Basketball is in Michael Plansky’s blood. Two of his brothers won state titles in high school, his dad coached his sister’s teams to another state championship, and his brother Mark played on Villanova’s 1985 NCAA championship team. After his own successful playing career in both basketball and baseball at Fairfield University ended, Michael decided to move into coaching. After serving as an assistant at Brandeis University for four years, Michael learned from the legendary Tom Davis at...

Ken Hunter still remembers the night he pulled a kitchen knife to stop his dad hitting his mom. What came next was even more extreme, although for anyone growing up in southwestern Detroit, it was normal. The court provided Ken with some solace, and he quickly grew into a top prospect, attending the same school where Jalen Rose had won a state title. When his football coach kicked his butt for skipping school, Ken also became a standout student, even while living off friends’ couches and with...

Most young assistant coaches dream of the day when they’ll finally get a crack at promotion. But few are ready for the realities of being a head coach. Jesse Wright realized he still had a lot to learn when he was tasked with running the weight room for the NFL Europe team in Barcelona while still in his early 20s. His work ethic and ability to problem solve got him through that trying season, and upon returning to his native Philadelphia, he soon found himself working for the 76ers as a...

Coach John Mosley can still remember the day his life changed forever. Gang members fired bullets outside his Los Angeles high school in a drive-by shooting, and Mosley was on his way to get revenge. But as he was about to jump in his friend’s car, he asked himself, “What am I doing?” Soon afterwards, two words took him down a different path: “Basketball tryouts.” Mosley came late to the game, but his stellar point guard play earned him minutes at East LA College (ELAC), The Master’s College...

Strength and conditioning for young pro athletes isn’t easy, but because they’re bouncy and resilient, you can experiment more to find a line of best fit. But what about when you’re training older athletes aged 35 and up, either in the general population or a pro sports setting? That’s the question legendary strength coach answers in this podcast. In this part 2, he and former Lakers S&C coach Tim DiFrancesco discuss: Why you should make a “who’s smarter than me?” list and then seek those...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination. In his senior...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination. In his senior...

Tim Frazier was told he was too small and weak to play contact sports. But sibling rivalry fueled him to prove his doubters wrong and propelled him to a basketball scholarship with Penn. There, his stellar play at the point earned Tim All Big Ten honors. Yet disaster loomed, and he tore his Achilles just a few months later. Looking at the game through his coaches’ eyes, he turned a negative into a positive and worked his way back onto the court with courage and determination. In his senior...

Ax throwing. Log balancing. Carrying kettlebells through the forest. Standup paddling. Visitors to Gray Cook’s lake cabin invariably do some activities that might seem unconventional at first but actually train every major movement pattern and then some. Gray applies a similar real-world lens to the movement and function assessments that he co-created for athletes, including the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), Functional Capacity Screen (FCS) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment...

Ax throwing. Log balancing. Carrying kettlebells through the forest. Standup paddling. Visitors to Gray Cook’s lake cabin invariably do some activities that might seem unconventional at first but actually train every major movement pattern and then some. Gray applies a similar real-world lens to the movement and function assessments that he co-created for athletes, including the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), Functional Capacity Screen (FCS) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment...

Growing up with a dad (Terry) who played 10 seasons in the NBA, you might expect that Ed Davis was pushed from the time he could hold a basketball. But his father let Ed’s love of the game develop naturally before training him on the court, at the track, and in the weight room when he was a teenager. Ed also benefited from a mom who let him put basketball first, pickup games with the likes of Ben Wallace at Virginia Union, and the discipline and timekeeping he learned at a private military...

NBA, NHL, MLS, division I college sports, pro rugby. There are few sports that Jeremy Bettle hasn’t worked in at the highest level. At each stop, he has combined the firm foundation of understanding the latest sports science with communication, teamwork, leadership and other soft skills that have allowed him to apply it. Working with Deron Williams and developing a relationship with GM Billy King led to Jeremy switching from director of sports performance at UC Santa Barbara to becoming head...

Everybody loves winners, but sometimes the most compelling stories are born out of losing. That’s one of the things Ian Thomsen learned when he was assigned to cover the losingest team in college football while in Northwestern University’s famed journalism program. He also juggled a job for the Chicago Sun-Tribune and eventually earned a spot on one of the greatest writing rosters of all time with the Boston Globe.  This gave Ian an insider’s view of the heated Celtics-Lakers rivalry that...

Ramsey Nijem’s mom worked multiple jobs to put food on the table for her family and give them the opportunity to excel. So it’s no surprise that he worked so hard in college that he finished his master’s and doctorate in half the normal time and ended up working as an assistant strength coach for the Sacramento Kings just a few short years later. It took years for the Kings to lay the foundation for their recent return to the NBA playoffs and Ramsey was on site pouring concrete and laying...

Carrie Moore came to basketball later than most of her peers, when a friend and neighbor’s love of the game rubbed off on her. She quickly made up for lost time, learning from her high school coach Frank Orlando, who’d go on to win almost 800 games. Carrie became a leader on the floor and then scored over 2,000 points at Western Michigan University, where she led the nation in points per game in her senior year. After graduating, Carrie’s sharp shooting earned her a spot in the WNBA, where...

Growing up as the 10th of 13 siblings, George Mumford always felt sensitive to the needs of others, whether it was his brothers and sisters or the homeless people he’d pass when walking to and from school. It was the same emotional intelligence that would one day serve him well when guiding the mental game of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant’s LA Lakers. But first he had to pass through some trying times. While basketball offered an oasis from his challenging upbringing, George...

In the late 90s and early 2000s, the LA Lakers looked like the heir apparent to Michael Jordan’s throne, with Shaq dominating in the post and Kobe Bryant coming into his own as the league’s emerging superstar. And when Jordan’s coach Phil Jackson took over, the final piece of the championship puzzle seemed to be in place. But in game 2 of the 2000 Finals, the Laker’s title run was jeopardized when Kobe went down with a severe ankle sprain.  Somehow, Lakers head athletic trainer Gary Vitti and...

Henry Barrera currently holds the position of the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach and Assistant Coach for the University of Alabama men's basketball team. Before that, he joined the Liberty men’s basketball program as its Director of Performance in June 2015 and was promoted to Director of Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports in July 2018. Barrera came to Liberty from the state of Oregon, where he was a Performance Training Specialist at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton....

Caleb Burgess’s basketball journey as a player includes a nail biting finish to the NAIA national championship game, a horrendous elbow injury that saw a bone shoved into his triceps, and lots more ups and downs. Deciding to stay on at Azusa Pacific after completing his own playing career to pursue a master’s and PhD in physical therapy, Caleb then completed a Residency in Orthopedic Physical Therapy and then a Fellowship in Sports and Orthopedic Physical Therapy through Kaiser Permanente...

Tom Brennan went from a small town in New Jersey to playing basketball at the University of Georgia, where he played for Dean Smith’s former assistant Ken Rosemond and won a senior leadership award. While he was at UGA, he had the difficult task of trying to slow down the college basketball phenom in the country, Pistol Pete Maravich. A UGA grad assistant role helped him learn the coaching ropes and he then assisted Bill Raftery at Seton Hall, Rollie Massimino at Villanova, and Bruce Parkhill...

Mike Robertson’s first exposure to basketball conditioning was his high school coach forcing him to run cross country. Though he eventually broke his three-mile PR, logging miles during an Indiana winter actually set him back when he returned to the court. It was solving problems like this that led Mike to take a master’s in sports biomechanics at Ball State, where he studied under pioneers William Kraemer and Robert Newton. Mike also honed his skills working with Ball State athletes, and...

After years of beatdowns by the Detroit Pistons Bad Boys, Michael Jordan finally won his first NBA title in 1992. Amidst the commotion in the Bulls’ locker room - champagne spraying, players and coaches yelling, media swarming - everyone wanted to get a defining image of MJ’s triumph, but the Finals MVP was nowhere to be seen. Lakers team photographer and co-creator of NBA Photos Andrew Bernstein was the one who snapped the definitive shot of Jordan crying with the trophy, his father James at...

Bill Foran first got into strength training with a friend’s set of vinyl weights from Sears. After studying physical education at Central Michigan, his first coaching job helped the smallest high school compete in its conference. He went from a grad assistant job at Michigan State to head strength coach at Washington State in just one year, helping turn around a football program that hadn’t been to a bowl game in 50 years. The U came calling and Bill moved to Miami, where he prepared the...

Chris Leazier refers to himself as a basketball nomad. He grew up glued to Indiana University games back when Bobby Knight was patrolling the sidelines and winning more championships than he threw chairs. Though a good player, Chris decided in high school that he’d have a greater impact with a whistle around his neck. One of his first stops was Thetford Academy, where he coached Basketball Strong co-host Tim DiFrancesco (TD). After spending seven years as an assistant coach at Dartmouth...