You Are a Teacher First
Most coaches spend their careers telling players what to do. John Farwell spends most of his time asking why. The distinction matters more than it sounds. A player who executes without understanding will need to be told again the next time the situation shifts and the next time and the next time. If you change how a player thinks, you change how they play.
Basketball Is a Foreign Language
Understanding basketball, Farwell says, is like learning a foreign language. You can know the vocabulary — the plays, the positions, the terms — and still not speak it fluently. Fluency means understanding the principles underneath the words. And when you understand those principles, you can look at any offense or defense in any country and see the why behind it.
Spacing. Timing. These sound simple and take careers to master. Spacing means no single defender can guard two of your players simultaneously. Timing means the ball arrives exactly when it needs to — not a second early, not late. A player coming off a screen needs the pass to meet them in rhythm, or the screen’s advantage is gone.
“When a team understands these principles at a deep level, it looks like a symphony. When they don’t, it looks like chaos. The difference is not talent. It’s understanding.”
— John Farwell
The Basics Speed Up. They Don’t Change.
The professional player performs the same fundamental skills as the youth player. Just faster, under greater pressure, and against better competition. The essence of the skill is identical. So why do coaches abandon the basics at higher levels? Because coaches get bored. Not players, the coaches. And so the fundamentals get shortchanged at exactly the level where they matter most.
Farwell watched NBA scouts come to observe practice with post-college players. On that day, the players tried to perform at an intensity they had never practiced at. They couldn’t. You cannot turn on a level of intensity on game day that you haven’t built into practice.
“The game doesn’t make you something you are not. It reveals what you actually are. You play the way you practice, with only the capacity you built when nobody important was watching.”
— John Farwell
Conflict Is Not the Enemy
When asked whether it’s more important to develop players through practice or to build a relationship with them, Farwell refused to separate the two. The relationship is what makes the practice possible.
His best friend asked him to help train for the Olympics. At some point during that training, the friend was so frustrated he threw a ball at Farwell’s head. That’s not a failure. This is what it looks like when someone is being pushed beyond what they thought was their ceiling. His friend called from the Olympics. He said thank you.
If you genuinely believe a player can go farther than they currently believe they can, the road there will have friction. The question isn’t whether you can prevent it. It’s whether you can handle it without backing down. And handle it without overreacting.
Coaching Is Preparation, Not Control
In the NCAA Tournament, one win from the Final Four, Farwell’s coach drew up a play. The players walked out of the huddle and ran something different. They lost. The point wasn’t who was right. The point was that no coach controls what happens once the ball is live. The entire job of coaching is building enough trust and understanding that players make good decisions for themselves when you can’t make those decisions for them.
Ask What They Heard
After giving a key instruction, Farwell asks the player: What did you hear me say? Not as a quiz but as a calibration. What a coach says and what a player hears are frequently two entirely different things. Asking is not distrust. It’s the discipline of actually communicating rather than just speaking.
It was the last game of the season when a player turned to him and asked: Why didn’t you tell me that sooner? Because, Farwell said, you weren’t ready for it then. Now you are. The same feedback, said at the wrong moment, closes a door. Said at the right moment, it opens something.
JOHN FARWELL’S
FIVE TEACHING PRINCIPLES
1 Teach the why, not just the what.
If you change how a player thinks, you change how they play. If you don’t change how they think, you will reteach the same lesson forever.
2 The basics speed up, they don’t change.
Coaches get bored with fundamentals. Players cannot afford to. Make practice as intense as the game so the game becomes the easier thing.
3 Conflict is not the enemy.
Pushing players toward a ceiling they don’t believe in yet will create friction. Handle it well — not by backing down or overreacting, but by staying in the relationship.
4 Players are in control once the ball is live.
You can only prepare your players well enough that they make good decisions for themselves. Coaching is preparation, not control.
5 Ask what they heard.
What you say and what is heard are often two different things. After every key instruction, ask the player to repeat back what they understood. Communication is not speaking, it is being understood.
John Farwell has served with Athletes in Action for 26 years, lead projects in 30 countries, and has decades of college and professional coaching. This article based on one of his talk Principles of Teaching. See the full talk here.
