Maximizing Potential: The Impact of Coaches and Resources in Basketball

Episode three let's do it Kev what's good brother not much just another week yes I mean let's get right into it man we wanted to talk about player resources right talk a little bit about uh really honestly not let just get started on talk about the resources you had as a basketball player coming up in New York uh maybe even give a little background of what your day-to-day was as a young Kevin Houston growing up in New York who you're were playing with how you trained how you got better maybe even a little back story to the path to the to the essentially the NBA the professional professional level and then we'll segue into the resources that are available now and how players could learn from this and say hey wow he did it with minimal resources I have all these resources available to me what can I do to essentially evolve my game and take my game to the next level let's get into it yeah uh the resources I had what resources first of all we didn't you know back in my day we didn't have a lot of resources uh you know we had to create a lot of our resources uh a lot of times uh when you're growing up I think you actually do better because you're almost in survival mode right you don't have a lot of resources so you kind of got to make things up as you go but our biggest resource I think when I grew up was our a coach uh Tippy who's still coaching nowadays in Brooklyn he's he's helped so many countless uh people uh reach the ultimate level I believe the last time I I checked on the website uh they he's putting through between him and Ziggy putting through aund you know 190 kits uh through division one colleges from the time that I was young to now even now they're still doing the same thing uh so our biggest resource was Tippy because without Tippy I don't think a lot of a lot of people wouldn't have made it uh he had a gym much like mine uh at the Y Brooklyn YMCA that he opened his doors to all the players like we can come work out whenever we wanted to and when when we came he actually had all the training equipment and stuff like that he would give anyone that came in a workout like take for me for instance like I wasn't I tell the kids here I wasn't very good when I first started at basketball uh it it was really you know people like Tippy helping me out understanding like hey this guy's got potential so let me let me train him like he is one of the top guys and that's you know half of my background of why I'm so holding the kids accountable here is because of my background how my a coach was with me he influenced me a lot because no matter whether you know you couldn't shoot you couldn't dribble you couldn't do anything he was the guy that treated you like like you're the star like you were the best on the team and and I think without him doing that a lot of kids wouldn't have made it but again he helped us learn how to work out like he would take us through dribbling drills uh with the heavy ball that's why I I like the heavy ball nowadays helping kids dribble um he like even now you don't see it a lot he actually implemented like a big ball which is Norm like twice the size or three times the size a regular ball is he would have like shooting equipment there that we could have on and really really he was the first I think that did all that everyone else was more like instruction based you do this you do that go right go left and he was more of a guy that he would train you but would have all these tools for you to help you get better well beyond I think it's worth clarifying what do you what do we mean essentially by player resources so clearly you mentioned your previous coach Tippy pause on how he you know was able to provide an open gym for you hold on his name is Tom murnin but we call him we call him Tippy that's his nickname so Tom MC Turnin MC Turner is his real name and he was a he was a Wall Street guy he he was on Wall Street for um I believe like 20 years and he was helping us out as well but I just wanted to clarify what his real name is yeah C that was a big pause was but uh it's it's worth uh clarifying for the listeners what exactly do you be my resources I know you talked about a coach uh your coach that meant a lot to you whether it be skill development simply just having a gym available for you to train in what other resources did did you have or are you just saying that's the only thing that was readily available to you what are some resources that you're able to translate to the listeners so they can understand yeah beyond my coach I also had X Y and Z and then we could transition into the resources that are present today uh like yeah I I think our resources was the coaches around us piece like because we didn't have a lot like I guess you would say another resource could be like the park that you that we would play in like each of us had something where we walk out of our apartment building and there was a court that was our biggest resource right other than that it was all selfmade like you had to go on the court you had to do the drills you had to make up what you need to work on no one back then it was going to tell you what to do it was more self-serving than anything how would you compare the resources you had then to what's available now I mean now there's trainers everywhere there's there clubs everywhere there's YouTube there's Tik Tok all these things that are now available to provide as a resource for players to get better how would you compare what's available now to what you had and can you say one is better than the other I know you had like a line earlier where you mentioned that you almost felt as if it worked to your benefit having limited resources expand on that uh it's a huge difference it's it's really it's really night and day I believe back in the day we had people are G to lie but we had DVDs they had DVDs like they would sell DVDs online so if you wanted to do something you had to actually go online go to whatever trainer that was selling this DVD and you'd have to purchase a DVD then you would have to P then you would have to wait two weeks you'd have to wait two weeks for their DVD to come then you you you have to watch it you know you have to watch it at home because there's no portable stuff you can't take this stuff to the gym and then pause it and stuff so you have to wash this at home right notes at home like what you saw on the DVD and then when you're in a gym you got to execute it no longer is it like that because every everything's on the phone right so a lot of times I feel like there's too much resources nowadays uh because you have you have every trainer that's online um whether it's digital stuff online training online courses uh uh you got all social media platforms they're on uh so and you got all these tools now you got all these tools that people are using um that the kids have I think an unlimited resource right they have unlimited they have access to gems they have access to tr like unlimited trainers which I just told you it was not a lot of trainers back in the day when I grew up it wasn't even heard of you go to a trainer it wasn't heard of like okay I'm going to go get this trainer and and work under him for you know two three years and develop my skills it was unheard of that someone did that it was more or less like your AE coach that knew so much about basketball he was the guy that was training you and he would do a workout for a group workout it wasn't a lot of individual workouts like there is now can you speak to what what you've noticed with a clubs in terms of how they Point their players in the right directions when it comes to providing the resources but Au teams High School coaches as well oh train here go there play for him do these drills do you have an opinion on what you've been seeing in essentially the aou realm or the high school realm if you can speak to that yes uh in in the a

realm it it's hard to say it's hard to say because there's so many guys that either on their website or if you talk to them they're all about development but when you either hear someone talk about their program that you trust or you see them how they how their kids are in games because we get to go play against other teams so we get to see how other teams uh play you can and then you can you can Gauge by watching them play uh you know are they being trained the right way so me looking at that I know and there there I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to say that people are not there are uh a program that are right and some of them are my friends uh that are doing it the right way but I would say the majority is not doing it the right way it's what you said a few episodes a ago which is Cash in cash out I'm gonna have this kid in and you know I'm not gonna develop this kid I'm just gonna give him a bunch of games okay and call it development because that's what parents want to hear parents want to hear that you're developing their kid but in actuality you're really not because if you're not having to me if you're not having extra skill sessions if you're not having extra things for the kids and all you're doing is just a plain aou how are you developing off of one day a week you're not okay how are you developing off of two days a week if you're a true developer you're giving these kids a lot more you're there and what I mean by a lot more is they should be practicing more than they should be playing because if it's the opposite opposite way around and you're playing more than you're training then that's not development to

me and put yourself under the fire what could you be doing better to help develop the kids in your program what have you done in the beginning when you first got started in a what have you learned through that process and developing players through the generations of kids and to now what you have set up currently yeah I I I've transformed my program in the beginning uh and I'm I'm very open about this in the beginning I had 18 teams I had almost close to 20 teams you 18 20 teams which you were a part of right um and I really didn't know what I was doing because having that many teams it's like you know how do you start with what I think I had like 150 kids 160 kids so how do you try to get as a program whole how to get everyone on a schedule and I think in the early days of me starting and me like kind of figuring out like how to handle big groups how to make sure that everyone in the program is getting something out of it I think that takes experience that takes experience of messing up right you're not going to be perfect doing anything and this is what I explained to the kids when we have practice is you know you're you're G to mess up you're not going to do things right but you have to understand like that's how you get better you get better by failing okay when you fail you understand why you fail and then you bounce back and that's with me I understood why I failed I failed because I didn't have it as structured as it needed to be I thought I was structured but it wasn't as structured as it needed to be so as the years evolved okay and I seen more athlete because to be frank I when I first started I didn't train a lot of kids from this area I trained mostly kids from my area which is Brooklyn New York Bronx like all th all those areas because that's where I was from so when I came up here and start training the kids up here it takes a while because it's a different it's a different kind of player it's not the same right it's not the same background it's not the same so you got to get used to like okay what does this area bring to the table that they're missing right which is creativity you go in the area that you know I'm from it's a whole bunch of creative people they may not be structured but they're they're very creative right so I had to come up here and have a structured plan in order to uh get the C uh certain level of skills here I had to had a structured plan and as the years went along that's what I did I started to dissect every skill level and say okay what are the basic drills that we need to do that if they did these basic drills they can Implement into their game play and then once they Implement into their game play they can be successful because I didn't want to give them something that which you give them and it's not in their wheelhouse it's not something that they're used to doing and they're never going to be be able to do you give people what they're capable of doing and then you master that and that's what we've done here we we've mastered the basics okay I've drilled the kids in this area about the basics the basics transcends every level it transcends High School it transcends College it transcends uh professional ranks and the more that you can drill yourself on the basics then the better so having resources here okay I have training tools can I have my own personal training tools that I will be coming out with by the way it's just taking me a long time of getting everything set up the way I want but I will I I I've implemented those same training tools with the kids for at least two years now I've had these training tools for two years and I know it works because I've I've had it with the kids the kids love it okay so that's one of the the the resources that I use knowing that my knowledge and my 20 years in basketball I've created these tools so these kids shortens down the time that they're learning okay instead of me telling them what to do now they wear one of my shooting devices and now it's easy for them to understand okay I also give them look at all the skill sessions that I give them I throughout the year we have a yearly program where the kids do the yearly program which it's just skill skill skill and they train more than they play right and the kids that the kids that are really serious about it are usually the kids that are of high skill level in this area and usually are the kids that are your best high school players so I give them a ton of resources between skills between um giving them training tools uh working with them in group sessions and one-on-one sessions and it's always something here in the building that it's available like yesterday we had open gym had open gym for three hours this week what majority of our teams a wise okay not with the basketball Factory but the majority of team a wise will have went through four or five practices before this weekend's tournament that's unheard of in a that doesn't happen in a a is like one practice maybe two practice and then they have a game our kids here will have four or five practices before they play the game this uh this this Saturday and Sunday so I think I think now you know like maybe four or five years I think we've got it right for last four or five years I think we got it right the structure is right but to me it's still not enough I had a parents meeting and we talked about this I still think we need to up our skill level we need to up our skill classes so that's one thing that I can do better that I told the parents in the parents meeting that I will get better at I we need to have more skill sessions because the more skill sessions we have the better the kids understand what we want because not initially they understand like why we're teaching them a certain skill and the more repetitions they have the more that I trust kids that they'll figure it out kids are smart enough that I think once you give them a lot they will be able to take that and be able to to get better at that because I truly think I truly think it's in the it's in the players hands I think if the players want to get better they will get better but something has to be in place for them for them to get better so I trust the kids that if something's available and they really want it P they can they can do it they they've proven it in my program over and over again that they can do it so I mean do you think being that earlier you mentioned that you coach people from the inner city versus this more so I guess rural area uh do you think it makes a difference in terms of Player Development in the long term whether someone doesn't have a lot of resources versus when they do have a lot of resources is there a fine is there a fine balance in between making sure if possible for certain kids that have certain things that are necessary to help almost expedite their progress versus kids who may not have the you know let say Financial Resources to pay for uh certain opportunities yes I I truly think it makes her breaker kit whether he has resources or he doesn't have resources now we live in a different time so when I was growing up we had to figure it out we're in we're in an era where it was like a figure figure it out era or fail right we're not in that era anymore we have so much stuff nowadays that you can't just tell a kid figure it out um so for me I think seeing the kids that don't have the resources and we see them a lot especially when we we play in these um BigTime tournaments uh especially with the girls and the guys over the last three four years and then some of these local tournaments we get to see a lot of talent of kids um for other teams and you can just see it you can see and say hey if this kid had a certain amount of resources or have a certain uh someone teaching him how to do certain things and when to do it he could be outstanding or she could be outstanding I think that the difference between being good and great are your resources are the people you surround yourself with if you're able to surround yourself with smart people that understand the game that understand that okay no you don't do all these fancy moves you got to start with the basics and I know with kids it's hard for kids to to understand like okay because they see all this cool stuff online that they want to do but it really comes down to how is your fundamentals how is your basic skill level are you mastering your basic skill level because if you are you can you can do a lot of great things in this game and that and and to me that comes down to the people that are coaching you and the resources that you have and and the gym availab availability right if you don't have the gym to go in the gym and do all these things then how you going to get better you know it's cold outside again it's not like when we grew up you know our parents like go outside figure it out I don't care if it's freezing like nowadays kids don't want to go outside and do that so you need gym time you need gym time to go in the gym and be able to work on these skills so that you can get better and you need a knowledgeable person who has those uh type of resources to give you and if you're not under that then you're I'm not saying you're not going to succeed because I succeed it you better have a strong will to make it it's either one or the other you ever have a strong will to make it or you better be under someone that has the resources that can provide you with things to make sure that you can be able to uh get to the level that you want to get to but that's another thing I mean the other thing I want to touch up on is there's not a lot of things we talk about resources there's not a lot of things for kids that are their their their skill level is not up the part to the elite athlete right and that's what that's what I don't like about social media I don't like about social media I don't like seeing it's everything's catered to the elite athlete everything piece the elite high school player the elite pro the elite every drill you see someone do online everything you seen on social media they talk about elite elite elite elite that's not that's that's not the majority of of of the United States the majority of the United States it's either their skill level is low or at a medium level at least 98% 98% you're talking to 2% of the of the population that is Elite everyone else should be able to do your fundamental basketball because to me if 98% is either below or average that's what they should be concentrating on because that's how they can succeed yeah you're not lying man I think uh I think this a good way to end it there a good way to end it on the leave it on the mark where I like how you said those who don't have the resources like you said let's hope that unfortunately or fortunately right you have the will to persevere through your circumstance right and find the right Avenues and uh people mentors for you was your coach that could you know Excel you to the next level and for those who are fortunate to have the resources right family gym tools uh take advantage of it you know I'm saying make sure you're aware of the opportunities you have take advantage of it and uh see where this thing can take you Kev any last words man any last words as we uh close it up the only last words I would say is you know I know a lot of things look like it's hard kids it's really not it's really it's really about being on a routine being on a schedule and understanding that okay you're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days I just want kids to understand that you can make it whatever your goals are whatever you can do just be under someone that has that kind of same level of wanting you to reach that certain level if you're under a guy that is helping you and making sure that is holding you accountable go under that guy because you're more likely to accomplish your goals and just just my last message to kids like you can do it you just have to be able to understand that I need to put together a routine if I'm able to put together a routine I think you know the world Sky's the limit yeah that's it that's the pod