NOTE: From May 17-31, 2001, I joined fellow American coaches Sean McDonnell (Head Coach, Hiram College, OH), Andrew Miller (Assistant Coach, Hiram College) and Will Robinson (Head Coach, Woodbridge High School, VA) on a Hoops4Hope Coaches Tour in the Western Cape, South Africa where we worked with H4H Founder Mark Crandall and Cape Technikon coach Thierry Kita.

We were warned that the gym was unusual, but I never could have imagined what we saw. While the court was barely wide enough to have a three-point line, I felt as though I were looking from one end zone to the other, rather than one basket to the other. The linoleum court must have been about 125 X 40, but the kids hardly seemed to notice, if they even knew better. We coached nearly a thousand players and conducted coaches’ clinics for most of the coaches in the Western Cape Basketball Association, but the biggest clinic we conducted was at this school in one of the “rougher” areas of Cape Town. The hundred-plus kids were divided into three groups: one basket for shooting, the middle of the court for ball handling and the other end for defense. There was one coach per group, or a player to coach ratio of over 35:1. I taught shooting, but had only three balls at my disposal. Besides the language difficulties (There are nine official languages in South Africa, and most speak three: their native/tribal language (Zulu, Xhosa, etc.), Afrikaans and English.), in my group of 11 to 14 year olds, about a dozen kids had no shoes, as they could not afford them. They walked to school barefoot and they played basketball barefoot. However, I have never coached a more attentive group anywhere.

The players possess a tremendous desire to learn. Their positive attitude rarely left them discouraged, and they challenged themselves to pick up new skills, whether it was a barefooted ten year old learning how to shoot for the first time, or some of the U18 players trying to keep up with Sean in advanced ball handling drills. At the Future Stars (U20 women) practice, I was impressed with their capacity to learn offensive principles: V cuts, L cuts, triple threat, basket cuts and pick-and-rolls. We ended with a game of Cut Throat and their natural instincts and passing were phenomenal: like a poor man’s Princeton on the first day of practice. The game finished with a perfect backdoor pass from the high post for a lay-up and then they tried teaching me some Xhosa phrases. They were much more adept at learning the backdoor cut than I was at learning phrases like, “Molo. Unjani wena?” (Hi. How are you?) and “Diphilile enkosi.” (Good, thank you).

While Africans reminded me constantly that Cape Town was hardly Africa (it is not unlike San Diego), basketball in South Africa certainly remains Third World. The resources-balls, hoops, courts, gyms, coaching books and tapes, sneakers, uniforms, money-are basically absent in a country decimated by HIV and 70% unemployment and dominated by soccer, cricket and rugby. Despite its problems, basketball has been the fastest growing sport for the past seven years and those in the basketball community are very dedicated. The older generation, the parents, teachers and administrators, serve as coaches even though few have ever played. They watch NBA games at 3:00 AM on satellite and try to learn by listening to the commentators and watching players like Ray Allen and Kobe Bryant. The players in their twenties are the life of basketball: they started a magazine, they coach younger teams, they play, they watch each other’s games: they have a basketball community that is supportive and focused on building something. They envision a training center and more trained coaches, camps for kids and a resurrection of the defunct (bankrupt) professional league.

During our visit, I was fortunate to be invited to run some First Division practices for friends’ teams. The coaches gave me an idea of areas where they needed to improve, and then allowed me full reign to run their practice. I worked with Kita’s Cape Tech Men’s Team; Cape Tech Women’s Team that featured four Junior National Team players and went undefeated and largely unchallenged last year; and Montana Vikings, coached by the most respected coach in Cape Town, Craig Daniels. The greatest difference Craig saw between American coaches (me) and South African coaches is the detail that we stress: the footwork on a jump shot, the first step on a move to the basket, the left hand to close-out on a right-handed shooter, etc. Because most coaches have never played, and most teams are lucky just to have one coach (forget about assistants), it is very difficult for them to focus on individual development and correcting individual habits. It made me realize that even at our JC we have three coaches and a manager for twelve players, so it is so much easier to see and correct things than when one person coaches six teams without any help (or pay). We take assistant coaches for granted, but they are truly a blessing in the overall development of a team.

These practices were both fun and frustrating to coach, as there is ample athletic ability, but so much to teach. Coaches take much for granted in the USA because players have more exposure to basketball: they are bombarded by games on television, they play at parks, gyms or recreation centers, they play on summer teams and attend camps and they have always played. Basketball is a part of the culture in America, it is everywhere from Venice Beach to Times Square to Indian Reservations. While coaches complain about the bad habits players develop by watching the NBA and AND1 Mix Tapes (criticism’s which I believe lack merit), the exposure creates such a monumental affect on culture and basketball and makes the game, from the youth to the professional leagues, what it is. South Africans are giddy with excitement due to their first half hour basketball show, shown at obscure times, but an illustration of the growth and popularity of the game. With more exposure, they hope, more kids will play and more money will be geared towards developing basketball as a sport on par with soccer or cricket.

One of my final activities in South Africa was my television debut: I stopped by the filming of Kita’s “Guru” segment for the half hour basketball show, In The Zone. I demonstrated the cross over dribble on an outdoor court at Cape Tech, dwarfed by Table Mountain in the background. Cape Tech was more or less our basketball home for our trip as we conducted many of our clinics and watched the league games there. Cape Tech also provided a haunting introduction to the devastation of Apartheid: Cape Tech sits in what is known as District Six, a neighborhood that was bulldozered by the Apartheid government because the blacks were living too close to downtown. One night, while waiting for a ride, I spoke with a player’s father who told me about his former residence, a couple hundred feet from where the gym stands now. He talked about being separated from his wife and children because they were of a darker complexion than he (he was colored, basically the racial classification for anybody who is neither completely black nor white). I visited the District Six Museum, read the poetry, searched the used book stores for more information and came away realizing that though I left Los Angeles to teach coaches and players in South Africa something about basketball, I left South Africa knowing that I learned far more about people, life, race, equality and Africa.