Eric Musselman's Basketball Notebook

Be willing to share

2009-03-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

If you've found just one item of value on this blog over the last year or so, then it's been worth it. I've certainly enjoyed it. Even more, I've enjoyed interacting with so many great coaches, managers, and friends all over the world.

For me, the blog was about sharing items that coaches and leaders might find meaningful or worthy or constructive. In many cases, it was something that someone had shared with me first. After all, that's the nature of coaching.

Nearly all of the posts here have included at least one quote. This one will be no different. It comes from a blog reader who passed it along to me recently:

“The greatest difficulty with the world
is not its ability to produce,
but the unwillingness to share.”

Learning the intricacies of the midrange game

2009-03-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

How does it feel to go from "one of the go-to players on the 2008 NCAA Tournament runner-up to being an end-of-the-roster rookie in the NBA"?

Nets rookie Chris Douglas-Roberts, who averages a little more than nine minutes a game for NJ and has logged 40 DNPs this season, has worked with Nets assistant Doug Overton on "learning the intricacies of the midrange NBA game."

It paid off earlier this week in a win over the Knicks when Douglas-Roberts had 14 points and three steals in 27 minutes.

"We played a different type of game (at Memphis)," Douglas-Roberts said. "It was more open offense, and there's a lot more sets in the NBA. So I just go over everything. I watch a lot of film. This is my job now. So I spend the majority of my time on basketball. You have to be mentally strong, but I'm not the first rookie to go through this. There've been plenty of rookies who had to pay their dues and later in their career, they became stars. So I just look at it like that. I'm always positive. I stay positive."

Only a small percentage of young guys can come into this league and lead

2009-03-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

Great story in the ATL paper today that compares what Matt Ryan did with the Falcons with what Al Horford's doing with the Hawks.

On a team with Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and Mike Bibby, Horford has evolved into arguably the Hawks’ most indispensable player. Horford is different because he’s leading and he’s not the Hawks’ offensive centerpiece, like Chris Paul in New Orleans or LeBron James in Cleveland. He’s different because he’s 23 years old, and not nearly acting his age. He’s different because he’s a second-year pro and leading this team —- often by example, sometimes by his words, even in the face of a veteran teammate.

Veteran Joe Johnson contends that guys like Horford are rare: “Only a very small percentage of young guys can come into this league and lead. The ones who do usually are the focal point of their team. Al’s different.”

"If I see that somebody is not necessarily putting in the effort or is slacking off and it’s noticeable, I’m going to say something. I did it at Florida when I felt I had to. I did it in high school. Here, I’ve done it a couple of times. Usually I’m very mellow. But sometimes I think something needs to be said, even if I put it out there in front of the whole team, even to the point where the guys might be mad at me for a day or two. I think it’s for the best.”

Forcing it when it shouldn't be forced

2009-03-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Lakers are 54-14 this season, but 6-3 in March -- a "malaise," as Phil Jackson describes it.

'They got down and disgruntled ... I think it's just the idea that 'nothing's really gone well for me lately, and how am I going to get this going the right way?' Forcing it when it shouldn't be forced, or being too passive when you probably should step up and play harder, or with more aggression. Those are things that we're dealing with."

According to veteran PG Derek Fisher, despite winning 54 games thus far, there is a sense of frustration in the locker room.

"This is real," he said. "It's not a soap opera. So when you're part of a group, part of a team, you have to respect the fact that guys are going to have different, I don't want to say agendas, but just different things you go through. I know we've had a great season thus far, but we want so much more. That's where the frustration is coming from. There's probably not any other team that's frustrated with a 54-14 record, but we know what the end goal is."

A coach who's a friend, but not a buddy

2009-03-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

The great Bob Cousy, in today's Boston Globe, talked about home court advantage, Kobe, LeBron, and Doc Rivers' relationship with his players.

On home-court advantage:

"It is neutralized in the playoffs, pretty much," Cousy said from Florida in a telephone interview. "In the playoffs, any player worth his salt comes to play wherever the game is. Of course, you would rather have home-court advantage, but it's easier to overcome in the playoffs than the regular season."

On LeBron and Kobe:

"LeBron is a great one, but the other guys have got to beat you," Cousy said. "They can put two, three, four guys on him and force the other guys to beat you; and when you aren't used to doing it, you can't imagine the pressure. A great player thrives under pressure, a mediocre one collapses. All year long, LeBron has been carrying you, now I'm supposed to hit wide-open shots. And it's the same with LA, to some degree. Kobe is great, but still, in my judgment, there is a lack of defense. Kobe is a good defender, but I don't see improvement on the defensive end. It's a tossup, those three teams."

On Coach Rivers:

"Doc maintains as good a relationship with the guys as any coach in the league," Cousy said. "There is a lot of nodding the head affirmatively, I love you, and yes all the time, but Doc's not that. He's a friend in need but not their buddy. It requires a certain amount of discipline and they know Doc will be there if they need him, and that creates a bond."

Staying tuned in to the basketball channel

2009-03-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

Muggsy Bogues, the 5-foot-3 PG who played for 14 seasons in the NBA, on how basketball kept him focused while growing up in inner-city Baltimore.

"Basketball was always my savior. You know how a VCR always has to be on channel 3 to get a clear picture? Well, I was like a VCR: I had to be on the basketball channel to stay focused. If I switched to another channel, things got blurry."

Stay the course; trust the course

2009-03-19T05:47:00.001-07:00

Binghamton coach Kevin Broadus (at left), who's been criticized recently for "the academic and behavioral issues" of the players on his roster, says he remembers advice that former Georgetown coach John Thompson Jr. once gave him:

"Stay the course. Trust the course. Don't forget what you're doing," Thompson told Broadus. "Put the blinders on. Don't listen to the outside folks. They want you to listen. They want to bring you down."

Those are my players

2009-03-19T05:22:00.001-07:00

Congrats to Jim Boylen for getting his Utah team to the tourney. According to one Utes player, something Coach Boylen said two years ago at the news conference announcing his hiring laid the foundation for trust.

"Those are my players," Boylen said, nodding at the Utes who were in the room.

That simple statement, says senior guard Lawrence Borha, was the key.

"I never forgot," Borha said. "He did his work, believed in us, thought we could win. That's when I knew we were going to be a good team."

An interesting change Coach Boylen made was to remove the players' names from the back of the home jerseys and replace them with "UTAH."

Says one player: "He let everybody know it's more about the team and more about the program than individuals.

In addition, "down the side of the team's home shorts, starting with Boylen's first year, was placed its new slogan — "U, Us and the Muss." "The U is local parlance for the school; Us is for the team; and The Muss is for the student section. The Mighty Utah Student Section takes its name from a line in the school fight song, "Utah Man" — "No other gang of college men dare meet us in the muss."

Either you use an experience to make you better or it breaks you

2009-03-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

Loved how Memphis coach John Calipari turned over practice to forward Robert Dozier the other day in a move designed to force the quiet senior to take more of a leadership role with the team.

As this article describes, "Calipari left the gym, leaving Dozier on his own to coach."

"He thinks I'm too quiet," Dozier says. "He wanted me to be vocal, get on guys and be more of a leader. I was mad at first, because I didn't want to do it. But I had fun with it. The guys enjoyed it. It wasn't a long practice." The usually subdued Dozier said he tried to get as animated as Calipari, a dynamic, demonstrative speechmaker never at a loss for words. "I had to tone it down," Dozier says, laughing. "There were a lot of people in there."

If you're wondering why, at a Memphis practice, "there were a lot of people in there," it's because Coach Cal opens nearly all of the Tigers' practices to the public.

Retired folks stop in with their grandchildren; a postman comes by after finishing his route. For many elite programs, open practices were long abandoned in an Internet age when word can spread fast to rivals about a team's offensive and defensive schemes or a frustrated coach can show up on YouTube for pitching a fit. Calipari shrugs off those possibilities but notes he keeps some practices closed during the NCAA tournament.

Says Coach Cal: "I don't have anything to hide. You've got people, their lives seem to be this basketball program. They come to practice four or five times a week. They're able to get on the phone and talk to friends about what we're working on."

After his team lost the national championship game last season, Coach Cal was criticized for not having his players properly prepared.

"Either you use an experience to help build you and make you better and stronger, or the experience breaks you," he says. "That experience ... it did nothing except good stuff for us. None of it was bad."

The only way you can get commitment is through trust

2009-03-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

Continue to work through Joe Torre's book, "The Yankee Years." There's a good excerpt that ties into a post from yesterday from Jeffrey Gitomer's book about trust.

Torre took over a Yankee team that had "played under the tightly wound [Bucky] Showalter, who had played, coached, and managed so long in the Yankees organization, where Steinbrenner's divide-and-conquer style of leadership was designed to keep everyone uncomfortable, that trust did not come easily to him."

In 1996, when Torre was named manager of the team, "they had a tast of the playoffs," Torre said, "and I think they were grown up enough to know somebody has to make the decisions. Whether you like me or believe me, you have to understand that. They were at the point where they knew in order to win we have to work together. And somebody has to point us in that direction."

I pulled the following from page 10 of the book:

~~~~~~~~~~

Torre provided a complete contrast to Showalter's micromanagement style. He gave his coaches and players a wide berth. One word kept coming up over and over again in the application of his management philosophy: trust.

"What I try to do is treat everybody fairly," Torre said. "It doesn't mean I treat everybody the same. But everybody deserves a fair shake. That's the only right thing to do. I'd rather be wrong trusting somebody than never trusting them."

"I'm of the belief that the game belongs to the players, and you have to facilitate that the best you can. I want them to use their natural ability. If they're doing something wrong, you tell them, but I'd like it to be instructive, rather than robotic. The only thing I want them all to think about is what our goal is and what the at-bats are supposed to represent. And that simply is this: 'What can I do to help us win a game?'"

Players quickly bought into Torre's management-by-trust style, and they did so because its abiding principle was honesty.

"Honesty is important to me. Where does it come from? I don't know, but even when I think back it was always something that was ingrained in me. Even now I may have trouble when I have to tell someone the truth if it's not a pleasant thing, but I won't lie to them. I can't do that. The only way you can get commitment is through trust, and you've got to earn that trust."

What makes one person a champion and the other one not?

2009-03-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

Good quote from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a seven-time Mr. Olympia, in Barbara Walters' autobiography:

"What makes one guy a champion and the other one not?" [Walters] asked.

Schwarzenegger:

"It's drive. It's the will. There are certain people that grow up with a tremendous hunger and it's usually kids that have struggled when they were young. When you grow up comfortable and in peace and happiness, all those things will produce a very balanced person and a good person, but it will not create the will and determination and hunger that you need to be the best in the world."

It's called growing up

2009-03-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

In HOU, Aaron Brooks is experiencing some growing pains now that he's moved into the starting PG position.

In his words, "it's a little bit of a burden."

While Brooks is settling into his role, he does not fit into the traditional point guard mold, someone who looks to set the table. Without Tracy McGrady in the lineup — especially at the end of games — Brooks is the primary creator. That means he’s going to be more offensive-minded, because that is what is required of him.

What leaps out are games such as Saturday’s, when Brooks played 31½ minutes, took 18 shots and did not deal a single assist.

According to teammate Shane Battier, for Brooks, "the next step for him is to find a way to use his speed to make his people better. It’s part of the maturation process, and you can’t rush it. It’s called growing up. It’s called living."

Shaq changes his workouts to extend his career

2009-03-18T06:20:00.001-07:00

Posted recently about Derek Fisher and Stephon Marbury's workout routines. Today, I see a note about how Shaq has changed his fitness regimen.

Before a recent game, "he did 200 sit-ups and 200 push-ups in a concrete corner, an area more suited for 200 crates."

That does not even count the times the Suns center bench-pressed strength-and-conditioning coach Erik Phillips in the locker room before scoring 26 points in a 154-130 win at Golden State.

According to this article, "O'Neal is doing more off and on the court than expected of the NBA's fifth-oldest player. He comes to US Airways Center on off-nights for workouts or free-throw practice and has joined Jared Dudley on 'the (Steve) Nash diet - no meat, no sugar, no starch, no soda, no nothing.'"

"The biggest misnomer is the fact that everybody says we can't play [uptempo] with Shaq," Suns coach Alvin Gentry said. "We can play that way with Shaq because he allows us to run and take quick shots. But when there are dead-ball situations, we're able to throw the ball inside. We have the best of both worlds. We can be an up-tempo team and have the most-dominant big guy to ever play the game."

O'Neal says PHX trainers found that "a posterior muscle... was not 'firing.'"

"I thought I was done (last season) because those doctors didn't know what was going on," O'Neal said. "When I got here, it wasn't even a hip problem. Those guys, Nellie and Mike Clark, they saved me."

The function of basketball is penetration

2009-03-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

As he's done from time to time this season, DAL coach Rick Carlisle "hatched a surprise" recently against the Lakers -- a zone defense that "caused confusion" and "bog[ged] down the Lakers offense."

"We hadn't seen a zone for a long time and it came out of nowhere," Vujacic said Monday. "For 60 games teams played man-to-man against us. No team played zone."

LA won the game, but the zone worked for time, as "the Lakers offense went stagnant."

"When the zone got sprung on [the second unit], they had that hesitation and ended up shooting nine 3-pointers that didn't go in," Coach Phil Jackson said. "That was a loss of focus because they lost the function of basketball, which is penetration."

To prepare for the next time they face a zone, "the Lakers spent the majority of Monday's two-hour practice working on the principles of their zone offense. The focus was on the best ways to attack a zone, which include moving the basketball to make the zone shift, making sharp cuts without the ball, and maintaining proper spacing."

Trying to make your opponent uncomfortable

2009-03-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

Good story in the Minneapolis paper about 31-year-old veteran Brian Cardinal, who's proving in MIN that he can still contribute.

"After he watched for the season's opening month, he has become a valuable, contributing member of coach Kevin McHale's rotation, playing as many as 35 minutes Friday against New York when his team had about seven healthy bodies."

As evident from this quote, one of Cardinal's strengths is his attitude:

"It's tough to just sit over there and watch, but I knew at some point in time something was going to happen because that's just how this league is," Cardinal said. "It's crazy: Some days, you play. Some days, you don't. Sometimes, your number is called. Sometimes, it's not. You have to be ready at all times. I'm just lucky Mac has had some faith in me."

According to the Star-Tribute article, when they traded for him, "the Wolves... received a veteran who didn't complain when he didn't play and who has contributed with his defense, his ability to make the right play and even with his three-point shooting, whether he plays five minutes or 35. He has made seven three-pointers in the past three games."

"The last game, he had three steals, and he took three charges," [Coach] McHale said. "That's six possessions. That's huge."

Cardinal is one of those rare NBA role players who, as Dr. J said here, understands his role and is happy to be in the league. Cardinal is first to acknowledge that he's "heavy on will and seemingly light on skill."

"I'm not the greatest of athletes, the greatest of jumpers," he said. "The list of things I'm not very good at goes on and on. I try to make up for that with hard work and just knowing the game. I try to make people somewhat uncomfortable. Anytime you're in your comfort zone, you're at your best. So I try to make the other guy uncomfortable."

You can give it everything and still lose, yet it's still worth it

2009-03-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

Mike Montgomery is in his first season as head coach at Cal but he "guided Stanford to 12 NCAA appearances including the 1998 Final Four."

To get his Cal players excited about the tourney, "after the team's regular season had concluded at Arizona State, Montgomery assembled his players. He showed them a video about the NCAA tournament, featuring big moments and big plays. Montgomery then spoke of his own March Madness experiences to a locker room in which 10 of the 15 players had never been on the court in an NCAA game."

"I told them," Montgomery said, "how they don't understand how hard it is to win in the tournament, how they don't have any idea yet how big a deal this is. It's something you'll look back on and you need to cherish it. I talked to them about the heartbreak that can happen when you give it everything and sell your souls out and still lose — but how it's all worth it."

"He got a little emotional about it,'' point guard Jerome Randle said. "He was talking about the memories you can have, about how once you get there, anything can happen. It's a serious deal for him."

Difference-makers in the NCAA, NIT tournaments

2009-03-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

A big key to winning in the NCAA Tournament is having pro prospects, whether NBA, D-League, or European League.

Here's a list of guys I'd consider "difference makers" at the college college level who are playing in the NCAA tourney. [Ranked by pro potential.]

SOUTH REGION

1. Blake Griffin - Oklahoma, PF
2. James Harden - Arizona State, OG/SF
3. Ty Lawson - UNC, PG
4. Willie Warren - Oklahoma, OG
5. Tyler Hansbrough - UNC, PF
6. Jonny Flynn - Syracuse, PG
7. Austin Daye - Gonzaga, SF
8. Gordon Hayward – Butler, SF
9. Ed Davis - UNC, PF
10. Manny Harris - Michigan, OG
11. Trevor Booker - Clemson, F
12. Marcus Thornton - LSU
13. Jeff Pendergraph - Arizona State, PF
14. Wayne Ellington - UNC, OG
15. Jeremy Pargo - Gonzaga, PG
16. KC Rivers - Clemson, OG
17. Matt Bouldin - Gonzaga, OG
18. Danny Greene - UNC, SG/SF
19. Josh Heytvelt - Gonzaga, PF
20. DeShawn Sims - Michigan, PF
21. Dionte Christmas – Temple, G
22.A.J. Slaughter -Western Kentucky ,OG

Others of note in South Region: Tasmin Mitchell (LSU), Matt Howard (Butler), Mike Tisdale (Illinois), Artsiom Parakhouski (Radford), Matt Kingsley (SFA),Orlando -Mendez-Valdez(Western Kentucky), Chester Frazier (Illinois/injured).

EAST REGION

1. Gerald Henderson - Duke, OG
2. Jrue Holiday - UCLA, OG
3. DeJuan Blair - Pittsburgh, PF
4. Kyle Singler - Duke. SF
5. Darren Collison - UCLA, PG
6. Damion James - Texas, PF
7. Eric Maynor - VCU, PG
8. Sam Young - Pittsburgh, SF
9. AJ Abrams - Texas, PG
10. Tyler Smith - Tennessee, SF
11. LeVance Fields – Pittsburgh, PG
12. Scotty Hopson - Tennessee, OG
13. Derrick Brown - Xavier, PF
14. Toney Douglas - Florida State, OG
15. Jon Scheyer – Duke, G
16. James Anderson -Oklahoma State, SF
17. Larry Sanders -VCU, PF
18. Corey Fisher – Villanova, PG

Other East Region players of note: Scottie Reynolds (Villanova), Dante Cunningham (Villanova), Dexter Pittman (Texas), Lawrence Westbrook (Minnesota),Solomon Alabi( Florida State ), Ralph Sampson (Minnesota), Elliott Williams (Duke), Marcus Landry (Wisconsin), Derrick Mercer (American), Courtney Pigram (ETSU), Jeremiah Dominguez (Portland State), DJ Rivera (Binghampton).

MIDWEST REGION

1. Jeff Teague - Wake Forest, G
2. Jordan Hill - Arizona, PF
3. Earl Clark - Louisville, SF
4. BJ Mullins - Ohio State, C
5. Al-Farouq Aminu - Wake Forest, F
6. DerMar Derozan - USC, SF
7. Evan Turner - Ohio State, F
8. Terrance Williams - Louisville, SF
9. Cole Aldrich - Kansas, C
10. James Johnson - Wake Forest, F
11. Chase Budinger - Arizona, SF/OG
12. Samardo Samuels - Louisville, F
13. Devin Ebanks - West Virginia, F
14.Kalin Lucas (Michigan State), PG
15. Sherron Collins - Kansas, PG
16. Raymar Morgan - Michigan State, F
17. Taj Gibson - USC, PF
18. Tyrese Rice - Boston College, G
19. William Buford - Ohio State, OG
20. Tony Woods - Wake Forest, C/PF
21. Luke Nevill - Utah, C
22. Tyshawn Taylor – Kansas, PG
23. Daniel Hackett – USC, PG
24. Nic Wise – Arizona, PG
25. Ben Woodside – North Dakota State, G
26. Chris Wright – Dayton, F
27. Kenneth Faried - Morehead State, PF

Other Midwest Region players of note: DaSean Butler (West Virginia), Brandon Brooks (Alabama State), Goran Suton (Michigan State), Jeremy Chappell (Robert Morris), J'Nathan Bullock (Cleveland State), Chief Kickingstallionsims (Alabama State),Ty Walker ( Wake Forrest )

WEST REGION

1. Hasheem Thabeet - UConn, C
2. Tyreke Evans - Memphis, PG
3. Jarvis Varnado - Mississippi State, C
4. Jerel McNeal - Marquette, OG
5. Kemba Walker – Connecticut, PG
6. Greivis Vasquez - Maryland, G
7. AJ Price – Connecticut, PG
8. DeMarre Carroll - Missouri, SF
9. Robbie Hummel - Purdue, OG
10. Jon Brockman - Washington, PF
11. Lee Cummard - BYU, OG/SF
12. Wesley Matthews - Marquette, SF
13. Jerome Randall - California, PG
14. Ryan Whitman - Cornell, OG/SF
15. Patrick Christopher - California, OG
16. Isiah Thomas - Washington, PG
17. Jeff Adrien – Connecticut, PF
18. Gary Williams -Utah State, PF

Other West Region players of note: JaJuan Johnson (Purdue), Josh Carter (Texas A&M), Dominic James (Marquette/injured), Theo Robertson (Cal), Justin Dentmon (Washington).

Top NIT players ( ranked as pro prospects):

1. Greg Monroe - Georgetown, PF/C
2. Stephen Curry - Davidson, PG
3. Patrick Mills - St. Mary's, PG
4. Patrick Patterson - Kentucky, PF
5. Jodie Meeks – Kentucky, G
6. Korvotney Barber – Auburn, F
7. Jerome Jordan - Tulsa, C
8. DaJuan Summers - Georgetown, SF
9. Talor Battle – Penn State, PG
10. Nick Calathes - Florida, OG
11. Luke Harangody - Notre Dame, PF
12. Jack McClinton - Miami, PG/OG
13. Curtis Jerrells - Baylor, PG
14. Tory Jackson – Notre Dame, PG
15. Tony Danridge – New Mexico, OG/SF
16. LaceDarius Dunn – Baylor, OG
17. Chad Toppert – New Mexico, OG
18. Darryl Monroe – George Mason, PF
19. Glenn Andrews – Tulsa, F
20. Lawrence Kinnard – UAB, SF
21. DeQuan Jones - Miami, OG
22.Omar Samhan- St. Mary's, C
23. Damian Saunders - Duquesne, PF
24. John Vaughan – George Mason, G
25. Diamon Simpson-St. Mary's, PF/SF
26. Devan Downey – South Carolina, PG
27.Taylor Rochestie- Washington State, G
others of Note
Aaron Jackson (Duquesne)
Jacob Pullen ( Kansas State )
A.D.Vassallo ( Virginia Tech)

Are you willing to bet on yourself?

2009-03-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

Found a great little book by Jeffrey Gitomer the other day titled "Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Teal Book of Trust." It's only a couple of hundred pages, but it's a wonderful book -- one that I'd consider giving to other coaches and players.

Here's a good excerpt from the first part of Gitomer's book:

~~~~~~~~~~

Have you ever looked back at a decision you made and scolded yourself, almost punished yourself, for making the wrong decision or realizing you could have made a better decision?

Monday-morning quarterbacks are always correct. They see what could have been done or should have been done on Sunday, and talk about it on Monday as though they could have gone back to Sunday and done it themselves.

People who go back and chastise themselves, or second-guess themselves, for making a wrong decision continue to set themselves up for failure in future decisions simply because they don't trust themselves.

I maintain that your judgment should always be trusted and never be second-guessed. That doesn't mean you won't make errors. That's why they call it judgment.

But I'm challenging you to look at incorrect decisions as lessons, life's lessons.

Mistakes in judgement are the best teachers in the world, and if you choose to learn from them, then you will begin to trust yourself and understand that, correct or incorrect, you were decisive and moved on.

Oh, you may rely on others. Oh, you may be dependent on others. But reliance and dependence are mutually exclusive of trust.

In order to build trust and become a trusted advisor to others, you have to first trust yourself. This means you have to trust your thinking, your wisdom, your knowledge, your judgment, your instincts, your powers of observation,your powers of dedication, your ability to reason, and your ability to discern.

You must be decisive. Trusted people are not wishy-washy. Trusted people do not pass the buck. Trusted people are willing to bet on themselves. It's not "trust me." It's "trust yourself."

A team that's unafraid

2009-03-17T04:13:00.000-07:00

UConn's women's coach Geno Auriemma, whose team is 33-0 and favored to win another NCAA title, says this year's team has something in common with great UConn teams of the past:

“We’re not afraid to lose. That’s the biggest thing. We might play bad. We might get beat. But, generally, the years we’ve had great teams, we’ve been unafraid.”

If you're looking for someone to follow, why not follow the one who is sure the outcome of the journey will be positive?

2009-03-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

In Joe Torre's book "The Yankee Years," there's a section about Derek Jeter that really jumped out at me:

What was it about Jeter that enabled him to succeed in clutch situations? He was comfortable with himself. There were never doubts about who he was or what the mission was all about.

"I'm an optimist by nature," Jeter said. "That's why when it comes to any negative stuff, I don't like to hear about it. I don't like to read about it. I don't like to know about it. I try to be positive."

Such a strong belief in a positive outcome sustains Jeter, lifts him above any self-doubt or any awareness of the consequences of failure. It is a characteristic he brought to the Yankees as a 21-year-old rookie, not a vestige of the big leauge experience he gained.

Teammates tapped into that quality immediately. If you're looking for someone to follow, why not follow the one who is sure the outcome of the journey will be positive? Why not follow someone, even a kid in his first full year in the big leagues, who stays cool at all times, who is unfamiliar with worry and anxiety?

The need for a "killer instinct"

2009-03-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

The Lakers are 53-13 but coach Phil Jackson has noticed that something has been missing from his club in the second half of the season:

"I thought we had perhaps a better killer instinct earlier in the year, if you can use that term," Jackson said. "I'm not fond of it, but when we had a team [down] 15, we'd try to extend it to 25 and tried to take the heart out of teams earlier in the year. Right now, I think that we've kind of played around with teams at times and allowed them to stay around in games and this is one of them."

There's always teaching to be done

2009-03-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Was happy to see Maryland get into the NCAA tourney after fighting through the season. The Terps' ability to get to the Dance is a credit to coach Gary Williams.

Here's an excerpt from a Baltimore Sun story today that really captures his essence (and the essence of coaching):

There was a moment late in yesterday's game. There was less than a minute on the clock, and Duke was inbounding the ball on the baseline near Maryland's bench. Williams stood just a few feet away from where the play would begin, his eyes and attention focused on Landon Milbourne, who was guarding the inbound passer.

"Move! Move! Move, Landon! Move!" Williams screamed, his face turning redder than his necktie.

The Terps' chances of winning were slipping away, but Williams was still teaching. He wasn't ready to stop. He knew he had more coaching to do. He has always known, in fact.

And now everyone else knows that, too.

You think you're tough, but are you really tough?

2009-03-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Good note here about how USC's turnaround began "two weeks ago during a film session before a game against Oregon, when assistant coach Phil Johnson (pictured here) had a harsh assessment of the team."

"He got up and told us we were not a tough team and it was time to show people how tough USC was," guard Daniel Hackett said. "We did by winning five consecutive games."

"Coach Johnson is like Papa Angry," forward Taj Gibson said. "He doesn't say much often, but when he lashes out, it wakes you up. He turned off the Oregon film and just said, 'You think you're tough, but are you really tough?' Guys snapped out of it."

USC swept Oregon and Oregon State to finish the regular season.

"We took that as a challenge," guard Dwight Lewis said. "Someone saying you're not tough, when you know you are? We wanted to prove we were a tough team and we had heart."

When asked about his team's toughness," USC coach Tim Floyd said:

"They can kill you, but they can't eat you. Obviously, when you had to take the path we had to take to get there, you're just thrilled to be in this field," Floyd said. But, he added, "At this point, that's yesterday's news. Put the DVD your mama made under the bed and start getting ready for the next one, Boston College."

One AD's list of requirements for prospective coaches

2009-03-16T08:08:00.001-07:00

Bowling Green's AD Greg Christopher has a list traits he looks for when hiring a coach. It's the same list he used when he hired Louis Orr (pictured here) last year to coach the BGSU hoops team.

Any coach he hires must...

-- Exhibit absolute integrity and high character.
-- Have a solid reputation of success and work ethic.
-- Show a passion to recruit and evaluate talent.
-- Work as a team member in an 18-sport athletic department.
-- Commit to his or her players' academics.

"If they don't have one of those things on that list, they won't be considered for the position," Christopher said.

According to this post of Hoops Coach, what helped Coach Orr "separate from other candidates was his success at Seton Hall."

Said Christopher: "He kept standing out because of his credibility."

Real coaching is teaching people to play the game better

2009-03-16T07:45:00.001-07:00

Interesting thoughts from the late Bill Walsh in David Harris' book "The Genius" about how he formed his coaching philosophy.

~~~~~~~~~~

"[When he began his coaching career], there was this religion of 'toughness' in coaching circles those days and all coaches were trying to be like marine drill sergeants and scare people into playing well. I got caught up in that for a while but I concluded it didn't come close to working. It was kind of a mass delusion.

All the coaches thought the players loved them despite how badly they treated them, and all the players were doing were putting up with the coach so they could play football. Instead of loving and revering the coach, they couldn't stand im and were disgusted with him but they wanted to play football. They wanted the fellowship, they wanted the association, they wanted the excitement, and only put up with the bullying because they had to. Most played football in spite of the coach.

By the time I left Cal I had decided that if you taught people to play the game better, that was real coaching -- being a teacher rather than a thug."

A coach who doesn't take plays off

2009-03-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

Bobcats GM Rod Higgins on what's most impressive about 68-year-old CHA coach Larry Brown:

"The thing that's jumped out about Larry is his ability to keep his motor at a high level. You hear the old term about players taking plays off. Well, he's a coach that doesn't take plays off. He continuously challenges the players to get better. He's never satisfied."

The most critical decision for me becoming who I am

2009-03-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

NPR has a good piece today on Coach K and his upbringing in inner-city Chicago where his "father was an elevator operator and his mother cleaned offices to make sure her sons had everything they needed. "

Coach Krzyzewski called his belated decision to attend the U.S. Military Academy and play for Bobby Knight a "critical" turning point for his life.

At first, Coach K turned down Coach Knight's offer to play at West Point. But his parents felt it was the wrong move and talked about it -- in their native Polish -- for two weeks.

"I'd just hear it and finally I said, 'OK, I'll go.' And we let Coach Knight know, and — I don't know how I got in at that time, but I did," Krzyzewski recalls. "That was the most critical decision for me becoming who I am."

Bob Knight, who would later gain fame at Indiana University, was his coach at Army. It was also Knight who hired Krzyzewski to be his graduate assistant at Indiana. Later on, Knight recommended his former player for a coaching job at West Point, and then at Duke in 1980.

Now in his 30th season at Duke, Coach K's first few seasons were rough as he "taught his team to play man-to-man defense, rather than relying on the zone defense" and recruited "the kind of players he wanted." [In 1982, Duke went 10-17; in '83 the Devils were 11-17.]

"My first year at Duke was the hardest year for any of us," says Jay Bilas, who played for Coach K from 1983-86, "because there was a lot of talk that Coach K was going to get fired."

"I think if Coach K had that start in his career now, he wouldn't have made it," Bilas says. "I think the microwave culture we've got now, where coaches are fired after a couple of years, [in] a few years he wouldn't have survived — and look what everybody would have missed."

A bigger, stronger Stephen Jackson

2009-03-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

If Stephen Jackson looks bigger these days it's because he's added "10 pounds of muscle" and now weights 235 (at 6-8).

Jackson, who leads the W's in points, assists and minutes, "says his new-and-improved physique is behind his sustained surge, and he's giving credit to the Warriors' strength and conditioning gurus Mark Grabow and John Murray."

It was Murray who pointed out that Jackson's lack of strength was causing him to get pushed around without getting his share of foul calls, so the nine-year veteran hit the weight room to bulk up. Jackson now lifts for 30 to 40 minutes after every Warriors shootaround to jump start his game-day routine. He's also using meal-replacement shakes to boost nutrition.

The added strength is helping Jackson get "in better spots for shots and rebounds and figuring out how to hold his position down low." It's also helped his stamina.

"This is the most I've lifted and the most I've been in the weight room my whole career, and it's starting to pay off," says Jackson. "I was thinking that I didn't need it, but as I see now, it's the most I've ever weighed in my life and I still have my speed, so it's definitely helped my game a lot."

I would never expect a great coach to try to do something his team doesn't do

2009-03-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim was asked if he was surprised when West Virginia didn't try to press his team the night after the Orange's six OT game against UConn, which SU won (at 1:22 a.m.).

“I’m not surprised a team that’s well coached and is a really, really good team that never presses, doesn’t press,” Boeheim said. “That would surprise me if they did. If you’ve seen us play, we’re pretty good against pressure. So that has sometimes given us baskets. Tomorrow night we will be pressed for 40 minutes because that’s what Louisville does. But I would never expect a great coach to try to do something his team doesn’t do.”

Changing coaches as priorities change

2009-03-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Though both are outstanding professional tennis players, Andy Roddick and James Blake (who have 37 titles between them) "have taken a radically different approach when it comes to the voice in their ears."

Over nine years, Roddick's "engaged no less than seven coaches on a part- or full-time basis. Blake, who spent two years at Harvard before jumping to the pros in 1999, has had one."

In fact, the 29-year-old Blake has had the same coach since he was 11 years old.

"I've always said about tennis, it's a very individual sport," 13th-ranked Blake said in a conference call last month. "What works for one will never work for another. For me, I would not be nearly as successful with someone that didn't know me as a person, and know my strengths and weaknesses on the court. I credit him with making me the best player I can possibly be, and absolutely maximizing my potential. We are going to be friends for life, that's not even a question."

According to this article, "Blake is much more the exception than the rule. Most players switch coaches throughout their playing days as priorities change and relationships become stale."

Unlike Blake (at right in photo above), Roddick, 26, "likes to pick the brain of some of game's best minds, and it has often paid quick dividends."

"There's been a couple of times in my career where it's really jump-started my playing just by having a fresh voice," Roddick says. The downside is the getting-to-know-you process, along with periods of transition. "Obviously, continuity is a good thing, and there have certainly been times where I've been without someone or in transition and you're just kind of trying to make due."

Blake contends it's simply a personal preference and that one style doesn't fit all.

"If he had the same coach the whole time he wouldn't be as good as he is," said Blake of Roddick. "If I had changed coaches, the way he has, I wouldn't be as good."

It's exceptional when you find a role player who's just happy to be there

2009-03-14T11:55:00.001-07:00

Lots of interesting audio and transcriptions of interviews with athletes and coaches on the Sports Radio Interviews website.

Here's a good one from yesterday with the legendary Dr. J -- Julius Erving -- and his thoughts on how the game has changed since he played in the '70s and '80s:

“I think one of the major differences is every player to a man is regarded as, at least maybe in his own mind, a basketball star. During our era, there was a clear delineation between a guy who was a star, a guy who was a role player, and a guy who was just happy to be there. I don’t think you have too many guys today that are just happy to be there. The economics just set it up that way where there’s a star mentality 1 through 12. It’s exceptional when you find somebody who is humble and happy to be there and capable of deferring to the guys that are the actually stars.”

[Great video of some vintage Dr. J here.]

Learning about attention to detail

2009-03-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

SAC coach Kenny Natt, an assistant with Jerry Sloan in Utah and Mike Brown (pictured here) in Cleveland, on what he learned working with Coach Brown.

"His attention to detail. Coach Sloan is not as detailed. He'll scribble something down on a piece of paper, but Mike Brown is very scripted, very attentive to detail at practice, right to the point with everything. Those are the things I learned and carry over from Mike. Most of what we want to do offensively and defensively, being more demanding, comes from Sloan -- and the disciplinary side of things. I think it's a pretty good mix."

When you have a height advantage, "the farther away you get from the basket, the shorter you get"

2009-03-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

My sister in Dallas emailed me a note from the Texas State 2A boy's basketball semifinals. (Texas runs from the huge 5A schools to the smaller Class A and 2A schools.)

Ponder High School, one of the 2A semifinalists, is led by 6-foot-5 Scott Gregg (pictured here).

Ponder's opponent, Santa Rosa, doesn't have a single starter over 5-foot-10.

Ponder's coach made it clear before the game that he planned to take advantage of the mismatch in height.

"You're 6-5, so we're going to make you 6-5. We're going to make sure [Gregg and another tall Ponder player] don't get too far from the basket. The farther away you get from the basket, the shorter you get."

Ponder won the game, 77-54, with Gregg leading the way with 26 points.

In winning and losing there are no politics -- only numbers

2009-03-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

In the book "The Dandy Dons," which comes out this June, former USF star Bill Russell talks about how his attitude changed after he'd been overlooked for player of the year honors in the California Basketball Association (now the WCC).

"It was then and there that I determined, 'If my team wins a championship every year, there's no quarrel anyone can come up with to deny me that. Winning is the only thing I really cared about because I found that when I left the cocoon of my childhood I came into the world and found the individual awards were mostly political.

But winning and losing, there are no politics, only numbers. It's the most democratic thing in the world. You either win or lose, so I decided early in my career that the only really important thing was to try to win every game. The only thing that really mattered was who won -- and there is nothing subjective about that."

A "non-traditional" coaching candidate who finally got a sniff

2009-03-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

A week ago, UT-San Antonio announced they'd found a coach for its fledgling program: 60-year-old Larry Coker, the same Larry Coker who'd guided the Miami Hurricanes to a 2001 National Championship and won 80 percent of his games at U of M over six seasons. He's now the coach at UTSA.

According to Frank Solich, who was fired as head coach at Nebraska in 2003 before being hired at Ohio in 2005, Coach Coker's move to UTSA "reinforces the notion that upper-tier jobs can be hard to come by for veteran coaches who have been fired. Ask Gary Barnett. Or Dennis Franchione. Or Bob Davie. Or Glen Mason. Or R.C. Slocum. Or Jim Donnan. Or Phillip Fulmer. Or Tommy Bowden. You get the idea."

“There are plenty of guys out there who haven’t gotten a sniff,” Coach Solich said. “It’s a tough, tough business. For one thing, there’s a little stigma attached to you if you didn’t make it work at a program, or were fired. And the trend has gone toward young guys. You see it in the NFL. You see it in colleges. It just seems that once you’ve been in it for a while, and you’re an established guy, and all of a sudden you get removed from a position, it’s tough on you. I just thought I still had a lot to offer (as a head coach). I felt I was good at being a head coach.”

It also reminds me a little of Radford coach Brad Greenberg (pictured here), who "was a young assistant at American University and Saint Joseph's in the late 1970s and early 1980s but then took a detour to the NBA as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers and New York Knicks and as a player personnel executive with the Portland Trail Blazers."

Coach Greenberg also had a "1-year stint as the 76ers' general manager/vice president of basketball operations. In fact, while Greenberg's stay in Philly was brief, he did make the most influential decision in recent Sixers history by choosing Allen Iverson with the No. 1 pick in the 1996 NBA draft. It was a franchise-altering choice, for which Greenberg never gets the full credit he deserves."

After being fired by the Sixers in April 1997, Coach Greenberg waited 10 years to get a college head coaching job. His brother, Seth, hired him at South Florida as the director of basketball ops, then took him along to Virginia Tech in 2003 where he served as associate head coach.

Along the way, "Brad applied for openings but says schools weren't much interested in a first-time head coach in his 50s."

According to Coach Greenberg, when applying for college jobs, "Some athletics directors would look at me and say, 'Wait a minute, this guy was an NBA GM. What does he want coaching my team? He's been dealing with agents and pros and flying on charter planes. Is he really going to be happy in a little, tiny office and getting on a bus?' "

In 2007, Coach Greenberg got the chance he'd been waiting for when he was hired at Radford, a Big South school 2o minutes from Va. Tech that had gone 8-22 the season before.

Radford President Penelope W. Kyle, who hired Greenberg as coach, said "it didn't bother her that he was a nontraditional candidate."

"That's why we hit it off," she says. "I was a nontraditional choice, too." She ran the state lottery in Virginia and, before that, was a business executive and a lawyer. She liked his NBA credentials.

When Coach Greenberg arrived at Radford two seasons ago, his team was described as "a laughingstock." Now the Highlanders are headed to the NCAA tournament.

Avoiding the trap of tailspin

2009-03-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

There's an old saying: "Wins come in bunches." Of course, so do losses.

Which is why after his team's 12-game winning streak ended recently with a loss to ATL, Jerry Sloan "worries about what awaits."

So after the game at Atlanta on Wednesday night, Coach Sloan made it clear to his guys that he "wants to avoid the trap of tailspin."

"I just told them, 'Lots of times, you see a team after they've had a streak, they have one the other way,' "

According to Carlos Boozer, a seven-year NBA vet who played on the U.S. Olympic basketball team last summer, the next few games are a test for the Jazz.

"We'll see what kind of character we've got. I think if we're an elite team, we'll bounce right back. We won't just look at this thing and sulk and lose four or five in a row. We've got to bounce back from it."

Managing the home crowds' energy

2009-03-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Insightful comment from Northeastern hockey coach Greg Cronin, whose team is ranked fourth in the nation, behind only Boston, Notre Dame, and Michigan.

With every win, NU's home crowds have grown. According to this article, "the noise is constant."

Coach Cronin (pictured here) claims that while it's true that the Huskies' "arena has been a real special place this season," the best part is how his players can use the fans' enthusiasm to their advantage:

"Our players have the opportunity to manage the energy in the building."

It comes down to how hard you want to work

2009-03-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Great quote from Larry Hughes in the NY Daily News.

Hughes, who exploded for 30 points on 13-20 shooting in a win at Milwaukee on Tuesday, then added 22 in NY's win at DET the next night, said that as the postseason approaches, the key variable is effort:

"At this point it comes down to how hard you want to work," he said. "Everyone has talent. It comes down to how hard you want to work."

Your coaching philosophy: The sum total of all you believe

2009-03-13T05:11:00.000-07:00

Jud Heathcote was a head coach for nearly a quarter of a century, including 19 seasons at Michigan State, where he won a national title in 1979 with Magic Johnson running the point.

In his 1995 autobiography, "Jud: A Magical Journey," he talked about the roots of his coaching philosophy:

"A key to success is always being able to adjust. But you have to believe in something when you coach. That's what's called your coaching philosophy -- the sum total of all you believe. Your basic philosophy is usually established at an early age. But it changes as you get more experience and the game changes.

In my playing career, I was a star in high school, a star on the small-college level, but just a role player or a substitute at the major-college level. So I can relate to guys sitting on the bench, always wanting to play. I never had any hard feelings about it. I always thought I was better than the guys playing. But I accepted it. What was important was what the coach thought. That has always been my philosophy. I've always been a good team guy. And I've always felt the team came first."

I was not allowed to quit when things got tough

2009-03-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

Saw recently where Dwyane Wade relies on guys like Kobe and LeBron to push him to achieve more. In his words:

"Listen, I won a championship. I’ve been a Finals MVP. I’ve had All-Star games. I’m on every commercial you see. My life is good. But you have to keep going and keep going. You need things to push you, and I found them. There are always guys that are going to push me. LeBron and Kobe are two of the best talents this game has ever seen. If you want your name to be right there with them, you’ve got to continue working hard."

Wade's quote reminded me of a book I read last year. In it, professionals from various fields and walks of life talked about who had pushed them to achieve success.

The great Morgan Freeman (pictured above), one of my favorite actors, said he "was not allowed to quit when things got tough. I was not allowed to give up acting and try something else. I was just not allowed. There was always somebody there who gave me encouragement or help."

Several people credited their mothers or fathers with providing the support and positive reinforcement they needed to press on. According to Pablo Picasso, one of the world's great painters, his mother told him, "If you become a solider, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as Pope." He continued: "Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso."

Early in his cycling career, Lance Armstrong wanted to quit a race, telling his mother that he simply couldn't go any further. His mother replied that she wouldn't allow him to quit, even if he had to walk his bike across the finish line. "So Lance walked to the finish line."

Then there's Derek Hatfield, who was in a Trans-atlantic sailboat race when his mast broke. When he finally made it to land, he called his father to tell him he was quitting. "Bring the trailer, I'm dropping out of the race," recalls Hatfield.

His father was having none of it, saying, "I'm not bringing you the trailer. You get back on the boat and go to the finish line."

Hatfield "finished the race and became one of the few people who have ever sailed around the world alone."

Pick one: Coach, officiate, or play

2009-03-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

When he arrived at Arizona State, coach Herb Sendek "made it clear he wouldn't tolerate the persecution complex that long had been a part of the problem, a feeling that poor ASU hoops always was getting jobbed by Pac-10 officials."

He insisted "that his team not argue a single call."

Ask him why and he has a simple answer:

"Because they're not supposed to. I just don't want our guys responding to a referee's call, because the next play is getting ready to start. We ask our guys at the beginning of the year, 'You have a choice. You can pick one. You can either coach, officiate or play. Just pick one, because it's hard as hell to do any one of the three, let alone two of the three."

[Thanks to Phil Beckner at Weber State for passing along!]

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life

2009-03-12T12:26:00.001-07:00

Del Jones, a reporter for the USA Today, frequently writes about management issues that are usually insightful and interesting. Like many of his stories, his recent piece titled "How cheating death can change your life" was worth reading.

It describes what people who've survived near-death experiences ("NDEs"), or who are currently battling a life-threatening or terminal disease, learned in the process or how it changed their "long term perspective."

Said one:

"Death is very likely the single-best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

Says another: "Near-death experiences give you balance. You become more worldly. Your ideas become bigger."

Many say the experience changed "them in profound ways and give them a heightened sense of purpose." As one put it: "Life becomes shinier. You should plan for the long haul, but there is a big difference in doing that and making perpetual sacrifices."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs (pictured above), who has survived pancreatic cancer, had this to say in a commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

A basketball player sent on the court with rusty fundamentals is a good bet to fail

2009-03-12T06:19:00.001-07:00

Got an early copy of James Johnson's soon-to-be-released book "The Dandy Dons."

It chronicles the University of San Francisco basketball teams from the mid-1950s that were coached by Phil Woolpert and featured Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. USF won the NCAA championship in 1955 and 1956. [Coach Woolpert later coached at my alma mater, USD.]

As a side note, Phil's son, Paul, has had a long and successful career in the CBA and D-League.

Here's a good excerpt from the book:

~~~~~~~~~~

When practice opened in the fall of '53, Woolpert was ready. So were the players, but they didn't know what the coach had in store for them -- in practice or during games. Woolpert had a plan: First he was going to use defense to break up the opposition's attack before it could get set. On offense he wanted to use a balanced floor, with his players working the ball around the court until they got the right shot.

Woolpert had always been a strong advocate of defense and he saw an opportunity to develop his players into an aggressive defensive squad.

"I can't see just standing around and letting the other fellow shoot. To me, it's common sense to try to stop him from scoring. There is a science and a skill to defense. It's what makes the game interesting, not a race from one end of the court to the other for one more basket."

He was also fond of saying, "We figure to have the ball only about half the time in a game, so in practice, we work on defense half the time."

Woolpert was without a doubt a defensive-minded coach. In Woolpert's system, if you couldn't defend, it was unlikely you would get much playing time. He disdained "jackrabbit basketbal," once remarking about the up-tempo offense becoming popular then: "It just isn't good basketball. I wouldn't know how to go about coaching it. You can't expect to execute scoring playing when you're running up and down the court like madmen."

Practice included what Woolpert called the "hands-up" drill. The players would line up with their feet in position, bend their knees, and put one hand high above their heads and the other one out to the side. Then they moved quickly forward or backward, to the left or to the right, at Woolpert's direction.

It was the same drill that Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell used when he was at USF and in 1959 when his Cal team won the NCAA title. Most players introduced to the hands-up drill lasted about three minutes before they begged for mercy, but eventually they could go twenty minutes nonstop. That kind of stamina paid big dividends during the season.

Woolpert was also a stickler for making his players pick up the fundamentals of the game -- dribbling, passing, footwork, and shooting. "A basketball player sent on the court with rusty fundamentals," he said, "is a good bet to fail in his operations."

In addition to sound fundamentals, a team needed talented players and a simple offense and defense. Woolpert believed that regardless of what offense a team used, "the essentially important need is for simplicity and efficiency of operation. If the players know what they are doing, and why, and are impressed with the importance of each move in an overall pattern, the chances of that pattern creating good shot opportunities are excellent."

Looking for people with convictions who can influence their peers

2009-03-12T06:08:00.001-07:00

Came across a great quote from Joe Paterno in the book "The Competitive Edge" by Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a sports psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School.

"We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions."

[Here's a video at Coach Paterno at work that's worth a look.]

Veterans provide knowledge; young players bring the energy

2009-03-12T05:21:00.000-07:00

Reds manager Dusty Baker, 59, "has a reputation for preferring veterans at the expense of young players."

"I get tired of defending myself," he says. "It's the biggest crock of (bull) I've ever heard. I never had one (young team) except my last year (2006) in Chicago. In San Francisco, they had a big mortgage on the building. We had to win now."

What's important to Coach Baker is not whether a player is young or a veteran; it's whether the player wants to improve.

"Growth, that's exactly what I want," Baker says. "Baseball intellect, the ability to learn and retain what they learn. Some guys get it right away. Other guys you've got to keep reminding. I want intelligent, energy-type players. Competition from within without envy and jealousy. Veterans give us knowledge, kids give us energy."

When asked if some of the younger Reds players were likely to develop into team leaders, Coach Baker replied: "Leadership is not appointed. It's anointed by your teammates."

The benefits of a point-forward

2009-03-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

Having watched Louisville's Terrence Williams on TV, it's obvious he's an excellent athlete who is projected as a small forward in the NBA. He'll likely come off the bench as a limited-minutes player used primarily as a defender -- one who can guard an NBA 3/2 man off the bench.

Williams (pictured here with Coach Pitino) does a good job of rebounding his position and creates extra possessions for his team. Offensively, he's an unselfish player.

Coach Pitino and Louisville work a lot on shooting drills, and since Williams has spent four years with Coach Pitino, I don't see him improving significantly as a shooter. [Had he been coached poorly the last several years, there might be room for improvement, but that's not the case here.] Speaking of coaching, it's interesting how Coach Pitino advised Williams to "imagine that he's always doing commercials on himself in public."

Williams' offensive game is a concern. He's a poor FT shooter, failing to hit more than 62 percent of his free throws in his college career. There aren't many NBA small forwards who are shooting in that range who are in their team's rotations.

On the other hand, he's improved as a 3-point shooter, but has room to improve as a scorer. At this point, he's a player who is likely to be drafted in the 25-35 range.

As this article in SI this week points out, "Williams fills the rarest role in college hoops — that of point forward, which means he orchestrates the offense from the small-forward position, leading his team in assists at 5.1 per game, with a 2.2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio."

Louisville coach Rick Pitino knows that the two logical candidates to run the offense, 5'10" senior Andre McGee and 6'1" junior Edgar Sosa, "would rather score than assist, whereas T-Will would rather assist than score," and that Williams's court vision is second to none on Louisville's roster. At his height he can see over perimeter defenders; he can rebound and start fast breaks without the delay of an outlet pass; he can take ball-handling pressure off the guards or simply slide over from the wing and initiate offensive sets.

Williams is driven by what he feels after making a nice pass. Here's how he describes it:

"The feeling I get when I make a pass for an assist is like the one you'd get if you had a baby brother and every time he tried to walk, he fell down, until one time, he finally walked and you were there to see it. That's the kind of happiness I get from seeing other guys score."

Williams learned to appreciate the fine art of passing from watching Lakers great Magic Johnson. "My uncles used to show me old tapes of Magic," Williams says, "and I'd see the passes he'd make and think, 'That looks tight.'"

W's coach Don Nelson, who played Paul Pressey and Marques Johnson point-forwards in the mid-1980s while coaching the Bucks, is quoted in the SI story as saying, "It allow[ed] us to release our guards, who [were] not real quick, earlier, and alleviate[d] some of the pressure on them and [gave] me a chance to play two nonballhandling guards, like Kevin Grevey and Sidney Moncrief, together."

Nellie's requirements for the point-forward position?

He has to be a leader, has to rebound well, has to defend, has to have an assist-to-turnover ratio of at least 2 to 1 and has to be 6'5" or taller.

Giving players boundaries, parameters, direction, and feedback

2009-03-11T15:31:00.001-07:00

As the new head coach of the Montreal Canadiens, Bob Gainey is working to ensure each player "know[s] exactly what's expected of him."

According to Coach Gainey, who's coached in more than 450 NHL games, he will "try to give them boundaries, parameters, direction and feedback - done well, (or) not done well."

"After a few days, I hope to be able to give the players some key messages that there are places they will be corrected on," said Coach Gainey. "That will give them concentration - that they need to do this particular thing, or they'll be corrected on it."

As small things cumulate, bigger things will happen

2009-03-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

Dave Ulrich wrote the foreword for the 2002 book "The Extraordinary Leader."

Ulrich, a management guru who Fast Company magazine recognized as "one of the 10 most innovative and creative leaders," outlined his advice for leaders. Here are three of his points:

~~~~~~~~~~

1. Start small. Going from good to great follows an "S" curve of learning. Starting small means doing something now, something within your control that will have an immediate impact. As small things cumulate, bigger things will happen. A leaders should identify some quick, simple, and readily visible things that can be done along the "S" curve path.

2. Excel at something. The worst leaders have an average profile with no great strengths or weaknesses. They are "vanilla" leaders, not standing out on anything. My advice to you as a leader is to figure what you are good at and improve it. Be good at something, then a few things.

3. Remedy fatal flaws. (1) The inability to learn from mistakes and develop new skills; (2) being interpersonally inept; (3) being closed to new ideas; (4) failure to be accountable for results; and (5) not taking initiative. Assess yourself and see how others assess you on these five fatal flaws. If any show up, work on them fast and furiously.

You can't stay in the basketball game if you're not going to play with effort

2009-03-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

In SAC, Kings coach Kenny Natt has "made it very clear" who will play over the last 20 games of the season.

"What I need to do is pull guys out of the game that don't want to play. Guys who don't play with effort, that's who I'll start pulling out of the game. I've made it very clear to them that that's where we're going from now on. You can't stay in a basketball game if (they're) not going to play. If you think that you're going to stay in the game (without playing hard), you're going to be sitting over there with me."

Defense is all about desire; it has nothing to do with skill

2009-03-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

Byron Scott spoke at length recently about his team's defense and the importance of re-visiting defensive fundamentals during the season.

"Defense is all about desire and wanting to do it. It has nothing to do with skill. So we've just got to get back to our defensive principles and understanding what we need to do on every play. We were trying to rely too much on our offense, trying to outscore people. There's going to be nights when we're not going to be able to make shots or throw it in the ocean. We've got to be able to rely on our defense a lot more.

Right now, we're having a lot of trouble on the defensive end. Specifically, guarding guys off the dribble, number one, and protecting that paint, number two. The third thing is when we're getting beat, we're fouling too much. We've got to do a better job, maybe go back to the drawing board, think about some of the things on our defensive concepts that we talked about and get better at it.

The focus on that end has to be better. As far as us understanding what our principles are, I think we understand them. We've just got to get back to doing them on a day-to-day basis. This is not the time to lose desire to play defense; this is the times we've got to pick it back up."

Your GM gives you 12 players; you've got to make it work

2009-03-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Watched an interview with Chuck Daly from 1997 on the Charlie Rose Show. I managed to transcribe a small excerpt here.

~~~~~~~~~~

"When I was in Detroit, it lasted nine years. I knew I should've gone the two years before that because [the players] get tired of hearing you -- they know every inflection -- and you get tired of them. It works both ways. I don't look at [the players] as having made a lot of money. I really don't care what color they are or where they come from. I've got to deal with them on a one-to-one basis. Your general manager gives you 12 players. You've got to make this work. You've gotta take these 12 guys -- cause otherwise you're gonna lose your job. They're gonna fire you or you're gonna get embarrassed. So somehow, you've got to reach them, and every one of them is different."

How do you spend the 24 hours in the day?

2009-03-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

From a blog post by Ross Siler at the Salt Lake Tribune comes this quote from Jerry Sloan on managing your time:

"I don't worry about that stuff if you take care of yourself. There's 24 hours today. That won't change. Twenty-four hours tomorrow. See where you've got your eight hours' sleep and you've got eight hours to do something else and two hours to play basketball and you've still got a lot of time left over. So I don't buy all the stuff. If you take care of yourself, get your rest, so you're ready to play, that's your job. And I think fans deserve that out of you every single day, not just once in a while."

You always have to be ready, no matter what the circumstances

2009-03-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Lakers beat writer Jeff Eisenberg posts about a radio interview he heard with Jordan Farmar in which Farmar told a story about "scarfing down a burger at halftime" of a mid-season game against Seattle in his rookie season.

Besides being hungry, Farmar figured that because "he hadn't played in weeks" it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Coach Phil Jackson caught him eating the burger and used that moment as a teaching tool, not only fining him but also inserting him into the game in the second half to show the dangers of expecting not to play.

"He put me in and said, 'I hope you throw up," Farmar said. "It was just to show that you have to always be ready. No matter what the situation, no matter what the circumstances."

How coaching is like painting a fence

2009-03-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

Good post on Rick Bonnell's blog about Larry Brown and assistant Dave Hanners (pictured here with Coach Brown).

After a 12-point loss to Orlando on February 20, Coach Brown let his guys have it, "saying the point guards were selfish and Emeka Okafor sets ineffective screens."

The next day at practice, Coach Hanners came prepared to do some "maintenance.''

That's Hanners' term for smoothing it over when Brown has maybe overshot the runway in his critiques of the players. To Hanners' surprise, the day after was a great practice: No complaining, just great focus.

Bonnell commented to Coach Hanners that he "wasn't surprised because for whatever else was wrong in the past, this team had great character."

Bonnell contends that "[former CHA coach and EVP] Bernie Bickerstaff demanded it, right up to waiving Kareem Rush when he wouldn't get in line. Gerald Wallace and Raymond Felton are true leaders, and they both understand they need more coaching, not less. Brown's relentless insistence on precision can wear a team out, but that hasn't happened."

As they talked, Bonnell writes that Coach Hanners "offered a telling analogy."

Hanners said Brown's coaching is like the guy determined to perfectly paint a fence. When he's done, you'll never find an unpainted spot on that fence, but he might apply two or three more coats than is necessary to do the job.

[By the way, since February 20, the Bobcats are 6-2.]

It boils down to people and how they work and how they respect their job

2009-03-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

Coach Jerry Sloan, whose Utah Jazz have won 11 straight, doesn't hesitate to credit his players for the team's 40 wins thus far.

"Anybody could coach these guys. They're good people, they work hard in practice and they do the right thing. It boils down to people and how they work and how they respect their job. You always have a chance to win if you get good people who try to do their job.

I don't think it's coaching. It's not just about me. It's about our players and our coaches. There's a lot to learn as you go forward. Each game is an experience sometimes. There's always something that players aren't familiar with or things you are trying to get across to them. That's part of the coaching process."

A player-coach team is a lot better than a coach-coach team

2009-03-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

Michigan State's Travis Walton, the Spartans' team captain, only averages about five points per game. In fact, in MSU's last five games of the season -- all wins, by the way -- Walker only has seven field goals.

Says MSU coach Tom Izzo (here with Walton): "Walton is the only guy I know who cannot score a lot of points and be a difference maker in a game."

At halfime of the Spartans game yesterday against Purdue, "Walton offered some terse, fire-up-the-troops comments at halftime."

When he speaks, which is rare in public, he commands complete attention from his teammates.

According to Coach Izzo, a vocal leader who's also respected by his peers can have a big impact on a team's performance.

"I always say a player-coach team is a lot better than a coach-coach team. He was a difference maker in our locker room. You need somebody that puts winning above everything, and is tough enough to deal with it. And you need a coach on the floor. That's all Trav."

Notes from the WCC tournament in Las Vegas

2009-03-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Just now getting a chance to go back through my notes from the WCC tournament this weekend in Las Vegas at the Orleans Arena in the Orleans Casino & Hotel. It's a great venue that seats about 7,800 fans (not including suites).

At Friday night's Loyola Marymount-San Diego game, LMU freshman Kevin Young (pictured here), a SF with great length, displayed good athleticism. He ran hard and has the ability to push the ball himself off rebounds. He also moved well without the ball against USD's zone, finding holes for uncontested dunks.

Young is skinny, but will get bigger and stronger over the summer. His weight/strength is one reason he had trouble defending post-ups and holding his defensive position. That will change as he works on his lower-body strength.

Young had a nice first half with 16 points , but was passive in the second half - 4 second half points . I thought he out-reacted USD's upfront players and finished strong in transition in the first 20 minutes of the game.

Another LMU freshman, guard Jarred DuBois had nine first-half points. He's a good offensive player, but must improve his pick n roll defense and his on ball defense.

As for the game, USD's players spent too much time complaining to the refs and lost some focus in the first half. The Toreros got off to a slow start offensively until the middle pick-and-roll with De'Jon Jackson handling and Roberto Mafra setting the pick. But once Jackson picked up two fouls late into the first half, USD lacked point guard play.

Rob Jones' development as an offensive player has slowed. But Jones showed his versatility as a defender on a few possessions in the second half when USD went to man-to-man. Jones went from defending the 4-post to defending LMU guard DuBois. I really think Jones would make a good tight end in Football.

LMU had no one to defend USD's Gyno Pomare in the low post. But Pomare doesn't seem to run hard in either transition defense or offense. It's important for him to get in better physical condition. At this point, he's not bringing much energy except when he has the ball in his hands. Because of his ability to score from the 4-post, Pomare will play beyond college, likely for low-level European league team.

Both teams played hard, but in the second half, USD played smarter basketball and out-executed the young LMU squad.

USD really missed injured point guard Brandon Johnson, who was injured in December and lost for the year. The Toreros also missed Trumaine Johnson, who was suspended and announced last month that he'd transfer from USD. Without Brandon or Trumaine, it was no surprise that USD had 20 turnovers (to LMU's nine) in the game. USD backup PG Matt Dorr had five TOs and no assists in 31 minutes.

Free-throw shooting hurt LMU, which connected on just 13-28 from the foul line (43 percent). USD won the game by six, 62-56.

In Friday's second game, Pepperdine beat USF, 93-85. Not much defense played in this game and neither team has any size inside. All guard play. Big-time uptempo with four guards on the floor for both teams for most of the game.

USF played much better down the stretch of the season after Coach Rex Walters suspended four players. Those who were left played to their roles.

Pepperdine has a couple of good young players in Mychel Thompson (whose father, Mychal, played for my Dad at U of Minnesota in the '70s and was a No. 1 NBA pick) and Keion Bell.

Thompson (6' 7") has good offensive skills. Wiry and skilled, he played multiple positions but needs to get stronger physically. He also needs to work on his defense. Thompson's brother, Klay, a freshman at at Washington State, is a better prospect at this point.

As for Bell, he's a terrific athlete and an excellent offensive rebounder for a guard. His shot release is slow.

The Waves pushed the ball on the sideline break and shot a ton of 3-balls in transition.

At the Saturday games, the teams that played the night before (Pepperdine and USD) looked tired, which shows the impact back-to-back games have on college kids. It's tough on professionals, but even tougher on young players.

USD coach Bill Grier came into the Toreros' game against Santa Clara with a 4-0 record in WCC tournament games. USD's full-court 1-2-2 trap after free throws was effective in the first half, and after made-baskets in the second half.

USD's Roberto Mafra has really improved over the course of the season, though he still must improve as a rebounder. On the subject of rebounding, USD's Pomare had no rebounds in his last game in college. Santa Clara's John Bryant totally dominated him with 27 rebounds.Bryant out rebounded entire USD team 27-20 .

USD's Rob Jones has struggled with his perimeter jump shot most of the year, but hit his shots in this game as Santa Clara backed off him. He's also had some trouble beating people off the dribble. But he really rebounds his position and boarded better than any of USD's upfront players, finishing with 10 rebounds and 20 points.

USD's middle pick-and-roll with Jackson and Mafra setting was the Toreros' most effective offense. SCU freshman Kevin Foster was impressive creating his own shot off the dribble. Of the first two nights, Foster was the best pro prospect, but was turnover prone vs traps and must improve as a point guard.

John Bryant (pictured here) had a big game against USD, but his lack of athleticsm and lack of speed will make it hard for him to make it in the pro game. He doesn't get off the ground at all on the boards, but has such great hands and is a good passer with excellent court vision. He completely dominated the glass. His numbers are unbelievable, but I don't see it continuing at the next level vs the same size players and better athletes. Bryant reminds me of former NBA player Todd MacCulloch.

Santa Clara's Calvin Johnson hit some big 3-pointers in the second half vs USD's trapping defense. The difference in this game was perimeter shooting.

SCU freshman Marc Trasolini had a great game and did a good job moving without the ball.

In the Pepperdine-Portland game, POR coach Eric Reveno did a good job subbing early to help save his guys' legs for Sunday's game. Pepperdine didn't score until six minutes into the game and had just two points in the first 10 minutes of the game. Again, the game the night before took a lot out of the Waves.

Hire big people who are better than you

2009-03-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

Came across a wise quote from David Ogilvy in this month's "Strategy & Business" magazine. Ogilvy, who died in 1999 at the age of 88, is regarded by many as "The Father of Advertising."

Here are his thoughts on hiring good people:

“If you hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If you hire people who are bigger than you, we shall become a company of giants. Hire big people, people who are better than you. Pay them more than yourself if necessary.”

The better you get, the more you raise your standards

2009-03-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

After NJ Devils coach Brent Sutter "voic[ed] his displeasure after a lopsided (7-3) loss Saturday afternoon to an inferior Islanders squad," a reporter questioned whether it made sense for the coach of "a team that has won 18 of its past 23 games and sits atop the Atlantic Division" to be scolding his team.

He asked, "Doesn't a squad that has lost just five times since Jan. 12 deserve some slack for an occasional stinker?"

Not the Devils. They don't expect it, and maybe that's why they have had a winning record for 17 straight seasons. The mentality is different here.

"The better you get, the more you raise your standards," said Devils center Bobby Holik, a 15-year NHL veteran. "Because if you say, 'Well, it happens,' that's the end of it. You become satisfied. 'So what, we lost?' That's a terrible way to think. That's one of the reasons this team is competitive year after year. We're not satisfied that we've only lost five times in 23 games. We know we're not going to win them all. Nobody will. But we're not happy because we didn't compete in this (last) game."

Trust what is simple

2009-03-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

On the flight home from the WCC tourney in Vegas, I was flipping through Forbes magazine and came across this advice from Paul Johnson, "eminent British historian and author," in his weekly column in the magazine.

"I have always been highly suspicious of things that ought to be simple but have become too intricate for me to grasp. And I am doubly suspicious of those who make them so. Trust what is simple and can be understood at a glance. Anything more elaborate, investigate carefully and thoroughly; if it's too convoluted for you to grasp, pull back."

Playing HORSE with Larry Bird

2009-03-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

Marc Spears of the Boston Globe has an excerpt from Pat Williams' new book, "Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inside Basketball."

Ex-Magic ball boy Bobby Williams writes about the surprising experience of being asked to play H-O-R-S-E by Larry Bird at the Orlando Arena hours before a game.

"Larry said to me, 'Hey kid, can you shoot?' As my voice cracked, I bravely replied, 'Of course.' He said, 'Let's play H-O-R-S-E.' I was numb. It was one thing to rebound for Larry Bird. It's another to play H-O-R-S-E with him. Larry said, 'Are you good for five dollars?' 'Sure,' I said.

To no one's surprise, he made his shots and I missed mine. Larry said, 'Pay up.' I grinned and shrugged, 'I don't have any money.' Larry gave me a stern look and then just smiled."

Players allow you to coach them

2009-03-09T06:02:00.001-07:00

In his column yesterday, Mike Lupica has a great quote from Chuck Daly, who Lupica writes, "isn't just one of the good guys. He is one of the best guys."

According to Coach Daly:

"(Players) allow you to coach them. If you don't understand that, you have no chance to succeed in this business."

The importance of ensuring the high quality of practice

2009-03-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Scott for passing along a scholarly paper by Jefrey Frost at the U.S. Sports Academy titled "Characteristics Contributing to the Success of a Sports Coach."

In his research, Frost found that "in all kinds of sports, there are characteristics that successful coaches share," including "(1) the quality of practices, (2) communicating with athletes, (3) motivating athletes, (4) developing athletes’ sports skills, and (5) possessing strong knowledge of the sport."

Of those five characteristics, Frost's research determined that "the ability to ensure the high quality of practice... is a successful coach’s most important characteristic."

Two keys to success when inbounding: Detail and execution

2009-03-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

While at the WCC tourney this weekend in Las Vegas, I was struck by how many college teams don't look to score on the baseline out-of-bounds. On several occasions, teams seem to be content just getting the ball inbounds.

In contrast, NBA teams look to score on all baseline out of bounds plays.

Brendan Malone (pictured here), a long-time NBA assistant and former head coach for TOR, wrote a good book chapter not too long ago about out-of-bounds plays. Here's a short excerpt from Coach Malone's chapter.

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Well-executed out-of-bounds plays, as well as other special-situation plays, can be critical because late in a game they often make the difference between a win and a loss. All NBA teams run several of these plays, practicing them until they are automatic.

There are keys to success at every level of basketball, but two stand out in our league. One such key is detail, which applies to individual fundamentals as well as to team offense and defense. Maybe more than any other team sport, basketball is a game of details.

A player might miss a shot by a fraction of an inch, costing his team the game. A screen set a slightly improper angle won't be effective in freeing up your shooter for his shot. A pass that is a trace too slow or barely off target will likely result in a steal. When it comes to running out-of-bounds plays, detail is as important as ever. When a team is working on the fundamentals necessary to run a baseline or sideline out-of-bounds play, the coach must attend to every detail.

Another key is execution. To perfectly execute a play, and to know the play will be executed perfectly every time, teams must practice the play over and over until it become automatic. Never assume that players will run a play in a game properly after they've practiced it only a few times. Execution doesn't come naturally to all players.

You must run the play initially at moderate speed without the defense, then with the defense playing at 50 percent, and finally with the defense playing as they would in a game. Players must have complete knowledge of the entire play. They must master the play's first option as well as the other options. They also must master the timing of the different actions of each option.

As coach, you need to make sure every player understands not only how to run the out of bounds play, but why to run it. You want the skills of the play to be automatic, but you don't want your players to play like robots. You want smart players conscious of the reasons behind each play.

But before inserting and teaching specific plays, it's useful to specify to players what you consider the keys to making your team optimally successful in such situations:

1. Get the ball inbounds. This is a top priority. This is the first aim of the play.

2. Make your best passer your inbounder. If your best passer is out of the game, designate a player who handles the ball a lot, usually a 2- or 3-man.

3. Your best scorer should be the first option to receive the pass. Don't use your best scorer as the inbounder. Your team's best shooters must get into position to receive the inbounds pass in the right spot when the passer is ready to inbound the ball.

4. Use fakes. The inbounder will be aggressively pressured and in many cases should use pass fakes and other deception to get the ball inbounds.

5. Make good screens. You'll usually use your big men to set screens and get their teammates open. But you can also use your 2- or 3-man to screen your big man or two force a defensive switch.

6. Screen the screener. This action is common in the NBA but is especially effective in inbounds situations. "Screening the screener" simply means that the player who first makes the screen then receives a screen himself. In most cases, the screener's defender won't have time to react to the second screen.

Developing genuine relationships key part of recruiter's success

2009-03-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Interesting story in the Reno paper today that sheds some light on the college football recruiting process.

According to the article, 51-year-old Nevada assistant Barry Sacks, is a "prototypical recruiter" as he's blessed with "equal parts integrity, optimist and loyalist infused with boundless energy."

Coach Sacks, who recruits Northern California, is known for his honesty, which has helped him earn the respect of high school coaches and parents.

In the words of one father whose son signed with the Wolfpack, "I really believe he loves the kids and their families. That sets him apart."

Says another: "He's very positive and truthful about what's going on. He was here for seven or eight hours, had dinner with us. My family liked him. My girls liked him. Not everyone is as truthful as they should be. Barry was a straight shooter from the beginning. Everybody's nice because they want something. It's like going to a used-car salesman. They're on you all the time. Barry's not like that. There were not a lot of empty promises. I respect him for that. When he talks to you he talks from the heart."

As for Coach Sacks, he says the best part of recruiting the same area over a number of years is getting to know the people from that region.

"You develop a lot of relationships with young men that you bring to your university and their families," Coach Sacks said. "I love those things about it. And I love the coaches in my area. I don't ever want to give my area up. My personality comes out in recruiting as far as always getting to know the family and the friends. So you get to know and have a personal relationship with as many of those people as you can. And I want them to get to know me and know our football program and what I believe our football program is."

Telling you things the way they needed to be said

2009-03-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Dick Price, former coach and AD at Norfolk State, died last week after a battle with cancer.

At his funeral, 18 people took turns at the podium.

One of them, a former player, said that Coach Price "didn't tell you things the way you wanted to hear them. He told you things the way they needed to be said."

In the program for his funeral, his only daughter had written a poem. It read:

"Your eyes, they gaze upon me, that's my childhood memory...
As I look upon my children, I pray that they can also see
The gaze of my father, living deep within me."

You had to be better than you'd ever been

2009-03-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

Until I read this article, I didn't realize just how great Hall of Famer Bobby Orr was.

An eight-time first-team NHL All-Star, Orr was voted the league's best defensive player eight times.

In 1969-70, "Orr became the only player to sweep the league's top awards — MVP, defenseman, playoff MVP and scoring title — and capped it off by scoring the Stanley Cup -- winning goal over St. Louis in overtime."

Despite his dominance on the ice, "Orr bristled at the attentions of superstardom." According to this article, during the 1974-75 season, "he scored 46 goals but probably gave away a half dozen more by insisting that teammates had deflected the puck in."

One of Orr's former teammates says that Orr "brought others with him; he wanted them involved."

"That's what made him so different: It felt like a five-player stampede moving toward you—and at his pace. He pushed his teammates, [because] you're playing with the best player in the league and he's giving you the puck and you just can't mess it up. You had to be better than you'd ever been."

Looking for guys who have "gotten over themselves"

2009-03-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

Good story in SI about the Spurs and how they're constructed. According to SA coach Gregg Popovich, it's about finding guys who know and accept their roles.

"We get guys who want to do their job and go home and aren't impressed with the hoopla. One of the keys is to bring in guys who have gotten over themselves. They either want to prove that they can play in this league—or they want to prove nothing. They fill their role and know the pecking order. We have three guys who are the best players, and everyone else fits around them."

Don't believe it?

Just listen to what Fabricio Oberto says. Oberto started 64 games for the Spurs last season, averaging more than 20 minutes per game. This season, his minutes have been trimmed (13.1 mpg), though you wouldn't know it from this quote:

"If I'm not playing and the team wins, that's perfect. Look, everyone wants to play, [but] everyone wants to win more."

The people who restrict themselves on time will never advance beyond a certain point

2009-03-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

My heart sank when I heard the news about Chuck Daly, one of my favorite people and caring mentor to me and a lot of other coaches over the years.

In a 2001 article in Investor's Business Daily, Coach Daly provided some insight into his rare communication and persuasive abilities.

According to the article, Coach Daly would sell "his players on the game's less glamorous aspects, such as defense, by seeking their input."

"One of the things I learned along the way is that if you ask a player, for example, about (defending) a pick and roll, you would say to him, 'How do you want to play this?' Once he commits to a way of doing it, he's going to try very hard to make it successful. Harder than when you say, 'We will do it this way.'"

The article describes how Coach Daly "made sure he was up on every aspect of basketball, from statistics to playing styles. That's because he loves the game.

"You've got to have a passion and a belief in what you're trying to sell or teach. I spent my whole life without working, because I had this passion for the game. I was passionate about what I was doing."

"Chuck gained the respect of the players because they had a great deal of respect for his basketball knowledge," said Billy Cunningham, one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history and a former coach of the 76ers for whom Coach Daly worked as an assistant for five years in the late 1970s and early '80s.

Throughout his career, Coach Daly studied the game intensely, dedicating hours to watching games and learning as much as he could from great coaches.

"I started following John Wooden to his clinics. Whenever he went, I went," Daly said. "They used to have a lot of clinics around the country, and I got to be known as a guy that went to every clinic. People thought I was crazy. But what I was trying to do was learn as much as I could about the business.

There is no time limit on your job. The people who restrict themselves on time will never advance beyond a certain stage. None of my success came until after I was 52 years old. I don't think there was anything wrong with that process."

Said Magic SVP Pat Williams, "Chuck would say you cannot be a teacher unless you're a lifelong learner."

As a coach, he has a wonderful way of connecting with players and others that's based on a genuine interest in them.

"If you're going to coach, you've got to be one of the great salesmen. Particularly today, because your players are already millionaires or multimillionaires. So you've really got to sell them on why they have to do something and the reasons for it. You must get into social situations and into in-depth conversations to find out who this person is, what this person is all about, and their likes and dislikes. So you, as the person who is supposed to get this person to perform, can have a better understanding of them. And everybody has different things that push their buttons."

"Chuck had a wonderful ability to relate to players. They also looked at him as a father and as a friend, someone they could talk to if they had a problem," said Coach Cunningham.

Coach Daly's philosophy was grounded in defense and a deep respect for work ethic. In his book, "Daly Life," he wrote how, after studying the game for years, he decided that "defense was the answer to winning."

"My conclusion seemed logical because defense was the one thing that could be consistent every night."

And while talent wins games, Coach Daly said he'd "take a little less talent if a guy has a great work ethic, a great attitude and is a good person."

Perhaps Coach Daly's greatest gift is his outlook on life and the ability to keep things in perspective. Horace Grant, who played for Coach Daly, once said:

"What makes Chuck Daly successful is his attitude toward life. He doesn't make basketball into a life-or-death situation. He's a great coach and most of all a great, great person."

Giving Twitter a shot

2009-03-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Just created a Twitter account. Looking forward to trying it out while at the WCC tourney in Las Vegas this weekend:

www.twitter.com/ericmusselman

As a QB, you can't worry about being liked

2009-03-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

Phil Simms, who led the NY Giants to two Super Bowl victories in the late '80s and early '90s, has some simple advice for Cowboys QB Tony Romo: "Take control."

"When you are the starting quarterback of a NFL team, there will always be factions on your team that don't like you. Some players are jealous of your status. Others think you are overrated. Still others won't like your personality. That's fine. As a quarterback you have to ignore that. You have to lead. You can't worry about being liked.

[Former Giants coach] Bill Parcells once took me aside and told me how disappointed he was in me. He said, 'You used to be a leader but now you are trying to be everyone's friend.' He made the point."

As for DAL coach Wade Phillips, Simms had some advice for him, too.

"Someone has to take complete control of the team. There is no middle ground. There are ways to communicate and still be the man in charge. In Pittsburgh, Mike Tomlin is thought to be a players' coach, but when you walk around there, as I did a bunch last season, you know who is in charge. More importantly, the players do too."

Providing your players with candid feedback

2009-03-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

MIL center Andrew Bogut, out since the end of January with a stress fracture in his lower back, had a private meeting recently with Bucks coach Scott Skiles in which they had a candid discussion.

"It's the first time a coach has brought me in and given me positive and negative feedback, and I appreciated that. It's tough to swallow for some guys, especially some who've been in the league for five or 10 years. But I want to get better as a player. To have a coach tell me things like that was important to me."

Asked how it's been playing for Coach Skiles, Bogut's third coach in four NBA seasons, the 7-foot Bogut brought up two key themes, both central to effective coaching: Accountability and fairness.

"I think a team, and each player individually, must be held accountable by the coach," Bogut said. "Coach Skiles has done a fair job of not just calling out the seventh or eighth guy on the bench, but calling out your first-, second- and third-best players. I think that's been the biggest change. Playing for somebody like that every day, it only makes you better as a player. Your game is only going to get better if you have somebody who's going to stay on you every day. It can get tough, and frustrating on some days, but in the long run, there will come a day in your career when you look back and say, 'That's the guy who helped me become better.'

He's not only a great teacher, but he's fair as well," Bogut said. "The stories you hear aren't always true. Just because he's tough and defensive-minded, as most NBA coaches are, that doesn't mean he's cussing us out every single minute. If we play well, he's very fair to us. if we don't play well, practice will be harder, which is the way it should be. I think he does a good job of balancing that."

A "poor me" attitude shows you don't have control of your emotions

2009-03-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

After watching Kyle Kendrick throw up his hands after giving up two hits in an exhibition game against Team USA, Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee, 51, called time out, hustled out to the mound, and "laid into his 24-year-old pitcher."

"He threw his arms up like, 'Poor me,' and that doesn't show control of your emotions," Dubee said after the Phillies' 9-6 loss to Team USA. "Sometimes, during the course of the season, you're going to face adversity. That's not acceptable behavior, it really isn't. He still needs better body language, better presence. He looks a little frail at times. That's showing the other team you're scuffling, and you don't ever want to let your guard down. . . . We've got to get over that hump, focus, and make another quality pitch."

Coach always said...

2009-03-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

Over the last 10 years, I've tried to make a note of every time a player said, "Coach always says...". I'd see an article, highlight it, and toss it in a file.

During that time, I've come across hundreds of examples across every sport. It's a simple reminder of what messages players retain and recall, sometimes years after they've left the field or the gym.

Here's a selection of them.

~~~~~~~~~~

Coach always said...

"Nobody is going to outwork us, but nobody will have more fun either."

"You have to go out and find the best competition.”

"If you are not doing it the right way, why are you doing it. Learn how to do it the right way and practice it the right way."

"If it was easy, everyone would be doing it."

"You'll be remembered by your last performance."

"They can't cut you if you hustle."

"It's not about how many times you get the ball, it's what you do when you do get the ball."

"Toughness is a skill."

"Don't let anyone know that you're frustrated."

"The only rankings that matter are at the end of the season."

"You can't think you're good. If you think you're good, you're never going to get better."

"Referees can't help you play the game, so don't change your style just to please the referee."

"You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken s--t. You need the athletes and the horses to win."

"If you do the little things right you’ll win."

"The more things you can do, the longer you'll be around here."

"What you put in is what you get out."

"You’re six inches away from success." [Six inches is the distance between your ears.]

"Winning isn't like a light bulb. You can't just switch it on when you need it."

"You don’t improve during the playoffs. You improve at practice."

"If you look good, you play good."

"If you want to be a champ, you have to surround yourself with champs."

"Let them have the excuses for losing. Let us offer the reasons for winning."

"The season is a marathon not a sprint. What matters is that our team gets better with each game."

"Fix the small problems and the big problems correct themselves."

"Don't leave the court on a miss. Always finish with the result you want."

"Life is a journey, not a destination."

"We either get better or we get worse. We never stay the same."

"Hesitate and you're dead."

"Offense sells tickets; defense wins championships."

"You have to go hard on every play because it could be the difference in the game."

"An excuse is the easiest thing in the world to make."

"Smaller players have to play meaner."

"I don't want excuses. I want results."

"What’s a mismatch one way is a mismatch the other."

"Rest on offense. Use all of your energy on defense."

"In every crisis lies opportunity."

"The game doesn't teach character, it reveals it."

"You're a play away from starting."

"Games typically come down to five plays. You either make those plays or you don't."

"Find somebody you admire and try to make yourself like him."

"Keep your mouth shut and keep working."

"If you can't be creative on the basketball court, you should be a chess player."

"You have to rise to the occasion."

"The mental is to the physical as 4 is to 1."

"Just get better every game."

"You never have a rebuilding year, you rebuild within yourselves."

"Concentrate on effort; the results will take care of themselves."

"Stop talking about doing it and do it."

"Good things happen to good people who work hard."

"It's hard being at the top and having to stay at the top."

"If you get a five-point lead, push it up to 10. If you have a 10-point lead, push it to 20."

"The more wind you have, the more wins you'll have."

"Who you are will show up on film."

"Great players make great plays."

"Life is about relationships."

"Turn the page. Good stuff, bad stuff, just turn the page."

"You have to fight the hardest when you're number one."

"Let the system work for you."

"Effort is good, but intelligent effort is what we want."

"As long as we do well as a team, individual things will come."

"The three-point line is the great equalizer in basketball. If you're hitting them, and they aren't, you're more likely to win."

"If we've got five guys running, somebody's going to get rewarded."

"The opponent is nameless and faceless."

"Action is quicker than a reaction."

"If the team is winning, good things will happen to the players."

"When you focus on defense, the offense gets better."

"In a 30-game season, for five games you're better than you really are; for five games you're worse. You are who you really are for about 20 games of the season."

"To win a title, your stars have to be superstars and your superstars have to be Hall of Famers."

'We're not playing our opponent. We're trying to beat the game. The opponent is just another hurdle."

"Have your teammates' back."

"Great teams always make runs."

"No one can stop us from playing defense."

"Process."

"It's a four-quarter game."

"You can't play on a railroad track. You have to be able to change, to do something different."

"Do your job and half of somebody else's."

"The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there."

"It's not the quantity of practice, it's the quality."

"The advantage goes to the aggressor."

"The guys who move ahead are the ones who are ready when their opportunity comes."

"Two or three bad things happen to you every game. You just have to come back and make another play."

"It's like a bundle of sticks. If you are one stick alone, it's easy to break, but if it's 11 sticks all together it's hard to break."

"Come back harder after you're hurt."

"No negative body language."

"You only go as far as your seniors take you."

"Hard work doesn't guarantee success."

"You've got to get wins on the road to be a good team."

"When you reverse the ball, it opens everything up."

"Turn the bad into good."

"Take advantage of every opportunity that comes along. You may only have one chance."

"The way you play in the game is a reflection of how you practice."

"Forget about the last play. Think about the next play."

"There is no such thing as a comfortable lead."

"Playing unselfish is one of the best things you can do in basketball."

"Play within the system."

"A zone is bad a man-to-man."

"If you make a mistake, make an aggressive mistake."

"The game starts in the layup line."

"If you have a passion for something, then do it as hard as you can -- and as well as you can -- every time."

"No possessions off."

"Finish."

"Confidence and success go hand in hand."

"Don't take a rest on the court, rest on the bench."

"'Potential' is a scary word. It takes work to be good."

"The team that makes the most plays and wins the turnover battle is going to win the game."

"Don't put your head down if you miss a shot."

"Pride comes before a fall. Be proud; don't be prideful."

"Emotion comes and goes; passion is forever."

"If you have a good shot, someone else has a great shot."

"The game is in thirds -- one-third offense, one-third defense and one-third special teams."

"There are expectations for the position, not the player."

"The first three minutes of the third quarter can make the difference."

"Enthusiasm is like rippling water; it spreads."

"Mismatches don't beat you, uncontested shots beat you."

"Make the easy play."

"Make them miss, don't hope they miss."

"Throw yourself into the game."

"There are always extra opportunities for people when other people are not hitting shots or making plays."

"You can know everything about defense there is to know, but if you aren’t aggressive, it doesn’t make any difference."

"This is the time when the ants eat the elephants. Gather together and beat the giants."

"Play until your lungs are burning."

"It's better to be a small thing climbing up than a big thing crashing down."

"Would you rather play in front of 200 people or play on the road in a packed house."

"The wrong defense played the right way by the right guys is going to be the right defense."

"The best way to get more minutes is to be more than an offensive or defensive player. Be able to do other things."

"There's a fine line between not having enough enthusiasm and having too much."

"Coaches find ways to keep the game close, but kids are the ones who have to win it in the end."

"Don't let your mind convince you that you can't do something."

"Play with your heart on defense and your head on offense."

"The next play is the biggest play."

"The pain of regret is worse than the pain of disappointment."

"Let the mistakes go because if you hold on to them you're going to keep making mistakes."

"Finish the half strong."

"Shoot the ball in rhythm."

"Practice is not about punishment, it's about improvement."

"How do you want to be remembered?"

"To try to jump into his arms when you're trying to draw the foul."

"In 10, 15, 20 years, we won't remember the scores but the times we had."

"Something that is moving tends to keep moving, and things that are stopped tend to stay stopped."

"Don't fear who you play, even if you know they have an advantage over you."

"He wants to see how you work when you're tired."

Coach always says, 'Every day you work for your job,

"Offense comes and goes, but defense is everlasting."

"Leads are dangerous."

"You can’t control the uncontrollable."

"A silent defense is a flat defense."

"We have to take care of home and sneak a few on the road."

"Offense sells tickets, defense wins games and rebounding wins championships."

"If you make a mistake, don't lie down and cry."

"The more players you can play the more successful the team will be."

"It's all preseason until the playoffs."

"If you can't be on time, be early."

"Stay calm and play your game."

"Every play matters."

"Things in the past don't matter, it's what's going on now that counts."

"Don't take anyone for granted."

"To apply guard pressure, because it makes it hard for the opponent to start their offense."

"If someone hits you, hit back."

"To be ready on the bench."

"Keep a cool head in a hot situation."

"Not to settle for jump shots -- attack the basket."

"Rebounding is an attitude."

"The best offense is fueled by defense."

"Not to think about ourselves; think about your teammates."

"There are only two directions we can go -- up or down."

"When we're down somebody has to step up."

"Guys coming off the bench have to bring energy."

"Don’t let the day go by."

"Not to be afraid to win."

"To imagine the one or two people that would most inspire you to perform at your best sitting in the crowd watching you play."

"The best man plays."

"Never get too high or too low."

"A game is just a practice with more people."

"We need to have a balance."

"Shoot the ball with confidence."

"Play with poise."

"Great teams find a way to win when their shots aren't falling."

"Playing a privilege, not a right."

"Pressure doesn't like pressure."

"Assume a shot is going to be missed."

"The first one on the floor gets the ball."

"The lower man wins."

Don't do things that take energy away from the team

2009-03-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

Over on Hoops World, Travis Heath has a good quote from DEN coach George Karl:

"Don't do things that take energy away from the team. I call them de-energizers. Sometimes the way you say good morning in the morning can be a de-energizer. If you're going to play in June, you can't de-energize yourself. Mopiness, or being late, just little things of not remembering that we're practicing at 10:00 instead of 11:00, all those things take some energy from somebody. When you're the captain of the team and you're the best player on the team, it's best said that you should be serving us to energize us and not de-energize us."

The breakdown of individual egos and the reassembly into a team

2009-03-06T08:38:00.000-08:00

As the U of Washington closes in on a Pac-10 title, Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar says the most satisfying thing is seeing how "everyone can somehow be on the same page."

"One of the most difficult things to do as a staff is to get everyone on the same page, because everyone has their own agenda. To get players to think of others, and to think of others in the same one way, is difficult. I feel like this team is what every coaching staff would aspire to. So it is very, very gratifying.""

As a side note, columnist Art Thiel, who's written for the Seattle paper for almost 30 years, contends that "the breakdown of individual egos and the reassembly into a team is about 90 percent of game coaching at the college level."

Nearly every blue-chip recruit who comes to a school in a big-time conference thinks he's an NBA prospect. Nope. Nearly all of them are wrong. Over the past 15 or so years, the influx of talent from around the world has significantly reduced the already small chance of making it in the NBA, although a good living can now be made in many other countries.

The "see" and "listen" of concentration

2009-03-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

After posting about Bobby Knight earlier this morning, I grabbed his 2002 book "Knight: My Story" off the shelf.

Here's a good excerpt from the book.

~~~~~~~~~~

To me, concentration is basketball in a nutshell. Concentration leads to anticipation, which leads to recognition, which leads to reaction, which leads to execution.

The concentration I'm talking about involves four key words.

The first two are "look" and "see." Everybody who plays basketball looks, but very few players see. Very few players train themselves to use their eyes. Not everybody has the same shooting ability as everybody else, nor the same size, nor the same quickness.

But each person who's playing this game can develop the ability to see what's happening on the court -- see the open man, see where to take the ball, see the guy who's being defended, see who's open on the break.

"Hear" and "listen" are the next two words. Most people only hear. The key is listening to what you're being told, what's being said, what is expected of you in your role as part of any team.

A basketball player who learns to see and listen has improved tremendously without doing a single thing involving physical skills. Once learned, seeing and listening are valuable traits for anyone doing anything.

Wanting to win as long as I can keep doing what I want to do

2009-03-06T05:52:00.001-08:00

Saw a clip where former Dallas receiver Terrell Owens said, "I just want to win."

Then I thought about something Doc Rivers said last month:

"I hear so many times guys say they want to win... I want to be a winner, but what they're really saying is they want to win so long as it's comfortable for them. What they're really saying is, 'I want to win it as long as I can keep doing what I do.'"

Owens talks about wanting to win, but his actions say otherwise. He's putting conditions on it. What he's really saying is that he wants to win "as long as I can keep doing what I do."

That's not how it works.

Yes, you might be able to keep doing what you like to do or what you're comfortable doing and the team has a good season. After all, when Owens was with the Cowboys they won lots of regular season games.

But when it comes to winning championships, it often boils down to who is willing to sacrifice the most in order to win.

It's the coach's job to know who needs more structure, less structure, more challenge, or more support

2009-03-06T05:18:00.001-08:00

Interesting article here about a Harvard professor uses coaches Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski to demonstrate that there's no "one size fits all" leadership style.

Different styles, yes, but the results are similar: After long careers, both have similar win-loss records for their teams and are acknowledged as top coaches in the collegiate ranks. So what do Knight and Krzyzewski tell us about leadership?

The professor contends that your beliefs about human nature "influences your leadership style."

"If you believe people are fundamentally good—good meaning that they're trying to do their best, they're self-motivated, they want to perform—then your fundamental leadership style will be one way. It will be empowering them, getting obstacles out of the way, and setting high goals while maintaining standards.

"If you believe people are fundamentally bad—if you believe people are constantly looking to get over and get by and won't do anything unless they're watched—then you'll tend to lead with a very transactional management style that's built primarily around rewards and punishments. Tight supervision, a controlling type of leadership style characterized by a great deal of social distance between leaders and led."

When the professor asks his students which coach -- Knight or Krzyzewski -- they'd hired, responses vary, often by age, with younger students (with little real-world experience) perceiving Coach Knight "as little more than a bully."

But then the older students in the class "tell stories of doing their best work under a mentor with Coach Knight's tough-love approach. Some also recall their experiences as managers when a stern approach helped set an employee on a more productive course." They also hear about how many of Coach Knight's former players consider him a close friend.

According to the professor, "The ones that say they couldn't imagine learning from someone like a Coach Knight, they hear these stories and start questioning, 'Well, maybe there is another way of thinking about leading.'"

The idea is to get students "to consider that there are alternative ways of influencing people, and that different people respond to different styles."

Sure, Knight's older-generation, throw-the-chair leadership style has gone out of favor, but a disciplined, top-down approach can still be effective in particular situations. Some employees work better when structure is imposed on them, [the professor] observes. Others crave autonomy or teamwork.

The professor has personal experience with Coach Knight as he attended a summer camp and Coach Knight was leading drills one day.

"I was in high school, and what I remember was he'd throw all the balls out [of the gym] and lock the doors. He'd only do defensive positioning drills. As a young kid all you want to do is shoot the ball and play games.

But for a half day, he would just have us doing defensive positioning drills, never touching a basketball, and he'd run around and cuss us out and keep us in the right defensive position. It was all about drills, it was all about discipline.

In retrospect, he got us to work on the fundamentals of basketball, the things we didn't want to do. We dreaded the day that he would come to camp. In the end he made us all better defensive players because of it.

There are skills... that you only get through repetition, drill, habit, and discipline. A lot of times we're not real good at those. So having an external force, whether it's a leader or a compensation system, forces you to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do, the mundane things that make you a better person, a better leader, or a better basketball player. Coach Knight was good at it.

There was no question that his approach to teaching defensive positioning drills was probably more effective than if Coach K had come in for half a day and tried to inspire us to keep our butts down and our palms out."

The right leadership style depends, in great part, on the situation, according to the professor. It's the leaders job to know "who needs more structure, or less structure, or more love, more challenge, or more support." Leaders must "accurately read relevant situational demands... then appropriately adapt" how they lead.

All you can do as a coach is ask players to give what they have

2009-03-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

What a season it's been for Gary Williams at Maryland.

The Terps won their first four games of the season, including beating No. 6 Michigan State by 18. On January 7, they were 11-3. Since then, they've gone 7-8, though they upset No. 3 UNC and nearly upset No. 10 Wake Forest during that 15-game stretch.

A Washington Post column last month described the Terps as a"workmanlike, undersized unit" featuring just one senior and noted that Coach Williams' "critics charged that he either can't or won't recruit the talent he needs to be more competitive."

But the columnist adds: "So what did Williams do? He coached his team up, that's what."

Throughout it all, Coach Williams, who is in his 20th season at UM, has kept his team focused. After the close loss Tuesday night to Wake, he said his team has given all they had.

"This is what it's about: all you can do as a coach is ask them to give what they have -- and this group has done that. It's never because of effort with them. As a coach, that's what you live for."

[Thanks to Zak Boisvert at Fordham for passing along!]

Who is your "chemistry coach"?

2009-03-05T06:07:00.001-08:00

Just getting into Urban Meyer's book "Urban's Way," which was published last year.

About 50 pages in, there's a great quote from Hiram de Fries (pictured here), a former lineman for Colorado State and retired oil executive.

When discussing how "one key ingredient to winning is [a team's] so-called chemistry," Coach Meyer says that, early in his career, "I always wanted to have an older guy as the chemistry coach on my staff to help us all get on the same page. Hiram is my chemistry coach."

But, according to Hiram, there's one thing that, regardless of chemistry, keeps it all together:

"Winning," he says, "prevents anarchy."

A lot of people talk about leadership; not that many actually do it

2009-03-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

A friend (of a friend) recently returned from Insead, a respected international business school near Paris. The school is led by Frank Brown, who spent 25 years with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

He contends that while "a lot of people talk about leadership... not that many actually do it." In fact, he says, many "leaders" are leaders in name only (LINO).

"In my view LINOs don’t really want your opinion, they don’t really want your input, they don’t really want you on their team. They’d like you to go away and do your job. There is a failing of CEOs that surround themselves with people who aren’t as smart as they are and therefore they think they’re ensuring they’re going to stay in the top spot, but in reality they’re setting themselves and their teams up for failure."

Brown believes that leaders need to assemble teams (or coaching staffs) "with differing skills and backgrounds."

"Diversity is an absolute necessity for a team, and when I say diversity, I mean it in every sense of the word: gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, culture, personality type (and) area of expertise. You’ve got to surround yourself with people that are diverse, have very, very broad perspectives in terms of educational background, in terms of their cultural background."

When evaluating point guards, the key is whether they make their teammates better

2009-03-05T05:15:00.001-08:00

In case you missed it, Jason Kidd just passed the great Oscar Robertson on the NBA's all-time assist list. He'll likely pass Magic Johnson this season, as well, to move into the third spot among assist leaders. [John Stockton is the NBA's all-time assist leader with 15,806.]

But as this article by Jan Hubbard points out, Kidd is more than someone who distributes the ball. He "is the current active leader among all NBA players in career steals," and "among point guards, Kidd is the third best rebounder in history. Only Oscar Robertson (7.5) and Magic Johnson (7.2) are ahead of Kidd (6.7)."

According to longtime NBA coach Del Harris, the measuring stick for point guards is how they impact the guys they play with.

"When we evaluate point guards, the biggest thing is whether they make their teammates better. And when you have 10,000 assists, you obviously made a lot of folks better."

[Kidd, by the way, is quick to deflect praise for reaching the 10,000-assist mark, saying, that it's "a credit to every teammate I’ve ever played with because I can’t get an assist unless someone else scores."]

NJ Nets coach Lawrence Frank describes Kidd as "an elite defender" with "unbelievable strong hands."

"He has a sixth sense about where the ball’s going to be. So he gets to virtually every loose ball. He anticipates where the ball is coming off the rim and he can anticipate where passes are going."

Much of what Kidd does on the court doesn't show up on the stat sheet. Hubbard contends that Kidd is often underappreciated because he "makes so many plays with no TV cameras focused on him."

According to DAL owner Mark Cuban, it's not until you see him in person that "you get a full appreciation for what he does. No one covers the court from end to end like J-Kidd."

"Unless you understand the game and unless you are there, you don’t see all the things he does," said Nets president Rod Thorn. "He’s got an innate sense like a Wayne Gretzky in hockey. He just knows where the ball is coming and because of his strength, he’s always able to get it. If you see him and a big man get to the ball and get their hands on it at the same time, Jason’s usually going to get it. The great thing about his statistics is that he doesn’t care about them. He doesn’t care if other point guards have great stats against him. He just wants to win. And that will to win is what has set him apart and made him a great player."

Nearly 36-years-old, Kidd says he stays in shape by getting plenty of sleep, working out in the pool (to reduce stress on his knees, laying off fried foods, and not eating much red meat.

As for his hands, he "attributes his strength to his father, who kept horses in the backyard of their Oakland home when Kidd was growing up."

"I always had to do chores and lift bales of hay," Kidd said. "I was always scared of the hooks, so I would just lift the hay with my hands. Doing that sort of thing helped develop what some people have called heavy hands."

Improvement in any sport depends on physiology, technology, coaching, and equipment

2009-03-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

Today's NY Times asks how it's possible that, when it comes to free throw shooting, basketball players today have about as much success as the players of 40 years ago.

We run faster, jump higher, have better shoes and uniforms, train harder (and smarter), eat better, yet in four decades, we've still not improved as FT shooters.

The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But free-throw shooting represents a stubbornly peculiar athletic endeavor. As a group, players have not gotten better. Nor have they become worse.

According to Southern Utah coach Roger Reid (pictured above), "A lot of coaches give it lip service, but when you say that games are won and lost at the free-throw line, you better back it up." Coach Reid contends that "individual players and teams can improve free-throw shooting through better technique and repetition."

One reason why more teams/players don't work on FT shooting is that "there is little correlation between free-throw percentages and winning percentages. Only one of the 25 best shooting teams, No. 2 North Carolina, is also in the latest Associated Press top 25 rankings."

That is why, despite accounting for more than 20 percent of scoring in men’s college basketball and just below 20 percent in the N.B.A., free throws receive a fraction of the attention from coaches, players and fans. That is, until something considered free proves costly. [Like when Memphis missed "4 of 5 free throws in the final 72 seconds against Kansas, which had made a late 3-point shot to tie the game and won in overtime."]

One professor who's studied sports statistics extensively has found that "widespread improvement over time in any sport... depends on a combination of four factors: physiology, technology or innovation, coaching, and equipment."

Those factors can help explain why swimming records seemingly fall at every international event, runners broke through the four-minute-mile barrier, field-goal kickers are more accurate than ever, bowling a 300 game is not as unlikely as it once was, and home run numbers surged in major league baseball.

As the professor puts it, "There are not a lot of those four things that would help in free-throw shooting," except for coaching.

Coaches admit to baselines of acceptability for their players and teams. The average, apparently, is about 75 percent in the N.B.A. and 69 percent in college basketball. When numbers slip, time is devoted to improvement. When they rebound, the game’s other facets take precedence.

D-League guard Blake Ahearn, the best FT shooter in NCAA history (95%) says that rather than devoting time to free-throw shooting in practice, coaches "want to work on defenses and offenses and schemes."
But as the NY Times article concludes, "even practice has never made perfect."

The general rule is that players, in games, shoot 10 percentage points below their practice average. The difference is pressure and fatigue, hard to replicate in an empty arena.

Take advantage of your strengths and hide your weaknesses

2009-03-04T06:47:00.000-08:00

After winning AP national coach of the year honors last season at Drake, first-year Providence coach Keno Davis, son of longtime Iowa coach Dr. Tom Davis, guided the Friars to an 81-73 upset win over Pitt last week.

According to this story in "The Daily Orange," an independent student newspaper for Syracuse University, upon arriving at Providence in April of last year, Coach Davis "retooled his team's offensive and defensive systems" and "learned to adjust to the athletes' playing style."

"You have your basic principles that you want to stick to," Davis said. "But you also make sure that you want to take advantage of the strengths of your team and try to hide your weaknesses as much as you can."

According to the Daily Orange piece, Providence's "weaknesses were hard to hide at first. The season started slow: An ominous manner with a 70-66 loss to Northeastern. But instead of telling the team to be better for the next game, Davis adjusted his goals for the Friars."

"By the time the conference rolls around we have to improve," Davis said. "Not only did we set out a goal for improvement, we put a timeline by it and explained it to the team at what level we felt like we needed to be at to be able to compete against the best of the Big East."

Says senior guard Weyinmi Efejuku, Coach Davis doesn't pull any punches.

"He doesn't sugar coat it but he tells us we're talented players," Efejuku said. "He tells us to play our strengths and puts us in great positions to use our strengths. He's just very effective in his strategies and it's working out well."

Improving your strengths

2009-03-04T06:29:00.001-08:00

Roger Federer has won 13 Grand Slam titles, second only to Pete Sampras who won 14. Federer won five straight Wimbledon titles (2003-07) and five straight U.S. Open titles (2004-08).

After losing in five sets to Rafael Nadal last month in the Australian Open finals, Federer was asked what he thought he needed to work on:

"You can’t win everything. The idea is to take positives from those setbacks and work at getting better. I have never believed in working on my weaknesses. My serve and my forehand are my strengths and I work on them to get better."

[Here's a great highlight video of Federer.]

Being negative is a habit

2009-03-04T06:11:00.000-08:00

The AP's Doug Ferguson wrote a good story about Geoff Ogilvy, who won the Accenture Match Play Championship last week (he also won it in 2006) and has won three times in his last seven outings.

After not "getting the results he expected his first four years on the PGA Tour," Ogilvy changed the way he manages his emotions on the golf course so they're not "dragging him down."

As Ferguson writes, for Ogilvy, "the trick was learning to like himself on the course."

Ogilvy says he gradually went from being "not very nice to myself on the golf course to being quite nice to myself on the golf course."

"Being negative on a golf course is a habit. You hit a shot and complain about it, and that's just the way you play golf. It takes a while to change that."

Tracking a team's effort

2009-03-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

Last night, the Big Ten Network had a story on the University of Minnesota's "Hustle Chart."

I emailed Ryan Saunders, a graduate manager on Tubby Smith's staff at UM, asking about the chart. He was nice enough to email me back with some details.

During every game, the UM staff charts steals, blocks, charges, deflections, and hustle plays.

According to Coach Saunders, it's "not uncommon for Coach Smith (pictured above) to ask during timeouts how many deflections we have" as it serves as a tool for gauging the team's overall effort. Not surprisingly, "much of the time, [deflections] coincide with the score."

To hold players accountable, the team posts the "Hustle Chart" in its film room that lists the best offensive rebounder, screener, player who took a charge, hustle player of the game, defensive player of the game, deflections, assist/TO ratio, and blocks leader. [They also maintain an updated cumulative deflection chart in the locker room that highlights numbers from the last game and season totals.]

"Players always are aware when they do not make the board, and we are sure to point it out when somebody is dominating the hustle chart or if their name is missing."

18 Old-School Values

2009-03-03T11:18:00.001-08:00

From Coach Silver's email, a great weekly read, comes coach Herb Welling's list of "old school basketball values.

[Here's a story about Coach Welling, pictured here.]

Basketball's Old-School Values

We value the ball.
We take good shots.
We share the ball and make the extra pass.
We sprint back on defense and we don't give up lay-ups.
We defend the ball and help our teammate guarding the ball.
We contest shots without fouling.
We box out.
We rebound and run the floor.
We dive for loose balls.
We take charges.
We respect the game, officials, coaches, opponents, and our teammates.
We have good body language.
We compete hard and we play with passion.
We have no excuses and we have "next play" mentality.
We listen with our eyes and our ears.
We only care about one stat -- the final score.
We are responsible and accountable to the team -- on and off the floor.
We play as a team -- the we is great than the me.

Everyone is on one page

2009-03-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

The first time Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury played together was in 1996 with the T-wolves and Flip Saunders.

KG was 20 years old; Marbury was still a teenager.

Now, 13 years later, what did Garnett tell Marbury about what to expect in Boston?

"He spoke about how much fun it’s been and how much fun I’m going to have and how basketball is fun again and you feel that. You feel it when you come into the locker room. Just everything about the organization – everyone is on one page, there’s no division, everybody is trying to do one thing and that’s win a basketball game to win a championship."

BOS coach Doc Rivers "explained to Marbury that being a Celtic means putting the team first and the individual second, and he believes that Marbury has bought into that team concept."

"This whole Steph thing is not about Steph," Rivers said. "It’s not about Rajon [Rondo]. This whole thing is more of a statement on our team. It really is and whether or not we have the type of team that is about zero [individual identity] and that is all about winning. To me, it’s more a testimony on that."

To get into shape after not playing for more than a year, Marbury trained in Manhattan Beach (just south of LAX) with Aim Sports Medicine.

Marbury, who "lost more than 10 pounds over the course of his training," worked on his core, ran and hiked the Runyan Mountains, and did a number of nontraditional exercises.

"I was lifting 100-pound boulders. I was doing things that I’ve never done before like swinging sledge hammers, using kettlebells. It changed the structure of my body. I lost a lot of weight and I got stronger."

Can a team "peak" too soon?

2009-03-03T06:14:00.000-08:00

Michigan coach John Beilein (pictured here) was asked recently whether his team, which was 10-2 on December 29, had perhaps "peaked" too soon.

“The peaking question has always been interesting with me,” he said. “What do you do? Do you tell your team not to go too hard in December because you want to peak later on? I don’t think there’s a key to it. I think you just have to make sure your team has a good combination of not losing their edge and also making sure they have enough rest.”

There was a good opinion piece on ESPN a couple of years ago that addressed the issue of "peaking." Here's a key excerpt:

~~~~~~~~~~

Look, this isn't swimming, where you measure yourself against a clock and can taper your workouts in an attempt to achieve maximum performance at a desired time. (Even then, it doesn't always work.)

In basketball, you want to win every game. You want to get better every day. I don't get this "peaked too soon" malarkey. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's silly to suggest it can be prevented.

Again, what can a coach do? Go into practice one day in December or January and say, "You know what? We're playing too good right now. I need you guys to stay in neutral or regress a little and then start improving again in, say, mid-February."

God didn't bless me with athleticism; he blessed me with intelligence and fundamentals

2009-03-03T05:10:00.000-08:00

Maryland center Dave Neal is listed as 6-7 on the roster, though he admits he's closer to 6-6.

The only senior on the Terps roster, Neal is "a vital element and an embodiment of an underdog Terp team."

"I would love to have athleticism - just a tiny bit. And if I did, I think it would make me a whole different player," he said. "But God didn't bless me with athleticism; he blessed me with the intelligence and the fundamentals of the game."

Growing up, Neal was a standout goalkeeper in soccer, an outstanding swimmer, and, as a 6-foot-3 12-year-old, a homerun-hitting baseball player. ("He was so big that if he just made contact he would hit home runs," his mother, Kathy Neal, said.)

Despite friendly advice to push their son to play football, Neal's parents had other ideas.

"All of my friends all said, 'Why are you wasting your time? Get him into football. The kid can never make it [in basketball]. He doesn't jump very high,'" the elder Dave Neal said. "I said, 'I think it could work.'"

After a s0-so high school season as a junior, Neal had a break-out year as a senior, averaging 20 points and 13 rebounds to lead his team to a 31-3 record. Neal's father remembers when Maryland coach Gary Williams called to offer his son a scholarship.

"It was kind of a tear-jerking experience," his father said. "Dave has internal expectations, but he probably doesn't share them because sometimes they're a little high-standard."

During his first three seasons at Maryland, "Neal was relatively ineffective (due mostly to a lingering shoulder injury), averaging 1.6 points in 62 games. When he entered the game, he was often greeted by the fans to mock cheers. He was the slow and heavy white guy whom people poked fun at. Yet he was the Terps' lone player in his class."

One of Neal's teammates notes how much Neal has developed in four years.

"It's unbelievable - I came here [his sophomore year], he didn't play at all. [Last year] he played a little bit. Now he's just our center. It's funny, but he works hard. A lot of people don't give him credit, but he's a smart player."

On a typical night in the ACC, Neal faces centers who are two-, three-, and four-inches taller than he is. "Without the size or leaping ability to collect droves of boards, Neal focuses on boxing out his assignment and lets his teammates control most rebounds."

Before the Terps played North Carolina for a second time, Neal said he'd use his intelligence and positioning to stop leading scorer Tyler Hansbrough. He did just that, limiting Hansbrough to 11 points and drawing a key charge from the reigning player of the year in the second half. [Down by nine at halftime, Maryland won in OT.]

According to this article, "Neal has held ground by acknowledging his shortcomings. He fronts his opponent when he can to deny entry passes. When stuck behind, he nudges and prods his man ever so subtly, until the basket is further than an explosive power move away."

"When you're not as big or whatever, then position becomes important," Coach Williams said. "If you're much bigger or much quicker or you've got much greater leaping ability, then you can kind of use your athletic ability to play against a player. But Dave's not that type of player, so Dave has to work hard on maintaining his position with his man and the ball."

Offensively, Neal utilizes what Williams has described as "YMCA moves," because they're typically in the arsenal of rec league players twice Neal's age. His shots are based on timing and leverage, rather than brute force. And by now, opponents have learned that leaving Neal open along the perimeter is unwise. He is shooting 32.3 percent from three-point range, third best on the team.

Neal's impact has been felt beyond the box score. His teammates say he's the genuine leader of a scrappy Maryland team.

"Dave puts this team together," sophomore forward Dino Gregory said. "He puts the team on his back when he can. He's an extremely hard worker, and that shows on the court."

Says junior forward Landon Milbourne: "He's always one of those guys to speak up and tell what's on his mind and say we need to calm down or we need to get focused or we need to do this and that. And it really helps, especially coming from a guy that's been here so long and has been through a lot with this program."

WCC postseason honors

2009-03-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

The West Coast Conference announced its All-Conference teams today.

Having done some color work for Comcast SportsNet this year on WCC games, I had a chance to watch the league's top players throughout the season. For what it's worth, here are my votes (and a few notes) for the postseason awards:

~~~~~~~~~~

Coach of the Year: Mark Few, whose Gonzaga team went undefeated (14-0) in conference play. Eric Reveno (Portland) and Randy Bennett (St. Mary's) did excellent jobs, as well.

Player of the Year: Gonzaga's Matt Bouldin (pictured here) with John Bryant as the runner-up.

Freshman of Year: Santa Clara guard Kevin Foster. The leading freshman scorer in the WCC, Foster is a big-time shooter who had 31 points (15 off of 3-pointers) against St. Mary's and had half of his team's 62 points.

Toward the end of the year, Foster was playing 38-40 minutes and looked tired in the game against Portland. He has a moter and competes. He's still learning to play the PG position (he had 7 turnovers vs Portland and made a critical baseline out of bounds TO).

In pre-game warmups, he really shot the ball well, but struggled once the Portland game started, hitting just 1-12 from the field.

Foster has lost 15 pounds since the summer and reduced his body fat from 18% to 12% (and is aiming to get down to 6% body fat).

Foster's not the only good freshman guard in the WCC. Jarred DuBois (LMU), Keion Bell (Pepperdine), and Kwame Vaughn (USF) are also excellent young guards. Strong and athletic, Bell is a good slasher and solid offensive rebounder. Vaughn is an athletic slasher and scorer who can score off the bounce and pull-up.

Newcomer of Year: Portland PG T.J. Campbell with Foster (Santa Clara) as a close second. Campbell, who is built like Jameer Nelson, shot over 65% from 3 in the second half of conference play. He does a great job of running Portland's team, always under control and taking shots only when needed.

Defensive Player of Year: Diamon Simpson (St. Mary's)

WCC All-Conference:

PG Patrick Mills (St. Mary's) -- Just a sophomore, Mills is a terrific leader who's been injured for most of the WCC season. He has NBA speed and quickness and has improved his outside jump shot, though he could still improve his range. Mills also must improve his assist-to-turnover ratio and his point guard decision-making skills.

OG Matt Bouldin (Gonzaga) -- Bouldin makes winning plays for his team. A junior, he's well-rounded player and the best player on the WCC's best team. And he's getting better.

F Josh Heytvelt (Gonzaga) -- An active, athletic 4-man who has range on his shot. A potential NBA second round pick, he's neither a 5-man nor a 3-man in the pros -- Heytvelt is strictly a PF. He can stretch out the defense on the pick-and-pop.

F Diamon Simpson (St. Mary's) -- An undersized power forward who creates extra possessions for his team, Simpson has a great reaction to the ball. He's an excellent range-rebounder who gets balls out of his area. He's also a strong on-ball defender. Offensively, Simpson has the ability to beat bigger, slower power forwards off the dribble and has improved his mid-range game.

C John Bryant (Santa Clara) -- Bryant puts up big numbers, including 48 career double-doubles. He's a big man with soft hands and a great touch who can dominate at this level. Bryant is the best overall center in the WCC. However, in a Feb. 26 game against Gonzaga, Bryant was totally outplayed by Josh Heytvelt, a marginal NBA prospect. In that game, Bryant was in foul trouble and was ineffective.

Bryant is an NBA project. He needs two years in an NBA setting, working with strength coach and developing in NBA practices. He could drop 10-20 pounds. Because he's graduating two months early, he has time to get ready for Portsmouth, devoting his full attention to basketball.

At this point, I don't feel Bryant is an NBA player. He lacks athleticism, speed, and lateral quickness. He's put up great numbers in a mid-major conference and could be a good a mid-level European league player.

Second Team:

PG Jeremy Pargo (Gonzaga) -- Point with good size who is a potential second-round pick. Pargo, a senior, might be a good D-League player, but he will need to prove himself at that level in order to earn a call-up. He must improve as a shooter, but he gets in the lane. He's also an excellent defender.

G/F Austin Daye (Gonzaga) -- Daye needs to stay in school and improve his strength and gain weight. Further, he's got to get tougher and work on his body language in reaction to an official's call. He has terrific upside with his lenghth and skills.

PF Gyno Pomare (San Diego) -- 4-man who has low- to mid-level Euro League skills. Must learn play hard for the entire game.

F Dior Lowhorn (San Francisco) -- The most versatile player in the WCC and the league's leading scorer. Lowhorn is a tweener at the next level.

C Omar Samhan (St. Mary's) -- Averages almost a double-double. Samhan will be the best back-to-the-basket big man in the league next season and should have a big senior season. He's strong and physical with good hands and solid footwork.

Honorable Mention: Nik Raivio (Portland) and T.J. Campbell (Portland). Raivio is a nice college player who does a great job rebounding from the off-guard spot and has a nice off-the-dribble pull-up jumper.

Top 5 pro prospects:

1. Patty Mills (St. Mary's)
2. Austin Daye (Gonzaga)
3. Josh Heytvelt (Gonzaga)
4. John Bryant (Santa Clara)
5. Jeremy Pargo (Gonzaga)

Four players to watch in the future:

1. Andy Poling (Gonzaga)
2. Demetri Goodson (Gonzaga)
3. Tim Williams (St. Mary's)
4. Drew Viney (Loyola Marymount)

On defense, you have to get up and get into people

2009-03-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Look at MIL's 29-33 record and remember that this year's team has already won three more games than it did all of last season when they lost their last eight to finish 26-56.

And keep in mind that they're missing Dream Teamer Michael Redd and Andrew Bogut (12 ppg/10 rpg), both of whom have gone down with injuries.

In Sunday's win over the Wizards, MIL's starting lineup featured former D-League PG Ramon Sessions, rookie Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, center Francisco Elson, along with veterans Richard Jefferson, and Charlie Villanueva.

According to Villanueva, the key has been the team's new coach, Scott Skiles.

"It starts with Coach Skiles. He believes that whoever is out there on the floor can win the game, and that has become contagious. The easiest thing to do would have been to mail in the season. We've been dealt a bad hand as far as the injuries to Andrew and Mike, but the fact that we've kept this team together and believed in one another shows a maturity on our part."

Coach Skiles says that while the players have changed, the team has maintained its approach, one that emphasizes defense and ball movement.

"The actors have changed, but the script is the same. We're going to try to keep the ball in the hands of our best offensive players and live and die with the decisions they make. Good teams generally can weather injuries, at least for a while, because they have a good system."

"I think you have to get up and get into people," Skiles said of his defensive philosophy. "You can't allow people to penetrate in the paint and you have to guard -- the post-ups, the pick-and-rolls and the pin-downs. We do it a certain way. There are only a handful of schemes most teams are using anyway. It just depends on the personnel on a given night."

As this article in SI points out, MIL's defense is improving quickly. "After ranking 23rd in points allowed and 30th in field-goal defense last season, they have improved to 16th and 14th, respectively, this season."

[Sessions says Coach Skiles is "real big on being in the right place at the right time."]

One scout contends that Coach Skiles' reputation as "a hard guy to deal with" isn't entirely fair.

"If you listen to him during games, he's an encouraging guy," the scout said. "He knows you're going to miss shots, so he doesn't get wrapped up in that. As long as you're playing hard, he's out there with you, or you're not going to play, no matter who it is. And they play hard all the time."

It's easy to come back, but hard to come back and win

2009-03-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

In a January game at Montana, Northern Colorado was down by 16 at the half. Tad Boyle's team rallied in the second half, outscoring Montana, 38-31, but it wasn't enough as UM handed UNC its 13th loss of the season.

After the game, Coach Boyle, who played for Larry Brown at Kansas in the early 1980s, remembered something his former coach was fond of saying.

"Coach (Larry) Brown always used to tell our teams at Kansas that it's easy to come back. It's hard to come back and win, though. And that's why a lot of teams can't do it. We came back and cut the deficit a few different times today, but it happened there at the end when basically the game was over."

Sacrificing for the betterment of the team

2009-03-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

Like most 10-year vets, Wally Szczerbiak seen a lot during his NBA career.

As a 22-year-old rookie in 1999, he was a member of a 50-win MIN team, starting 53 games alongside Kevin Garnett, Sam Mitchell, and Joe Smith.

Last season, in SEA, he played for a time with the Sonics, which won just 20 games, then finished the season in CLE, helping the Cavs to the Eastern Conference Finals.

But this season has been one to remember because, as LeBron James puts it, Szczerbiak has had to "sacrifice... for the betterment of the team."

CLE coach Mike Brown "has used Szczerbiak at shooting guard, small forward and power forward. He has counted on him for offense and defense, as well as rebounding on both ends of the court."

This has required Szczerbiak to become "a student of the game" and take "a completely selfless attitude, know it's all about the team and all about winning."

"Wherever you need that guy to come in and plug a hole, I've been capable of doing that. Whatever we need, I'm there to do -- anything that's going to get me out there on the floor for more minutes. I'm just going to work my butt off, and we can pose matchup problems on the other end, too. Mike's such a good coach that he realizes that. If I'm guarding a center, the center's got to guard me out there on the perimeter."

Being a defensive guy is what sets you apart

2009-03-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Before yesterday's disappointing loss at Kansas, Missouri guard J.T. Tiller had helped his team to seven straight wins

As this writer puts it, Tiller is "the tenacious face of coach Mike Anderson's fire-drill defense... the quintessential Anderson player. Unselfish and unsung. Responsible and relentless."

Tiller, who Coach Anderson refers to as his "glue guy," says his upbringing (his father was in the U.S. Navy for 20 years) helped shape his game.

"I just like to bring that energy and frustrate the other guard, not let him do what he came into the game expecting to do. I know my team counts on me to do it, and I want to do that job. That is something I was always brought up and taught to do. Everybody can learn how to play offense, but being that defensive guy is what sets you apart from the other guys. If I can keep their main scorer from getting his average, that gives the other team grief."

Allowing players to see the human side of their coach

2009-03-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

Saw where Yankees manager Joe Girardi, borrowing a page from NY Giants coach Tom Coughlin's team chemistry playbook, recently "surprised his players with an impromptu field trip, loading more than 60 players and the entire coaching staff on a bus and heading for a Tampa-area pool hall."

Girardi "wanted to reward his players for their hard work with a day off from camp, and in the process, allow them to get to know each other in a non-baseball setting."

According to this story in the NY Daily News, "People familiar with the Giants said those events not only helped players grow closer but, more importantly, allowed them to observe a human side of Coughlin that had not previously been seen. For Girardi, who often carried a drill sergeant label with him during his first year in the manager's office, a little good will can't hurt."

"I've never been on a team that did something like this before, but I often wondered why," Girardi said. "There are a lot of other sports that do these types of things; get away from the park, enjoy each other off the field like you do on the field and get to know each other. Every year that you're here as a manager, you want to have more and more knowledge about your players and their personalities. You want to feel closer in a sense to your players so that you can read between the lines most of the time."

Listening to Yankee players, the experience made a real impact on the team.

Mark Teixeira said it was "probably the most fun I've ever had in spring training in my whole career."

Said Johnny Damon: "Today is one of those days that, as a ballplayer, you'll never forget. I don't think any team has ever really done this. It's a day I'll never forget. It says a lot about Joe. He knows we've been working hard and he rewarded us with a day off. For Joe to let us take a day off from practice like that, it makes you want to work even harder for him. I think everybody had a great time."

Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him

2009-03-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Thought this was a good post for a Sunday afternoon: A few quotes from Randy Howe's book "Coachisms: Winning Words From the Country's Finest Coaches."

~~~~~~~~~~

"A guy who gives you less than what he has is, one, telling you what he thinks of you, and two, telling you what he thinks of himself." -- Pete Carril

"Nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad, but somewhere between reality falls." -- Lou Holtz

"If you could have won, you should have won." -- Chuck Knox

"Either get a better player or get a player better." -- Eddie Robinson

"What to do with a mistake: Recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it." -- Dean Smith

"Guys ask me, 'Don't I get burned out?' How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl?" -- Tommy Lasorda

"People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present." -- Sparky Anderson

"The coaching philosophy I live by is that the young men in my care will be husbands and fathers much longer than they will be football players." -- Clinton E. Alexander

"It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example." -- Don Meyer

"The fewer rules the coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break." -- John Madden

"It is bad coaching to blame your boys for losing a game, even if it is true." -- Jake Gaither

"I realized early in my career I needed to share something besides how to bounce a ball, how to shoot a basketball. I had to share some things with 'em that would pay off later in life." -- Ronald Bradley

"I constantly stress process over outcome. In other words, don't worry about the exam. Just do your homework." -- Jim Wilson

"In order to be a great teacher or great coach you try to put players into situations that they're going to face during the game, and if you do that, then it becomes second nature, and they don't make those mistakes." -- Mike Shanahan

"I only use statistics to reinforce what I already think." -- Dean Smith

"Either love your players or get out of coaching." -- Bobby Dodd

"Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect." -- Woody Hayes

"Overcoaching is the worst thing you can do to a player." -- Dean Smith

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment." -- John Wooden

"When someone asks me what time it is, I always want to tell them how to build a watch." -- Herb Brooks

"Only praise behavior that you want to be repeated. Never use false praise." -- Dean Smith

"You don't 'handle' players, you handle pets. You deal with players. Stand up for your players. Show them you care -- on and off the court." -- Red Auerbach

"No coach who is sure of himself and his team constantly bawls out his players." -- Jock Sutherland

"I don't think of myself as a basketball coach. I think of myself as a leader. A leader who coaches basketball." -- Mike Krzyzewski

"The way you win is to get average players to play good and good players to play great." -- Bum Phillips

"In any competitive situation, a chief duty of leadership is to minimize the impact of unexpected conditions and distractions on the team in combat." -- Pat Riley

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence by seeing how you react. If you are in control, they are in control." -- Tom Landry

Don't get upset at things you can't change

2009-03-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

Toronto, after winning two straight, lost on Friday at PHX to fall to 23-37 on the season.

Chris Bosh, a four-time NBA All-Star and a member of the gold medal-winning Team USA this past summer in Beijing, was asked recently if the losses bother him.

"I don't get upset at things you can't change," he said. "Once the game is over ... it's over, there's nothing you can do about it, there's no reason to be upset.

To some, not beating oneself up for every loss may look to be uncaring. To Bosh, it's a matter of mental survival.

"It can only get worse and we have so many games, we have to erase everything and keep moving. That's the thing about it: I want to win the next game, so if I'm dwelling on us losing three games in a row or four games in a row and thinking about nothing but that, what do you think is going to happen the next game?

Most of the people ... they're probably unhappy. I'm happy, I'm a very happy person no matter what happens. I'm always seeing the positive out of everything."