What you should be reading, watching, and listening to

The honest answer: more than you are.

Most coaches read or watch craft material in spurts — a clinic in June, a book somebody recommended, a couple of YouTube clips when they're prepping a new set. Then nothing for six months. Then another spurt.

The coaches who keep growing have something on rotation. Not a lot. A consistent something.

The specific titles and channels are yours to pick. This lesson is a framework.

One thing up front. Experience is the best teacher. Nothing on this list replaces coaching games and running practices. What this stuff does is sharpen what you see in the reps. Reps without study plateau. Study without reps doesn't matter.

What to read

A small set of books that have lasted. Coaches who wrote down what they knew, in their own words. Five I'd start with:

• They Call Me Coach — John Wooden. The foundation. Read it.
• A Coach's Life — Dean Smith. The most complete portrait of running a program for the long haul.
• Multiple Offense and Defense — Dean Smith. The playbook to pair with the memoir. How a coach actually built a working basketball framework. Both books belong in your hand.
• Sacred Hoops — Phil Jackson. Coaching the people inside the system, not just the system.
• Knight: My Story — Bob Knight with Bob Hammel. The work and the man, in his own words. You won't agree with all of it. Read it anyway.

And one outside the game: Coaching the Mental Game — Harvey Dorfman. Sports psychology written by somebody who actually worked with athletes, not somebody who watched from a distance. Helps with the part of the job that has nothing to do with X's and O's.

Beyond books — the practice plans of coaches you respect. Many head coaches publish them, or you can ask. A coach's practice plan tells you more about how they think than their book does. The book is what they decided to write. The practice plan is what they actually did on a Tuesday.

Articles from coaches who write seriously — basketball-specific Substacks, FastModel, certain coaching blogs. Stay away from the highlight-reel content. Look for coaches who write about why something works, not just what they ran.

What to watch

Practice film. Not just game film. If you can get practice film from a coach at a level above yours, that's better than 10 games of the same team. A practice tells you how they teach. A game tells you what they teach.

Game film of teams that run systems you don't. If you're a motion coach, watch a continuity team. If you run a continuity, watch a ball-screen-heavy team. Watching what you already do confirms what you already believe. Watching what you don't do is the work.

Your own film. Not just games. Practice film of your own practices. Phone on a tripod is enough. Watching yourself coach for 20 minutes is the most uncomfortable hour of your week and the most useful. The coach you remember being is rarely the coach the camera shows.

What to listen to

Coaches in your league. Most coaches will talk basketball with you for 30 minutes if you ask. The opponent who beat you in November will tell you what they saw. Listen.

Coaches at the level above yours. The HS coach who has a kid in your AAU program. The college assistant who recruits your area. They've seen things you haven't.

Podcasts. Some are good. Most are interview-and-anecdote without much craft. Find the one or two that go deep on the work — practice design, in-game decisions, the specific stuff. The Hoops College Coaches Podcast is one we use as anchor material in COA 1600 and COA 1700.

Players. Ask your point guard what she saw on a possession. Ask your center what his defender is doing. Players see things from a vantage you don't have. The coach who never asks loses access to that.

What to NOT spend time on

Hot-take content. Twitter / X arguments about whether a college coach should be fired. The recruiting-news cycle. NBA load-management discourse. None of it makes you a better coach. It feels like staying current. It's not.

Clinics that are sales pitches in disguise. Some clinics are 80% the speaker telling you he's a great coach and 20% actual content. You can tell within 15 minutes which kind you're in.

Highlight-reel content from people whose process you'd never want to copy. The flashy crossover from a 13-year-old at an AAU showcase has nothing to teach you about coaching. The drill it came from might.

Have someone to call

Not a content thing. A person thing.

Have one coach you can call when you don't know what to do. Doesn't have to be famous. Doesn't have to be at a higher level. Has to be somebody who tells you the truth, not what you want to hear. Most working coaches don't have this. The ones who do are noticeably steadier.

Be that person for somebody else. Younger coach. Assistant. A peer at a different school. Pick up when they call.

What to do this week

Pick three of these — one reading, one watching, one listening — and put them on a calendar. Not aspirational. On the calendar.

Sunday morning: read 30 minutes.

Wednesday during your prep block: watch 20 minutes of film that isn't your own team.

Friday after the game: 10-minute call with another coach about what just happened.

You won't keep all three. You'll keep one. That one is the rotation. Next month, add a second.

The coaches who do this for 30 years aren't doing 4-hour study sessions. They're doing 20-minute sessions, every week, for 30 years. Compounding interest.