11 Commandments of a Point Guard

The following 11 commandments are used by Coach Sundance Wicks and the Northern Illinois basketball team.

1. Media, family, friends, pressure, fans, girlfriends, or hangers on, ignore them on matters of basketball, they don’t know what’s happening here.
2. Don’t forget to have fun but don’t be the class clown. Class clowns and leaders don’t mix, Clowns can’t run an on-court huddle.
3. Point guards make defensive plays with their legs more than arms. Sit in your stance and move your feet, have active hands, anticipate and wait for them to make the mistake.
4. Know your job cold. This is not a game without errors, keep yours to a minimum (3:1 assist to turnover ratio minimum).
5. Know your own players, who can shoot, who can catch, who can finish, who needs encouragement, who needs to be pushed…be precise…know your opponent.
6. Be the same person everyday, in conditioning, preparing to lead, studying your homework, studying your scout, studying your game plan. A coach can’t prepare you for every eventuality, prepare yourself and remember: impulse decisions usually lead to mistakes.
7. Deciding to make the safe pass is a good play. Turnovers, reaching fouls, missed free throws and missed lay-ups are bad plays. Protect against those.
8. You must learn to manage the game: control the tempo, get us where we need to be, communicate the play, ball handling, proper reads, well timed passes, accurate passes, quick passes, deceptive passes. Clock, clock, clock, don’t ever lose track of the clock TIME & SCORE!).
9. Points and assists are not how you are going to be judged, your job is to get your team to win, that’s how you are going to be judged.
10. When all around you is in chaos, you must be the hand to steer the ship. If you have a panic button, so will everyone else. Our ship can’t have panic buttons.
11. Don’t be a celebrity point guard, we don’t need any of those. We need battlefield commanders that are willing to fight it out every day, every week, and every season, and lead their team to win, after win, after win.

Visit Coach Sundance Wicks on his website http://www.coachsundancewicks.com/