MIKE WINTERS - HARLEM (IL) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS' BASKETBALL HEAD COACH & AUTHOR OF THE BOOK "THE JOURNEY: LESSONS FROM THE HARDWOOD"- EPISODE 551

Mike Winters is currently the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Harlem High School in Machesney Park, Illinois. He is also the author of the new book, The Journey: Lessons from the Hardwood. Mike has spent 18 seasons as a Varsity Basketball Coach at Oregon, Rockford Jefferson, Rock Falls, Boylan Catholic and Machesney Park Harlem in the state of Illinois. His career record is 357-164 (.687-win percentage). He opened his career with 14 consecutive winning seasons. Coach Winters has led three different programs to the State Tournament.

Coach Winters has been named the IBCA District Coach of the Year seven times and was the Sauk Valley Newspapers Coach of the Year in 2006 and the NIC-10 Coach of the Year in 2016. His teams have won 7 conference titles, 8 regional titles and 4 sectional titles. He led his teams to nine 20-win seasons and two 30-win seasons.

Coach Winters has coached players who have gone on to play at Kansas State, New Orleans, Florida A&M, Evansville, Southeast Missouri, Ball State, Wisconsin-Green Bay, University of Illinois-Chicago, Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Air Force and many others who have competed at the Division II, Division III and JUCO levels. Two of his former players are now college head coaches.

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You’ll want to have your notebook with you as you listen to this episode with Mike Winters, Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Harlem High School in Machesney Park, Illinois.

What We Discuss with Mike Winters

The why behind writing his book “The Journey: Lessons from the Hardwood”
Returning to coach at his old high school while still in college
Lacking confidence as a young coach and the mistakes that led to
“We need these guys to be great parents.”
“Seize the opportunities to talk about real life.”
Enjoy your time as a parent because it goes fast and you don’t get it back
Knowing the why behind your philosophy
Being flexible and willing to change
Taking over a new program and figuring out what your new players can and can’t do
Realizing pretty early on that he didn’t have to cater to kids
Difficult conversations and brutal honesty
“You do have to take time and build relationships with kids, and if I think if you do that, you kind of have that open door to be able to tell them the truth.”
Why you should mic yourself up at practice
Making sure your players are hearing the message you want them to hear
“Winning is a by-product of doing things the right way every day.”
“You’ve got to be consistent and demanding with your accountability.”
“Culture is what you allow and what you don’t allow.”
Why you should have your players write a vision statement
“Get players to set the goals that you want them to set, but make them believe it was entirely their idea.”
“If a kid has an attitude on the court, it’s probably because he cares.”
Turning around a player with a bad attitude
“I was terrible at delegating early on because I had a certain standard and I didn’t think anyone else could meet that standard.”
“I focused too much on what my assistant coaches couldn’t do versus just seeing what they could do.”
Hire good people first and you can help them become good coaches
Why he doesn’t watch film right after a game
The importance of scouting in having his team prepared to play
“We’re going to take away what they do best. I think at the high school level if you can take away what they do best you’ve got a great chance to win, even if they’re more talented than you are.”
Why 3’s and layups only isn’t always the right approach
Using a heavy ball for players to run with during practice
Practice planning advice
The scoreboard should always be on and you should always be keeping score
“If you’re not finding and rewarding actions with points in practice, I think you’re missing opportunities to get better. “
A practice tip for cutting down on turnovers
Learning to co-exist with AAU Basketball and how what he teaches in practice has changed over the years
The experience of coaching your own kids
The huge privilege that people come to watch what we do to escape from whatever it is that they have going on in life. That’s something I’ll never take for granted.”

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THANKS, MIKE WINTERS

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MIKE WINTERS – HARLEM (IL) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH & AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “THE JOURNEY: LESSONS FROM THE HARDWOOD”- EPISODE 551

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my cohost, Jason Sunkle and tonight we are pleased to welcome to the podcast Mike Winters, the head coach at Harlem High School in the state of Illinois and author of the new book, “The Journey: Lessons from the Hardwood” an excellent book as Mike and I are going to dive into, if you are a coach out there, you’re definitely going to want to listen to this episode.

Mike is going to drop a lot of knowledge on us, and you’re going to want to pick up a copy of the book. Mike, first of all, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:28] Mike Winters: I see you guys are over 300 of these things now, so it’s cool to be on with you guys.

[00:00:35] Mike Klinzing: We’re cranking them out. We keep working hard to try to get as much content out there to help the coach community as we possibly can.

We’re thrilled to be able to have you on got a chance to go through and read your book here. Kind of prepping for the episode. And I have to say very, very well done as people are going to see from listening to the episode, the knowledge that you’re going to show. I think they’ll see that it’s more than worth them going out and picking up a copy.

So that being [00:01:00] said, give us the quick synopsis of the book where people can find it, what it’s all about, why you decided this was the time to write a book and then we’ll dive into more of your story and get into the nitty-gritty of the book in a second.

[00:01:12] Mike Winters: You know, one thing that I just have a passion for, and I think I was very lucky as a young coach, as I just had some, some really good mentors, some guys that I could bounce ideas off of or learn from and just vent to as a young coach, I started when I was 20 years old.

I really wanted to kind of pay it forward and put together everything I’ve learned in 27 years of coaching. And it’s not just Xs and O’s, it’s actually very little X’s and O’s, it’s really more about the off the court stuff, building culture the all-in commitment of your family for young coaches who really don’t know what to expect as they dive into this.

But I think at the same time, there’s a lot there. I think the best coaches are always in a growth state of mind. So I think there’s a lot there for the veteran coach as well. I don’t tell you what you should run. I go through and just a lot of [00:02:00] Q and A stuff that you just need to go through with yourself to try and figure.

Really what’s your philosophy should be in terms of the style of play in what you enjoy and, and things like that. I think that’s really important too. I think it’s gotta be stuff you enjoy because you’re going to pour so much time and effort into this thing. And so really it’s, it’s a guide for the young coach, but it’s hopefully some nuggets for the veteran coaches as well.

And I think you nailed it. I think people at every level can take some stuff away from it. And you know, I tried to really tie in some, some anecdotes, just, just stories. I’ve been fortunate to coach against some, some great players. To have coached some great players and great teams and just trying to share some things I’ve learned, not only as a coach, but things that I’ve learned from my players and from assistant coaches and you don’t really, everybody I’ve come into contact with over 27 years in this,

[00:02:47] Mike Klinzing: I enjoyed reading the section about Sean Livingston and thinking about him and that gruesome knee injury that he had when he got drafted in the NBA, by the Clippers and what a unbelievable athlete that [00:03:00] people who maybe only knew him when his time at the war with the warriors, when he was athletically compromised, what he was.

And so it’s interesting to hear you as somebody who played against him in high school you know, coached against him and had the opportunity to see him when he was at his athletic peak. I really enjoyed reading that story. I thought it was interesting. Just you talking about how. You had to think about trying to stop a guy who ended up being the fourth pick in the NBA draft and probably was headed for, if you think about what he became as a role player, when his athleticism was taken away by that knee injury, you think about his IQ and just the way that he played the game.

And if you would have combined that with the athleticism that he had, pre-injury what kind of player he would’ve been. And those are the kinds of stories I think that really bring your career and what you were trying to do with the book to life. And I just want to say again, I really enjoyed that piece of the story.

As I said before, we jumped on the show, like, and I were talking with Jason here and I told them. I really feel like for [00:04:00] our audience, this episode is going to fit almost identically with the way that Mike structured the book in that he has some biographical information on himself, some background, and then he dives right into some coaching nuggets and things that can help you to be a better basketball coach.

That’s what we’re going to try to do tonight is just follow sort of the arc of the book. And my first question related to you and your background is when did you know for sure that coaching was what you wanted to do? Obviously you got into it at a young age, but when did coaching get on your radar as, Hey, this is something that I might want to do for my profession.

[00:04:37] Mike Winters: No, that’s a great question. I think it’s funny. I teach career development too. So I teach kids about learning the job search process and exploring careers and all that stuff. So for me, it was, I was a business major to start. I was planning on plan at a junior college here in town at rock valley community college.

Are broke my hands. Couldn’t play. And then on top of that, I [00:05:00] had to do an interview of a coach for a PE class that I had at the time. And I went back and interviewed my old high school coach. And he, he didn’t have an assistant at the time. He’s like, are you interested in coaching? I couldn’t play.

So I’m like, yeah, I think I would be, I was 19 coaching, 17, 18 year olds at the varsity level. And just fell in love with it. You know, I changed my major immediately to education and the rest is history, but just had a just kind of a, a really good opportunity as a young guy and took advantage of it.

And like I said, just wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do up until that point. And then I always tell kids, like you don’t know until you can ask them experiences and just fell in love with it. Just being back around a game after being out of it for a year, just felt really good.

And I kind of knew that I just didn’t want to be without the game in my life anymore. So that’s kind of where it started.

[00:05:48] Mike Klinzing: One of the themes that runs through the entire book is the importance for you of your family. And it comes through loud and clear. And a lot of the stories that you tell [00:06:00] and you frequently talk about trying to make sure that as a coach, you have balance in your life between your dedication, to your team and your family.

That’s waiting for you at home, your kids, your wife, your spouse. And when you think about how you changed as a young coach versus how you are today, in terms of the amount of. Delegation you do the time. And again, these are things that we can dive into a little bit more, but one of the things that struck me was you talked about being a young coach and having three hour practices and always go on right up to the bell.

And versus now your son has a game and maybe practice ends at six and his game starts at six and you got to leave 20 minutes early and you delegate that to your assistant. So maybe when you think about just the way that you’ve changed and evolved as a coach, what would you say is the, the number one thing or one of the things [00:07:00] that has really changed for you since you first started in your career?

[00:07:04] Mike Winters: I think I fear failure. Like for me, I think a lot of people they’re the top of the addiction of winning and all that stuff. And for me, it’s really, I just hate losing so much. And as a younger coach, I probably just, wasn’t confident enough tto allow people I didn’t delegate, well, I tried to do too much on my own.

I probably watched too much. You know, forced the kids to be a practice too long. I think a little bit of that when you’re young is his lack of confidence. I think if someone really wants to talk about in the book, because I think a lot of young coaches struggle with it. I sit there and I I have a, an assistant coach right now, Luke disown.

Who’s fantastic. He’s got two young kids at home and you know, and I kind of coached them through, like, this is, these are the things I made mistakes with. And one of the things that changed for me was I took a year out of coaching and I took a job as a financial advisor. And I love the financial side of it.

I hated the sales side of it. I really missed a game and I had an opportunity to come back to one of the best programs in [00:08:00] the state of Illinois at Boylan Catholic. And you know, when I, when I went back, my wife kinda gave me the look like, alright you’re coaching your kids’ teams now. And I, I promised her that wouldn’t change and it hasn’t changed.

I’ve coached my son’s travel baseball team for years coaching and travel basketball. And now I coach my daughter’s 13 new travel softball team. And and that’s a big commitment, but it’s a my assistants are fantastic. I trust them a hundred percent to, to take things when I’ve got to take off.

I think one of the things we miss as coaches we always trying to defeat life lessons to kids. I think. The bigger picture we get caught up in wins and losses and I do too, man. I I, I know my won loss record is all the time all do, but I think the bigger picture is, is you know, when I leave early, I tell the kids look, I’m, I’m not gonna miss my kid’s game.

I said, I think your biggest role down the road is as much as we want you to win basketball games right now is going to be as a parent, as a leader. And if I don’t show you what that looks like, then I’m not doing my job. So leaving early for me is, is it has become it. Wasn’t always that way, but that’s just an example [00:09:00] for the kids.

You know, we need these guys to be great parents because you know, society needs that right now. We need all the, all the, all the great parenting we can get. And we have the opportunity obviously to really impact these kids and show them what that’s all about.

[00:09:12] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I think there’s no question that it’s something that we’ve talked about with a lot of coaches, Mike you’re on a podcast trying to figure out.

What that, and again, I don’t know if balance is the right word, but trying to figure out how to juggle doing the things that you want to do as a coach for your players, with your team and maintaining what you need to have at home with your kids, with your spouse. And it’s something that coaches struggle with.

And I would guess that you’ve seen this in the profession because we’ve certainly seen it here that the amount of time as a baseline that you have to spend, I think at any level of basketball, but certainly at the high school level, the amount of time that you have to spend, not only in season, but also out of season continues to go up [00:10:00] and up and up every single year because the expectations of parents and players of having the gym open and getting in and getting skilled development workouts and making sure that you’re at summer league and just all the things that a high school coach, maybe right at the time when you started your career, might’ve been things that some of the best or most dedicated coaches were doing now, it’s kind of like that.

The baseline and coaches are trying to figure out how to navigate that with their family life at home, and trying to make sure that they keep on top of both things. And it’s a challenge. And I like the idea that you’ve talked about in the book and that you just share with us there that look, sometimes you gotta leave early and you gotta have a good relationship with your staff and you gotta be able to delegate.

And those are really important things that are gonna enable you to have the kind of success that you want to have both on and off the court as a role model, as you said for your players, because ultimately, yes, we want to win games, but it’s about more than that. And it has to be. And that’s one of the things that [00:11:00] you talk about in the book is that it has to be about more than basketball.

How do you go about making it more than basketball with your players and with your team being a role model for your players with your family is obviously one, but give us some other things that you’ve done over the years with your team. That’s helped them to see. This experience is about more than basketball.

[00:11:25] Mike Winters: I think you know, there’s just so many opportunities along the way, just the journey is what it is and there’s, you’re going to, there’s going to be nights that are rough and you got to overcome adversity. It might be might be some calls that don’t go your way. It might be. It’s just not going down.

It’s it might be an injury, whatever it is. And you know, I, I constantly remind our kids like, blah, this is hard, but man, real life is, is this and so much more. I mean, every time you face something difficult in real life, there’s a lot more. Then a win or a loss in a high school basketball game.

And so I think there’s just [00:12:00] opportunities to connect the dots there. And you know, constantly, constantly remind them like, Hey, we push you. We’re very detail oriented. We’re very demanding, but it’s not about the result of, of a Friday night. It’s about the results that you need. You need to get down the road in your bigger, more important wall, whatever that is and whatever you choose for that to be.

So I don’t know if there’s any one. I don’t know if I have any one just nugget or, or words of wisdom there other than this seize the opportunities to talk about real life. I mean, we’ve all experienced it. We’ve all had a family members come down with died also cancer you know, somebody that dies unexpectedly you know, difficulty of losing a job and how you’re going to go on.

And you can’t just throw in the towel. You know, people are depending on you and you know, they’re there when they’re 17, 18 old, 18 years old, they’re pretty close to that. You know, they’re not too far off from those responsible.

[00:12:52] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that comes quicker than we all think.

[00:12:56] Mike Winters: It’s certainly, it

[00:12:57] Mike Klinzing: certainly does.

We can think of that with our own life. And [00:13:00] you can think about that with your kids and how quickly those 18 years of their life can get, go by. People tell you that when your kids are first born, and then all of a sudden I’ve turned around and I got a daughter as a senior and a song as a sophomore and a daughter’s a sixth grader.

I’m like, I still remember when they were little babies holding them in my arms doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. And

that’s

[00:13:19] Mike Winters: the thing I was gonna tell you about coaching your kids and making time for all that stuff. That stuff goes by so fast. I mean, my, my kids are a junior. I got one that’s going to play for me this year.

My daughter’s an eighth grader, so I’ll have them both at our school next year together. And it goes by so fast. So, I mean, I tell people, people ask me all the time, like, how do you do all these things you do? How do you still coach travel softball? Which by the way is more year round than high school basketball.

I believe in. Tell him, like we can sleep on the kids, move on house, plenty of times naps and all that stuff. And just, just enjoy it while you got it. Cause it, man, it goes by fast and it’s just something you can’t get back. You can keep doing this coaching thing until you’re old and gray and fat, but those kids are their, [00:14:00] their time is limited in your house and you need to enjoy every second of that.

[00:14:02] Mike Klinzing: And you said something similar in the book that when you said, when you talk about your own kids, that you talked about your players and you said that high school players, they get whatever it is they get. If you start, when they’re a freshmen, they get four years of high school basketball experience. And most of them as a varsity player probably get two years and you could potentially coach for 50 years.

So you got to make it about the kids. And I thought that was something that is really important. And it’s something that I think coaches are much, much better about that. Today then I think the egos are smaller and coaching today because we all can kind of see what the other people are doing. Nobody can hide behind closed doors and pretend to be a genius because social media and just the openness of the coaching profession, I think is, has made it easier for everybody to see what everyone else is doing.

But I think it was a great point. Like when I read that it really struck me [00:15:00] that, you know what, it’s so true that you only get one chance as a player to go through and have your junior season or your senior season. Whereas for us as coaches, we’re going to have another year next year or another year, the year after that, or another year, 10 years from now, if we keep coaching and the kids have a much more limited window assets, that’s something that is important to keep in mind as a coach.

When you think about the type of program, the type of experience that you want to provide for the kids that you’re coaching to me, that seems like it’s really, really important. That being said. In your career, you’ve gone through and you’ve coached at five different schools. As you said, you took some time to get into financial planning slash sales, which you didn’t like the sales aspect of it.

But tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned in terms of getting a job. And some of the things that a coach might need to consider, if they’re going [00:16:00] out on an interview or what they should be looking for in their next position, if maybe they’re an assistant, they’re trying to get a head coaching job.

Maybe they’re a head coach and they want to get to a better program or find a place that fits better with them. Just what are some of the experiences that you’ve had in your career around changing jobs and starting a new program at a new school?

[00:16:20] Mike Winters: Well, for me getting that first job is tough because I was pretty young.

I thought I was ready when I was 23, 24. I started interviewing Frank coaching jobs. You remember, it looks at you like you’re 23 and 24 so I felt like I, I learned that I had to go above and beyond whatever I brought into the interview room. You know, I wrote a kind of a book or a manuscript or it was probably about a hundred pages of time just called building the high school program and laid it all on paper.

Like, this is what we’re going to do. This is what each level is going to do each day, kind of all that stuff. And I felt like I had to do a lot more because I didn’t have one summer experience. I was a young guy in that that’s, that can be a knock against you a lot of times. So as far as changing jobs still, and I think that, you [00:17:00] know, what you were just hitting on, this is about the kids.

This is not about you. And I think that applies to this. When I’ve changed jobs. I think let’s talk off offensive philosophy. First of all, I think, I think we all our first day coach in doubt, we have this vision, right? The things that we love to run it’s going to be great. We’re going to go in and we’re going to run all of, all of my stuff and it’s going to be the most awesome thing in the world.

And then you get there and the kids can’t do half the things new because they just don’t have the skillset. So one of the things I said was you just got to kind of get over yourself. All right, what can we do? And that’s, let’s tweak it. And so my, our system is different every single year. And I think a lot of coaches do that.

But I think when I was younger, I did things because Bobby Knight did them or because coach K did them. And I, again, I think that was part of my lack of confidence. So being able to legitimize something by saying coach K does this kind of made me feel better about it. And I could tell that to the kids and like, this is why.

And you know, it didn’t really make a lot of sense at the time. Honestly, if we were doing things that didn’t fit our system, it’s not, we’re doing offensive and [00:18:00] defensive way. So I’ve just learned to just analyze things a little bit differently, but I think man, you just really got to watch your game film.

You know, the kids will show you and tell you what they can do just based on what you’re seeing on film. So make sure you’re putting them in a position to be successful. There will be a time where you’ll have that dream team and you’ll get, you’ll get to, to run your stuff and then it’ll be it’ll be everything you thought of it is.

But in between there, you gotta make sure the kids have the best chance for success. And that’s not always going to be with the stuff you thought it was going to be. You just have to be flexible. You gotta be willing to change. There was a, I took a job at rockfalls high school and all my rockfalls was, they have one at the time Illinois was two classes.

When I took that job, they had one other class, a state championship a few years before they had been downstate or really close to state every year, since then. And then they found out they were getting bumped up to the big school class, which in Illinois was everything for like 7 35 to whatever. I mean, we had schools with 6,000 kids in it.

So their coach left. I had been ripped from my [00:19:00] job at Rockford Jefferson high school, right after we had come back from taking a fourth in the state and was just kind of tired of that. And my wife was teaching down near rock falls. So I’m like, we’re gonna check this out. And man, it was just old school, kind of a sold out gym every night type place where they were just crazy about basketball.

But when I got there, I was hired kind of late. So it’s the first one week of June and I’m just meeting the kids. And I didn’t even have it really planned, but I’m like I kind of like our first workout together in summer. I’m like, Hey guys, I want you to show me everything you guys have been running the last couple of years.

And man, they must’ve been running 50 or 60 sets. It was insane. I had a legal pad full by the time that they was old. And if I know they’re going to break that much stuff out of it, I got the video camera out. So I’m sitting there trying to write it all down and I just would kind of make a note. I like it.

I hate it. You know, whatever. But we saved probably half of their system where we just, they were good at it. I mean, this was a really good team returning six, seven seniors who all styled played a ton of minutes and, and they were just super talented and high [00:20:00] IQ and all this stuff like, why am I going to come in and screw this up?

These guys are really good at it. So it wasn’t what I had planned or intended going in there, but it just made a lot of sense and it, it kind of put their they were in a tough spot. Think about it. They’re here. They are thinking they’re going to be the number one team in the state next year. And they would have been in class.

Which is a small school class in Illinois, their coach leaves. They get bumped up to the big school class, and now they’re sitting there like here’s who we are as seniors. And it’s, the walls are caving in on them. And I think that kind of really helped them be comfortable with the change in all that other stuff.

And the other thing is I had just taken fourth in the state of Illinois at the time with two classes, I think there were 375 teams that our big school class, and we took fourth. So I was able to come back and just say, look, you guys have what it takes. I just got back from there. If you guys have what it takes and you can’t get caught up in the size of your school and people telling you, you can’t because of the size of your school and all that stuff.So I think that really got us off of the right floor and we ended up making it to one, one game away from state. We lost to a Schaumburg high school. We had an enrollment of about 3000 to our [00:21:00] 740 kids. But you know, it’s it I’ve learned a lot just, just from them, honestly. And I I’ve told a lot of people, like just when you take over, let the kids show you what they’ve got.

You know, if they’ve got some things they’re already good at, why not keep a few of it in and it’ll just help them translate.

[00:21:15] Mike Klinzing: When did you feel like you had the confidence to be able to do that where you could come in and not just say, Hey, I’m running Bob Knight’s stuff, I’m running coach K stuff. I’m doing this drill because I saw somebody else do it.

But when did you feel like you had the confidence to be able to do the things that you needed to do to maximize your personnel? And obviously you’re always growing. You’re always learning and no, none of us are ever satisfied with where we’re at, where we’re at on that learning curve. But, but when did you feel like you had a handle on?

I can do the things that I need to do to help put my kids in the best position to be able to win and have an understanding of how that fit into your own [00:22:00] philosophy.

[00:22:02] Mike Winters: I think about my, probably about my third year as a head coach, my third year as a head coach, I left Oregon high school, which was a small school that I started at.

We won think 39 games in two years there we did. Okay. And went back to my Alma mater, which was Rockford Jefferson. And just kind of, I, I knew I wanted to do things differently. I hadn’t been an assistant at Jefferson for seven years and I knew there was some, there was some things I really liked about what we did there, there were some things that after being in a small farm community, like Oregon in Illinois you know, I realized that we didn’t have to cater to kids that there are kids out there who would run through a brick wall for you to still, and maybe those kids that didn’t want to do that, we just needed to push, push to the side and, and move on.

So when I got back to Rockford Jefferson, that was that first year we played Shaun Livingston. That first year we were talented. We were pretty young. We had all kinds of attitude and, and egos and just a lot of chemistry issues. I think we cut. Probably our three most talented point guards, to be honest with you.

[00:23:00] The kid who we kept as our point guard was probably the fourth most down to kid. He wasn’t bad. He’s a head coach now in, in Detroit, Michigan at Lawrence tech university. And I’m excited to actually get to go watch him coach for the first time this weekend we’re heading up to Detroit, that’s all sticks out in six hour drive.

So he wrote the forward in the book, Josh Pickens and Josh was just everything we needed. You know, he was gonna run the offense. We had tons of town. We didn’t need a point guard that would even wanted to score a lot. The kid ran the a hundred meter and about 11 seconds, he could just fly up and down the floor.

He was just a tough kid and I character kid. And you know, so we kept, we kept Josh and we cut three kids that just were ineligible. They had, they had all kinds of off the court issues and you know, the culture there had just been, we’re going to take all these talented kids and we’re going to try and change them in that.

There’s something to be said for that in some cases, but man, you can lose a lot of valuable time among kids like that as well. So those are tough decisions that as a coach, you’re going to have to make at some point. And he’s got to kind of go with your heart on it. [00:24:00] You know, I, I not, it’s not to say I haven’t tried to save some kids here and there, but for that team, that was the right decision.

It was too much talented or anyways, and it just wasn’t going to work. What do

[00:24:09] Mike Klinzing: What do those conversations sound like when you have to have a discussion with a player who maybe is more talented than a player that you keep, but has off the court issues or has grade problems or whatever it might be when you sit down to have a conversation with that kid, if they come in your office or a parent comes in and says, Hey, why is my kid not making it?

How do you handle those kinds of conversations? I’m sure you’ve had difficult conversations in your coaching career. How do you go about handling those.

[00:24:41] Mike Winters: And brutal honesty and generally I’ll I’ll leave clues, but I’m not just going to wait and say nothing and then pull a kid in and cut them at trial.

It’s I I’m talking to them in August, September, October just, this is where it’s at checking grades, giving them feedback on the opportunity because I think that’s the big thing is that kid can change [00:25:00] tremendously for one year to the next you know, kids mature at different rates.

And you just never know when things are going to click for a kid. So that’s not the first time we’ve had a conversation about whether or not it’s going in the right direction or not. But I think brutal honesty is something that, that kids have come back and told me they respected a lot. We didn’t pull any punches.

We told them exactly what they needed to hear. But I think that’s the precursor to that is they gotta know what you care about them as people first, to be able to do that. And if you’re a young coach and you’re just trying to be brutally honest with kids and they don’t know you from anybody. They’re going to take it the wrong way if that’s the case.

So you do have to take time and build relationships with kids, and if I think if you do that, you kind of have that open door to, to be able to tell them the truth. I think most kids want to hear the truth, honestly, but they want to hear it from somebody they trust and that’s the key and it takes time to build that trust.

[00:25:50] Mike Klinzing: It absolutely does. And I think that’s one of the challenges, especially for young coaches, is getting to the point where you can have those [00:26:00] brutally honest discussions and have the kids respect your opinion, respect what you have to say. But as you said, you have to build that relationship first. And I think sometimes those of us when we’re early in our career, that can be difficult.

It goes back to the confidence thing that you talked about in order to be able to have those brutally honest conversations you got. Be pretty convicted about what it is that you’re about to say. If you’re going to take a kids opportunity to play high school basketball away from them, by cutting them, you better understand exactly what it is that you’re saying and feel confident that what you’re saying is the right thing to do well for your program.

And ultimately, hopefully for that kid, to give them an opportunity to go do something else or maybe to come back, if they’re an underclassmen to work on their game and come back and give it a try again in the ensuing years as their career continues. I want to dive into a couple of sections of the book that I think are really, really relevant to helping coaches out there to improve [00:27:00] in what they do.

And one of the sections that you have in there is it’s not what you teach. It’s what you emphasize. And I think this is. A really important thing. It’s something that we just had a couple of podcasts where we’ve talked with several coaches about this exact point and I’m coaching my daughter’s sixth grade travel team.

And we had our first practice on Monday and before practice started, I’ve spent a couple of days going through and trying to figure out what is it that I want to emphasize, because I’ll be honest with you, Mike. I’m one of those guys that’s completely scattershot. Like I’m all over the place when I’m working on a drill.

And I’ll say all of a sudden I’m correcting this and I’m finding that and I’m trying to do this. And then before it I’m like, I really didn’t accomplish. Anything that I wanted to cause I’m trying to fix everything. And so this year I decided I was going to make a huge point of trying to figure out what are the most important three things on offense.

What are my most important three things on defense? And that’s really all, we’re going to zero in on. So just talk about [00:28:00] when you learned that in your career, why you feel it’s so important and the experiences that you’ve had with making sure that you emphasize the things that are most important to you.

[00:28:09] Mike Winters: I heard that a lot from one of my mentors who was actually my brother-in-law now Dean Martinetti was so I told you, I coached one year with my former head coach in high school. And then he was like, go after that year. I was like to think it wasn’t my fault, but he was like going in. So my future brother-in-law comes in and takes the job.

And you know, I have something he said last night, I want you to teach us what you emphasize. And then I heard it at some clinics too, when I was younger. I think in the grand scheme of thing, we have a lot of stuff as basketball coaches, right? We got sidelined bounds. We got, we got baseline out of bounds.

We got into game stuff. We got all his special situations. And through all of that, is there a clear message coming back? Like you just said, what I love, what you just said about three things on offense, three things on defense what type of clarity do you have in your practice plans? Do you have that stuff written at the top of your practice plans?

Those are the things that you’re [00:29:00] really focusing on that day. And then film yourself at practice, Mic yourself, up at Bryce, and you need to be video just Mic, yourself, up at practice, and listen to yourself. What are you saying over and over again? What message do you think the kids are taking away?

And then this may be oversimplifying things, but ask the kids went through here and you say just, Hey, what are you hearing us say a lot as coaches, you know? And if they’re not spitting back to you, the things you want to. Then obviously you need to be able to, you need to change the way re-emphasizing or how you emphasize your most important points.

But I think sometimes when you start off your season though, to-do lists, you got two weeks for your first game and that to-do list is so long. I, I know exactly what you’re talking about, about feeling scatterbrained. We gotta do this, we gotta do that. And not really getting things focused down.

Here in Illinois, now we get 25 contact days in the summer as well. So that really helps us be able to kinda kind of get our bearings as far as putting that [00:30:00] stuff in for the next year. That’s helped a lot, but and then ultimately I think one of my favorite things is, is just winning as a by-product of doing things the right way every day.

So what are your procedures? What are your expectations on a daily basis? How much do you hold kids accountable from, from drill to drill? And are you consistent with it, Mike? Is it, I don’t feel good today. So I’m not really going to get after him today on this or, or whatever it is. You’ve gotta be consistent in demanding with, with your accountability.

You know, that ultimately is your culture. There’s so much out there about culture now and it’s it’s become a big ticket item, right? There’s podcasts, there’s books, there’s everything about culture. Really ultimately culture is what you allow and what you don’t allow. You know, it’s just the way we do things every day.

And you have to establish that in every single drill and every single practice,

[00:30:49] Mike Klinzing: How do you help your kids to become a part of that culture in terms of. Enforcing it. How long do you think that takes when you [00:31:00] come into a new program to get it to where it’s not just coming from the coaching staff, but it’s coming from the players where maybe your upperclassmen are talking to your younger players, or maybe the one senior soccer and other senior and say, Hey man, come on.

We don’t we don’t do that here. We’re not missing a week’s worth of summer workouts because X, Y, or Z, how long do you think that takes in your experience? And I know obviously it changes from time to time, but what are some of the things you do to help, to make it be a player to player culture, as well as a coach to player culture?

[00:31:30] Mike Winters: I think one of the best things that we’ve done is we have the kids write a vision statement. We give us some examples there’s some, some really Jeff Janssens wrote some great books about team-building and culture and he travels all over and just touches the best programs in the country in terms of D one schools and stuff.

So I would encourage people to read a little bit of Jeff Jansen and just kinda he’s, he’s got some great stuff on vision statements and core principles, standards, whatever you want to call them. But we write a paragraph. That’s our vision [00:32:00] statement, our varsity guys write that paragraph. And it’s a cool process because it will kind of guide it.

We’ll introduce it. No, you just kind of sit back. And every once in a while, we’ll, we’ll guide it down a certain path and make or whatever. But I think it’s really cool to watch them debate the reasoning as to why they want this in and why they want that. And then we’ll say we’ve got too much, we got to cut it down and we got to shorten it and we got to figure out what’s most important to us.

But when that process is all said and done, we’ll print that up. We’ll put it on the kids lockers or we’ll, we’ll plaster it all over the place. And then what we find is those varsity guys will walk through a freshmen practice and they’ll, they’ll see things. And they’ll, they’ll tell me about it. Like, Hey, they’re not doing this thing.

We need to get out about that. And they’ve just, they’ve taken this ownership, stake that, that maybe they didn’t have the opportunity to have. If, if we didn’t allow them to do that within that process, we also asked them flat out Hey, what do you need from us as coaches? And I think when you have them in that, that spotlight on them and you haven’t had a situation, they’re going to say all the right things.

They may regret it later, but [00:33:00] they’re going to say all the right things. They’re going to tell you, Hey, we need you to hold us accountable. We need you to not let up on us on days where we don’t feel like doing the work, we need you to remind us. And that’s when you’ve got this, this golden opportunity to constantly remind them what they said they wanted to accomplish, but not be the bad.

Hey, remember when you told me what my job was, right. I’m just doing my job here. You guys said, you want to do these things. I’m supposed to hold you accountable. That’s what we’re doing here. And so I think when you you just, you just make them stakeholders in the whole deal. You involve them in the process.

You teach them the process. You let them take over the process. I think ultimately what you want to do is get them to set the goals that you want them to set, but make them believe it was entirely their idea. And that everything they’re asking of you is, is, is it’s, it’s, it’s them. It’s not me.

It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s entirely them. And I think that helps you avoid being the bad guy a lot at practice, not all the time, [00:34:00] but I think again, just involving them in that and make them a part of that process. Is huge. And I’ve always been able to get kids pretty close to where I get them to write down the things and say the things that I wanted them to say anyways, but now it’s coming from them and not for me.

So it’s, it’s ultimately their team, not my team,

[00:34:17] Mike Klinzing: A little gentle guidance, never hurts. Right? Mike

[00:34:19] Mike Winters: Absolutely.

[00:34:22] Mike Klinzing: Another thing that you talk about in the book is dealing with players who have less than a stellar attitude. And you kind of kick off that section though, by saying that you shouldn’t take anyone else’s opinion about what this type of kid, what this, what type of kid you’re dealing with, you should figure it out for yourself instead of just, well, this guy told me that this player was a pain in the neck instead go and meet the player, find out about the player, coach the player, get to know the kid and find out really what they’re all about.

And if you do that more often than not, you can figure out how to. Correct that attitude and get it moving in the right direction. [00:35:00] Just talk a little bit about your experience of dealing with players whose maybe attitudes aren’t where you want them to be. How do you mold and shape them and get them to come around to the team aspect of the game that we all know is so important to success on the court?

[00:35:11] Mike Winters: Oh, that’s funny. Cause last night was our middle school program. We have, we have two teams at each level. Sounds like seventh and eighth grade. So I was watching them play last night. They had their first games and that’s kind of where I always think of like, Hey you got this kid down at the middle school.

He’s really talented, but you don’t want them. Cause he’s got this bad attitude and this and that. And I’ve always thought First of all. If, if he’s got a bad attitude on the court, he probably cares a lot. That’s first and foremost, like I can never make a kid care more than he wants to care.

But if a kid has an attitude on the court, it’s probably because he cares. And one of the 13 and 14, how do you know anybody’s ever taught them how to use that passion for something more positive? So I think we were just writing. Sometimes we write kids off too soon. You know, you don’t know what their home situation is.

His dad not at home, his mom, not at home. [00:36:00] Maybe me the room rat hole, maybe the kids just pretty much on his own. There’s just so many different things that can, that can be you know, happened in the kid’s life right there. And number two, like I said, a year of growth in a kid from age 12, page 18 is, is just incredible to see it’s unpredictable with kids, but it’s it’s fun to watch.

And I just think we just because the kid has an attitude. Doesn’t mean he may not be in your best leader by the time he’s a senior. If we take them under our wing and coach them up on a little bit and just teach him that. So how many times do we say if, if, if this kid with this talent had such and such as whoever’s attitude or passion we say that all the time, here’s this kid with the passion, but he doesn’t really know how to, how to express it or use it.

And we want to write them off say, oh, you don’t want that kid. He’s got a bad attitude. So I just think you gotta to make your own decisions. You know, be careful what people tell you and don’t forget these kids need the opportunity to grow up.

[00:36:59] Mike Klinzing: [00:37:00] I think kids so often, but when we think about as a coach or we think about it as a teacher, And we sometimes forget that I teach elementary school, phys ed, and sometimes I’m dealing with a six year old kid that’s driving me crazy.

And sometimes you just forget, you’re like this kid’s six years old, like they’re, they’re not, they’re not out to get you. They’re not trying to stick it to you. They just are having a bad day or they don’t have it figured out yet how to channel their emotions in a positive way. Or they’re just, again, they’re six they’re kids.

And I think that is true all the way up through no matter what level you’re coaching, because we’re all human beings and we have good days, we have bad days. And I think if you can, as a coach build the type of relationship that you’ve talked about up to this point with your players, then you’re going to be able to have.

And impact. And can you reach every single kid? No. I mean, there’s some kids that for whatever reason, they don’t click with you and you can’t, you can’t get to them. But for the most part, I think if you take an F you know, [00:38:00] take, take an interest in a kid and you can figure out how to, as you said, take their passion that they have and channel it in the right direction.

You’re going to end up with something that may be surprising to you, that you might not have expected, or certainly that somebody else who would be that person that’s saying, Hey you don’t want to deal with this kid. His attitude is really bad. That might be surprising to them. And that’s really what I mean.

That’s what, that’s, what coaching is all about is having an impact sure. On the game of basketball, but you want that impact to carry on off the court where you can help the kid to not only improve as a basketball player, but improve their life as well. Another section. Delegating to assistant coaches. We talked about it a little bit off the top of the pod and just how important that is to be able to delegate to assistant coaches and Mike you’d be I’m sure not that surprised the number of coaches that have told us that I really became a successful coach when I stepped back and was [00:39:00] actually doing less for my program and delegating more to my coaches and putting my faith in the people that I had hired and what they were able to do to improve the program.

And that’s when I knew I really had success. So talk a little bit about how your ability to delegate has evolved over the course of your coaching career.

[00:39:23] Mike Winters: I think one of the great things, I’m a big Notre Dame football fan, so there’s some great stories there for coaches research, Brian Kelly, and the changes he made to the program has does that probably four or five years ago.

Where he stopped stop calling the plays. He stopped being the offensive coordinator and he just stepped back and let people do their jobs. And he was the head coach and he’s like, I, there was so much that I was missing because I was so my, my head was in his place sheet all the time. And I was missing the, really, the heartbeat of my team, the pulse of the team.

So there was a lot to that. I was terrible at delegating early on because I had a certain standard and I didn’t think anyone else could [00:40:00] meet that standard. So I was afraid that as head coaches, when we fail, it’s on us, it’s not on the assistant coaches, it’s on us. And I had that fear. So I I had this standard and I didn’t think any of us could meet that standard.

What I learned along the way as I became a parent and became busier and, and just trying to juggle it all was, I think I focused too much on what my assistant coaches couldn’t. Versus just seeing what they could do and finding a way to let them take that on one with it and be really good at it today. I, my assistant coaches run the way.

I don’t even know what the weight room program is, to be honest with you. I know it’s working. I know they’re doing a great job. I know they mix it up a lot. I know we’ve I, so what I’ve done is I’ve looked at some things like in our program, lateral quickness is just kind of so-so we get a beat off the dribble too much.

So we’ve really started adding a lot of band work, trying to improve our lateral movement. So I’m working on little nuances like that while they’re, they’re running the the basis that the main part of our weight program is [00:41:00] entirely them. So I’m there. I show up, I get to be the assistant coach in the weight room.

It’s kind of fun. You know, I get to joke around with kids and I’ll catch them in some technique stuff here and there and, and just kind of float around and I. Almost no responsibility. It’s kind of nice and the kids, the kids know that our coach, our assistant coaches are in charge in there.

And I think that demands more respect for them too. So it just ends up making our program stronger from top to bottom.

[00:41:26] Mike Klinzing: How do you view your responsibility as a head coach in helping to. Develop your assistance. Maybe if they eventually want to be head coaches and assistant coaches come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and some coaches just want to continue to be assistant coaches and they enjoy that role.

And then there are other coaches who aspire to be a head coach. So how do you look at your responsibility to develop your staff and help them to grow as coaches so they can eventually get to where they want to get to in their career, whether that’s being the best [00:42:00] assistant they can be, or whether that’s taking over a program of their own eventually.

[00:42:03] Mike Winters: I’m in a really cool spot right now. I just hired two of my players that graduated last year to do my freshmen system and sophomore system. That’s a really cool thing for me because I was that age when I started and I got two guys that just played for me and they were just the best teammates and they’re coaching nonstop.

So that’s, that’s really cool right now, getting to watch them interact with. And just remembering back where I was at that point, I think as a head coach, you got to know what assistance, what do they aspire to be? And you said, some people are just happy being the assistant coach. You know, okay.

If that’s the case, tell me what your, what you think your, your niches, your specialty is. And we’ll, we’ll kind of work through that. And then we’ll just try to build an add responsibility. You know, we’ll see what we can teach them. I think it’s more important to get assistant coaches, especially at the high school level who are good people first and foremost, I think you get good people who are going to be loyal to you.

You can teach them a lot of things that they need to know. So I think that’s really important when hiring. But I, I don’t, I don’t treat them [00:43:00] all the same way in terms of what I teach them, because I know they don’t all have those same aspirations, kind of the same thing. When your players, you got some guys that want to be college players, you’ve got some that don’t.

So you just kinda kinda know that. I take it very seriously. I, I try to teach them as much as I possibly can and now I just hand them my book. But before that it was we spend a lot of time together. I don’t, I may be really the only one in the United States, but I don’t watch game film after a game.

If we, I don’t care if we win by 30 or lose by 30, on a Friday night, I don’t watch game film till Saturday anymore. I think the cool thing with things like hudl is I can just upload it. I can take myself and my family out to dinner. We’ll, we’ll talk about the game or whatever, and just have a good time and just kind of lost some steam.

Now my head’s a little clear the next day when I come back to it, I’ve got the stats returned from hudl and it was a lot of, a lot of programs like Hudld. That’ll do that for you. And I just don’t have that emotion attached to it. I always found, I was just more efficient with that when I didn’t have that emotion attached to it after the game.

You know, the other part of that is I’ve coached over 500 and some [00:44:00] games now. So I kind of feel like I’ve got a pretty clear picture when I leave the gym that night. Anyways, there’s always stuff you don’t see or you see from a different angle and things like that. But I, I just felt like I would go home.

I would be too emotional. I’d watch the game so I might get more emotional. I wouldn’t sleep. It just was so counterproductive. So I, like I said, I may be in the minority on that, but I don’t touch the film on game night anymore and just spend time with my family and my coaches and their families.

And you know, I think that’s, that’s really important, I think. And that’s where we talk about you know, just a lot of, a lot of little things, the nuances of the game, and it’s still an opportunity for me to coach my coaches, even if we’re sitting at dinner and having a beer after a game, how do you guys approach.

[00:44:41] Mike Klinzing: Film work with your staff in terms of how much film is your assistant, how much film are your assistants watching, and then what do you guys share with your players? Obviously, you’re watching a decent amount of film. Your assistant coaches probably are too. So just talk about your process for how you use [00:45:00] film to make your team better.

[00:45:01] Mike Winters: I think every team’s a little different and you get some teams that are really into film and some teams where it’s like pulling teeth to get them to watch any films. So I think you have to really get a pulse on that as well. My assistant coaches, I’ve got a couple that watch a ton of film and then some that probably never venture into Hudl at all.

And that’s, I’m okay with that too, because I’m going to watch a lot of the film myself. I’ve got my varsity assistant right now. He likes to be involved in this gallery and port process. So I certainly let him be involved in that. We’ll generate our scouting reports, we’ll share a Google doc or something where we can both type into it and, and just kind of watch film simultaneous.

It’s kind of cool to see. What he’s saying and comparing it to what I’m saying and just comparing notes after that he teaches at the middle school. So we can, sometimes we can see each other typing into it during the day when we got breaks and stuff. And just kind of get together afterwards and we share quite a bit.

Our scouting reports are, they’re not skinny. We give our kids everything and you have to understand my mindset is, is that I’m going to give my kids every competitive advantage. You know, we’re going, gonna, we’re [00:46:00] going to have strengths and weaknesses. We’re going to have X’s and O’s tendencies. We’re going to have keys to the game.

You know, it’s not uncommon with like a conference opponent where they, they get a 10 page scouting report and you know, 10 pages as obviously that’s what some X’s and O’s and stuff in there, which takes up more space. So it’s not like it’s all texts, but and we’ll go through it with them. And we have very high expectations of.

I think you know, I’ve always said that people will say, oh, we just scout ourselves or we don’t, I know my mindset. I kind of do the eye roll. Like you’re just being lazy. Cause your job is to give your kids the best chance. Go back to what we said about how they only get a couple of years to do this.

And we’ve got to provide them with every opportunity. Not only that, I think just the preparation process teaches them once again, a lot about life, this being prepared for every meeting whatever it is they’re doing for a living down the road, just that prep preparation you show them how to do it.

It’s another opportunity that to throw a life lesson at them,

[00:46:55] Mike Klinzing: How much time on the floor during practice, [00:47:00] do you dedicate to a specific opponent? So let’s say you have a couple of days of practice leading into a conference game. How much time, how much practice time on the floor are you dedicating to showing what your opponent’s going to be doing and dedicated to that scouting report?

[00:47:17] Mike Winters: We’ll take their, they’re probably the sets they run the most. It’s a continuity, or if it’s a couple of quick hitters, whatever it is, and we’ll walk through that and then we’ll go through a live, we’ll teach it to our scout team and probably spend. Maybe 15 minutes or so on, on that stuff, we’ll walk them through base on a balanced place.

I think kids are visual, so they want to see it on the floor. We’ll actually have our starting five one that our stuff too, because I think they learn that way. You know, where the cots are, all that stuff is at. In, so in our conference we have some teams that are strictly, they don’t really want on any sets.

So it’s really more about personnel and then we’ve got other teams that run a ton of sense. So it really depends on the volume for us. I think it varies a little bit, but, [00:48:00] and then the, the process of, for us is, is we’re going to spend time on now. We’re going to take away what they do best. I think at the high school level, you can take away what they do best.

You got a great chance to win, even if they’re more talented than you are.

[00:48:13] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s completely true. You think about a high school teams, ability to adapt. If you can shut down their best player or take their best actions away from them. I think you certainly give yourself a much better opportunity to be able to win.

Cause when high school kids start going to their second or third option, they’re usually not quite as good as, as that first option might be to go along with that. How do you view the use of analytics and what are some things that you’ve done in recent years to incorporate analytics into what you do from a coaching perspective?

And what are some of the things that you think are really valuable that high school coaches should be looking at? What’s a statistic or two that you [00:49:00] really liked that you think this, that impacts winning. And that’s why we spend a lot of time looking at it.

[00:49:06] Mike Winters: I love analytics. I think you know, again, we have Hudl.

Hudl is really popular in Illinois. I think it is a lot of states. You know, the things that you give for that, I think sometimes rebounding numbers can be misleading, I think because of the pace of the game and things like that. So I liked the, the percentage of offensive rebounds that your team’s grabbing a percentage of defensive rebounds.

I like those better than just the pure numbers. I love percentage, but I’ll caution people on this. I think sometimes we can take analytics too seriously. And again, I love them. I think there’s a lot of, lot of value in coach in it for coaches. In Hudl, we can see what our best, our best lineup was in the night.

We can, we can look at it by which five guys were on the floor and what was their a plus minus and all that stuff. So there was a lot of cool stuff and you can get lost in it. But the field goal percentage, I’ve heard coaches say, you shoot lamps or you shoot threes because everything else is bad for your [00:50:00] field goal percentage.

And you know, at the high school level, I think that’s a little harder. So I think that’s a little extreme. I think you’ve got, I think we all have, have had teams where our fourth and fifth option offensively at the high school level, that KIPP probably can’t score off the dribble. That kid may not be able to shoot a three.

The only thing he may be able to do off offensively is knocked down in mid range, shot that he field a low percentage is telling me is. But here’s my byproduct. If I allow him to knock that shot down, I probably get more out of him. Defensively. I probably get more out of the kid as a rebounder. I probably get more onto the kid as a screener.

I just get so much more value out of that player. And if he’s my fourth or fifth player, I need value out of that player. So don’t let it be the end all be all. So what you, what you do, I think there’s still place for the mid-range game in, especially in high school basketball, think at all levels, but I think especially a high school basketball, just because you’ve got kids whose skill sets are limited and you know, you want [00:51:00] their best efforts and sometimes you gotta, you gotta trust them to make a shot here and there.

And yeah. They, you can tell them they’re not the number one option number two option or whatever, and be brutally honest with them on that stuff. But you know, if they can make a 12 to 17 footer and that’s gonna allow you to get a lot more out of them across the board and in every other aspect of the game, you gotta let them do that.

[00:51:20] Mike Klinzing: That’s the James harden, Houston rockets corollary right there. That was when James harden dribbles around for 22 seconds. And the only time you’re one of those other four guys that you get the ball is when he gets stonewalled and has to give it to you with two seconds on the shot clock. So you can touch the ball for half a second and Chuck up a shot.

That’s probably completely contested.

[00:51:43] Jason Sunkle: Oh, Hey Mike, you you’ve ruined it. Mike, Mike is going to talk about James harden for like 25 minutes.

[00:51:46] Mike Klinzing: No, I won’t. I promise, I promise. I promise. I’m going to get on the James Harden rant. I, and I didn’t even bring it up. That’s right. It’s just, I think about that particular style of play.

[00:52:00] And I think you brought up the fact that look, those other guys. Half the want to, I mean, let’s face it basketball. The reason why we get into it as players is not so that we can stand around and watch some other guy dribble and then go back to the other end and play 24 seconds a hard defense. That’s not why anybody starts to play.

And clearly there’s a hierarchy on teams and I get it. You, your best offensive players are going to get the most shots. And I understand that, but I think especially when you talk about high school kids, if, if you’re not going to allow a kid to do anything except shoot threes and get to the rim, I think you’re pigeonholing a lot of kids.

And I see so many teams that. They’ve got guys shooting threes, who in all honesty have no business shooting threes. And look, while I understand that I get it. That three is worth more than two, but not every kid is a three-point shooter. And look, sometimes, as you said, you’re fortunate [00:53:00] enough that you get that group where you have six or seven kids that can knock down a three, but you’re going to have other years where you might only have one or two kids that in all honesty, those are the kids you want shooting threes and everybody else, when they do take one, you’re kind of cringing like, Ooh, man, I don’t know.

I want them taking that shot. And so you got to give kids an opportunity to do what they do well, and then as you said, maybe they cut harder on offense. Maybe they play a little bit harder on defense. Maybe they sprint a little bit more on transition because they know that they’re going to touch the ball and they’re going to get to do some stuff versus you’re telling them, look, you’re not a three point shooter and you can’t get to the rim.

So all you’re going to do is play defense and set screens. That’s not any fun for him for any kid.

[00:53:40] Mike Winters: No, it’s not. All right. I think there’s, there’s a lot too, then I think you just, you got your roster is what it is, the high school level. We can’t get out and recruit guys. So again, we just have to put their strengths to work for us.

[00:53:51] Mike Klinzing: I want to talk a little bit about how you design your practices and your PR planning process, and then how you go about [00:54:00] making sure that you keep things competitive. I know from the book that you’re a big proponent of keeping score and drills. So maybe talk a little bit about how you plan your practices and then why you feel it’s so important to keep score when you’re in practice.

[00:54:16] Mike Winters: I think, first of all, the practice planning for us, our first drill is called perfection. And it’s it’s for really basic or offensive drills back to back to back. You know, it’s three man weave it’s three man straight it’s. It’s a two man passing. It’s a rebound outlet drill fill the lane for a layup, but we call it perfection because they can’t make any mistakes.

They fumble a past, they, they throw it away. They miss a layup. We just, we started over at the first drill and they’ve got six minutes to get through that and be perfect. And for us, it’s, it’s it’s some days it’s three minutes, some days it’s six minutes, but it’s just a lot of really basic fundamentals to get practice going.

They’ve got to communicate through the drill but they’ve got to compete right off the bat. Like they don’t want to run up the identity six [00:55:00] minutes. We’ll we’ll have something for them. Maybe may just be a down and back. It was it not, not really about what that is. It’s just about the fact that they lost.

We want their mindset. We want to raise our sharpen competing right from the get-go. You know, just doing simple things in, in, at the varsity level we still, we still need to talk about bounce passes to cutters for lamps, things like that. So it’s our opportunity to emphasize that, but we jumped straight from that, right?

The defense will do all of our defensive breakdown drills in about 20 minutes. We do most of those same ones every day. There’s only about four different ones that we’ll use. And in the past I’ve used a lot of different ones, but you know, we’ll jump right into that. As soon as we jump into our defensive breakdown drill is you’ll see coaches that have heavy ball.

We’ve got a ball it’s about three and a half pound ball that each coach has underneath their arms. And as soon as the kid misses assignment, we just called her name and toss on the ball. And as they take off, we’ll tell them why most, usually they know why, but it’s just a part of our culture where we demand perfection in terms of positioning, defensively, communication, defensively, all that stuff.

So [00:56:00] that 20 minutes segments pretty intense. There’s usually a good run around a quarter of the ball has had maybe twice around the court. Again, it’s not a killer thing. It’s just that reminding them of what the expectation is. From there, we round out the first after practice with a lot of offensive breakdown, drills, shooting, ball handling you know, kind of what we do.

We have two guns usually set up at a practice. Coaches out there, if you don’t have shooting machines, man, you got to find a way to fundraise and get them because they have the efficiency that they bring to practices just incredible. And then usually halftime for us as free throws. So we’re at an hour, hour and 10 minute.

Free throws is kind of like they had just catching breath a little bit, but shoot them while you’re tired, get a drink, come back. And then we’ll have a quick talk like we do at halftime. You know, this is kind of where we’re at. This is what the emphasis is. The second half of practice. This is what’s going well, this is what we need to change.

And for us, the second half of practice is going to be a lot more of a five on five stuff, scheme situations that might include some scouter report stuff. But that’s where we get into I just think if you’re not [00:57:00] keeping score in everything you do in practice, you really need to, the scoreboard should be on.

If you have that ability to turn a scoreboard on there should be a time running on a drill. Like we tell them we’re doing this defensive breakdown drill for four minutes, do it for four minutes again, the heck out of it, no matter how bad it is. I think the clock is important because we play games with clocks on, right.

I mean, we, we gotta finish the quarter. We gotta finish. We gotta finish the fourth quarter. It’s an opportunity when there’s 30 seconds on the clock to just really push them to the finished real strong and just mimic what we’re going to do in a game. So the scoreboard is always on, we’re always keeping score in, in scrimmages.

I think it took me a while to figure this out. And it’s really just super, super simple. If I, if I watch game film on Saturday and work terrible and offensive rebound, and the effort’s just not there part of that’s probably coming back to, I didn’t emphasize it enough throughout the week. So when we’re scrimmage and on Monday in practice, we’re gonna give them two points for an offensive rebound.

You know, maybe [00:58:00] we’re giving the defensive point per deflection. Maybe we’re not screening very well. So now coaches are gonna just judge the screens. If there’s, if it’s a solid screen, we’ll give them a point. If it’s a bad screen, we don’t give him a point. So the end of a possession one possession might be worth in some days, one possession might do over 11, 12, 13 points.

And you know, the game gets up in the hundreds pretty quickly when we pull up. But it’s just the opportunity to emphasize again, it’s not what you teach is what you emphasize is right. It’s your opportunity to score. Kids are competitive. So if you tell them these little rules, all right. I guess if that’s what we got to do, a scrimmage, we’ll do it and they want to win.

So if you’re not finding, you’re not rewarding actions with points in practice, I think you’re missing opportunities to get better.

[00:58:40] Mike Klinzing: I think that was a great point that you made in the book and you just reiterated it there about your kids really want a scrimmage. I mean, that’s what they want to do you think about it?

You think about any kid at any age, the, the most universal question you get, especially if you’re a new coach you’d come in. I know, I think about just the number of [00:59:00] my own kids’ teams. I’ve coached a few and travel and rec basketball and you come in. What’s the first thing that kid walks through the door.

Hey coach, when we gonna to scrimmage, we scrimmaged it tonight. We’re going to scrimmage and that’s what they want to do. And your point is well taken that because. That desire to scrimmage is so high. You can get them to do just about anything if they get to scrimmage. And so by putting them in situations where, Hey, we’re going to scrimmage, but yeah, you get two points for an offensive rebound and you get points for deflections, or you get points.

If you take a charge or you get points for setting a good hard ball screen and roll into the basket or whatever it is, whatever it is that you’re trying to emphasize. I think that’s a really, really great coaching point and teaching point that any coaches out there listening, if you can incorporate that into what you do, whether you do it in a five on five scenario, or you do it in a small side of game, you’re working three on three, and maybe you just want to work on some actions that are part of your offense.

Or maybe you want to work on [01:00:00] some actions that your opponents are going to throw out your team. You can do all that and reward the types of behaviors and the types of things that you’re looking for. As we’ve said a couple of times, you’ve got to make sure that you know, what you want to emphasize and be intentional about what it is that you’re looking for, what you’re teaching, because then that’s what you’re going to get.

If you don’t throw out what it is that you’re looking for. I know you said a couple times in the book that scrimmaging can sometimes look like free time and that’s how kids sometimes approach it. If you don’t provide a structure as a coach. And I think that’s really, really important.

[01:00:37] Mike Winters: And one of the things we do besides keeping score is we’ll have days where maybe it was a bad turnover game where we just, we have three coaches in there while we’re scrimmaging.

Each coach has a ball. As soon as they turn one over, we take that ball away. We throw the second ball out. They turn that one over. We throw the third ball out. And so it’s a visual, all three balls are gone. Now. Now we just got to run for whatever time is left on the clock. So that was an eight minute quarter.

We were [01:01:00] scrimmaging. There’s four minutes on the clock. We’re going to get some conditioning. You know, we may put a ball in her hand and do some, some dribble suicides or whatever, but just it’s amazing what you can do to get them to focus when you, when you put those parameters in.

[01:01:12] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I never heard that one before of taking a ball off the rack and having that be a way to visualize the turnover situation. I think that’s a great way to go about it because as you said, it provides a concrete. Look at what’s actually happening. And then boom, they know the consequences. If they’re not doing the things that they need to do.

And your book is filled with a bunch of great tips like that from a practice standpoint and figuring out how to do those kinds of things. As you said off the top, it’s not necessarily X’s and O’s, you’re not going to find a bunch of out of bounds plays and that kind of thing. But you’re going to find a ton about how to run your program the right way and how to build your culture.

One of the other things that you talked about was, and it’s something that’s become ever more important in the high school game. As a high [01:02:00] school coach is your ability to work with a basketball and travel basketball because it’s something that the way basketball is here in the United States as a high school coach, you’re going to have to figure out how to best navigate that, to help your players.

And I just wanted you to have an opportunity to talk about how you’ve handled that, to make sure that. Your players are getting the most out of their experience of you and conversely, how you can help them to get the best of their experience with a U and travel basketball.

[01:02:33] Mike Winters: I was in a hospitality room. I think this was back in 2004 when I was at Rockford Jefferson.

And we were planning an NCAA certified shootout for high school, which those are rare these days. But and it was a Friday and on Saturday, a bunch of our kids, this was just Filipino and a bunch of our kids were they wanted to go play at an AAU tournament. And I always came back to like, all right, they’re playing somewhere.

I going to play against a really good competition. If they’re gone, other guys get to play we should be able to make this [01:03:00] work to where we’re we get better as a result of it. But I was in his hospital room. I was talking to Gordy Kirkman. Gordy’s a hall of fame coach here in Illinois, Western rural high school.

And I have a ton of respect for Gordy. And as a young coach, I just said, coach, I said, what do you do when your guys want to go play AAU? When you’ve already got a tournament schedule? Like, how do. He looked me dead in the eye. And he said, I tell them if they leave and they go play with their AAU team, they can never come back.

I just got a thought here. I am like, man, I love this guy that he’s a great coach, but there’s just gotta be a better way. You know, it, it is part of the culture. It’s not going away. Scheduling wise we schedule all of our summer of 25 days when we schedule most of them in June so that our guys that are traveled teammate, you guys can go play in July, cause that’s a big time for them.

I know that I’m being bypassed in the college recruitment process. I used to love that with our guys met a lot of great coach that way, a lot of big name coaches, just because I had some good players through the years and [01:04:00] really enjoyed that part of it. I also know that like, listen, if, if I’m a trainer, if I were a trainer you know, you see them on social media, right?

You see these trainers showing video clips of, of their clients, their kids. Performing these high level moves. Right. But they don’t teach them some of the most basic fundamentals and I get it. Like, it’s an advertising thing, it’s a marketing thing. Why would you not put that video out there? And then everybody’s like, yeah, well my kid doing that stuff.

So they sign them up and they do come back with some really high level skill stuff. But in the process, some things get bypass. And I think that happens a lot of AAU teams as well. Not all of them, but some of them. So I just think again, as a, as a high school head coach now, I’ve just got to be really observant of what my guys are where their improvements are and where the holes are in their game.

So I think at the varsity level, that’s a really long way to say it’s not the varsity level. There are, I think I do more stuff than I did when I was coaching freshmen to fill in some of those games. [01:05:00] But at the same time, these kids are so far advanced in other things that I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that stuff, if that, I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but it’s just changed the way we approach practice scheduling really everything.

And you know, I, I don’t think it’s bad. There’s a negative stigma there. And I don’t think there has to be. I just think we have to be willing to try to co-exist.

[01:05:22] Mike Klinzing: How much do you try to build relationships with the better, a few programs in your area to sort of help to facilitate your kids getting into a good situation?

Cause I tell parents and I have conversations with people all the time that come to me for advice about where they should play and this and that. And for me, it always comes down to what’s. What’s the coach going to do during your practices? Are you going to be learning the game or we just roll the ball out and plan glorified, pickup basketball with somebody standing on the sideline and a couple of reps running up and down the floor.

So how do you go about building [01:06:00] relationships with a few programs to just to make sure that your kids are getting the right experiences?

[01:06:06] Mike Winters: I don’t do that as much as I used to, to be honest. And it’s not part of that is, is where I’m at in life and just, just being busy with other things. But I do talk to kids about the fact that like make sure you spend a lot of money, make sure you’re going to get better.

Like look at this. You know, I know you like it if they just roll a ball out some days, but is that really where you want to get the, is that any value for what you’re spending? In terms of it are you going to be a better player as a result of that? I always tell parents, like be careful because I think so much of these AAU programs, you can have a program that has a great reputation.

But your son or daughter may end up playing for a particular coach in that program who just not very good. Absolutely. And therefore that experience for that kid is not going to be great, even though there’s been a ton of other kids who have had a great experience in that program, the opposite can also be true.

You can have a program that doesn’t have a great [01:07:00] reputation. Well, maybe are 16 year coaches as a younger guy or a new guy, or he’s just really good in general. And if you’re on that team, you could have a great experience. So it’s really about do your research. I kind of tell him, it’s I kind of give him the job interview stuff like you’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you.

You grow a tryout, ask questions, be observed and how organized is it? All of that stuff. But you know, there’s, like I said, there’s just, there’s, there’s a lot of good programs that have some bad coaches.

[01:07:31] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny, Mike, you gotta do your research. Absolutely. It’s funny that you say that because what, the way you phrased it is exactly the way.

That I’ve phrased it to so many people that I’ve talked to, you can be with a great organization and get the one bad coach in that organization and have a terrible experience. And conversely, you could be with an organization that other people will tell you is terrible, and you can get that one great coach in [01:08:00] that organization.

And you can have a terrific experience. And it really does come down to the coach and are they going to teach the game and are they going to make sure that they’re in it for the right reasons, which is to benefit the kid. And I think really ultimately whether you’re a high school coach or you’re an AAU coach, if your ultimate goal is to do what’s right by the player, then that’s where we want to be.

Whether what, no matter which side of that equation, we’re on, whether we’re on the AAU side or on the high school side, if both sides are trying to do what’s best for the players. And not what’s best for them. Selfishly as bicycle coach or as the AAU coach of a program, then that’s where we’re going to end up in a spot where we all want to be where we’re going to be able to have a positive impact on the kid as a player.

And as we’ve talked about numerous times tonight as a human being, all right, I want to wrap up with a final two-part question then give you another opportunity to plug the book two parter. First [01:09:00] part, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what’s the biggest challenge that you have in front of you?

And then number two, what’s the biggest joy that you feel when you wake up in the morning and you get to go in and you get to be the head coach at Harlem high school. What’s your biggest joy? So biggest challenge and biggest joy.

[01:09:16] Mike Winters: Biggest challenge for me right now is something I’ve never done before and that’s coached my own kids.

And I I I’ve coached him. I’ve coached him for years travel ball and stuff like that. But this was a little different the smiling lights on it a little bit more on a, in a high school gym on a Friday night or whatever it is. So, and I think when I say that’s a challenge, it’s not him.

It’s me. And it’s, it’s me making sure that I think the best advice I’ve gotten on this. A good friend of mine. He was an assistant coach of mine at one point. And he’s a head coach in our league right now, but he said you just gotta make sure your coach in the same if you get pumped up, when the other kids take a charge, you gotta get pumped up.

When your kid takes the charge, you can’t just be like, well, I [01:10:00] expect them to do that because he’s my kid. So that’s a challenge. I had something that I think some coaches out there probably can relate to it because they’ve coached their own, their own sons or daughters before. For me, that’s a new challenge.

So that’s something I’m looking forward to. I don’t know if he’s looking forward to it or not. I have to do a better job of, of coaching him the same way I coach the other guys that can’t be harder on him because he misses a layup. You know, it is what it is. It’s the same as everybody else makes.

One of the things I just love about being a coach, I just, I am super observant. I don’t know if other coaches do, as I made. This is just a quirky thing that I have. I love watching game fill when our guys make a great play, whatever it is. I love watching. I rewind it. And I watched the reactions of fans in the stands.

You know what I’m, I dunno, maybe I don’t know if you’ve ever done that or not, but for me, it’s, it’s that reminder that we have this incredible opportunity to bring joy into people’s lives, [01:11:00] whether it be 90 minutes or whatever it is. And you know, just and we talked to our kids about that. I talked to my players about that a lot, just taking it very seriously.

Like people paid to watch you play tonight. You know, they they’ve got difficult things going on in their lives and this is their escape what are you going to give them tonight? What are you going to show them tonight? And I think that’s a huge privilege that we have that people come to watch what we do to escape from whatever it is that they have this difficult that’s going on in life.

And it’s it’s something I’ll never take for granted.

[01:11:32] Mike Klinzing: I love that. That’s a great reminder for coaches, for players, just to think about, Hey, somebody is coming in this. Paying their hard-earned money to come and watch you play. I think back to that, Michael Jordan quote of you never know that somebody is going to be there, right?

It’s the, it might be the only time they ever get to see me in person. And I got to make sure that they’re getting the true Michael Jordan experience. And I don’t know [01:12:00] how many guys in the game, all that all the way through. And we know there are guys that still do that today. And we know there are some guys that don’t do that, but I think if you could take that attitude into every single game that, Hey, this might be the only time this person is going to be in the stands to see me play.

And I want to make sure that I show them who I really am and give my best effort. And it’s a great way to frame that.

[01:12:23] Mike Winters: I’ve used exactly that before that, that exact clip that you’re talking about from that Michael Jordan interview. Yeah. I’ve used that exact same thing with our kids before.

So that was a great, great add on to that.

[01:12:36] Mike Klinzing: So before we get out, I want to give you a chance one more time. Pitch the book tell people where they can find out more about it, where they can order it, give them the title again, let’s go through all that. Share your own social media, how people can connect with you if they want to reach out after listening to the episode.

And after you do all that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:12:55] Mike Winters: All right. So the book is called “The Journey: Lessons from the Hardwood”. It’s everything I’ve learned in [01:13:00] 27 years, sometimes through successes, sometimes through failures it’s available everywhere. It’s available on amazon.com, Barnes and noble.com.

My website, coachwinters.com. It’s actually on sale there right now. So it’s a little cheaper there if you order it from coach winters.com. It is you know, it’s, it’s just, I think it’s one of those things you said it’s an easy read. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that, that it just kind of flows and, and you know, like I said, the, the reviews have been good on it.

We just got to get the word out that it’s, it’s something that I think can really help people. I’m excited about it. I’d love to get the opportunity to talk about it. I can’t thank you guys enough for that opportunity here tonight. And you know, looking forward to hear some feedback from some of your listeners, as well,

[01:13:40] Mike Klinzing: As I said, both on the podcast and before we jumped on, I love the book.

It reads honestly, for those people who are a regular part of our audience here on the hoop beds pod, the book reads very similar to an episode of the hoop heads podcast, where Mike dives into a little bit of his backstory, we [01:14:00] learned about him. We learned about his family. We learned a little bit about his experiences and his various jobs.

And then he dives into the nitty gritty of what it means to be a high school basketball coach and build a program. There’s just a lot of great wisdom in there that as he said, he’s built up over his 27 year career that he shared. So if you get an opportunity to go out and pick up a copy of the. Please make sure you do so, Mike, we cannot thank you enough for jumping out with us tonight and taking the time out of your schedule to share with our coaching audience, to share a little bit about your book.

Congratulations. It’s very, very well done. And thank you for taking the time to speak with us about it tonight to everyone out there. Who’s part of our audience. We appreciate you listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

MIKE WINTERS – HARLEM (IL) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH & AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “THE JOURNEY: LESSONS FROM THE HARDWOOD”- EPISODE 551

Grip Spritz is perfect for…

COACH’S CORNER ROUND TABLE 16 – WHAT ADVICE WOULD GIVE A YOUNG COACH JUST ENTERING THE PROFESSION? (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 1135

CHRIS OLIVER – FOUNDER OF BASKETBALL IMMERSION AND HOST OF THE BASKETBALL PODCAST (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 671

LESSONS LEARNED ON RELATIONSHIPS, INTANGIBLES, & GROWTH MINDSET – EPISODE 606

“MENTALITY” PART 12 WITH UALBANY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH DWAYNE KILLINGS – THE STRETCH RUN – EPISODE 600

COACH DAVID THORPE FROM TRUEHOOP.COM – EPISODE 595

DUANE SHELDON – ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AT DUBLIN-COFFMAN (OH) HIGH SCHOOL & FORMER HIGH SCHOOL/COLLEGE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 591

Grip Spritz is perfect for…

RELATED EPISODES

COACH’S CORNER ROUND TABLE 16 – WHAT ADVICE WOULD GIVE A YOUNG COACH JUST ENTERING THE PROFESSION? (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 1135

CHRIS OLIVER – FOUNDER OF BASKETBALL IMMERSION AND HOST OF THE BASKETBALL PODCAST (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 671

LESSONS LEARNED ON RELATIONSHIPS, INTANGIBLES, & GROWTH MINDSET – EPISODE 606

“MENTALITY” PART 12 WITH UALBANY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH DWAYNE KILLINGS – THE STRETCH RUN – EPISODE 600

COACH DAVID THORPE FROM TRUEHOOP.COM – EPISODE 595

DUANE SHELDON – ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AT DUBLIN-COFFMAN (OH) HIGH SCHOOL & FORMER HIGH SCHOOL/COLLEGE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 591