July 2
Today was the first full day of working with the players. I found them very adaptable and very eager to learn. It is amazing how universal the language of basketball is. Some of the players spoke a little English but most didn’t understand me. But we we spoke about basketball, everyone understood.
The camp is built on top of a mountain. The courts, of which there are 3, are tiered so going from court to court requires going up and down significantly. Just going to the courts is a workout. There is a 4th court, which is located in the town at the bottom of the mountain, and they transport the players by bus. To me, it is a gym, to them it is a “closed court” because it is inside.
I had an interesting discussion with the coaches. I am amazed that how much they are held by tradition. I have always thought that European basketball was much more scientific and progressive than American basketball but, at the same time, more programmed. We got into a discussion of coaching styles and stretching. As I mentioned earlier, they spend a ridiculous amount of time stretching where I like to do multi-purpose drills, such as ball handling drills, to get loose. They thought that was a pretty good idea, however, if they held a practice and did not stretch they all said they would get fired immediately.
They watched my teaching technique and thought is was very effective. However, I do not yell and scream at players nor do I stop an entire group when a mistake is made and get after everyone. Their feeling was they are expected to yell and scream at their teams. They felt that if in a game, they were not up and yelling at their team all the time, they would get fired immediately.
I find that a very interesting perspective.
July 3
Good day of basketball workouts. Players really picked thing up quickly. If you have read any of my work before, you know how important footwork is to me. Here, everything stems from shooting the basketball. By working with the player’s footwork, they quickly started to shoot better. Watching them shoot, they often are not facing the basket because they never get their feet around. I believe by getting them to understand their feet, they were able to self correct their shots and be more effective.
The most important basketball here is NBA basketball. I am amazed that they think that, because I have worked with a few NBA players and have scouted for a couple of NBA teams, I am an expert. I have reporters everywhere I go. I have given 5 interviews and had a full-page story printed in a major Athens newspaper. Everywhere, they want to know about the NBA. They want to know if there are any Greek players that might be stars in the NBA (I don’t know), and the biggest question is do I think that a Greek professional team can compete for a championship in the NBA. There seems to be a lot of talk about the Greek League champion, Panathaniokus, joining the NBA. I asked who is doing that talking and they said it was mostly Greek basketball experts. I really don’t think the NBA is talking about that.
The camp is in a town called Krestena, in the city-state of Peloponsis, and is the closest town to Olympia, the ancient city where the first Olympics over 3000 years ago. A reporter asked my yesterday what my opinion was about teaching basketball in the city were sports was invented.
Kind of makes you think.
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