams and players in the United States. He currently advises clubs, schools and federations on their development systems and coach education programs.

He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach (NSCA) and Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM). McCormick writes the free, weekly Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters; to subscribe, email hard2guardinc@yahoo.com.

1. Could you briefly describe your career path in the sports industry? How did you get started?

I always wanted to be a coach. They Call Me Coach by John Wooden was the first book report that I did in school, and my dad was always my coach on virtually every one of my youth teams. After my freshman year of college, I worked a summer camp and saw that people actually make a full-time living coaching, and not just NBA coaches. I felt that I could run a better summer camp, so that became my career goal. A fellow coach at the camp hired me to coach girls’ volleyball and basketball at her school, even though I had never played volleyball in my life. I stayed with the same group from 5th-7th grade and then moved to high school volleyball and basketball teams and started coaching AAU basketball.

During my senior year, I looked around and realized that I could coach at a higher level. I also decided that I needed a better resume before starting my camp. I moved to the college level as an assistant and then returned to an AAU team. After another year as a junior college assistant, I moved to Sweden as the Head Coach of a women’s professional team. I was 25. They never asked my age before I arrived – I interviewed through about 50 emails and 3 phone conversations. I had the most capped player in Swedish history on my team, a 41-year old center.

After being selected to coach in the All-Star Game and guiding the team picked for last place, which the National Team coach did not rate at all – he invited 40 girls to try-out and not one was from our team – I was confident that I could coach at any level and returned to the States hoping to move to the Division I level as an assistant.

No job was forthcoming, so I turned my attention to developing players. I worked with dozens of youth and high school players. I saw other trainers who did not seem to know what they were doing in terms of athletic development, so I pursued a couple national strength training credentials and a Master’s degree. By this time, I had forgotten about the summer camp and wanted to train players. However, I saw players running from trainer to trainer, each without any knowledge of the others, so I wanted the skills and knowledge to develop the whole player, not just the basketball-specific skills.

Eventually, I was hired to coach a men’s team in Ireland, but that ended disastrously. So, I returned to the States, started training players again and here I am.

2. Can you name a person or book that has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Why and how did this person or book impact your life?

My dad. First, I saw how he coached us when I was young. He coached my baseball, soccer and basketball teams even though he knew nothing about soccer. But, he knew how to coach. We were always motivated and improving. It’s hard to describe, and I’ve never been able to describe my own coaching and why I feel that I am successful, but we had a great time and usually won a fair number of games. But, even the two years when I was on the worst team in our Little League, we had fun and improved. It was just as fun as the following year when we won the District Championship.

Second, I saw how hard my dad worked professionally. I spent time around the office and at company softball games. I used to play 1v1 or horse against the younger workers. I saw the respect that his co-workers had for him because of how hard he worked and how diligent he was. He’s famous for returning calls or emails almost instanteously and never being late for a meeting or appointment. Simple things, but he earned respect by doing things the right way and ultimately it was very simple things that led to his business success.

3. Will you summarize in a few sentences your new model of youth basketball development?

The basic goal is to create an athlete-centered environment focused on long term athlete development, as opposed to the “Peak by Friday” or win-now model. The long term model does not mean that winning is unimportant. However, the idea is that players at different ages have different motivations, and coaches and parents need to be aware of and use these motivations rather than super-imposing our motivations onto children. With a long term mentality, we focus on skill and athletic development for this season and beyond.

4. What are the biggest issues in US competitive sports systems that need to change? And how do we implement change?

Change is hard and most people resist a change to the status quo. The biggest issue is the lack of consistency. Most leagues and teams are developed around one season. You play the season and then you re-enter the draft next year or you join a new team next year. I played on essentially the same soccer team from kindergarten to 8th grade. We started as two teams because u-8s was 7v7, I think, and as a couple kids dropped out and we moved to 11v11, we joined together. Some kids moved and left the team and others joined, but the core of the team was together for 9 years. Nobody looked to find a better coach or a better chance to go to Nationals or more playing time. I played for three soccer coaches in nine years. I train players who play for three coaches in one season.

Playing for different coaches and with different players is not inherently a bad thing. I encourage players to use different trainers because they may see something that I miss or relate better to a certain athlete than I do. As a trainer, my goal is to maximize their talent, and sometimes that means cutting the strings because someone else may do a better job. I think when players stick together for too long, sometimes they play to their determined role rather than exploring new roles or developing new skills.

However, in today’s system, with a year-by-year mentality, there is no incentive for a coach to develop a long term approach. As an example, Tony Gwynn coached #1 MLB draft pick Steven Strasburgh at San Diego State this year. Gwynn knew that he would be the #1 pick. He knew this was the season to capitalize on his talent. With a pitcher that dominating, this might have been his best chance to reach a College World Series. However, he limited his innings. Rather than pitch him as much as possible to get the most wins, best seed, etc., he limited his innings because he did not want to wear out his arm or predispose him to injury. Although it was not in his best interest as a coach, it was in the player’s best interests. That’s the idea of a long term mentality.

I worked with a young 10-year-old who matured quickly. He was probably 5′5, but his dad wasn’t 5′10. His coach played him at center, told him not to shoot outside the key and prohibied him from dribbling. When he came to train with me, and I wanted to train his ball handling and shooting, he told me he only wanted to work on post moves because that is all his coach allowed him to do (although, the chances of a 10-year-old making a post entry pass to a post player who is defended 1v1 on the block with time and space to make an individual post move is almost unheard of).

That is a win-now mentality. His coach focused on winning the most games at 10-years-old, not developing skills that would help him at 10-years-old, but also position him to continue playing competitively as he transitioned from the tall kid to the averaged size kid to being on the small side for a basketball player.

It is easy to encourage a long term mentality, but coaches are competitive and we judge coaches by what we see, which is the game and its outcome. Therefore, to develop a broad long term approach, we need to encourage players, coaches and teams to stick together to provide the continuity and the incentive. If I know that the big 10-year-old is going to be on my team as an averaged-sized 12-year-old, I am more likely to spend time developing all his skills so he can help us at 12 too, not just this season.

5. What books are you reading?

Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach by Keith Davids, Chris Button and Simon Bennett and The Body has a Mind of its Own by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. I just finished Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.

6. What blogs in the sports and development industry would you recommend following?

80% Mental: http://blog.80percentmental.com/
Basketball Medicine: http://basketballmedicine.blogspot.com/
Doc’s Headgames: http://www.docsheadgames.com/
Functional Path Training: http://www.functionalpathtraining.typepad.com/
John Kessel’s blog: http://usavolleyball.org/blog/blog/220/

7. What are your impressions of the social networks (Twitter, etc)? Do you have a strategy?

I don’t have a strategy and haven’t yet found a purpose. I only have a Facebook page because my sister made it for me because she felt the lack of one left a void in my life. But, I check it less than once a week. I use twitter, but I don’t really know why. I mainly use it as an advanced form of search to find articles written by or recommended people that I know or trust.

Additionally, you can follow Brian McCormick on Twitter and his BMac’s blog here .