18 Old-School Values

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

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

Everyone is on one page

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."

Discovering that less can be more

If you're wondering how Stephon Marbury will fit in with the Celtics, this article draws parallels to how Bob McAdoo fit in with the Lakers of the '80s.

For those too young to remember Bob McAdoo, he's a Hall of Fame C/PF who played for 14 seasons in the NBA, averaging 35 ppg in 1974-75 (when he earned league MVP honors), and was a member of two NBA title teams.

[This video shows the greatness of Bob McAdoo.]

When McAdoo joined the Lakers in 1981, LA's roster featured a number of talented, savvy players: Kareem, Magic, Michael Cooper, Norm Nixon, Jamaal Wilkes, Kurt Rambis, Eddie Jordan, Jim Brewer, and Mitch Kupchak. The Lakers had won the NBA Championship two years earlier.

In LA, McAdoo "was seeking to resurrect a career that began spectacularly in Buffalo, was never fully appreciated in New York and plunged like Wall Street as he toiled for crumbling teams in Boston, Detroit and New Jersey."

Under Pat Riley, who took over for Paul Westhead as head coach 11 games into the season, McAdoo averaged 18 minutes a night for the Lakers in 1981-82, averaging just under 10 ppg.

He was frustrated, but stuck with it.

"They started Mark Landsberger over me, Jim Brewer, Kurt Rambis — guys I played against and dismantled. You know, you’re so young, and trying to understand the situation, but after you’ve been the M.V.P., the best player in the league, you don’t just get comfortable looking over your shoulder after a few minutes. At home, my family saw my frustration, my sadness, but I never gave in to the urge to complain.”

What McAdoo did in LA was prove "he was a team player. In the playoffs that spring, his minutes increased to 27 a game from 18. His scoring average rose to 16.7 from 9.6. Riley won his first coaching title and McAdoo a championship ring few people believed was in his reach."

As this NY Times article puts it, for the first time in his career, McAdoo "discovered to his surprise that less could be more."

And when his run with the Lakers ended in 1985, he made it clear that he appreciated the opportunity.

"I could have been bitter," he said. "Instead, I said the same thing to Jerry Buss, Jerry West and Pat. I said: 'Thank you for the opportunity to play with this team. It’s been a privilege.' And I meant it."

Ten years after he ended his NBA career (McAdoo played in Europe until 1993), Coach Riley hired McAdoo as an assistant in Miami, a job McAdoo still has to this day.

“I got two rings, made my career complete, and I’m still in the game through Pat.”

The only thing that's going to define individuals is how the team does

Great quote from Ron Artest the other day in the Houston paper:

"That’s the only thing that’s going to define individuals: how the team does."

When Tom Crean coached at Marquette, there was a banner that hung in the practice gym with a quote from John Wooden that read, "The star of the team is the team."

Back in my CBA days, that was a frequent message. As a coaching staff, we'd work to convince players to worry less about their stats and focus on helping the team win. That's something coaches at all levels talk about, but in the minor leagues, where players use big numbers as a way to catch the eye of NBA teams, it can be difficult to get guys to buy in to that.

We'd explain that NBA coaches and scouts recognize that it's one thing to put up big numbers on a losing team. Making a contribution (and sacrifice) to a winning team is more significant.

As Joe Paterno once said, a team only reaches true greatness when its members aren't concerned with their stats.

"When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality."

If you don't communicate, you'll never be a great defensive team

Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie talked recently about chemistry and on-court communication:

"People, when they're talking about chemistry with a team, they always talk about offense," Coach Gillispie said. "Do they share the ball? Are guys selfish? Do they shoot shots they shouldn't shoot?

There's as much chemistry that has to be established defensively as there is offensively, maybe even more so, because you're seeing so many moving pieces.

You can have an above-average team, probably, if you don't communicate, but you'll never be a great defensive team if you don't. You have to be constantly talking."

According to this article, "great defensive teams can adjust on the fly. Strong defensive units can compensate when one teammate breaks down during a possession."

"You can't adjust if you're not talking with your teammates. Our young guys -- and it's understandable -- don't talk nearly as much as they need to and nearly as well as they need to," said Coach Gillispie.

"That's why you see really good teams playing on TV and they have the best recruiting classes in the country -- not even close, in everybody's opinion -- and all the all-star freshmen are sitting on the bench in the last five minutes of the game."

Hard work makes up for a lot of things

The turning point in the season came early for Weber State.

As this article describes, it was in Game 6, a home contest against BYU. Coach Randy Rahe's team, which had dropped three of its first five games of the year, lost by 30.

Against BYU, the Wildcats were outrebounded, 31-20; had 13 fewer assists (20-7); turned the ball over 15 times (compared to BYU's 6); and trailed 18-4 four minutes into the game.

Says Coach Rahe, "We gave in to adversity. We can never do that. We had to figure out if we're going to improve and go north or do nothing and go south."

According to the article, "one of Rahe's strengths as a coach, though, is that he knows when to nurture and he knows when to torture." After the BYU meltdown, he "knew he had to push."

To ensure his team headed north, he put them through two-a-days, including 6 a.m. workouts.

The loss sparked a turnaround. "Six weeks later, the answer is clear. The Wildcats have won 15 of 19 games since that Dec. 3 loss to the Cougars and surged to the top of the Big Sky Conference standings with an 11-1 league record."

The author contends that:

"In a balanced conference where just about any team can pull out a win on any given night, the Wildcats have to play with maximum efficiency. They aren't the fastest, tallest or even the most talented team. What has separated them from the pack is their thorough understanding of the team concept."

Says Coach Rahe: "We have to do things a certain way. We have a very small margin of error," Rahe said. "We're not the most talented team. We're just not. But I do know hard work makes up for a lot of things."

Rahe's success as a coach -- in his third season at Weber State, his overall record is 53-34 -- stems from the trust his players have in him. He gains it, he says, by being honest. He's never unrealistic about the team's goal, but he also believes this team can go far and he lets his players know it.

Basketball's Benjamin Button

How good is Brandon Roy?

He's so good that BOS coach Doc Rivers has put together highlight videos of Roy that he gives to his sons to study.

"He's one of my favorite players in the league," says Coach Rivers. "He plays under control, he plays unselfishly, and he plays at gears that young players don't play at. Most young players play fast and out of control, and for them it's all about getting 'my shots.' But his whole attitude is based on team play."

As Ian Thomsen describes him in his story today on SI.com, "the 6'6" Roy plays like an aging vet who takes pride in outsmarting the rim-scrapers while conserving energy to extend his career. In fact, he is a 24-year-old blessed with a 41-inch vertical leap, which he uses only when necessary. He wears neither tattoos nor jewelry. In this era of unparalleled athleticism and style over substance, Brandon Roy is the NBA's curious version of Benjamin Button—a young body driven by an old-school mind."

Says Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard: "He absolutely changed the direction of our team."

According to Roy, many mistake his style of play for a lack of intensity:

"I would get so mad because I would be trying to run harder, but my game would never let me get out of control," says Roy. "When I went to college, right away coach [Lorenzo] Romar was like, This guy just doesn't go hard. He was just hammering me, hammering me, hammering me, and I would say, 'Coach, I am playing hard.'"

So, asks Thomsen, "how does he make the spectacular look so effortless?"

The answer is fundamental: Roy can dribble so well that you can't tell which is his weak hand, and at 211 pounds he has the size to shield the ball as he reads the defense and waits for a play to develop. He has a coach's mind, an intuitive understanding of teammates and opponents swirling around him as if they were X's and O's diagrammed on a whiteboard.

Teammate Steve Blake contends that Roy is "always on balance, so if someone reaches in, he's able to spin and he's not falling over."

POR coach Nate McMillan says Roy has "three moves that will get you... a crossover, a pump, a spin."

According to Chris Paul, it's a matter of angles and efficiency:

"He goes in straight lines. Anybody who knows basketball knows if you go around a guy, you need to go right by him. He takes a minimal amount of steps, and then he's at the rim."

To improve, Roy says he needs "to make some mistakes."

"I think that's where my potential lies — taking more risks, trying to play with more flair and having more fun out there."

The trouble with "hero basketball"

In D.C., injuries have forced younger players to step up quickly.

According to coach Ed Tapscott, young players typically " have two or three years to watch, observe and work their way into the rotation - rather than learning through such a heavy dose of trial and error."

"It becomes an object lesson in learning how to play the right way, how to play winning basketball - even when you're not a winning team," Coach Tapscott said. "And there is a right way to play, even when you're not winning, and that's what I kept stressing throughout the game. And we had episodes of good, solid basketball - winning basketball - when you play the right way, and then we have episodes of very poor basketball."

According to this article, Coach Tapscott "has stressed the importance of driving to the basket to generate higher-percentage scoring opportunities. He also wants his guards... to penetrate and draw defenders toward them and then kick the ball out to teammates. But while the Wizards got the ball into the paint, they got caught up in what Tapscott calls hero play, otherwise known as one-on-one basketball."

"Hero basketball is jackknife dunks, reverse layups, plays that make the late-night highlights on sports programming - but they become low-percentage plays," Coach Tapscott explained. "You might make only three or four; what happens on the other six? They're dunks the other way. Great effort, bad percentage basketball. I remember having the same conversations with an old coach a long time ago," Coach Tapscott said with a chuckle, shaking his head. "You get it sooner, or you don't and someone else gets your minutes."

You don't win by being comfortable

Like fine wine, Ray Allen seems to be improving with age.

As Ian Thomsen writes, "Shooting guards are supposed to become lame and ineffective at his age, but Allen is having what may be his finest season. He continues to defend at a better rate than over his 11 years before coming to Boston, while at the other end of the floor -- the end that has always defined him -- he is shooting a career-best 49.7 percent. He has moved past Kevin Garnett to become the Celtics' second option, with 18.1 points."

"He's doing it more efficiently than he's done it earlier in his career,'' Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "If you don't need the ball in your hands for 15-20 seconds, if you can have it in your hands for five seconds of a possession and you're still really good -- that means you're a really good basketball player. And that's what Ray has become with us.''

One of the NBA's best shooters, in the Celtics' title run last season, Allen was "asked to shoot less. When times were bad in previous years (and there were a lot of those bad nights, as Allen's teams in Milwaukee and Seattle missed the playoffs six times), he would naturally take it upon himself to shoot his team out of trouble. But that approach, as Allen noted, wasn't going to help the Celtics win a title."

"If on a season you're averaging 22-23 shots a game, you're going to shoot yourself into a good rhythm,'' Allen said. "But the majority of the time, if you have to shoot that many times, you don't win. Now I pass first more than anything. When I'm coming off a screen and it's early in the game, I just try to make a hard move, get to the basket and pass it so somebody else can get an easier shot. It builds your way into the offense that way.''

Says BOS coach Doc Rivers, "It was difficult for him but he did it. He did it and he got better and better at it. And now he's taking it to a different level.''

"I hear so many times guys say they want to win a championship, 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,'' Rivers said. "You don't win by being comfortable. You win by doing things out of your comfort zone to make the team better, and Ray epitomizes that to me. He's completely come out of his comfort zone to fit into this team to make us better, and Ray has proved that he's a champion because he's willing to do that. He's accepting double teams and getting rid of the ball, where in the past he was the only guy who would get doubled and he'd still try to create a play.''

Trading glitz and glamour for productivity

A unique part of the Butler's basketball program are the early-morning workouts, which the players contend give them an edge:

"We do this all the time, every day," junior forward Willie Veasley said. "I think you get more focused when you wake up and everything is so fresh. It's gotten us to where we are now, and it's probably real different from what other programs do."

As this article points out, the No. 13 "Bulldogs have appeared in five NCAA tournaments since 2000 and reached the regional semifinals twice in the last six years. Over the past three seasons, they've won more games than any other Division I school in Indiana and have been ranked for 40 weeks since 2006."

This season, Butler's starting lineup features "three freshmen and a sophomore" and is led by "the nation's third-youngest coach, 32-year-old Brad Stevens."

And here they are, winners of 19 of their first 20 games.

According to this article:

Butler's old-school strategy favors teamwork over experience. Players share the basketball, take pride in defending opponents, prefer crediting teammates to gloating about their own accomplishments and they don't deviate from the system. Simply put, it's all about desire, determination and execution.

Part of Butler's recipe for success is that the team's "coaches look for distinctive traits in recruits — like maturity and teamwork — that other schools often overlook. At Butler, they're essential."

"We spend a lot of time talking to their high school coaches and the coaches around them. That gives you better insight into them," Coach Stevens said. "But I think if you watched how they interacted with their teammates on and off the court, you'd see we really didn't have to do a lot of research. It starts with the makeup of the kids on this team — their selflessness and their belief in being a great teammate."

The author contends that "when the freshmen arrive in Indy, they've already agreed to trade glitz and glamour, even dunks, for productivity. The Bulldogs also keep things in perspective. They focus on making the most of what they have, not complaining about what they don't have — bigger post players, highly ranked recruiting classes or sparkling new facilities."

"We're not aiming to be someone else," Coach Stevens said. "I think a lot of programs do things really well and when you watch them on tape, you may take something and try some things that might work for your program. But we are Butler, and we're just trying to be the best Butler team we can be."

If you are going to lead, you try to lead with a servant's heart

At one point this season, Steelers RB Willie Parker became unhappy that the team wasn't giving him more carries.

PIT coach Mike Tomlin had a quick response:

“Every day when I walk into our practice facility,” said the head coach, “I walk past five Lombardi Trophies. I don’t walk past five rushing titles.”

Coach Tomlin describes his first coaching job, as the 23-year-old receivers coach at VMI, as "pure."

“I didn’t have anything else going on in my life, truth be known. I was single, I was broke, I didn’t have cable or long distance calling, and so there was nothing else to do other than immerse yourself in the game. I was with a bunch of guys who were like-minded, and we had a great time.”

Looking back on what he's learned over the last 13 years, from VMI to the Super Bowl, Coach Tomlin says he's thankful for his mentors:

“I’ve been blessed that I have worked with some great people, people who took a stake in my development,” he said this week. “And really, I pull from all of it on a day-to-day basis – lessons learned from leadership. It’s about people. It’s about taking care of the troops. It’s about putting them first. I’ve learned that if you are going to lead, you try to lead with a servant’s heart. I try to do that – try to take care of my men and give them what they need to be great.”

There is a problem, let's fix it

Four interesting points from the book "Hard Facts," a book from the Harvard Business School Press:

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Talent or ability... depends on what happens to people and how they are coached, not just their innate skill or motivation.

A study by Lawrence Kahn examined the effect of baseball managers on team and player performance. Kahn measured player ability by the average of their performance over their entire carers, a reliable indicator of player talent.

He found that some managers inspired players to perform above their ability, and other managers stymied players, consistently driving players to perform below their ability.

Ability or talent did not explain all of a player's performance in a given year. How the player was managed or coached mattered, too.

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What is true for individuals is also true for organizations, groups, and teams. Exceptional performance depends heavily on experience and effort. No matter how gifted (or ordinary) team members are to start out, the more experience they have working together, the better their teams do.

Think of the U.S. women's national soccer team, which has won numerous championships, including two of the four women's World Cups and two of the three Olympic women's tournaments held to date.

The team certainly has had enormously talented players. Yet every team member will tell you that the most important factors in their success were the communication, mutual understanding, respect, and ability to work together tha tdeveloped in the dozen or so years that the stable core group played together.

Quantitative research on team effectiveness has demonstrated the power of such joint experience in every setting examined, including string quartets, surgical teams, student groups, top management teams, and airplane cockpit crews.

Experienced teams perform better because over time members come to trust each other more, communicate more effectively, and learn to blend each other's diverse skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

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The "talent mind-set" is dangerous because it treats talent as something fixed. This mind-set causes people to believe that it just isn't worth trying hard because they -- or the people they lead -- are naturally smart or not, and therer is little if anything anyone can do about it.

A seires of studies by Columbia University's Carol Dweck shows that when people believe their IQ is unchangeable, "they become too focused on being smart and looking smart rather than on challenging themselves, stretching and expanding their skills, becoming smarter."

Dweck concludes that:

When people believe they are born with natural and unchangeable smarts, it causes them to learn less over time. They don't bother learning new things and improving old skills.

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Given all the evidence on the importance of systems, why do so many companies place so much emphasis on getting and keeping great people [or players] and so little on building and sustaining great systems?

A big part of that is Western countries, like the United States, glorify rugged individualism so much that we make a cognitive error. We forget that history, organizational goals, rewards are potent causes of what people and organizations do. We give too much credit to individual heroes when organizations [or teams] do things right and too much blame on individual scapegoats when things go wrong.

[In successful organizations] managers consciously fought their natural tendency to focus on who deserved credit and blame, and instead worked on strengthening the system.

A supervisor explained:

"There are two theories. One says 'there is a problem, let's fix it.' The other says 'we've got a problem, someone is screwing up, let's go beat them up.' To make improvement, we could no longer embrace the second theory. We had to use the first."

His whole game is predicated on players playing for each other

Just a quick note:

Came across a Gregg Popovich quote from 2005 about Bobcats coach Larry Brown, who was coaching the Pistons at that time (and won an NBA title in 2004).

"I just think that Larry loves the pure part of the game. His whole game is predicated on players playing for each other, feeling the responsibility they have toward each other."

Sometimes by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war

In his self-titled book from 1987, Donald Trump begins Chapter 10 with this line:

"Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war."

It's a concept that applies to the Celtics, who after losing four straight earlier this month, have won seven in a row, holding opponents to under 90 points in six of those wins.

According to Kevin Garnett, the losses helped BOS return to its roots:

"One of the biggest tests in this league is when you lose. You learn a lot about each other. When the season is not going well, some things come out. I've been on losing teams, and stuff comes out. Guys don't like each other, cats are fighting over the ball, bickering and stuff. What we learned is to do it together. That's what brought us out of it. What really brought us back was being fundamentally sound and defense; that's what we did from Day 1 last year."

It's amazing how much gets done when nobody's worried about getting credit

Earlier this week, the Lions named Titans defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz as the team's new head coach.

According to Coach Schwartz, one of the Titans' keys to success has been a sense of selflessness.

"It's amazing how much can get done when nobody's worried about who gets credit for it," Schwartz said. "I think the whole objective is to get the player right, to get the circumstance right, not who's right. That's going be the emphasis here. It'll be to get the player right. It's funny. I had a person ask me in Tennessee, 'Well, who makes the final decision on draft or roster?' I'm the defensive coordinator, and I said, 'You know, I really don't know.' And that's how good the relationship was and that's how unselfish the relationship was, that even people in the organization didn't know."

You can control whether you hustle

Now in his 12th NBA season, SAC guard Bobby Jackson reminds me a lot of Avery Johnson, another veteran guard who has had great success as a pro coach after his playing days ended.

Based on this quote, Bobby has the mindset of a coach, too.

"If you're not doing the things to help us win games, then you've got to come out. When a guy isn't performing the way you expect, then he has to come sit down. When I become a coach, I'm going to do the same thing. You can't let guys think it's okay to play [selfishly]... They end up making a mistake instead of making the simple play. Here, it's about guys wanting to score instead of making the extra pass, thinking of the team concept. But, hey, you're not always going to shoot well. You can't always control that. But you can control your effort on rebounding, on defense. You can control whether you hustle."

Gleaning confidence from a coach

I'll be at the Cal-Arizona game at Haas Pavilion tomorrow night, but read this article about Cal's 1959 NCAA title today.

As the story describes, "Cal entered the NCAA Tournament ranked 11th in the country and was the lowest-scoring of the four teams that qualified for what was not yet known as the Final Four, being played that year in Louisville, Ky."

Standing in Cal's path were two All-Americans and future Hall of Famers. First Cincinnati's Oscar Robertson, who led the nation in scoring at 32.6 points per game. Looming the next night was West Virginia's Jerry West, who averaged 26.6 points.

According to the article, Cal had one thing their opponents didn't: Coach Pete Newell.

His teams were well-conditioned, disciplined and defensive-minded. The players revere him still, but as college kids they gleaned great confidence from their coach.

Said one former Cal player: "His intensity level during the game was quite something, when he'd be chomping on that towel. He never really yelled at us. I just remember you didn't want to get that look. We didn't ever want to displease him."

Coach Newell's team -- known for "defense and teamwork" -- was also well prepared, thanks in great part to assistant coach Rene Herrerias, "who provided detailed scouting reports on each opponent." [Coach Herrerias took over for Coach Newell at Cal after Coach Newell retired.]

Some 25 years ago, Jerry West, a member of the West Virginia team that Cal defeated in the final game, was quoted as saying, "Teams today have great individuals, but Cal had a great team."

Proof that one bad apple spoils the bunch

Many thanks to Coach George Seff for passing along a link to a recent NPR story about new research showing how "bad apples" negatively influence the performance of teams.

The researcher set out to determine if "one person in the workplace could ruin a workplace. Not just disrupt the way people get along... but could one person actually lower productivity. Does one bad apple spoil the bunch?"

In his research on "bad apple behaviors," Will Felps, a management professor, identified "three personality types, three types of behavior that seem to hurt group dynamics and group performance."

According to Felps, they are:

1. "Someone who is a real jerk, who attacks or insults others."
2. "Someone who's a slacker, who does less than they can."
3. "Someone who's a depressive pessimist."

If your team or group includes one of these types, "there's a good chance that they might spoil the barrel."

Over the years, research has found that groups dominate individuals. "There's tons of research going back decades demonstrating that people conform to group values and norms."

But in his research, Felps found just the opposite.

"Invariably, groups that had [the bad apple] would perform worse. And this despite the fact that were people in some groups that were very talented, very smart, very likeable."

In his studies, Phelps found that the bad apple's behavior "had a profound effect," with the bad apple's group "performing 30 to 40 percent worse than groups without a bad apple."

On teams with the bad apple, "people would argue and fight, and they would not share their relevant information, they would communicate less."

Even worse, team members would begin to take on the bad apple's characteristics. When the bad apple was a jerk, other team members would begin acting like a jerk. When he was a slacker, they began to slack, too, and so forth.

And they wouldn't act this way just in response to the bad apple. They'd act this way to each other in "sort of a spillover effect."

If you're a veteran coach or manager, you've likely seen this in teams or groups you've worked with. Based on my experience, it's absolutely true. A bad apple really can spoil the bunch.

A player with an innate understanding of spatial relationships

Read where 12-year NBA veteran Tim Duncan recently played in his 1000th NBA game for the Spurs.

But as this writer describes, because of Duncan's fly-below-the-radar persona and focus on fundamentals, there's not much new to say about the former Wake Forest star.

"It's like figuring out something new to say about the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi River or the Sphinx (at least when the great stone critter isn't whining over a referee's whistle). As in: It's, uh, still there.. And, y'know, still great."

MIN coach Kevin McHale contends that, among the NBA's current big men, Duncan is "by far the best.'' And much of his success, argues McHale, has to do with Duncan's basketball IQ.

"He's smart. He doesn't run around. No wasted energy. Things I'm trying to get our guys to do -- basketball's a game of read-and-react. Especially with young guys, they want to 'run' the offense. But the offense doesn't score -- the read inside the offense does. Things happen, Tim just stands there and goes [McHale very slowly looks left, very slowly looks right]. Then he moves into the open spot.

Believe it or not, that's how everybody played. You didn't run on top of each other. You gave everybody space. He's different because, right now, for whatever reason -- either how the game is taught or how the young guys play in AAU or whatever -- it's, 'We're going to go as fast as we can, run around as fast as we possibly can.'

He just takes his time. Let the defense make mistakes.''

Duncan, a 10-time All-Star and two-time league MVP, is the first to admit that he's not a flashy, super-athletic player who's going to make SportsCenter highlights very often.

"I'm not a quick guy. I've never been the most athletic guy. I'm not as quick, I don't jump as high, all that stuff. So [it has taken] a conscious decision about playing harder, positioning better, getting to spots, getting your feet set, giving yourself another half second to react to something, things like that. If I can slow it down, take my time and go to my own strengths, I can neutralize a lot of what people are able to do against me. You try to make people react to you more than you react to people. When you can do that, you're the one in control. You know what's going on and everyone else has to figure it out on the fly. I try to base my game around that. That's how I've always played.''

According to Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, Duncan has "an innate understanding of the game and spatial relationships, what teammates are going to do and what's needed at a certain time. Never in a hurry. Always a patient, skillful player who understands the situation. He's a throwback."

Placing more emphasis on togetherness

In PHX, the Suns held a 30-minute meeting recently in which players created "collage posters they made about togetherness that were put on the locker room wall."

Coach Terry Porter "said the overlying message was the same fun-focused one he shared with the team at practice" earlier in the day.

"The reality is, 'Guys, we're still a good team. We still have got some good things going on. Let's not put the weight of the world on us, just because we lose a couple games. Granted, we'd like to play better at home. We haven't. Let's regroup, come out and play better. Play with more energy. Have more fun.' "