From the outside looking in, there’s a common misconception that once a team has strung together a few winning seasons, or if they’ve perennially made competitive post-season tourney runs, or even when a team has won one of those ever-elusive championships – that because of their success – they automatically qualify as having built a ‘winning basketball culture’ in their program.
Veteran coaches, however, and those coaches who have coached with multiple teams or who have spent time at several different schools or programs are aware that possessing a ‘winning culture’ is not a chicken-or-egg kind of situation.
To the contrary, ‘winning games’ or ‘winning a championship’ is not a signal that you’ve successfully built a winning basketball culture … rather, a true winning basketball culture is a byproduct derived from the process of culture building.
The more one studies the coaches who have had the most basketball success, the more it becomes apparent that building a true ‘championship basketball culture’ is a process-driven exercise – one that’s based on attention to detail and staying consistent in your approach to all matters of the team, year-over-year and day-after-day.
This daily grind of consistency – serves as a framework that adheres to your beliefs. It’s the end result of your vision for the program, as well as the primary vehicle used to build successful relationships with everyone involved in your basketball program: players, parents, alumni, faculty, administration, the other coaches on your staff and all the systems you implement along the way.
Sustained Success – Not An Accident
Examining the most-successful basketball coaches, you’ll find common culture-building characteristics that permeate all aspects of their coaching job. The winningest coaches tailor their approach based on planning and then seeing these plans through to the end … without skipping steps in the process. In building a basketball culture, the daily details matter. And always remember that the correct path sometimes requires a longer journey.
In the competitive world of team sports / school sports, coaches need to establish a blueprint for building a winning basketball culture and base that plan on the traits they hold dear as a coach – the stuff that is not only important to them, but the things that get their ‘motor running’ as a coach.
Sounds easy you say? Remember, it falls on you to ensure this vision and plan is carried through to your liking – all while staying true to your main role as a coach: Providing guidance and serving the mission of providing dedicated service to developing young athletes. The goal for all coaches is to watch your players undergo a personal transformation during their time in your program … and ultimately, you’ll see them grow into a responsible adult and build a relationship that they will always remember fondly.
Sharing Wisdom
Despite the fierce competition in today’s basketball world, even when the stakes are at their highest, the vast majority of basketball coaches LOVE to help their coaching contemporaries by sharing their success stories for building a positive, winning basketball culture.
Truly successful coaches realize that culture building – while not as sexy or immediately gratifying as drawing up a tactically clever in-game play, or not as intense as recruiting a talented class of players into your program as you build a star-studded roster of players who have their sights set on winning a championship as soon as possible.
Immediate gratification is usually not in the cards when you attempt to cultivate a winning basketball culture that’s designed for the long haul. Building a winning basketball culture requires a dedication to adhere to the process of laying your BASE foundation for everything a coach needs to do on a daily basis.
Championship Productions has been fortunate enough to work with the very best basketball culture-builders in the game at all levels.
Below showcases an array of video-clips that detail some of the proven methods that consistently winning coaches use to build a championship basketball culture that is positioned for sustained success.
Lin Dunn
Lin Dunn, currently the General Manager of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever is a hall-of-famer who has won at every level of basketball, including racking up 600+ career coaching wins, championships and coach of the year honors in college (at Purdue) and in the pros (Indiana Fever). Coach Dunn shared her thoughts on basketball culture building.
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David Peavy
David Peavy is an incredibly accomplished head boy’s basketball coach in the competitive environment of Texas prep basketball. Coach Peavy, a man with four Texas 6A State Championships at Duncanville High School (TX), with a national championship and multiple coach of the year awards, says his success can be solely traced to his vision for basketball culture building and their dedication to the process.
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Dan Hughes
Dan Hughes is a coach who keeps the process of building a winning basketball culture at the forefront of everything he does as a coach. The WNBA champion head coach with the Seattle Storm and two time WNBA coach of the year discussed how this top-of-mind dedication to the process of culture building paid enormous dividends during a critical game 5 of a hard fought playoff series.
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Dr. Johnny Tauer
Dr. Johnny Tauer, the University of St. Thomas Head Men’s Basketball Coach, knows a thing or two about building a winning culture the right way and has resulted in sustained success. The two-time NCAA D-III National Champions (2016, 2011), national NABC coach of the year and 5-time MIAC coach of the year, shows how building challenging drills within a productive, tough practice mentally and physically prepares players for in-game adversary, and how building in ‘positive incentives’ for making winning basketball plays has played a huge role in building a basketball culture that keeps the Tommies’ winning ways on the court.
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Landry Kosmalski
Landry Kosmalski, Swarthmore College Head Men’s Coach; a highly decorated coach with 2020 NABC Division III National Coach of the Year, 3-time Regional/District Coach of the Year (2017, 2019, 2020) and 4-time Centennial Conference Coach of the Year (2016, 2017, 2019, 2020) honors – provides some awesome and unique insights into how slight coaching twists and how leveraging specific messaging during the daily grind of a tough practice – is a total game-changer when it comes to building a winning basketball culture up and down the roster.
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Porter Moser
Porter Moser’s rise to national prominence as a coach was a journey born of the process of basketball culture building at literally every college he’s coached. The University of Oklahoma head men’s coach demonstrates the productive results that come from consistent and teaching-based positive messaging – done every day during practice.
Coach Moser is a testament to how planning, positive messaging as a teaching tool and a vision for success without taking shortcuts pays massive dividends in his collegiate success.
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Steve Howes
Steve Howes, Catholic University Head Men’s Basketball Coach and 2012-2013 Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year (D3Hoops.com) and a coach with 6x NCAA Tournament appearances is a huge proponent of building a basketball culture the right way.
Coach Howes shows that culture building is a multi-faceted process and explains how the culture-building process permeates every aspect of his program – from locker-room rules, to the way he and his coaches plan their practices, to utilizing daily drills that are designed to challenge players to perform while they are fatigued.
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Tim Miles
Tim Miles shows that his formula for building a winning basketball culture stems from challenging players and pushing them to be their best in all phases of their time with the program.
Coach Miles, San Jose State’s Head Coach – the 2023 MWC Coach of the Year – shows off his best methods for pushing players to improve, while physically challenging them with drills – yet structuring an environment where the goal is also to have players improve their basketball IQ while simultaneously getting tougher and learning to execute while under pressure in practice.
Adhering to this structure, Coach Miles testifies that players respond to respectful, demanding challenges and it results in a team that is mentally strong and better at the end of the year when it matters most.
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Tom Izzo
There aren’t many coaches who have won more consistently or come as highly regarded as Tom Izzo at Michigan State.
Coach Izzo is renowned for the winning basketball culture he has built with the Spartans. When an opponent plays the Michigan State, they know they will encounter a physically tough, challenging team that won’t wilt under the pressure of a hard-fought contest.
Learning the importance of establishing a winning basketball culture under his former boss Jud Heathcote, Coach Izzo gives some pointers on building a team culture that ultimately becomes a basketball identity.
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Kelvin Sampson
One of the most-decorated coaches in the history of the game, Kelvin Sampson, the University of Houston head coach and 2024 NABC Division I Coach of the Year, has built a basketball culture where year-in and year-out, his teams are proven to be ferocious defensively and tenacious rebounders.
Coach Sampson provides a few great coaching nuggets that transform from consistent teaching points emphasized as practice instruction, into a basketball culture with a winning identity that’s always up to the challenge of big-game moments.
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John Calipari
John Calipari, the head coach at the University of Arkansas, is widely regarded as a great communicator who relies on his tried-and-true methods for building a winning basketball culture.
In this clip, Coach Calipari discusses how he’s stayed flexible within the framework of how he coaches and teaches throughout the year – depending on the year and the makeup of his roster of players. He ultimately receives player buy-in to his culture building ideas through challenging players while teaching them the process for improving.
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