One of the teams i cooach is a county league team for 14-17 year old boys. For the most part they are a great group of boys with alot of talent and alot of skill. The problem i am having is i have two boys on the team that are way to cocky. they shoot long range shots and dont follow them even though we preach that every week, one of them tries to dribble behind his back and will lose the ball sometimes and we tell him to stop and he decides he doesn't want to, the other one makes wild shots that every now and then will get lucky and go in and the more we tell him to stop shooting like that the more he does it. When one of them is in a quarter they shoot everytime they get there hands on the ball, it seems like theyh feel they are the only ones out there. And if you put both of them in the same quarter its a shooting math to see who can make more and it winds up being which one missed more. I have tried everything to stop this i have talked to them i have made them run for not listening i have even tried not playing thembut as soon as they hit the floor again it starts right back up. the problem is i am the assistant coach and the head coach makes me do all the discipine work so i look like the bad guy then he turns around on saturday and puts them in the game and expects that they have changed!

What do i do?

Being the assistant is a tough gig... any discipline should come from the HEAD COACH.... Maybe its time you both put your BIGFOOT down. :-)IF he doesn't follow through you are wasting your time... ask him what he wants from his players and try to come to some sort of agreement as to how you both want things done.

One thing I learned a long time ago was that whatever you allow them to do in practice, they will do in games. A lot of coaches will talk about what a players role is... I never did that... I just told them, DON'T DO SOMETHING IN GAMES THAT YOU DON'T WORK ON IN PRACTICE AND ARE SUCCESSFUL AT.
So stop them EVERY TIME in practice when they do something you don't want done. IF that doesn't transfer to game situations... then the bench is a great motivator... start cutting into their playing time - don't start them.

Another approach might be to get them to be leaders for the team... talk to them about leadership skills and how important it is for everyone to play as a TEAM... and that everything WE do is for the good of the TEAM.... and that you need them to be those leaders. Just some thoughts.

ok thanks those are some great suggestions I'll talk with the head coach and throw those ideas to him and see what if he thinks. But coach while we are on this subject i have aother question......... one of these same players also has a problem with when we tell him something in a game he will look at his mother to see if he should do what we have told him to do and i have just noticed this in the past few weeks. sometimes she tells him to listen and other times she blows up says no and comes to us after the game mad because we are "holding back" her son. How do i get hi to pay attention to us and not her?

I think its time for a parent/team meeting so you can discuss the season, your goals and the rules of the team... one being.... the players cant listen to everyone in the stands or they will be confused as to what to do. Please let them focus on what the coaches are trying to get them to do since its a team game and evey one has to be on the same page. You might open it to questions and answers after you tell them what you want them to know.

Then you might sit down with this boy and explain that he has to listen to the coaches and NOT look in the stands or at US as the coaches... just listen to our voices, we don't want you to get whiplash from looking over all the time..... :-)

You might have to talk to her individualy and explain that its a TEAM game and each kid has a part in this... and if the team is going to be succesful, ALL the boys have to be on the same page... they cant listen to everyone in the stands... explain IF everyone started yelling at them to do this or do that... what chaos it would be. See how she reacts to that.

thank you coach these are really great ideas and i will do whatever need be to solve these problems because i know in the long run its gonna do nothing but hurt the kid!!! thank you

You're welcome... anything I can do to help you and like you say, in the long run, the kids. I hope some of this works out for you. You cant allow a parent or parents to run the show.... thats counter productive to everyone.... makes your life miserable and the kids don't learn anything positive from this.... do they really think they can do that at the high school level?

I had a group come in, nice players and pretty good kids... but the parents were used to scmoozing with the 8th grade coach and venting about our program and almost telling him what to do... he won so it was easy. I got them as sophomores... and I knew those parents too.... but they knew NOT to tell me how to run the program..... they tried after a tough loss.... complained how we handled the last two minutes..... told them straight out... what we did got us a bunch of layups, I cant help it the kids missed them and the free throws... they weren't trying to miss... sometimes it just happens. That was the LAST time they did that. Our AD was suckin up to them too..... cant do that or everyone is the COACH.

Heck, now that I am retired and sit in the stands... I NEVER make a BAD decision LOL Good luck, hope things work out.