"Everybody's Talking At Me"

I don't hear a word their saying.

Only the echoes of their minds. " (Lyrics by Fred Neil)

Some of you may remember this song made famous by Harry Nilsson, Stephen Stills and I am sure others. I would be willing to wager most of us (including your players) can identify with the phrase ... "Everybody's talking at me. I don't hear a word their saying."

If you consider the life of the young people you are coaching/teaching, think about the volume of verbiage they are exposed to everyday. I have no idea but I gotta believe many of the young people that reach you by late afternoon or early evening have been "talked at" for the equivalence of 5-6 hours. This may even be higher depending on how much time they have spent using their cell phones. Research suggest attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. I recently had a classroom teacher tell me that attention spans today may be around seven minutes. Do you ever get that glassy eyed I am somewhere else stare? I have, and again with full disclosure, I have experienced a few of them myself.

"Maybe this is taking social distancing a little to far?"

One of the more impactful quotes I have heard over the years came from Coach Bob Knight. The entire quote was: "There is a difference between listening and hearing. Looking and seeing. Participating and playing. " Now for the subject of this blog post, I want to examine how we can

communicate more affectively. You as a coach, parent, teacher, etc. may be listening when others attempt to communicant but are you hearing? If the so called "experts" are correct, a great deal of communication is done nonverbally. Our so called "body language" contributes to our verbal message. Some forms of social media and technology do not lend themselves to conveying our "body language" well. I have to believe some of our communication problems are a result of the media we are using is not as affective as face to face communication can and should be.

As teachers/coaches, we need to evaluate from time to time how we are communicated to our players and those around us. Some thoughts/suggestions I have about being more affective communicators:

1. Limit your talk with your players once you start practice. Don't do what I sometimes did ..... Have a pre practice meeting on the floor and end up giving a mini-lecture. Remember, your players have more than likely just come out of a classroom where they may have been talked at for nearly an hour.

2. Teach your vocabulary to your players. There are words, phrases, etc. that may be meaningful to you but that does not mean your players or fellow coaches understand. For example: Do your players know what "hedge" means? Do they understand what fake a pass to make a pass means? Do they get it when you say drive the closeout? Do they know what a closeout is?

3. If you use set plays how do you communicate that on the floor? One simple idea we used was to give an offensive set a name say "Carolina". We then taught our players that any word that began with the letter C was actually the Carolina play. For example if we called out "California" it was the same play as "Carolina". We did this to disguise our plays so our opponent wouldn't gain an advantage. Also, do you have a nonverbal

way of communicated in a loud gym?

4. Some may think this is silly but we also used this technique for baseline out of bounds plays. We would give the play a name such as "Spartan". If we ran "Spartan" early in the game, the next time we might call out "run Spartan Again" by adding the word "again" our players knew we were running a blob that looked exactly like "Spartan" but it would have different action so as to prevent our opponents from anticipating the action.

5. Maybe the best advice, that I far to often I neglected, is to listen more than we talk. Ask your players and other coaches questions. Show an interest in what they are thinking.

6. We asked our players to communicate during practice with the hope it would carry over to games. A good experiment to conduct is once you start practice is don't say anything and see how quiet it is. Your players need to hear their voices and not have your's be the only sound.

7. Especially on defense. Teach your players to say simple one word messages such as: ball, shot, deny, left, right, & help.

8. Have a timeout in practice. Explain the situation. Then give your players an index card and ask them to write down what you said ..... be prepared this may shock you!! THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LISTENING & HEARING!

9. In practice/games, chart how many times you fail to hit the open man.

One of my biggest frustrations was when one of our perimeter players receives an outlet pass turns and throws it up the floor to one of our poorer

ball handlers who now is being asked to catch, dribble and decide to try &

score or finish from 40' away from the rim. Another one is when one of your players makes a pass to a player and the pass puts the player behind the back boards in a worse situation than they were in before. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOOKING & SEEING. I am willing to bet you have players who look but don't see!

10. If you are frustrated with the lack of communication that takes place

when your players are on the floor it may partly be because they honestly

don't know what to say. Yes, I think you need to teach them how to communicate and what words to use especially on defense.

11. Consider collecting cell phones on bus trips to encourage "face to face"

communication between players.

12. Collect feedback from your players. If you feel it is necessary collect this

feedback anonymously. Ask them a limited number of questions to respond

to such as: a) Are practices to long? b) Do you feel you are being treated

fairly? c) Are you giving your best effort?