Ray Lokar is the Southern California Lead Trainer for the Positive Coaching Alliance and also serves as the Lead Trainer and Mentor Coach for PCA. Coach "Lók" has coached in SoCal for over 25 years at the youth, high school, and college levels and has worked countless camps and clinics during that time for ages 8-18. He is also the Director of The Basketball4all.net and developed a majority of the content for Basketball.Lifetips.com.

Coach Lokar was the Head Basketball Coach of the 2002 California Interscholastic Federation Champions while at Bishop Amat High School and as a member of the Executive Board of the Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association starting in 1991, he served a two-year term as President beginning in 2000. He is also a and author that has a basketball DVD series available online at Championship Productions

Tip: BE BIG ON THE LITTLE THINGS!

During the preseason, as basketball coaches are introducing the offensive and defensive game plans, philosophies, and strategies, it is easy to forget some basic actions that can improve players and the team. There are some fundamental things that ANY player can commit to doing, simply by putting their mind to it, without needing to get better at any "basketball fundamentals". These "commitments" can make the player more effective IMMEDIATELY without getting any better at “basketball skills”.

Tip: PLAY WITH YOUR KNEES BENT

Always stay in an athletic stance. It is your point of maximum explosion. Be just like a track sprinter coming out of the blocks. Have your knees bent. Be on balance. Be ready to move. You will get open on offense more often. You will guard your man on defense easier. The player with the lowest active stance usually wins.

Tip: GET A HAND UP ON EVERY SHOOTER

The only person who can score is the one with the ball. Go guard him even if he is not your man. Help your teammates when their man is open. Go guard him. Contest the shot even if it means leaving your feet, but don’t fall for a head fake too easily!

Tip: GAIN POSSESSION WITH TWO HANDS

Always catch the ball with 2 hands--concentrate on the catch before you do anything else. Rebound with 2 hands--and try for every one. Pick up a loose ball with 2 hands--pick it up, don’t dribble it. You will get more possessions for your team and each possession is another chance to score

Tip: TRY TO OUT RUN YOUR OPPONENT EVERY TIME

You will usually break their will with your first three steps. Get ahead of the defense and your teammates will throw you the ball. It will help you get easy shots on offense with your fast break. If you beat the offense back, they may not even try to run their fast break. Getting back on defense will help stop their fast break and cut down on their easy shot attempts.

Tip: PASS TO THE FIRST OPEN PERSON

Passing the ball is faster than dribbling it. If you move the ball, you make the defense adjust and they might make a mistake and leave someone (maybe you!) open. If you see an open teammate--throw them the ball. Don’t wait for a better pass. Remember - "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Tip: CARE -THINK - TRY

Coaches are always looking for the secret to a team’s success, and many of them develop long laundry lists of qualities and attributes that they want the team to strive to develop. I’ve tried to simplify that long list to the lowest common denominators. If players truly CARE about their teammates, THINK about their actions and TRY their best, the team will grow into a unit and begin to be the best that they can be.

CARE. When teams begin to work together and go thru the everyday effort they develop a certain camaraderie that forces them to truly CARE about their teammates. When that happens, they will do everything that they cannot to let their teammates down. Everyone must accept teammates and coaches as they are and mold themselves into whatever is necessary to make US successful. As a group remember the goodness required to enjoy each other and have fun while participating in this great game. In our off-the-court lives, it means contributing our time to others, to good and worthwhile causes, and to the welfare of our families and our loved ones.

THINK. Players and coaches must strive to have knowledge of the system and the fundamentals of the game of basketball, inside and out. Strive for individual improvement on a daily basis and work to reach the team goals by executing the prepared game plan without fail. Pay special attention to time and score situations and understand the objectives of each. THINK about the risk and reward involved in each decision, both on and off the court. Follow all of the laws, rules and regulations as students, employees, and citizens while striving to achieve a rewarding life plan.

TRY. Just try. You’re very best. Every time! Be competitors without equal. Players and coaches should strive to make sure that no one prepares more thoroughly or works more diligently to become successful. Display the self-discipline necessary to prepare and succeed at the highest attainable level. Give a supreme daily effort, in all areas of life, towards being the best student, employee, and citizen possible.

Success in the game of basketball may be the first step to finding an avenue for social mobility. In the process of achieving athletic success, acknowledge that the world outside the gymnasium is where true success and fulfillment can be found. The basketball court will merely be a laboratory to prepare for the game of life.

Tip: EXAMINE YOUR COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Your style is often an extension of your personality. Coach within that personality. Whether you are soft-spoken or hotheaded off the court, most likely, you will assume a similar persona when coaching. This is not always, true, of course, but the exercise will get you thinking about the manner in which you coach.

Assess your players in the same manner. As you become more familiar with your team, you’ll be able to gauge its personality as a whole as well as the personalities of the individuals it comprises. In honing your coaching style, try to pinpoint an approach that will work effectively and cohesively with your players, individually and as a group. Once you’ve assessed these qualities, make an effort to nurture your strongest characteristics and incorporate them into your style. Be aware of your weakest traits so you can detect and eliminate them when they begin to surface on the court.

A coach wears a number of hats--teacher, administrator, surrogate parent, friend, and counselor. However, regardless of the role that you find yourself in, the most important thing that you can do is be yourself. You can learn from coaches that you admire and even borrow ideas from them. Yet, if your true personality doesn’t come into play, your players will see right through you and have a difficult time relating to you.

One of the most important pieces of advice that can be offered to a new coach is to coach within your personality. Don’t try to coach like someone else or emulate someone else’s style. Be yourself. Players can sense right away when you are insincere or not being yourself. You will go further if you coach in a manner that you are comfortable with.

Tip: PARENT A PROGRAM

"We never know the love of a parent, until we become a parent ourselves." I think that once a coach becomes a parent, it changes his perspective on how to teach young people. Raising my children, I did not only want them to do the right thing because "Dad said so" but rather because it was the right thing to do. Their comes a time when "Dad"(or Mom) is not going to be there, and yet a correct decision must be made. In order for this to occur, they had to learn "why" it was the right thing, and "how" it was going to benefit them. I believe that a similar approach must be taken in coaching. I like to call it "Parenting the Program."

We talk all the time about coaching the way that we would want our son or daughter coached. We would expect the coach, first and foremost, to be fair. We would want the coach to display patience and understanding with our child and the team. We want to be clear and concise in how we teach, giving the player the know how to perform, and then help them towards improvement, encouraging them all the way. Most of all we want to treat the player with the same respect that we ask of them. Scold and discipline when necessary, but re-teach and praise immediately following. We never want a player to leave the gym with a negative impression of how the coaches feel about them.

As a coach you 1) should be knowledgeable and organized. 2) Love your players equally, unconditionally, and care about them off the floor. 3) Work FOR them as hard as you expect them to work FOR you.

Do these three things and your players will: 1) Listen and try to understand; 2) Show the desire to play as well as they can; and 3) PLAY HARD.

Tip: TEACH SKILLS, NOT JUST SYSTEMS

A common oversight among coaches is spending too much time learning "plays" and not enough time learning how to play. Teams do need to have organized offenses and plays (we have tons!), but it is far more important to be able to execute the fundamentals of movement, ballhandling, dribbling, passing and shooting than it is to know how to run through a particular offense. Along with all of the individual fundamentals, players need to understand the concept of "relative motion". That can best be described as realizing how one player fits into the space on the floor, given the "relative" positioning of the other players, both offense and defense. A player with this understanding will know how to move to get open, create proper spacing, passing angles, play good on ball defense, and give good team defensive help.