In Reply to: If an ex player, from any level, isn't a good/great teacher posted by traprh on March 19, 2024 at 10:41:40
Yes indeed.
Just thinking of your comment about being a good communicator (just my thoughts on that - not arguing with anything anyone has said in these threads at all) -
in an article many many years ago about how rare it is for a truly great player to wind up being also a truly great coach - an article focusing on John Wooden - they made the point that the truly elite athletes can simply do things that others, mere mortals, cannot do. Athletically, some things just come easily and naturally for them. So when it comes to trying to get those aforementioned mere mortals to also do, the elite player turned coach doesn't have the detailed steps and elements it took to master each of those particular skills.
The great teacher not only gets where each player is coming from but he or she breaks it down in to the elements and knows how to guide (and motivate) their pupils to also master those steps. It's not only the detailed learning but also the patience - Walt Hazzard could do about anything with a basketball as a player; not sure Walt had the patience to take a step back and guide kids through all that, to sit out the wait for them to develop the skills. His personality was more involved in driving his team to success but coaches are nailed to the sidelines and just can't do that.
Wooden always considered himself a teacher. It's how his mind worked. But his is so rare a case of a truly elite player become truly elite coach - clearly it's not a common phenomenon.
The thing about teaching is it's just a guiding process - learning must always be accomplished by the student(s). Communication is an important part of it for sure but knowing how to (and being able to) create the situation that leads the students to master the subject is a complicated process - hence JRW's famous here's how to put on your socks lesson - Bill Walton has noted that took his players a couple decades to really understand the point and importance of that little lesson - it had very little to do with socks beyond the surfeit level and everything to do taking no short cuts at all and building success by mastering all the component elements along the way, Never mentioning "winning" to his players causing a total focus on the details and doing everything the right way (according to the HC of course).