Learning the intricacies of the midrange game

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."

As small things cumulate, bigger things will happen

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:

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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.

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

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."

Learning from others, but being your own coach

Great quote in the Orlando paper from MIA coach Erik Spoelstra, who talks about how, as an assistant to Pat Riley and Stan Van Gundy, he'd write down everything, including their "philosophy, poetry and daily practice plans."

Coach Spo also noted Coach Riley's "motivational talks," though he could never replicated them.

"I loved hearing motivational talks. I'd get fired up hearing them. But there's only one person who can talk like that. If I tried, it would sound false, so I don't. You can motivate in different ways."

Basketball's version of a corporate business retreat

Been meaning to get this up on the blog. It's a good piece about how playing on Team USA is paying dividends for the guys who spent their summer competing in the Olympics.

Cavs GM Danny Ferry likens it to a "corporate business retreat" where the players "got to talk the game, share ideas and see how each other was working."

For example, as Doug Collins points out, LeBron James was able to play "the four-man on their backline defense, and he was like a middle linebacker."

"His voice resonated through the team."

Before the Games, critics worried that players would wear themselves out before the long NBA season. But Coach K "kept practices short and played team members no more than 25 minutes a game. Ten of the 12 U.S. players averaged at least 11 minutes."

Says Dwyane Wade, for many players, defense became the focus:

"You have the best players in the NBA and put them on one team, great scorers. But you tell them, 'Look, the way we're going to win is to be great defensively.' Once you see guys buy into that, it becomes second nature. Guys understand they can be dominant on that end of the floor, as well."

Making investments in the lives of the players you coach

Nancy Gay has a good column in my local paper today about Mike Singletary who "insists he will not coach by intimidation. He will not lead his players with an iron hand. He is now their father figure. The players will be his flock."

As Gay writes, "Singletary and his coaching staff - who have a reputation as teaching, caring individuals - aim to turn the 2009 roster into a bonded family unit."

"We want to really get to the root of the matter, and that is to make sure we're making investments into the lives of those young men, so that when they leave that team, they can say, 'Wow - I didn't know I was just learning how to be a better football player; I was also learning how to be a better man.

I spend a lot of time with kids. I have seven kids myself. So, no, I don't think they have any clue," Singletary said. "I think they'll sit there and tell you, 'Yes, I know what I want to do and I know what I want to be.' But once you turn the fire on and it starts getting hot, it's 'Well, wait, I'm not sure I really want to do it that way or that much.'

I want my players to go away and be successful in business; they can be successful fathers.

I always say that when I study great coaches, whether it be Tom Landry or Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Bill Walsh - they are the coaches who looked at their players five or 10 years later and wondered: What are they doing now? If the bulk of those players are successful, then they are great coaches."

Taking lemons and making lemonade

Great example of a player taking lemons and making lemonade.

In a game last April, Portland's Martell Webster scored 23 against the Lakers. Two days later, after starting 70 games for the Blazers, he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat and missed the rest of the season.

This preseason, Webster was challenging to get his starting spot back when, in an exhibition game in early October, he broke his foot.

After two months of rehab, Webster logged five minutes in a Dec. 7 game against TOR. During that short span, he aggravated the broken foot, forcing him to return to rehab.

It's hard to argue that Webster's been handed a bunch of lemons. But he's used the down time to improve -- mentally.

"It's allowed me to experience the game from a whole different aspect," he said. "I almost feel like an assistant coach. I see coach McMillan write up plays and then watch to see if they actually unfurl on the court. Sitting behind the bench you see things differently. It's kind of weird in a way, but watching from that point of view kind of slows the game down. I feel like I'm learning a lot more about the X's and O's of the game."

You have to keep trying to get better

What's Jon Gruden been up to since being fired in Tampa Bay?

For starters, his day still begins around at 3:15 every morning.

As this article in the Orlando paper reveals, Coach Gruden heads to the offices of Tampa's Arena Football League team to study film.

As for getting fired, Coach Gruden, who led the Bucs to a Super Bowl, has a good attitude.

"You know what? Mike Shanahan got fired. Mike Holmgren is out of football. Brian Billick is out of football. That's the reality of it. Mostly though, I'm just really proud of working hard. I've always been taught you can only look yourself in the eye and ask 'Is that the best you've got? Is that the best you can do?'

And I'm not going to criticize anybody. That was the best I could do. ... In the NFL you've got to get to the Super Bowl and you've got to win it. That's the evaluation we're all accountable to. I wasn't able to get close enough and that's the way it is.

I worked as hard as I could work and I loved it. I feel a great sense of accomplishment, but I also feel a great sense of loss. ... I'm never going to point the finger at anybody, either. I'm good. I did my best. My body of work is out there for everybody to evaluate. ... We won three division championships; won 60 games in seven years; won a Super Bowl. It wasn't like it was total futility."

You have to keep trying to get better. I'm going to learn a lot about the spread offense, and about college football. I already know the questions I'm going to ask. I'm going to do clinics. I'm going to do appearances, but more than anything else I'm going to do research. I'm going to pick out two or three cool colleges that I think have great offenses. Great places. I want to go to Oregon. I want to go to Al Groh's camp in Virginia. I love the way Al Groh coaches that football team."

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."

If you've never failed as a leader, you'll never be very successful

Came across an excellent section of the the book, "Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader."

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If you've never failed as a leader, you'll never be very successful. The best, most accomplished CEOs almost always have at least one significant failure on their resume. The CEOs who fail most spectacularly... are often leaders who have never failed before.

As Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic has said:

"The best developer of a leader is failure."

Some executives are adept at avoiding this passage. They only take jobs for which they're qualified and avoid risks in whatever jobs they hold. They "manage upward" well and are able to advance because of their competence. They can only advance so far, however, because of their lack of resiliency, adaptability, and perseverance -- all traits acquired in this passage -- precludes them for higher-level leadership positions.

Eventually, they find themselves in situations where they make serious errors in judgment because of their failure-free background.

No matter what form failure takes, it humbles and embarrasses us all. Public humiliation, whether it involves being fired, being chastised by a superior, or being grilled by the media, ridiculed by columnists, subjected to comments [online] -- these situations are not fun.

Private humiliation -- feeling as if you've let yourself and others down -- is equally tough to take. The good news is if you're open to understanding why you failed and are able to acquire new knowledge and skills from it, you'll grow as a leader.

Three "dont's" in dealing with failure:

1. Don't let failure define you as a person. Even if you've made a stupid mistake, you aren't stupid. Recognize that anyone who works long enough will experience a significant failure at least once in his career. The worst thing you can do is dwell on the failure. After acknowledging the failure and accepting responsibility, you need to let it go and move on.

2. Don't seek scapegoats. Realistically and naturally, most leaders who fail react defensively. If you respond defensively, you're likely to waste this teachable moment. If you blame your team or anyone else for the setback, you're not likely to examine your role in the failure. Resist this blaming reflex and instead absorb the blame. Blaming others discourages self-examination and the acceptance of responsibility, two critical leadership traits.

3. Don't limit your thinking to the event itself. Yes, it's important to learn from what went wrong and act differently if the same circumstances present themselves in the future. Look for broader patterns or values that you can learn from.

The three functions of assistant coaches

Winning Hoops magazine had a good interview with former Marquette and current Indiana head coach Tom Crean.

During the interview, Coach Crean outlines "three functions" that assistants should fulfill.

1. Offset the mood of the head coach: If the head coach is in a bad mood, you as an assistant need to be a in a good mood. Assistants should not be carbon copies of head coaches.

“I love playing teams where the assistants act and teach just like the head coach because they just aren’t prepared as well,” Crean says.

2. Always be accessible to players: A head coach is often pulled in several directions through various responsibilities. An assistant must be available to players at all times. Players need that stability.

3. Do what's needed: As an assistant, Crean says, you are there to do whatever the head coach needs. An assistant’s primary role is to make the life of a head coach easier. You must be a willing participant in this process.

“When I was learning under Ralph Willard (Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh) and Tom Izzo, my job was to make them Coach of the Year. I wanted to allow them to do what they do best, so I took care of the things they didn’t want to do or didn’t have time to do.”

According to the article, Coach Crean contends that "when assistants know their role and players are energized about their part on the team, then your program is certain to get better every day."

Along these lines, Coach Crean encourages his assistants, and other coaches he meets at clinics and camps, to learn as much as they can about as much as they can.

“Never stop learning from others. It doesn’t have to be just in our sport. Look at military and business leaders. And, look at other sports. I bet you I have read more football books than anything else,” Crean acknowledges.

As the author describes, "your ultimate goal as a coach is not simply to win games... it’s to make
players better — as athletes and as people. It starts with accountability on and off the court. When you expect the best from players, you don’t have to harp on it day after day. Having to stress bringing energy and enthusiasm to the practice court each day gets old and
tired. Expect it and expect the best from everyone associated with your squad."

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."

The things you teach don't necessarily apply to everyone in every situation

A few years ago, Coach K wrote a book (with his daughter) titled "Beyond Basketball."

In a chapter about learning, he tells a story about Tommy Amaker, who he describes as "the first great point guard I ever had at Duke."

He had incredible instincts about the game, particularly on the defensive end. In his first two practices as a freshman, I remember teaching a defensive stance, specifically used when putting pressure on the opponent with the ball.

At the time, Coach K was in his nearly a decade into his head coaching career. He'd been taught -- and he'd taught his players the same -- that the proper way to guard the ball was with your palms up. But that's not how Amaker did it. Amaker was playing excellent defense, but he had his palms down.

Despite the terrific job he was doing on the ball, that Amaker didn't have his palms up bothered Coach K, so he stopped the drill, explained to Amaker that he should put his palms up.

What happened next surprised Coach K.

Amaker asked, "Why?"

"I was stumped," recalls Coach K, before explaining that "with your palms up, you have less of a chance of being called for a reaching foul."

Amaker assured his coach that he wouldn't reach. According to Coach K, "Tommy had better balance with his palms down. He instinctively did not reach where others may have had a tendency to do so. So why not let him do what was more natural to him."

[In 1987, as a senior, Amaker won national defensive player of the year honors.]

As a result, I examined with more scrutiny the way I taught other parts of the game. The lesson I learned was that, with great players, it pays to be flexible. There isn't just one way to do things. From that day at practice, I learned the things that you teach do not necessarily apply to everyone in every situation. And it was a lesson I'd learned from an eighteen-year-old freshman point guard.

You can't talk your way out of something you behaved your way into

Open the pantry in just about any home in America and it's likely there's a can of Campbell's Soup in there somewhere.

In fact, according to this article, "the typical American home has six cans of Campbell's in the pantry."

But when Douglas Conant took over as CEO of Campbell's in 2001, "it had no clear direction."

So Conant set a goal to "take a 'bad' company and lift its performance to 'extraordinary' by the end of one decade — that's by 2011."

His plan was focused on action. As Conant puts it:

"You can't talk your way out of something you behaved your way into."

He began by clearing his roster. "In his first three years, 300 of the company's top 350 leaders were replaced — 150 from within and 150 from outside."

This article from BusinessWeek describes Conant's penchant for reading:

"A devout reader of leadership tomes, Conant has scores of books in his office on shelves and piled up in corners. He keeps extra copies on hand to share with colleagues, and he started an executive book club for top brass. The cerebral Conant devours the words of everyone from President Abraham Lincoln to World War II General George S. Patton to management guru Stephen Covey. And he drops Leo Tolstoy quotes into conversations.

"I'm obsessed with getting new insights," he says. "I recently read a book about Patton, and he was an obsessive reader. It's really the only way to learn."

So how's he done?

According to the article, "turning Campbell around has not been simple, and is not a done deal. Last year, Campbell far outperformed the stock market."

BusinessWeek put it this way:

"Conant... has transformed Campbell from a beleaguered old brand rumored to be on the auction block to one of the food industry's best performers."

Taking players out of their comfort zone

With the Super Bowl this Sunday, there's been plenty written about both head coaches who are leading their teams into the game.

So far, the best one I've come across about PIT coach Mike Tomlin is this one from today's NY Times, titled "Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes."

The article describes Coach Tomlin as a "reluctant intellectual," how he hid his good grades from his friends until his junior year in high school when they finally found out he'd made straight A's.

After attending and playing football at William & Mary, one of the top 50 schools in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report and Forbes, he considered attending law school, but instead took a $12,000 a year coaching job.

The article in the NY Times tells a story of how Coach Tomlin, two weeks into his job as a 28-year-old assistant with Tampa Bay, put together a tape of 75 plays from John Lynch's previous season. Accompanying the tape was a play-by-play description of how Coach Tomlin thought Lynch, a nine-time Pro Bowl safety, could get better.

“At first, I thought, What’s up with this guy?” Lynch said. “But then I started reading the detail. He’d show a play, then have a long paragraph about what he thought I could do better. I learned a lot from him right away. That sold me on him.”

According to Coach Tomlin:

"I’ve always been extremely competitive. I’m a big dreamer, I guess. I’ve been known to be pushy. I go out of my way to not put [my players] at ease. There’s nothing wrong with being in a permanent state of arousal and not finding a comfort zone."

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."

You can't produce successful teams without developing knowledgeable players

In 1973, when he was hired as the first-ever African American coach at Harvard, Tom "Satch" Sanders (pictured here), a member of eight BOS title teams in the 1960s and who coached the team in 1978, pledged to help his Crimson team gain a better understanding of the game, saying:

"My teaching as coach will be geared to fundamentals along with defense. You can't produce successful teams without developing knowledgeable players."

When he was coaching the Pistons, Flip Saunders would tell his players that "the game is not black and white - it's played gray. What gray means, you got to make decisions every play, offensively and defensively. I don't believe there's one way to play."

In his 2004 book, "The Basketball Handbook," Lee Rose, a Bobcats assistant who coached Purdue to the 1980 Final Four, described a player with a "high basketball IQ" as one "who consistently makes the right decisions."

What does making a good decision mean? For basketball, it means doing the right thing at the right time. Coaches who demand discipline, concentration, and focus usually have teams that make fewer mistakes. This concept is not complicated. To avoid making mistakes, players must thoroughly understand the game.

According to Coach Rose, the question is whether coaches "can teach players to make good decisions."

Yes, players can improve their basketball IQ if they pay attention and absorb what they're taught. But if they don't have natural instincts, peripheral awareness, and the concept of unselfishness, chances are slim that they will make consistently good basketball decisions.

Searching for sources of improvement

Good story in the Chicago Tribune about Cubs manager Lou Piniella's plans to "spend part of his spare time in spring training reading up on new tactics from an old master and some sports psychologists, hoping to find a solution to his team's 101-year championship drought."

"I want to read (former UCLA basketball coach John) Wooden's book on winning and buy a couple of sports psychologist-type books," Piniella said. "I have to take it upon myself to do things a little differently when we get to the postseason, and I will. I don't know exactly what, but I've been searching. I've been talking to my coaches about it since I've been here. The fact that this team hasn't won in so long, it's going to take a little different approach, as opposed to just letting them play."

Worrying about being productive versus being liked

Donovan McNabb's season ended yesterday -- just short of the Super Bowl -- but in this article the 10-year veteran QB earns high praise from Brad Childress, the former Eagles' QB coach and O-coordinator and current head coach in MIN:

"He's one of those people that learns from the past and makes the most of what's ahead of him. He doesn't worry about being liked, he worries about being productive. He worries about the things he can change and how he can work to change them. There is something interwoven deep inside his fiber with his values and the values of his parents that have made him the person he is. To me, that's as important as the physical skills and ability."

Screaming is not teaching

A good passage from Lenny Wilkens' book "Unguarded" (with Terry Pluto):

Coach Wilkens, who became a player/head coach for the Sonics in 1969, recalls a key moment early in his coaching career:

One day, a college coach named Marv Harshman was at a practice. I really lit into one of my players because he couldn't get the ball to one of our big men at the low post. I let him have it: How dumb could he be? Didn't he see the man open? Didn't he want to get him the ball?

After practice, Harshman told me, "Lenny, you know that you're a very gifted player."

I waited, knowing Marv has something on his mind.

"You really see the floor," he said. "It's easy for you to make that play, to get the ball to the low post. But not everyone sees the game the same as you."

I was starting to get the message.

"You have to show them, to teach them," he said. "You can't assume everyone knows the game like you do. Show them that there's more than one way to make that play."

I nodded.

Of course, teach them. It sounds obvious as I talk about it now, but teaching wasn't the norm for NBA coaching back then. It was screaming.

What Marv told me made sense. I thought back to my rookie year with the Hawks, and how no one really taught me anything. Few people even said a word, unless it was to yell at me. I was acting just like my former coaches, who figured, "Hey, I know how to make that play, so you should, too."

But why would the players know how to play the pro game, especially the rookies? Even some of the veterans had real blind spots in their games, because no one bothered to show them how to make certain plays. If you didn't pick it up on your own, the assumption was that you couldn't do it.

About midseason, I really started coaching the guys. We went back to the basics. And I felt better because of something else that came out of that conversation with Marv Harshman: I didn't have to yell all the time. Screaming was never part of my personality, so I was glad that I could coach more like myself. Talk quietly. Listen. Teach. Be patient. Admittedly, not all of this happened at once, but slowly I began to feel comfortable as a coach.

And we began to win.

[I'll post additional excerpts from Coach Wilkens' book over the weekend.]