Coaches gravitate towards

It would be hard to excuse the fact that people have subconscious thinking processes that help determine their conscious decisions.
Having a negative opinion of a player/person is made through the same subconscious and conscious decision making as selecting a player you may favor.



When picking up players there is no way of knowing everything about them until you get to know them. So there is still evaluation going on.

Obviously players leave teams and players get cut from these processes.

Rolling Hard said:

In general (not always), the players that can't focus or are disrespectful when coach is talking are some of the more mediocre players.

Click to expand...

I know you said "not always" but it's worth noting that sometimes things like this are just that sports can be very single-minded in how a player should behave/exist, and it has a tendency to exclude/drive away a lot of people that are neurodivergent in the 'wrong' ways.

Many coaches would think "Oh, I can't put that kid at first/pitcher, etc because she's always daydreaming in RF"

But another coach might think "Oh, she needs to be more involved, let's put her at first and train her on all the different things she can pay attention to leading up to receiving a throw" or "Let's see if she wants to catch, so she's involved in each pitch"

"The whole point of basketball is to play." "Without playing time none of this matters."

The whole psychology of making someone submissive to an authority figure for playing time is not healthy.

The coach is a sociopath.

Yup, as I've said often. I prefer Parent coaches as I've found they don't play favorites as much as non-Parent coaches. Of course there are tons of exceptions and of course my sample size is small.

I've never had any favorites. I've had a few that I hoped didn't show up the next year, but I've been fair with everyone. My favorite KIND of player are the ones that are fearless. Not afraid of the physical stuff and more importantly, not afraid to fail. I've had a few of those that weren't particularly good teammates, and some that are great teammates. More and more, I've grown to realize that contributing to cohesion in the dugout may be the best attribute a kid can have.

This is obvioulsy a basketball camp setting. The coach could be viewed as using poor choice of words to give the teenage attendees a take-away. A better theme may be "be coachable", not "coaches have their favorites". Very few coaches (and NO effective coach) play favorites as the terminology here may suggest to some folks. In a high school setting, good coaches look for the athletes who both get the job done and are coachable. The coachable part is an essential attribute to have for individuals (whether the most skilled or the least skilled) to raise their skill level. Coachability is also very important to team dynamics. Coaching 14-18 year old high school athletes ALWAYS comes with challanges that are broader than the scope of the sport. Perhaps better verbiage could have been used in this coach's speech, but if these kids go home with a better understanding of the importance of being coachable, then the point was made!

Didn't watch the video...coachable players and then athletes. What did I miss?

Ive told teams up front, I have favorites, if you slide, dive, run out ground balls, pop ups, give effort, take warmups seriously, ask questions, you are probably one of my favorites, I like questions, every drill we work on has a purpose, I cringe when a coach answers a question with because I said so.