How to Build a Championship-Winning Basketball Team Culture

• By Grant Young

Building a basketball team’s culture takes a lot more than using positive encouragement and convincing players to high-five their opponents after games. Creating a solid culture that can make an impact for players both on and off the court, in the present and in the future, requires a daily commitment not only from a basketball coach but also from their players. 

And it can sometimes take years to build a program’s culture from the ground up. Yet, when a coach is conscious about the messages they’re sending, both verbal and non-verbal, the culture they’re trying to build can spread throughout their team like wildfire, and influence winning outcomes sooner than they might imagine.

Coaches like Jim Boone have laid out the blueprint for doing so. 

Coach Jim Boone moved among the Nation's top 5 winningest NCAA Division II coaches with over 600 victories in the 2023 season. His career includes two Final Fours and 6 Sweet Sixteens, taking an unprecedented 4 different schools to the NCAA Tournament. 

Coach Boone was able to bring this impressive track record of success to multiple different schools because he brought his winning culture along with him. And in his ‘Building a Championship Program: The Jim Boone Way’ course, Coach Boone shares his thoughts and philosophy on building a successful basketball program and creating a winning culture. In doing so, Coach Boone invites coaches to learn the systems and teaching methodology that has led his programs to numerous championships and milestones.

We have pulled some of his most pertinent points, giving you a taste of the value Coach Boone has imparted throughout his course. 

Possessions Are of the Utmost Importance

At one point in Coach Boone’s discussion, he notes that, among all 7 of the losing teams that he became the coach of across his career, all 7 had the same obstacle that they initially had to overcome: they were going to lose games before they started winning them. This is because, as we alluded to earlier, creating a culture of winning typically takes some time to build. 

And Coach Boone would always begin to address that by emphasizing one thing: “that our players respected and understood the value of every possession.”

All basketball coaches know that the difference between winning and losing can (and often does) boil down to one single possession. And while it can be easy to convince ourselves that the most important possession is the last one in the game, the reality is that any single possession across a game can ultimately be the one that decides a win or a loss. 

Therefore, each and every possession must be treated with the utmost care; although that doesn’t mean that coaches should get upset over every wasted possession. Turnovers and poor plays happen to every team in every game. But Coach Boone’s hope is that, if players recognize and respect the importance of every possession, they’ll be more conscious about their decision-making during the game.

Getting Back on Defense

Coach Boone then shared a quote from a coach that he admired. The quote was, “If you want your team to start getting on the track toward winning, teach them how to get back on defense.”

Now, there are many practical reasons why teaching a team to get back on defense will be conducive to winning; the main one being that a team that is always in transition is typically one that is scoring a lot of points. And so if your players aren’t also getting back on transition defense, their teammates are constantly going to be at a disadvantage on the defensive end, and will therefore concede plenty of easy baskets throughout the course of a game. And that is sure to cause a lot of losses.

But players not getting back on defense also speaks to a broader cultural issue. When a player does not get back on defense, it’s usually for one of a few reasons: they either think they got fouled and are complaining to a referee, are upset that they turned the ball over or missed a shot, or simply aren’t giving 100% effort on the court. 

All three of these potential causes point to a cultural problem that must be addressed as soon as possible if a team’s culture is going to improve. 

And Coach Boone notes that, once you have every one of your players getting back on defense every play, then that’s a sign you’re on the right track to winning games.

How You Put Practice Together

At one point in his course, Coach Boone says, “I don’t think there’s anything that translates more into winning and losing than your practice. And how you put practice together.”

Coach Boone then says that he always tried to start practice with something defense-oriented. The reason he does so is because he believes that, similar to why getting back on defense is important, defense (and specifically, toughness on defense) is the most important on-court component to building a winning culture. 

After that, Coach Boone discusses how all players do during their offseason is practice shooting and dribbling, by doing cone drills. Therefore, his team’s first month or so of practices is at least 75% defense-oriented. 

What’s more, Coach Boone stresses that, whatever they don’t do well in a practice or game during one day, they’ll do much of that during their next practice opportunity. This is so no aspect of a team’s deficiencies gets neglected, and shows to players they’ll immediately be held accountable for their mistakes. 

These are just a few of the valuable nuggets that Coach Boone drops during his course. And his overall message is that it takes every team member (head coach, assistant coaching staff, and every player, from the reading scorer to the guy at the end of the bench) to build and sustain a winning culture. But because you’re the coach, everyone will look at you to set the right example and move your team’s culture toward winning.