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What Does It Really Mean To Sacrifice?
We use the word sacrifice a lot with our teams, but like many of these buzzwords I'm not sure we get specific enough when defining what we mean. Sacrifice is important to all high performing teams, but I'm not sure our players know what sacrifice looks like.
When we think about sacrificing on teams, most people think about things like taking less shots or scoring less points. It's also associated with playing less minutes. It can be about off the court stuff, like "sacrificing" your Friday nights to be ready to go for a game or an early practice on Saturday. Sacrifice is looked at as giving up something that is (somewhat) tangible - shots, playing time, social activities - for the betterment of your team. There is only so much to go around, so we all have to be willing to sacrifice - to take less, to help the team.
I don't see sacrifice as giving something up for your teammates. Sacrifice isn't just passing up shots or playing less minutes. It's not just skipping parties on Friday nights or getting up early to lift weights. Those are essential. They are actually (some of) the requirements for high performing teams. Can you consider those behaviors to be sacrifice? Sure. But to me, that is just part of the commitment to your team.
I see sacrifice as an element of emotional intelligence. Sacrifice is getting over your own feelings when they don't help the team. Sacrifice is taking an unselfish approach when you feel like you have a right to be selfish. When you think things are unfairly going against you. Sacrifice is about handling the emotions that inevitably go with being a part of a team. It's a lot more than just altering some behavior to help the team get better. It's a mental approach that allows you avoid selfish emotions that will hurt your team.
Your team is playing poorly in the first half in a game you are supposed to win. Everything is going wrong. Shots aren't falling, there are way too many turnovers, and you can't guard the ball. Instead of a comfortable lead at halftime, you are only up by two. The coaching staff is understandably heated. Everyone in the locker room is upset and frustrated as well. No one is happy with how you've played.
The coaching staff decides to make a change. No one has really played well, but they decide to shake things up and take you and one other starter out of the line up to start the second half. This is a decision coaches face often, and it's not an easy one. On one hand you know things have to change and you have to get a message across. But you don't want a couple of players to feel like they are being blamed for the entire team not being ready to play. It's not an easy decision.
How do you respond when your coach takes you out of the line up in that spot? The natural reaction is "why me?" I wasn't the one turning the ball over every time, and at least I made a couple of shots. I was playing hard on defense. What about him? In that moment, most of us feel the exact same way. It wasn't my fault. You should be taking someone else out of the line up.
This is where you really have to sacrifice. It's not that you are sacrificing your own playing time to let someone else play. That decision has been made for you. You have two choices. You can be a great teammate, stay positive, encourage the guys going into the line up and show a great attitude. Or you can get upset, feel sorry for yourself, half-ass your way through warm-ups and make it clear to everyone around you that you aren't happy. Which option do you think is better for your team? I'm not saying it's easy, because it isn't. Sacrifice is hard. Guess what? So is winning.
Sacrifice is getting over your own feelings when they don't help the team. It's natural to feel upset, and you may even be justified in feeling that way. You might be right. You shouldn't be the one to bear the blame. But in that moment, it doesn't matter. The coach made a decision he thinks is best for the team. You may not like it, and you don't have to, but how you react to it says everything about you as a teammate and your commitment to the team. You have to sacrifice in that moment - the way you feel, the way you want to react, and what your ego is telling you. Getting past those selfish feelings - even if you feel you are right - and committing to what is best for the team - that is really what sacrifice is all about.
If sacrifice is a word you use with your team, and it's really important to you, think about what it really means in behavioral terms. What does sacrifice look like? It's not really about playing out of position or taking less shots. It's more about the emotions you feel when things don't go your way. It's handling your ego, your feelings, and the way you want to react, to do what is best for the team in that moment when things don't go your way. Sacrifice is taking an unselfish approach when you feel like you have a right to be selfish.
Define sacrifice for your players in a way that fits your approach to develop a team committed to one another, and committed to success.
Phil Jackson - 11 Principles of Leadership
Phil Jackson's "Eleven Rings" is one of the best books on coaching, leadership and team building I have ever read.
Phil Jackson’s 11 Principles Of Leadership
Few people would be more qualified to talk about leadership than Phil Jackson in the sports arena. Jackson is considered one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NBA clenching 11 championship titles as a coach. This is by far the most wins in the history of NBA.
In his book Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, he explores the alchemy of leadership and coaching. This book is a fantastic read not only for basketball fans who have followed Jordon and Bryant’s legacy, but also for leaders who can learn from Jackson’s lessons in team dynamics, organizational culture, and coaching.
Phil Jackson shares 11 leadership principles that have propelled him to become a championship leader.
- Lead From the Inside Out. Avoid fads and excessive benchmarking. Rather lead from who you are. Develop a more open-minded. “As time went by, I discovered that the more I spoke from the heart, the more players could hear me and benefit from what I gleaned.”
- Bench the Ego. “The more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team’s vision.
“Some coaches insist on having the last word, but I always tried to foster an environment in which everyone played a leadership role, from the most unschooled rookie to the veteran superstar. If your primary objective is to bring the team into a state of harmony and oneness, it doesn’t make sense for you to rigidly impose your authority.”
- Let Each Player Discover His Own Destiny. “One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.” He empowered team members to think for themselves so they can make difficult decisions by themselves. In essence, he taught skills to catch a fish, rather than feeding the fish every time.
“My approach was always to relate to each player as a whole person, not just a cog in the basketball machine. That meant pushing him to discover what distinct qualities he could bring to the game beyond taking shots and making passes. How much courage did he have? Or resilience? What about character under fire? Many players I’ve coached didn’t look special on paper, but in the process of creating a role for themselves they grew into formidable champions.”
- The Road to Freedom is a Beautiful System. Jackson used the triangle offense system, a controversial tool much like tools used for innovation in organizations, to inject a sense of freedom in the team’s play. “What attracted me to the triangle was the way it empowers the players, offering each one a vital role to play as well as a high level of creativity within a clear, well-defined structure…With the triangle you can’t stand around and wait for the Michael Jordons and Kobe Bryants of the world to work their magic. All five players must be fully engaged every second – or the whole system will fail. That stimulates an ongoing process of group problem solving in real time, not just on a coach’s clipboard during time-outs.”
- Turn the Mundane into the Sacred. “As I see it, my job as coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet: Playing pro basketball.” He incorporated meditation into his team’s practices. “I wanted to give players something besides X’s and O’s to focus on. What’s more, we often invented rituals of our own to infuse practices with a sense of the sacred.”
- One Breath = One Mind. Players “often have to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure. I discovered that when I had the players sit in silence, breathing together in sync, it helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words. One breath equals one mind.”
“If you place too many restrictions on players, they’ll spend an inordinate amount of time trying to buck the system. Like all of us, they need a certain degree of structure in their lives, but they also require enough latitude to express themselves creatively.”
- The Key to Success is Compassion. “Now, ‘compassion’ is not a word often bandied about in locker rooms. But I’ve found that a few kind, thoughtful words can have a strong transformative effect on relationships, even with the toughest men in the room.” Compassion breaks down barriers among people. Jackson writes,
“When Michael returned to the Bulls in 1995 after a year and a half of playing minor league baseball, he didn’t know most of the players and he felt completely out of sync with the team. It wasn’t until he got into a fight with Steve Kerr at practice that he realized he needed to get to know his teammates more intimately. He had to understand what made them tick, so that he could work with them more productively. That moment of awakening helped Michael become a compassionate leader and ultimately helped transform the team into one of the greatest of all time.
- Keep Your Eye on the Spirit, Not on the Scoreboard. “When a player isn’t forcing a shot or trying to impose his personality on the team, his gifts as an athlete most fully manifest.” When a player is “playing within his natural abilities, he activates a higher potential for the team that transcends his own limitations and helps his teammates transcend theirs. When this happens, the whole begins to add up to more than the sum of its parts.” He adds, “Most coaches get tied up in knots worrying about tactics, but I preferred to focus my attention on whether the players were moving together in a spirited way.”
- Sometimes You Have to Pull Out the Big Stick. At times Jackson used “tricks to wake players up and raise their level of consciousness. Once I had the Bulls practice in silence; on another occasion I made them scrimmage with the lights out. I like to shake things up and keep the players guessing. Not because I want to make their lives miserable but because I want to prepare them for the inevitable chaos that occurs the minute they step onto a basketball court.”
- When in Doubt, Do Nothing. “Basketball is an action sport, and most people involved in it are high-energy individuals who love to do something—anything—to solve problems. However, there are occasions when the best solution is to do absolutely nothing….I subscribe to the philosophy of the late Satchel Paige, who said, ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.'”
- Forget the Ring. Leaders hate losing. “And yet as coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome…What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.”
Create The Space For Ownership
From my book "Entitled To Nothing...
Create the Space for Ownership
One afternoon, about a week later, I was cleaning my new office when Kevin Payette came in. KP would be the only senior on my first team and our captain. Not only did I benefit from having a very good team—looking back, I think we were the best team in the league my first year—but we also had only one senior, and he was a terrific leader. The combination of talent and leadership made things much easier on a first year head coach.
KP was sitting in the office and talking to me about our pre-season pickup games. I had gone recruiting the day before, so I hadn’t seen the guys when I normally would as they came over to play. I asked KP how the games went.
“Ah, not very good. They were kind of bullshit. Guys weren’t playing hard, guys were complaining. It wasn’t good at all.”
I figured I’d put it on him and see how he responded. “Really? What are we going to do about it?” I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but I figured we could start a conversation about how to fix the issue.
His answer surprised me. “We already took care of it. We got up at 7 AM this morning and ran as a team. Everybody came in and ran. The guys know we can’t have that.”
I tried not to let him see my surprise. I asked the question pretty confident that I wasn’t going to get a good answer other than, “I don’t know, coach. If guys don’t play hard, I’m not really sure what we can do.” But he had taken ownership along with the rest of the team for some garbage pickup games in the pre-season. This wasn’t something I had stressed to them. This was something they had done on their own. They had standards for how they should compete, even in the pre-season, and they held themselves accountable to those standards. That said a lot about the team I was now coaching.
How many teams are getting up before class and running to punish themselves for bad pickup games? I was impressed. It showed me for certain that these kids cared. They wanted to be good, and they took it seriously. It also showed me that they would take responsibility and ownership, which is important in any successful organization. So often as leaders we want to correct mistakes and tell people what to do. In reality, high performing teams are driven from the inside out. I got my first glimpse of that lesson in the office with KP that day. Our job as the leader is not to tell them what to do, but to give them the tools to figure it out themselves. I wanted my team to be full of leaders, not followers. They had the space to take ownership when their coach left right before school. I’d learn over time to continue to give them that space.
There is a big difference between a team being told what to do and doing it on their own. Compliant teams will do what they are told, and with talent they can be good. Teams that take ownership do it for each other, and those teams have a chance to be special. When they own it, they’ll fight a little harder for it. When your team starts to drive your culture, elite success is more attainable.
Nick Nurse - Six Bullets
Nick Nurse outlines part of his approach when he first became an NBA head coach:
I told myself when I first got the job that I would have six bullets to fire during the season, just six times that I would allow myself- in the midst of a lackluster practice, after a particularly sloppy game, or during a losing streak- to really rip into the team.
There's a cliche' about a coach "losing" his team- or "losing the locker room," as it's sometimes said. It's a real thing. It can happen if you just chew on their asses from day one and never let up. At a certain point, players will feel like they've heard enough and just stop listening.
I don't know for sure that's what happened to me when I was coaching at Grand View, when I was still in my early twenties, but it's always in the back of my mind. Those poor kids had to put up with a coach who yelled too much- who had no concept of the tempo and rhythms required and the uses of silence.
I didn't keep close track of my six bullets (I certainly remember one during the playoffs, which I'll get into later) but I'm fairly sure I never used them all. There was one other determination I made before the season about how I was going to handle my role. I decided I was not going to run any of the sessions where we looked at game tape.
I put an assistant coach in charge of the offense, another in charge of the defense, and a third in charge of special teams- meaning out-of-bounds plays, late-game plays, any other special situations. I rotated them every eight games to keep them objective. I didn't want the offensive guy to be lobbying for someone who couldn't guard anybody to get minutes, or the other way around.
The players had heard my voice a lot over the last five seasons, because I ran a lot of these meetings. I would eventually step forward and do the critiques- but not until the playoffs.
Listen More, Say Less
Effective leadership is about listening more than talking. From my book, Entitled To Nothing...
Listen More, Say Less
After the press conference, I met with the team in a classroom in the Murray Center. That meeting is always a challenge, especially when it’s your first time in charge. The kids wanted to know who I was and what I was all about. And I was dying to tell them. But I wanted to listen more than talk. I resisted the temptation to talk about myself and made it a point to listen to them. I think seeing KP before the press conference when he handed me that schedule altered my approach. I needed to learn about the program, the players, and the culture. I needed to understand the personalities of the individ‐uals and the team. Your first day as a leader feels like it is supposed to be about you, but it’s really about the team in front of you.
It might be the biggest challenge you face when taking over a new organization – you want to make an impact and instill your culture right away. You can see what the program is going to look like, and you can’t wait to get it there. But it requires patience and mental discipline. You have to listen to your players and learn about them before you can get them to buy-in to your beliefs. Effective leadership is about listening more than talking, especially early on as you establish relationships.
A culture is built over time through daily action and approach. It’s a brick by brick scenario. And haven’t we always been taught that a great leader is the guy in the front of the room, telling everyone what the plan is? Well, I learned on my very first day that listening is one of the most powerful weapons in leadership. And the knowledge you need to build your organization the right way comes from the people you are trying to lead. Your connection with them is more important than your ideas about how to build your program.
That day, I started to understand a truth I would come to believe in strongly as a head coach. I learn the most about my team—and we are at our best—when I am listening to my players. The standard model of coaching—with the leader in the front of the room telling everyone what to do—isn’t the most effective model. It isn’t the best way to get the most out of your team. Talk to your people. Ask them questions. They may not always tell you what you want to hear, but they will tell you what you need to know.
Don't Coach Them Into A Corner
There is a lot of research on how our mind works and the different levels of bias inherent in what we perceive. I've always been fascinated by the way our mind operates and how it influences the way we coach. Human behavior studies show a perceptual bias, where our personal motivations have an influence on what we see, and a response bias, when we report seeing what we wish to see.
There's also significant data on confirmation bias which is the tendency to seek out, interpret, and favor information in a way that confirms our own beliefs. We actually ignore the information that contradicts the way we feel, and we process ambiguous information in a way that supports our beliefs. The bottom line is we see what we want to see.
I think about confirmation bias a lot when I coach and recruit. It's a huge factor in evaluation. If you really want to like a kid when you go watch him play (or worse, you really need a player at that position), you are going to find ways to like him. If you have a bad impression of him from the beginning, you'll find ways not to like him. Understanding the way your mind works will make you a better evaluator.
It also can have a big impact on how we coach. I'm always trying to avoid putting players into a box. You get an impression of who a player is (he's too soft, doesn't have good feel, etc.) and you continue to see the things that confirm your impression. The soft kid is never going to shake that label. You always evaluate him through the "soft" lens and any play that he makes confirms what you think.
It's really easy to coach your players into a corner. Especially when it comes time to make tough decisions on playing time. When you are trying to figure out who to start and how to establish your rotation, you need reasons. You need a rationale as to why some guys are playing and some guys are not. The kid who isn't tough enough, doesn't defend, or turns the ball over too much stays in that place and allows you to put the guys you want in the lineup. Many head coaches are looking for a comfort level, and they find it by confirming the the prevalent thoughts that are already in their mind.
It's not easy as a coach because it's literally the way the mind works. It's not a conscious bias, so you don't realize it's happening. You really have to be self aware and evaluate how fairly you see things. A lot of players don't get an opportunity to change their situation because of the way the are perceived, and our mind can play tricks on us.
Don't coach a player to be the player you think he is to make you more comfortable. Give him a chance to get out of the corner.
Confidence, Confusion and Communication
We all want our players to talk more. We all are constantly telling our players to talk more. We can't really understand why these guys who can't seem to shut up off the court can't be more vocal on the court.
One thing I know we are missing - and I've talked about this before - is not coaching our guys on what to say. It isn't enough to just tell them to talk. Tell them what you want them to say. If they are on defense, are they just letting the guy guarding the ball know where they are? Are they telling him they are in help? What are they supposed to say in transition? Start by asking them questions about what they saw, and if they can tell you what they saw, ask them what they think they should have said. If you want your guys to talk more, they have to know what to say.
Another big issue with communication is the difference between confidence and confusion. Confident players are able to talk more. They know what to expect and exactly what they are supposed to be doing. When they are comfortable with that, they can give to their teammates. And communication is an unselfish act, something you do for your team and your teammates. What do people do when they aren't feeling very confident? They keep to themselves. Make sure your guys are confident in what you do and what their job is to get them to talk.
Players who are confused aren't going to talk. It's that simple. If you can't get your guys to talk enough, they may not know what to say because they are confused. Think about the messages you are giving them on either side of the ball and whether or not it is clear to them. If you are a packline defensive team and you want your guys in the gaps, you can't also ask them to deny passes or get up on the hip of a shooter. Getting up on a shooter to ride him out is going to take them out of their gap. They can't do both. But we often send mixed messages. We want that guy in help position, but if he's guarding a shooter we want him to stay close to his man. The result is confusion, or at the very least a little bit of hesitancy. And if your players are confused, you can't expect them to talk. They aren't sure what to do, so what are they going to say?
Confident players will talk more. Heck, confident people talk more in all walks of life. Confused players are trying to figure it out, trying to survive. They are thinking too much about their job to talk. They can't be loud when they are uncertain.
Nobody talks when they are thinking. If your team isn't talking enough, make sure you aren't forcing them to think on the court. Are you being clear, concise and definitive? Do they now exactly what is expected of them? Give them the confidence that comes with knowing and take the thinking out of it. You will hear their communication level increase.
Greg Carvel - UMass Hockey
Very interesting presentation on this podcast from Greg Carvel, the hockey coach at UMass, who took over one of the worst teams in the country and won a national championship 5 years later. Great insight into his culture and how he built it.
Some concepts that I really liked...
Command Respect
When he first took over the program, they came up with a purpose for the team, They knew they weren't very good (they won 5 games his first year) but their purpose was to "command respect." That is what drove them. Regardless of the result, they wanted to command the respect of their opponent based on how hard they played. A great purpose or mission for a rebuilding program.
Get Them To Say Our Standard
Hard. Fast. Prepared. That was the standard for UMass Hockey. They always wanted to play hard, fast and prepared. Carvel insisted to his team that they wanted to pursue those standards in such a way that their opponent actually said them out loud. He wanted to hear the opposing coach or players, in the press after the game, talk about how hard and fast they played, and how prepared they were. And he got his wish. Whenever he heard an opponent talking about their own standards at UMass, they knew they had the culture right.
"Good"
Carvel has an interesting approach to dealing with tough circumstances. Any time they face adversity, the response is always "Good." When a couple of starters went down with Covid right before the national semifinal, the response was "Good." The approach is positive - this is an opportunity for us to get better and for others to step up and play a bigger role. The response to adversity is always "Good."
Uniquely Seen
I really like this phrase. Carvel wants to make sure everyone of his players is "uniquely seen." They are all different and he wants to make sure he and his coaching staff gets to know who they are through and through so as to be able to coach in the best way. Every player is different, and he wants to know and understand those differences. He says he felt "uniquely seen" by his coach in college and he's always wanted his players to feel the same way.
Give It In The Gut
The phrase UMass Hockey uses to talk about being direct and honest is "give it in the gut, not in the back." They speak the truth to one another. They tell it straight and they are unfailingly honest all the time. In their program their is no other way. They are truth-tellers who never dance around an issue.
From Scratch
Taking over a new program and trying to build an elite culture from scratch is challenging in a lot of ways. It's really hard to slow things down. The amount of work that needs to be done can be overwhelming and it's hard to remain patient. You know what you want things to look like and you want it to happen as soon as possible. Your desire to establish a new approach right away can actually get in the way of your ability to do so.
I've taken over two programs (Rhode Island College, University of Maine) that had no history of basketball success. I'm sure in both situations I was a little to eager to get things established. To get your culture right, you really have to think long term. I've always been more of a big picture thinker, but I still had trouble with this. It's hard to see something happen that is dysfunctional and say "Well, that's understandable, we haven't had a chance to implement our culture." You want it to change, and you want it to change now. Which is okay. But your first thought with any decisions about your culture should be about the long term impact. If you cut corners with your approach to feel like you are making an immediate impact, establishing your culture only gets tougher.
Trust is the most important core element of any successful organization. Everything you do should come from the mindset of earning the trust of your players. Show vulnerability and humility, and have genuine conversations with them. Don't just get to know them off the court, let them get to know you off the court. Make sure your actions back up everything you say. If for a second they feel like you aren't being authentic with them, you'll start to lose them and your culture will never be strong enough to sustain elite success.
We all think of leadership as making declarative statements. I think it's more about asking questions. One of the most important things you need to do when you take over is learn about your players and your organization. Telling people how you are going to do things is not how to go about it. It's a somewhat lazy approach to leadership, one that makes you feel good when you go home at night, but not one that connects with your team. You feel like you are establishing how you are going to operate, and your players are asking "Do I really want this guy telling me what to do? Whoever asks the most questions wins.
Place a majority of your focus and time off the court or away from the office. The basketball will take time, but it will be shaped by your approach. As your team is learning to trust you, the way you communicate with them will have a huge impact. Your preparation and your message is more important than your offense or defense. I'm not saying the basketball isn't important, of course it is. But as your team is still getting to know you, who you are is more important than what you know. They may love the offense, but if they don't really believe in you that won't matter. People buy in to who you are more than what you do.
Leadership from day one is a challenge. You have a natural urge to get as much done as quickly as possible. I'm pretty confident you'll look back at more than a few things that you tried to move too quickly with. Take some time to slow down and figure out the best way to implement your approach with the long game in mind. The goals is not to change things today, but to be successful over the long haul.
Can You Teach It?
I've learned over the years as a coach that there are some things that are easier to recruit than to teach. Certain parts of the game just come to players naturally. That's not to say you can't make them better in these areas. You can always work on improving skill. But there are certain elements of the game that seem to come naturally or guys just have trouble picking them up.
Finishing at the rim
I've found it's very hard to make someone a good finisher. Guys who can put the ball in the basket are naturals. They have the ability to get the ball from their hands to the bottom of the net quickly and easily. I've coached some great finishers - Ryan Gomes, Herbert Hill at Providence College - and they just had this instinctive ability. It wasn't something we trained them to do.
On the other side, guys who struggle to finish have a hard time getting better at it. Making a lay-up with a little bit of pressure always seems to be a struggle. These guys constantly frustrate you as a coach, no matter how much you work on it with them. There are drills that you can do and you'd like to think they'll show some improvement. But in my experience that improvement is marginal. Guys that struggle to finish always seem to do so - almost like it's part of their DNA.
Feeding the post
Maybe we all just need to work on passing skills more than we do, but it seems like feeding the post is hard for a lot of guards. It requires timing, touch and feel, plus a willingness to take a risk. It's usually not a dime that you are going to get an assist for, it's just making sure you can get it to the post player without turning it over. Nothing seems to frustrate guards more than trying to throw it inside and having the defender fight around the big and steal the ball.
A big part of being a good passer in general is just feel for the game and the timing of when to deliver the ball. Throw in the physical nature of post play, with two guys banging around back and forth, and it's easy for the passer to become a little more tentative. But guards who are natural passers have no issues feeding the post. They know how to ball fake, and they understand the balance and movement of the big - which direction he is heading, and where to get him the ball. I'm not sure those are things you can teach that effectively.
Obviously passing the ball and feeding the post are skills you can work on. I'm just not sure you can really improve somebody's ability to feed the post.
Rebounding out of your area
Rebounding is a lot about emphasis, toughness and technique, and you can certainly teach people to be better rebounders. But guys who chase the ball down, who rebound out of their area, are pretty special.
You can hold your players accountable for blocking out and reward the guys who are the best rebounders, and you can teach it and work on it every day. But there are some guys with a knack for the ball who are naturally greedy when the ball goes up and have a great feel for where a rebound is coming off. They combine that with great effort and toughness to become big time rebounders.
When you find a ball seeker, someone who can just go get it, that is pretty special. You can teach the technique and emphasize the importance of it, but certain guys just have an ability to go find the ball.
The Elephant In The Room
From Nick Nurse's book "Rapture."
In my Raptors office, I have an elephant on my desk. My assistant, Geni Melville, picked it up on the street in Toronto. It's made of some kind of bronze and is the so-called elephant in the room - a visual reminder of the need to have hard conversations and face things head on.
Say I have a player in my office who wants more minutes, but he doesn't shoot a high enough percentage to help us when he's out there. He takes too many difficult shots, stops the offense because he doesn't move the ball, doesn't pass it.
Well, say hi to the elephant. I have to say to him: You want to get on the floor? You want to get paid? This is what you have to do.
I'm not doing the team or this guy any good if I sugarcoat it just to make him feel better. If I do that, he goes back out there and does the same dumb stuff, we probably lose a game, and he ends up back on the bench.
I've been around coaches who do not want to have the hard conversations. What happens is the problem mushrooms. If you get an injury or two and need the player and he screws up again - which he will definitely do if you don't try to change him - you end up with a bunch of other guys pissed of that you didn't coach him properly. You started off with one problem and now you have ten.
The important thing is when I have my elephant-in-the-room moments, I don't want it to be a one-way conversation. That's a big thing I learned from my upbringing. I don't want to be the only one in the room talking.
When the other person has his say, there's a good chance I'll learns something. Maybe I'm giving him the wrong prompts. I'm telling him one thing but he's hearing something else.
There's no way that I could coach in the modern NBA with my father's my-way-or-the-highway approach, nor would I want to. I am not my players' boss in a traditional sense. For one thing, even some end-of-the-bench guys make more money than I do (and I'm very well paid by an normal standard) and a couple of the stars literally make ten times my salary.
But even if I was their boss, I'd want to hear their views - and probably especially when they disagree with me. The NBA has moved in that direction. The world has.
You Are Looking For A Response
What is the response you are looking for? That is the question you should ask yourself when you are talking to your team.
If you think about it, you aren't talking to your team just so they listen to you. You are trying to get a response out of them. If they are receiving your message, it should translate into behavior. When you draw up a play in a huddle you are trying to get them to execute. When you deliver the scouting report before the game, you are trying to get them to take a certain approach to winning that game. When you talk to them about academics, you want them to put great effort into their work.
Thinking about the response you want to get from your team should shape the way you talk to them. When your team comes out flat in a game and you have to get after them in a huddle, you are trying to wake them up. You want their energy (and behavior) to change. That's a different tone then when you are setting up a play to run in a tie game with 30 seconds to go. The response you are hoping to get impacts not only your message, but they way you deliver it.
This approach is really important when you are trying to get the most out of your guys in practice. Too often the way we talk to our players - especially in a closed gym during practice - is about our own emotion. If we are upset, we deliver the message that way. If we are coming off a bad performance, we have a long talk before practice to get everything off of our chest. But what response are we looking for? If you hammer a kid in practice every time he turns the ball over, what response do you expect to get? To think he's going to improve his performance after getting hammered doesn't make a lot of sense.
The conversation before practice is always one to think about. You may have a lot of different points you want to make and all might be valid and important. However, talking to your team right before practice - especially for any extended period of time - likely isn't going to get the desired response. If you want your players energized and ready to go right away, an extended conversation likely isn't going to make that happen. There is a time and a place to deliver an important message about things that need to change. Right before practice probably isn't the best time to do it.
Organizing your message and figuring out when and how to deliver it is important. But it's more than simply making sure they hear the message. The ultimate goal is to get them to respond the right way, and to change behavior to produce a desired outcome. Before you start talking to your team, think about more than delivering the right message. Think about the response you are looking for.
What Factors Predict NBA Success?
A good thought-provoking piece from a few years back.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-predicts-nba-success/
Okay
"Look around you and look inside you. How many people do you think are settling? I will tell you: a hell of a lot of people. People are settling every day into okay relationships and okay jobs and an okay life. And do you know why? Because okay is comfortable. Okay pays the bills and gives a warm bed at night and allows one to go out with co-workers on a Friday evening to enjoy happy hour. But do you know what okay is not? Okay isn't thrilling, it isn't passion, it isn't the reason you get up every day; it isn't life-changing or unforgettable. Okay is not the reason you go to bed late and wake up early. Okay is not the reason you risk absolutely everything you've got just for the smallest chance that something absolutely amazing could happen." - Lauren Goodger
10 Characteristics of High Performing Teams
Clarity of Purpose - One defined mission
Deep Trust - Allows for vulnerability
Psychological Safety - Fosters competitive excellence
Uncommon Leadership - Everyone is a leader
Take Ownership - The culture is theirs
Direct Communication - Truth-tellers, always
Win Anyway - No excuses
Process - Constant performance improvement
Perspective - Emotional balance
Intrinsically Motivated - Autonomy, mastery, and purpose
Reliable
Perhaps the simplest, most important attribute you can have a player is to be reliable. It sounds pretty basic, but it's true. As a coach I want to know what I'm going to get. Regardless of what level player you are - whether you are a starter and a star or a practice player who hardly gets the horn - I just want to know what I'm going to get. That allows me a comfort level in preparing and coaching the team.
I'm always talking to my teams about being able to "count on you." Can we count on you? If we can't count on you to show up on time, to give a great effort every day - to be reliable - we certainly aren't going to count on you to win tough games on the road. One of the most important things you can do as a teammate is to prove you can be counted on.
The best way to show you are reliable starts with being honest with yourself. Evaluate what you are really good at. Not what you want to be good at or what you are working on. What are you really good at right now that can help your team? Make an honest assessment of yourself. After that it's simple. Take the things you are good at, and do them a lot. If you are a quick guard and a great on the ball defender, hawk the ball for 94 feet and impact the game that way. If you are a strong physical rebounder, go to the glass on both ends every time the ball goes up. If you are a big time shooter, find open space and be ready to catch and shoot.
There are a lot of players out there who lose value (and minutes) by trying to prove they can do things they aren't good at. They shoot quick 3s in transition when they aren't great shooters. They handle the ball in transition when they aren't a great handler. Once you start to do things you aren't good at, you become unreliable. You are doing things that won't help your team.
If you come off the bench as a great defender and rebounder, who provides energy and a spark to the team, do that every day in practice. It's okay to average 6 points and 4 rebounds a game, and you can still be very valuable to your team. But as a coach, I want to know I'm going to get that energy, that level of defense and those 6 points and 4 rebounds every day.
Once you become reliable and I know I can count on you, I know I can win with you.
Alex Caruso
“A big reason guys get stuck in the G League... they don’t realize the position they’re trying out for. It’s like going to a job interview thinking you’re going to be the CFO, and they’re looking for someone to clean the bathrooms.”
Why Did You Take Me Out?
I took you out because it was time to put someone else in. It's really that simple. Making these decisions is a big part of my job, and the goal is to put our team in the best position to win. We have a lot of players who can help us, and it's always a challenge to find the right combinations while keeping everybody fresh.
It doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong - although if you jogged back on defense, I'm sure you know why you are coming out. It's not that I don't like you, or that I like him better than you. It's not personal, it really never is. I haven't decided that you aren't good enough to play anymore or that you belong on the bench. It was just time to give someone else a chance, and to give you a rest.
Everyone on this team competes at a high level. It's what we do. All of your teammates come to practice every day and lay it on the line, just like you do. They all have the chance to earn the right to play, just like you. Rewarding the guys who compete, produce and are great teammates with playing time is part of what makes our practices so good. And those practices are what give our team a chance to be great.
The thing is, I don't really have time for an individual meeting right now. I don't have time to speak to your parents, or explain to your AAU coach why I just took you out. We are really trying to win this game. I still love you, whether you're playing great or not at your best. But I need to focus on the next play in this game right now. I need to coach our team.
I'm sure this isn't the last time you'll fee this way, so keep this in mind. It's okay to print this out and keep it posted in your locker as a reminder. Everybody wants to play more. Everyone on this team. I want everyone to want to play more. But it's how you handle wanting to play more that tells me what type of teammate you are, and ultimately will define how successful you can be.
Hustle to the bench. Grab a drink. Catch your breath. Cheer on your teammates. Think about what you can do better to help this team when you go back in. Stay fully engaged in the game. That's the best way to get back on the floor, sooner rather than later.
I won't always make the right decision. And I have to make a lot of them. I promise you - every decision I make is with the best interests of our TEAM in mind.