We are big believers in give our players things to read...books...magazine articles...passouts. It's a great way to pass on information. Each year during the season we give our team a book to ready (this year it is "Make Today Count" by John Maxwell) and we have accompanying worksheets to see how they are filtering what they read.
The following comes from Steve Smiley's book "Playing for Coach Meyer" (a great book as well) and speaks to how and why it was important for Coach Don Meyer's teams to have things to read:
Coach would also sometimes bring books to practice, buying copies of books for the whole team, including John Wooden’s book, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and off the Court, among others. I think Coach did this for two reasons.
First, Coach Meyer simply loved the game of basketball and he loved to teach, and whenever he found any type of useful information about basketball he wanted to share it with his players, just as a teacher would share information with his or her class. Secondly, Coach Meyer was giving us a huge competitive edge because we began to learn the game; not just play the game, but actually learn the game. By writing in our notebooks, reading articles from different experts of the game, and continually studying every aspect of the game we eventually would become a smart team. And, when two teams play that are equal in talent, we believed the winner would be the team that was smarter on the floor. We always wanted to be that team.
