Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

08.25.21 Joe Mazzulla’s NBA-Level Positive Framing

  Over the past year or two I’ve had the pleasure of working occasionally with Joe Mazzulla. Joe is an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics and this summer was the head coach of their NBA Summer League Team.  He also wrote two really great side bars in The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. The NBA’s summer…


08.22.20 Book Excerpt: On Sideline Coaching and Post-Game Talks

I’m happy to say we’re still tracking for a December release for my book for sports coaches, The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. I’m trying to post some excerpts here. Though most of the book focuses on what we can do during training and practice to accelerate learning, in Chapter 6 I try to reflect on two…


01.11.19 On Coaching: You Give Two Kinds of Feedback. Are They Aligned??

Here’s a slide I showed recently to coaches at a workshop: The slide is an attempt to describe a common challenge I see in the teaching/coaching of athletes. Here’s the scene. Athletes are playing. We are observing them as coaches. We notice something that needs to be improved. So we stop and make a teaching point. …