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All great coaches have developed a set of core principles that they’ve applied to their teams, which has allowed operate as a cohesive unit and find success, on the court, in the locker room, and out in the world. 

Sean Sweeney is one of those coaches. 

Sean Sweeney is one of the hottest young up-and-coming coaches in the NBA, currently an assistant coach for the Dallas Mavericks. 

In his ‘Core Principles – How We Want to Play’ clinic, Coach Sweeney details the main pillars he instills within his players to get the most out of them. We will be breaking down his most pertinent points and sharing them with you so that you can get your team functioning at max capacity by the time next season begins. 

Core Principles For Your Program

Core Principles For Your Program

“Some general core principles for your program that make sense to me are: we want to be the hardest working, most together, most competitive, smartest, toughest team.” 

Coach Sweeney notes a variety of other things that a player can do to be considered hard-working; none of which show up on a box score or a stat sheet. This introduces an imperative point: that hard work isn’t always going to result in points for a player. But it will help result in wins. It will also get a player’s teammates and coaching staff to respect that, and facilitate trust in the other room. This is the byproduct of an unselfish, cohesive team culture that prioritizes “we” instead of “me”. 

Offensive Principles

“To play with great effort, to be the hardest working team, you have to be in shape.”

While there are multiple different tests and metrics with which conditioning can be evaluated by a basketball coach Coach Sweeney has also devised his own unique method of assessing how fit his players are: Can they play the way he needs them to play for six consecutive minutes? 

Offensive Principles

In terms of offensive principles, Coach Sweeney has one overarching rule: That you want to get a great shot as soon as you can. 

This is going to mean something different for every team and every player, considering what their strengths and weaknesses are. 

Defensive Principles

Defensive Principles

“We want to allow one contested long two-point shot.”

Coach Sweeney is very clear about what he wants his teams to allow on defense. In order to do that, he wants his players to sprint back on defense, ahead of the ball, and to play defense late into the clock, because a shot that occurs early in the shot clock typically means it’s a great shot for the other team. 

Instilling core principles into your team will have them playing like a cohesive (and coachable) unit in no time. 

Never get out-coached, 

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