What makes a good basketball coach?

It definitely has to be an emotional/fiery guy and has to be someone who believes in the team and players. If the coach creates a team with a good environment where the team loves each other and fights for one another the team is more successful.

A coach who understands the type of team he/she has

A great coach in middle school is a great teacher who can also gameplan.

A great college coach is not only a teacher who can gameplan, but he also has to recruit

In the pros, it depends on your team. A veteran team needs a coach who can manage egos and minutes. His job is to take advantage of the talents of his players and get them to buy into the system he installs

A young team needs someone who will set a standard and not allow the team to stray from it. The coach needs to have a vision for each of the players and set very high goals with achievable benchmarks. He needs to know what type of critism his players respond well (and more importantly poorly) to.

At the NBA level, even the sorry players are obsurdly talented. Some are self-driven and will meet thier potential no matter who their coach is (I get the impression that J Wall and T Book fit that mold), some need a coach to fit thier personality to reach ther potential but are willing to work and improve on thier own (McGee) and others may never reach thier potential, either because they are lazy (Blatche) or cocky (J Craw). The last group may make good coaches look bad if they aren’t kept in check by veterans.

“Young” is almost always synomymous with athletic and dumb in the NBA. A great coach of a young team is able to maximize the athleticism and minimize the mental errors by installing a simple, agressive game plan.

There are certain qualities that every coach should have but there are some extras that some people have already mentioned. I’m actually 26 too and I had a chance to coach a team at my church with kids from ages 8-13. It was quite a learning experience, but we ended up making it to the championship (lost it though). I had quite a few kids who came onto the team defiant to not follow my orders, so my first order that I had to do was establish discipline. In order to do that you have to give an expectation. As a coach you tell the players what you want out of them and if they don’t complete that task they should be punished. If you don’t do it, you will confuse them and lose them. I used to bench any player that shot a 3 pointer because none of them were big or strong enough to shoot them. Eventually they got the point and begin to understand why I told them not to as they saw their teammates throw up air balls and then get a sit on the bench.

Sometimes coaches get caught up in not starting issues with players and causing a mutiny but it is impossible to avoid conflict. As MurlandTerps said, you have to be upfront and real, instead of trying to be too friendly (a flaw that Flip had with most of the team minus McGee). A good argument might be good. Experts says team building starts at the ‘forming’ phase and moves up to the ‘storming’ phase, so it’s all apart of the natural progression to become a team

Second, a team needs consistency. If you show favoritism you can cause division on your team due to egos. It also will not motivate certain players to work hard because they are being held to a different standard than others (i.e. Blatche).

Third, your team needs to know that you want to win and that you are serious about your job. That means you are constantly showing them ways to improve as opposed to being complacent with ‘moral victories’.

Other than that it just depends on the team for the other qualities. The Wizards in particular need a teacher coach, a disciplinarian (should have hired Avery Johnson), and some who will establish an identity. So far I see some qualities like this in Randy Wittman but I’m not really sure he’s the answer. We shall see.