This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
One day last fall, Michigan basketball coach Dusty May sat down for a film session with a former high school principal with no basketball expertise.
The purpose was simple: May wanted to work on his teaching.
His guide in the process was Doug Lemov, the 58-year-old former principal and author of a series of books on the cognitive science behind high-performing teachers. On the screen in front of them was a clip of May leading a preseason film session with his Michigan players, which made the exercise feel a little meta.
In the clip, May stands at the front of the room, a big screen to his left and a laptop in front of him. He’s installing a series of defensive coverages, syncing the video with a series of questions. In just 90 seconds, he probes Roddy Gayle Jr., a shooting guard, on how to defend a sprint cut; he asks Morez Johnson Jr. and Trey McKenney about why he highlighted them on-screen (it was the location of their eyes during a rebound); he quizzes power forward Will Tschetter on a “scram” switch; and finally, he asks point guard Elliot Cadeau to name another cut they discussed recently.
Cadeau doesn’t remember.
“It’s OK,” May says. “Trey, do you remember what we called it?”
Still no answer.
“Nope, it’s OK,” May says again, his tone upbeat. “We’ve only introduced it one time.”
The answer, May finally says, is “long curl,” and then he stops so his players can write down the term. The pace is quick, the environment forgiving, the approach by design after years of practice.
May started working with Lemov three years ago, when he was still at Florida Atlantic and asked for feedback on his interactions with players. Lemov thought May was a natural, but he made one mistake common among teachers. He was often looking at the group and asking a broad question: “Does everybody get it?”
“They all nod and say yes,” Lemov said. “And one of the things we’ve talked about was that’s always a false positive. There are all these social incentives to just nod.”
Lemov told May about a research study in the Czech Republic that tracked the academic progress of students, sorting them by behavior and motivation. One group of students was highly motivated but never spoke in class. Those students lagged behind.
The reason was a psychological concept called the self-generation effect, an idea that people will better retain information if they can describe it to someone else. So to help the Michigan players learn concepts, Lemov suggested a strategy of “cold calling,” or directly engaging with each individual.
The idea spoke to May, who in two seasons at Michigan has created a culture that is one part Ted Lasso, one part high school teacher: always curious, never judgmental. The ethos has led to a 62-13 record and a spot in this weekend’s Final Four, the program’s first in eight years.
But it also represents a larger idea: the benefits of coaching like a teacher.
When May first came across Lemov’s work in 2021, he was in his third season at Florida Atlantic. Lemov was the author of “Teach Like a Champion,” a 2010 book based on his time studying high-performing teachers in high-performing schools. The book caught the eye of some in professional sports, including the U.S. Soccer Federation. A former Division 3 college soccer player, Lemov started consulting and parlayed his experiences in the sports world into another book: “The Coach’s Guide to Teaching.”
A voracious reader, May purchased the books and started pulling from the texts. When Florida Atlantic made a Cinderella Final Four run in 2023, he mentioned Lemov’s books in an interview with The Athletic. The shoutout led to a connection, and when May returned to Florida Atlantic the next season, Lemov flew to Florida for dinner.
“He just had really thoughtful questions,” Lemov recalled.
May sent Lemov a few clips of him doing a one-on-one film session with Vladislav Goldin, a 7-foot center who later followed May to Michigan. Lemov was struck by the coach’s posture — he sat back in his chair, his tone was encouraging, and he was adept at asking questions and separating the signal from the noise, or the process from the results.
When Goldin was frustrated with a play, May reminded him he was in the right spot.
Lemov and May discussed the importance of perception to athletes. Instead of focusing on a classic question — “What should you do?” — Lemov believes coaches should start simpler: “What are you looking at? What should you see?”
May and Lemov also talked about strategies to motivate players. Lemov likes to cite Carl Hendrick, an education researcher who has looked at the link between success and motivation.
Most people think motivation precedes success, that you motivate someone through external or internal means, and then it drives them to succeed. But Hendrick has found that the relationship is intertwined — that success influences motivation as much as motivation influences success.
The best teachers, therefore, are constantly reminding their students of their successes: Look how much better you are than yesterday. Look at the progress you’re making.
There’s a classic quote in teaching circles that almost every coach has heard or said: “Players don’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Lemov likes to add something he thinks is important. Sure, the best coaches are usually great at building relationships.
“But I think a lot of them overlook how much of the relationship building happens in the teaching settings,” Lemov said.
Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg said Dusty May has helped him mature this season. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
May, of course, is not the only coach fascinated by educators. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, like many others from his generation, used to teach an undergraduate course called “Theory of Basketball.” Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid used to buy his assistants educational textbooks, believing coaches are teachers first.
One secret is in creating a psychologically safe environment for players to think critically and get stuff wrong, to establish what Lemov calls a “culture of error,” where mistakes aren’t judged but rather viewed as learning opportunities.
When May was at Florida Atlantic, he borrowed a tactic from legendary coach Dean Smith to foster dedication: If the players bought into what the coaches asked, the wins would be theirs and the losses would be on the coaches.
At Michigan, he hung a sign above the locker room with a message that reflected their Final Four and championship goals: “April habits.” At the heart of the message was a culture of acceptance, honoring where each person was in their personal journey, then challenging them to get better.
“As humans, we have personality flaws that we can get better at,” May said. “When you know someone loves you and cares about you, and they criticize or try to fix you, you know it’s coming from a great place.”
When the season began, Michigan had lost Goldin and Danny Wolf to the NBA, and the roster was loaded with new faces, including forward Yaxel Lendeborg, a marquee transfer from UAB with less-than-stellar practice habits. May challenged him to think about how he was perceived by others.
“We also tried to pull every single day and just get him a little bit closer (to better habits), and we didn’t judge him,” May said. “We didn’t judge Will (Tschetter), we didn’t judge Nimari (Burnett) for where they were in their journey. Everyone simply tried to support each other instead of criticizing.”
For Lendeborg, the approach was revelatory. In the film room, May pointed out reads that Lendeborg didn’t even realize were there. On the practice floor, he helped him lean on teammates rather than beat himself up after mistakes.
“It helped me mature in the game of basketball,” he said. “Honestly, I’m really grateful I was coached by him.”
One reason May is a natural teacher: He spends most of his time thinking like a student.
He reads. He listens to podcasts. He borrows ideas and experiments. He obsesses over vocabulary, making it easier to encode ideas and concepts in his players’ minds.
“He’s one of the most curious leaders I’ve ever worked with,” said J.P. Nerbun, a leadership and executive coach. “Not just curious in how you run your offense better, and not just curious in maybe even strategies or tools to build a culture. It’s curiosity around the people.”
Nerbun is a former high school basketball coach and the author of “The Culture System.” May read the book while he was at Florida Atlantic and started taking Nerbun’s online webinars, which at the time were mostly attended by high school coaches.
“Dusty humbles himself so quickly,” Nerbun said. “If he sees value in it, he’s going to learn from it.”
Once, Lemov was attending a Michigan workout in which a few assistant coaches were trying to help guard L.J. Cason alter a few details of his shot. Lemov stood with May on the sideline as an assistant coach fired perfect pass after perfect pass to Cason.
Lemov mentioned to May that some cognitive science research had suggested that once a person has encoded the body motion they’re trying to change, one of the factors that might cause the skill to transfer durably was unpredictability. In other words, it might be smart to practice like a game, when the passes wouldn’t be perfect.
May listened curiously, then wandered onto the court, replaced the assistant and started flipping errant passes to Cason.
“He’s just right away experimenting with the idea,” Lemov said. “I just think that tells you something about him. He was really fascinated.”
Lemov has worked with two recent NBA championship franchises and an English Premier League manager. But May remains an outlier, obsessed with the tiniest details of teaching.
During one of his workshops with the Michigan staff, they were discussing the “transfer problem,” the idea that players might have all the answers in the film room and still not be able to perform on the court. As legendary UCLA coach John Wooden used to say, “You haven’t taught until they have learned.”
Lemov suggested an age-old tactic: the walk-through, an idea that May believes in. When the Wolverines blitzed the competition at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas in November, May had his staff use athletic tape to create a mock half court in a ballroom. Then his players used the setup to run through coverages and sets.
For a moment, May had turned an abstract concept into physical motion, which made it more likely that the information would be encoded and retained.
He was doing what he does best: Teaching.
