Michael Johnson is the current Director of Basketball Operations – Utah Valley Men’s Basketball. He’s coached at multiple levels and shares valuable information about his coaching journey, lessons learned, successes achieved and goals moving forward in his career. You can follow him on Twitter @micha3l_johnson.
My coaching journey is definitely not your typical one. You don’t often find a basketball coach that played collegiate golf… two sports that are not very similar! Whenever I tell people in this business that I played golf in college and not basketball I usually get quite a few funny looks and questions about how I ended up getting into basketball. I played basketball through high school, but that is where my playing career ended. My interest, and really where I can look back and see my passion for coaching basketball taking off, started in college during my time at Weber State. There was a lot of hype around the basketball team at Weber State when I got there as a freshman. My freshman year was Damian Lillard’s junior year, which ended up being his final season before being drafted into the NBA. I lived in the same dorm as a lot of the basketball players, so I got to know them pretty well. I got to see close up what a strong culture they had within the basketball program and that was something I became really interested in. It was in my sophomore year at Weber that I started to really think about coaching basketball and the possibility of turning it into a career. During the winter offseason I asked our coach if there was any way he could reach out to Coach Rahe (MBB Head Coach) to see if we could go watch a practice. The next day following one of our team workouts my golf coach and I went and watched the basketball team practice. Outside of the basketball team, coaches, managers… we were the only other people in the arena. I remember sitting there and feeling the ENERGY of that practice. It was electric… and from that point I knew I wanted to be a part of something like that. For the next two years I would attend as many practices as I could. I finished up my eligibility on the golf team and still had a semester left to graduate. I knew I wanted to be around the basketball team in that final semester. I called and told Coach Rahe my situation of having to come back another semester to graduate, and asked how I could help the basketball team. I met with Coach Rahe and he offered me a position as a student manager. I spent that Fall semester as a student manager for Coach Rahe and his staff and it was an unbelievable experience. I got to see all of the ins and outs of a Division I program and all of the work that goes on to be a successful team. Coach Rahe and his staff have an unbelievable culture that I was lucky enough to be a part of for that short time. In December 2016 I graduated and decided to move back home to Boise to start my professional career in the business world. Weber State went on to win the Big Sky Tournament and play in the NCAA Tournament. When I moved back to Boise I worked in the finance industry, but was also able to start coaching part time at Eagle High School. At the same time I started coaching with Clint Hordemann and the Select Basketball AAU program. I actually played for Clint from 5th grade through high school in AAU, and was lucky enough to get an opportunity from him to come back and coach. I coached with Select from 2016-2019 and it was some of the best coaching experiences I have had. Being a coach with Select Basketball allowed me to be a head coach and be in charge of my own team. Everything from coordinating our team’s travel schedule, communicating with parents, implementing my own offensive and defensive schemes, drawing up plays during timeouts, and so much more. AAU sometimes gets a bad name, but Select Basketball and the Hordemann’s do things the right way and those experiences with them are some of the best that prepared me to progress to where I am now. Through Select Basketball I met Colby Blaine. Colby was the Associate Head Coach at The College of Idaho when we met in 2016. In the summer of 2017 Colby called me and asked me if I would want to join the coaching staff at The College of Idaho. I interviewed with Head Coach, Scott Garson, and in August 2017 I decided to leave my job in the finance industry and join Coach Garson and his staff at The College of Idaho as a volunteer assistant coach. I think my family thought I was crazy to leave a well-paying job for a completely volunteer coaching position. I am SUPER grateful that I have an amazing wife who let me do that… still not sure how I convinced her of that decision. I knew deep down in my heart that coaching was what I wanted to do, so I had to take a leap of faith to make it happen.
I spent 2017-2019 at The College of Idaho under two head coaches – Scott Garson and Colby Blaine. Both of them gave me a ton of responsibility during my time there and that is where I truly found my voice as a coach. I was a part of two very special teams there that accomplished a lot. In two years we went 61-13, won 2 conference tournaments, 1 conference season title, and went to back-to-back NAIA DII National Semifinals. At the end of the 2018-2019 season I knew that I had to find a way to make a living doing what I loved. In July of last year I was able to go through the interview process with Coach Mark Madsen here at Utah Valley and was fortunate enough to be hired as the Director of Basketball Operations later that month. It has been a wild coaching journey to get to where I am at today, but I am so thankful for every lesson and experience I gained at each stop.
2. Who has had the biggest impact on your coaching career?
The two people that I consider my biggest coaching mentors up to this point in my career are Scott Garson and Colby Blaine. Those two both gave me the opportunity to start my college coaching career. Without the leadership, guidance, and friendship of those two men there is no way I would be where I am at today in this business. I consider them two of my closest friends and look up to both. They each have different personalities, so for me it was fun to work under both of them at The College of Idaho. Both are very successful coaches and I consider myself lucky to have worked for them while I did. I learned a ton from them while I was in Caldwell, and I continue to learn from them even now. I call or text both of them at least once a week if not more just to check in and see how things are going. I rely on them heavily with any questions, thoughts, ideas that I have and they are always willing to give me honest answers and feedback. These are two of the most genuine people in the coaching world and it is no secret to me why both have been extremely successful. I’m fortunate to have them to look up to.
3. You’ve spent time at the high school, NAIA, and D1 level now. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned at each level?
These lessons I listed below are probably what stick out to me most from what I have learned at each level. I think it is important to note that these lessons do build on each other and the importance of the lesson does not diminish at each different level. I see all three of these being super important at any level.
High School – Teaching the Fundamentals. High School is hard because you can have such a wide range of talent and basketball IQ level. I think it is extremely important to make the time to TEACH more of the game and fundamentals at this level. Coaches can get so wrapped up in drawing up the best plays or doing the coolest new drills, but if you don’t have a solid base of fundamentals none of that other stuff really matters. Take the time to TEACH.
NAIA – Culture and Toughness Win! The culture that Coach Garson built at College of Idaho speaks for itself when you are around that program. Coach Blaine has done a great job of building off of that culture and even taking it further. Everything there is TEAM. We didn’t have the best athletes, but we had a unit of one team together and we prided ourselves on being the toughest team on the court every night. Physical toughness yes, but mental toughness even more so. We won so many games where the other team was probably more talented on paper or the other team had us down 10 with 10 minutes left. Our teams there never flinched when they faced adversity. The players knew they were tougher, knew they were more together… and because they believed in that and believed in themselves, we won a lot of games. Culture is not just some values you talk about; it is everything that your program embodies every single day. Culture and toughness win those close games. I truly believe that and saw it firsthand there at College of Idaho.
Division I – Preparation is KEY! I think one of the most important things at this level is recruiting. As a staff, if you want to have a job for long, you better be able to win games… and to win games you have to be able to recruit and get the talent you need to win. Outside of recruiting, what stood out to me most was preparation. As the director of operations this was especially important for me. Prep is vital for everything! From making sure that practice is ready to go on time, film is set up, airline tickets are ready, bus is at the airport when we land, hotel is ready when we arrive… the list could go on and on. That part is my responsibility and extreme preparation is the key to making sure things run at a high level. Preparation is also crucial for our coaching staff and players leading up to each game. The talent level is high, the coaches are all great coaches… but where I think teams can really separate themselves is HOW and HOW HARD they prepare. To me, preparation is key to a lot of things at this level.
4. You’ve been a part of numerous winning programs. What are your coaching values and how have you helped translate those to the team?
Love, Belief, Togetherness, Accountability. I think there are a ton of different buzz words you could throw out when you talk about coaching values and culture. Culture is one of the things I love most about coaching. Being able to be a part of something bigger than yourself and figuring out what makes a team work best together. There is obviously a lot that those words entail, but to me those would be my 4 main coaching values right now. There are a lot of ways I translate those to the team, but I think the most important way is to carry myself each day with those things in mind. You have to be true to yourself, so if the values that you want your team to uphold aren’t the same values that you as a person or coach are willing to uphold then it just isn’t going to work. I think finding ways to put your players or anyone in the organization in different situations where they have to apply those values is important. Find ways to practice your values and culture. I try to keep those things in mind when interacting with our players every day.
5. You spent time coaching at the high school level before making the jump to college. What was the biggest challenge you faced moving levels?
I don’t really think it was a challenge, but what stood out to me was the time commitment. My situation coaching high school was different because I didn’t work at the school. I really was only at the high school for practices and games. In making the jump to college, that became my “job.” I was on campus all day every day. I saw our guys all the time, worked them out in the mornings, went to lunch with them, saw them for film, weights, practice, etc. At times, it can definitely be tough when you talk about your family time because a lot of that is now spent with the team. Time management became much more important.
6. What’s one thing you would like to accomplish next season at Utah Valley University?
I want our team to win the WAC Tournament. Playing in the NCAA Tournament is something that has never been done here before. Our team last year experienced a lot of disappointment. We lost a lot of close games, games that we should have won. I think that makes the guys coming back hungrier for success this year and realize how hard you have to work to make those goals become reality. We have added some new pieces to the roster that I think can come in and have an immediate impact on our program. Our staff has done a good job of putting together a team that can compete for a conference championship next year, and I really believe that.
7. You’ve been vocal about reading during this quarantine period. What’s one lesson you’ve learned the past few weeks from reading books you hope to take back to the team?
Obviously nobody loves this quarantine period. I hate that our guys are all gone and campus is shut down. I love going into the office every day and being around our players and staff. That has been hard, but one thing it has allowed is for us to slow down and do some things we might not normally make time for. For me, one of those things has been reading and I have really enjoyed it. I just finished the book that you sent me, How Successful People Lead by John C. Maxwell and it was a BIG TIME book! I loved it. That book is full of great stuff that is super applicable to leadership in any field, but I was really able to relate to it coming from a coaching perspective. I’m a big quote guy, and one quote that I loved from the book that I can take back to the team is this: “Having talented people on the team doesn’t automatically guarantee success. You can still lose with good players, but you cannot win without them. The difference comes from building them into a team.”
I think that quote is super relatable to any team and is something we can apply here at Utah Valley. We can have all the talent in the world, but if our guys don’t genuinely buy into being a team and sacrificing ME for WE then we will never reach our full potential. You have to have talent to win and we have that here at UVU. Now you combine talent with a group that buys into the team like never before and that’s where things get scary for everyone else and we start to achieve things that have never been achieved before!
8. If you could go back to the beginning of the season knowing what you know now upon season completion, what advice would you give yourself before the season?
I would tell myself that it is okay to ask questions and ask others how to get things done. I got to UVU pretty late in July. The team had already been here on campus doing summer workouts, things were rolling and I got thrown immediately into the fire. As a DOBO it is my job to basically handle everything and take on everything so that our head coach, assistants, and most importantly our players don’t have to worry about any of that. Basically, make sure that the coaches worry about coaching and recruiting, and the players just worry about playing and getting better. Everything else… I need to take care of. So here I am in a brand new spot, brand new school, I know nobody… and it’s my job to figure everything out. I felt like it was my job to know how to do everything… and to me that meant I had to figure out how to do it myself! When in reality, there is so much that goes on that you have to know how to effectively and efficiently use your resources. By that I mean… figure out how to get things done and WHO can get things done. I did a decent job of meeting people around campus when I first got there, but I would try to meet even more people. The more people you can connect with, the more resources you have to turn to when you come across something you don’t know how to get done and need someone else to help. You have to swallow your pride at times and just ask for help. At the end of the day… the boss really doesn’t care how it gets done, it just needs to get done!
9. What advice do you have for aspiring collegiate basketball coaches?
I’ve got two pieces of advice that I truly believe in. My first advice is be willing to work for free if your circumstances allow. This will open up a lot more doors for you to be around programs you may not be able to be around if you won’t work for free. For me, that was The College of Idaho and the experience that I got learning from Coach Garson, Coach Blaine, all of the assistants I worked with, and most importantly our players. I wouldn’t trade those two years for anything. Had I not been willing to or able to work for free, there is no way I would be where I am today at UVU and I definitely would not be anywhere close to the coach I am right now. I don’t want that to sound arrogant, I just know that the knowledge and everything I learned from those two years have given me a base for what it means to be successful. I have a LONG ways to go as a coach and in my career, but without that foundation I wouldn’t be who I am today. Second advice ties into my first, but I think every aspiring college coach should coach at a small school for at least a year. Whether it’s JUCO, NAIA, DII, DIII, whatever it is… but I think you get so much more experience in more areas at a small school than you do at a big one. As an assistant coach at those small schools you get to do the laundry, sweep the floor, set up practice, be an academic mentor, manage the equipment, drive the team van, help run camps, organize meals, organize all travel itineraries, be in charge of scouts, go out recruiting, and so much more. You get to do it all and it is awesome! All those experiences prepare you to move up in your career and give you a better appreciation for all of those jobs and the people who do them when you get to larger schools. Wear as many hats as you can and be great at those different areas!