The concern with the training of youth in sport has stimulated investigations into the professionalization of coaches. In this sense, the objective of the study was to describe how coaches represent their own professional development in basketball and interpret these representations according to the specialized literature. A qualitative study was conducted with multiple case studies involving four competent coaches of young players in Santa Catarina. The biographical data were collected with the use of structured and semi-structured interviews. The results show that the coaches give importance to various informal and non-formal sources of development. The observation of other coaches and the experience of daily practice are essential in the construction of professional knowledge. We concluded that the development process of the participating coaches is a result of self-teaching and the socialization of knowledge, which have implied mechanisms of observation, reflection and informal instruction that need to be investigated.