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Delivering Your Message
“Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audience feel smart.” - Adam Grant, Think Again
Think about how you deliver your message to your team. What is your goal?
My ability to deliver the right message to my team has evolved over the years. When you first become a head coach you really prepare to make sure you know exactly what you are talking about in front of the team. You think about exactly what you want to say and make sure you are comfortable getting it across. Although it wasn't intentional, my approach was really to make myself "look smart." I was just worried about what I knew, and how I was going to say it.
Over time I started to think more about getting the message across. I could see reactions in the players faces, and I could tell whether or not the message was resonating. Then when we went out on the floor, usually I could see some level of impact in their approach. If the message did get across there would be a tangible response.
John Wooden used to say "You haven't taught until they have learned." There are plenty of times as a head coach where you have an important message to relay, but circumstances may dictate if or how you deliver it. After a tough practice, when your team is dead tired, they may not be ready to receive any message. I've learned any long talks after practice or a game usually fell on deaf ears. It wasn't about the message I was prepared to deliver (and how smart I looked), it was about their ability to receive the message (and how smart they felt).
The quote above from Adam Grant really makes me think about how I deliver the message. Early in my career, I felt good if I got to all of my bullet points and deliver them succinctly and with presence. It didn't really matter how my team felt. But great communicators are also great listeners, and they have a feel for their audience. You should have this type of feel for your team. Your goal, when you deliver the message, is to make them feel smart.
Golden State's Front Office
Terrific look inside Golden State's approach to rebuilding their team while still competing for a championship. So many great gems in here.
Inside the Warriors’ restructured front office at the end of a validating NBA Finals season
Preseason. Los Angeles. An overall meaningless night to the viewing public in what was then known as Staples Center. But the stakes were high in regard to the Warriors’ 15th and final roster spot for the 2021-22 season. The decision was between Avery Bradley and Gary Payton II. The franchise legends preferred Bradley, the known commodity. The front office wanted Payton, a gem they felt they’d discovered. Another option: Neither. Leaving the spot open would save millions in luxury tax penalties. The internal debates were lively.
The competition tilted Bradley’s direction when Payton had hernia surgery a month before training camp and wasn’t able to get on the court. He was running out of time to win the spot. To secure an NBA job, Payton needed to make a statement. He convinced the training staff he was well enough for the green light in Los Angeles, however brief.
Payton entered late in the first quarter. He had a putback, dunk and layup within his first 121 seconds on the court. Two more dunks came a bit later. So did a block and a steal. His night — and entire preseason audition — only lasted 11 minutes. He didn’t even play in the preseason finale. But the impact of his performance swept through the organization like juicy gossip. Payton’s style isn’t subtle.
At one point during Payton’s stint, Steph Curry stood up from his seat on the bench, turned towards the crowd and locked eyes with Bob Myers, the president of basketball operations, seated about five rows back, next to a beaming Joe Lacob.
“Steph turned and gave me an, ‘All right, all right … ‘” Myers said while sharing the story this week, his head nodding and shoulders shrugged, hands in the air, mimicking Curry’s gesture. “I gave him one of those looks, like: ‘See, we’re not idiots. We know a little bit.'”
The rejuvenation of the Warriors — back in the NBA Finals, where they’ll face the Boston Celtics in Game 1 on Thursday night — means a whole lot for a whole lot of people at every level of the organization. Job security. Future earnings. Legacy building. Reputation defining. Career affirming. Winning sprays credit in every direction. Everybody eats. That includes the restructured, bolstered front office.
For the Warriors’ basketball operations collective, this has been a season of vindication. It’s been doubted, scrutinized and derided since Golden State lost the 2019 NBA Finals to the Toronto Raptors. This run to the championship stage is validation for a sharpened process, a string of new hires, some recent draft picks, their roster additions, their way of doing business. Most of all, for the ambition of their highly scrutinized two-timeline plan, which supposed the Warriors could simultaneously draft, protect and develop the future while pursuing a championship in the present. Even their star players were skeptical.
“If it was up (to the veteran players), we would’ve all loved to have (added) a ton of experience,” Draymond Green said recently on his podcast, The Draymond Green Show. “They thought totally different. Ultimately, we went with that side of things. They were 100 percent right. So you have to give them credit for going out on that limb with the highest payroll in the NBA and saying, ‘No, we think we can get it done that way and that’s the route we’re going to go.'”
The credit for finding Payton begins with Kent Lacob. The younger son of the team’s CEO cut his teeth scouting the G-League. The Warriors use Santa Cruz as a front office proving ground. Ryan Atkinson was the GM down there. He’s since been promoted to a more prominent role within the Warriors’ front office, replaced as Sea Dubs GM by rising front office voice David Fatoki.
Kent and Atkinson put Payton on the radar of Nick U’Ren, the Warriors’ director of basketball operations. Myers always wants a few G-League names ready if a roster spot opens. He relies on that crew’s expertise in the minors. When the Warriors traded Marquese Chriss and Brad Wanamaker at the 2021 trade deadline, they had a floating 14th roster spot that needed to be filled. That’s when Payton’s name first landed on Myers’ desk.
“What kind of guy is he? What do you think he does best? Basic stuff,” Myers said. “Then ultimately I’ll go with the recommendation. I can’t pretend to say I’ve watched as much Payton as Kent has. That’d be dumb. That’d be arrogant and wrong.”
It was a win for every layer of an expanding front office. From the Santa Cruz brain trust to U’Ren in the San Francisco front office, to head coach Steve Kerr, who was convinced by U’Ren, Kerr’s former special assistant, that Payton was worth keeping.
“They can question anything they want,” Myers said of his players. “I want them to. But this idea that they were upset or we bucked what they wanted … It’s an interesting story, but it’s never been uncomfortable. Nobody in the course of the last 10 years, as far as I can remember, I don’t remember a conversation where it was ever uncomfortable. They’ve held up their end of the bargain. But in the same way, so have we. I don’t want that to sound defensive. We haven’t done everything right. But we’ve done some things where it’s given us the benefit of the doubt a little bit.”
Klay Thompson tore his Achilles the day of the 2020 NBA Draft. The Warriors stuck to their established draft board and took James Wiseman at No. 2. But Wiseman, a center, couldn’t replace what they’d suddenly lost in the injury to their star guard. It created a frantic moment of roster reform. The Warriors had a valuable $17.2 million trade exception that was set to expire a few days later. They had a vacancy on the wing and one chip to cash that would vanish soon. Use it or lose it.
Joe Lacob spends aggressively. It’s an ownership quality that separates him from many of his peers and opens up the menu of options for his front office. He not only green-lighted acquiring Kelly Oubre Jr. with that trade exception but also was pushing for it. After going 15-50, Lacob had no interest in another losing season. Even though adding Oubre would incur a massive luxury tax penalty, Lacob wanted to fill the gaping hole on the perimeter. Oubre’s talent and defensive acumen felt like the closest they could get to replace Thompson. But the Warriors’ decision-makers would learn that not every problem can be solved by spending money.
“Fit is always a factor,” Steve Kerr said. “Bill Belichick has a great quote that he uses in general: ‘You’re not building a roster, you’re building a team.'”
Oubre didn’t quite work out for the Warriors. There was some internal belief that perhaps he could’ve been used wiser. Oubre always performed better as an undersized power forward in a smaller, speedier lineup. Just look at the season he completed in Charlotte. Kerr mostly started him at shooting guard. But Kerr had also been handed Wiseman, a rookie center whose developmental needs were both prioritized. So going small wasn’t an option.
“The hard part about that (Oubre) decision was there wasn’t enough time to make it,” Myers said. “Preparation is important. That decision was hastily made because of Klay’s Achilles. I guess if I were to criticize it, it’d be the knee-jerk part of it. But it also could be viewed as a positive because it shows Joe’s willingness to always try.”
The bigger problem: Neither Oubre nor Wiseman fit with the motion, pass-heavy, flowing scheme Kerr runs and both Curry and Green have come to prefer. The front office had gone talent hunting and strayed from what had so often made the Warriors successful in the middle part of the past decade — pairing David West’s passing with Ian Clark’s cutting and Zaza Pachulia’s brute force with JaVale McGee’s lob crushing.
“We never had to live on the margins,” Myers said. “We’re now on the margins more than ever, even though we are in the Finals. Those (Kevin Durant) teams had a huge margin for error. We don’t have that anymore. So how do we create an edge? Analytically you can find them. Player development you can find them.”
Zoom out. Go back to the dreadful 2019-20 season. During that time away from the spotlight, coming on the heels of that dynasty run, the Warriors’ front office finally had time to take a forest view of its operation and examine how best to reorganize and modernize.
Part of the issue with the Oubre addition was the lack of statistical vetting. He doesn’t pass or move much on offense. The tracking data and numbers told that tale, highlighting the unlikeliness of his fitin this particular system. But that warning wasn’t heeded prior to the trigger being pulled.
“When we were on that five-year run, it was really about trying to keep it together,” Myers said. “I spent a lot of energy on keeping us whole. Once that fractured with Kevin leaving, Klay being hurt, Steph getting hurt, it was no longer about the playoffs that season. So let’s spend our time and energy on our process. Meaning analytics, coaching staff, development. I’d say we started thinking deeper.”
What they discovered was an archaic habitat that had lost two valuable old-school voices — Jerry West and Travis Schlenk — while also failing to inject a new-school approach within a league increasingly obsessed with analytics.
They hired Onsi Saleh away from San Antonio on the recommendation of reputed Spurs executive R.C. Buford. Saleh is the Warriors’ new cap guy. Before, the team’s general counsel doubled as the cap guy.
“The Spurs are much more formalized in their meetings and much denser in how they process,” Myers said. “So it’s great to have Onsi. He’s been awesome as far as cap information. Strategic planning. He’s beloved by all our coaches. Super bright. Law degree.”
Pabail Sidhu leads the refurbished analytics department. Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Kirk Lacob have been at the forefront of platforming Sidhu and better integrating his work into the organization’s decision-making. They’ve let him hire a bigger department and plan to let him expand it further.
Sidhu has created his own formula that is used by several departments. It helped the Warriors generate their free agency board last offseason. Their new analytics approach identified Nemanja Bjelica and Otto Porter Jr. as targets who “popped” under this new paradigm.
“A lot of people didn’t celebrate our offseason, in terms of minimum signings,” Myers said. “We actually thought we got what we wanted. A lot of that was backed in analytics and fit. That was a new thing for us.”
Assistant coach Mike Brown uses Sidhu’s formula to generate a defensive metric that rates each player. If they have a bad week, it dips downward and Brown publicizes it to the team. It’s been a strategy that several players believe has raised internal accountability and, in turn, defensive effort.
Kerr, admittedly not an analytics-friendly coach, has come to love expected field goal percentage as a postgame metric. Sidhu’s system judges a player’s typical percentage based on a certain zone, the nearest defender and other varying factors to determine the likelihood of any given shot attempt.
That resulting number, instead of the traditional field goal percentage, gives a more accurate representation of the type of shots created and the health of the offense on any given night. Kerr once referenced the stat during a pregame media session before a game against the Jazz. A Utah media member asked Kerr which tracking system he uses. SportVU? Synergy? One of those other complicated systems?
Kerr expressed confusion.
“Uhh,” Kerr said. “Pabail.”
Sidhu works closest with Atkinson on the Warriors’ coaching staff. Atkinson was on the list of analytically friendly assistant coach candidates the front office presented to Kerr last summer.
“One of the reasons I hired Kenny was his feel for analytics,” said Kerr, who formerly had Sammy Gelfand as his analytics guy before Detroit poached him in 2018. “To have Kenny as the liaison between the coaching staff and the analytics department has been massive. Kenny is really well-versed on that stuff. He’s a believer. This year has been the first time I think we’ve achieved the right balance.”
Jordan Poole slicing and dicing against Dallas. (Jack Arent / NBAE via Getty Images)
The Warriors initially hired Mike Dunleavy Jr. in late 2018 to be a pro scout. He lived in New York City and — a 15-year veteran who was the son of an NBA coach — had generated a life-long, league-wide Rolodex. He also happened to live in an area of the country where league intel flowed and the Warriors lacked an insider.
Myers once represented Dunleavy as an agent. Their close friendship clearly played a pivotal role in his hiring and quick ascent up the ranks.
“In this job, you really need confidants,” said Kerr, once a general manager in Phoenix. “You really need someone you can confide in and lean on. I know Mike has meant that to Bob. Mike’s also really bright, played the game, knows the NBA.”
After attending several Eastern Conference games, Dunleavy gained an immediate taste for the profession. He asked for more responsibility. The college basketball season hit its stride and they sent him out to scout. The Warriors spread their executives around the country to watch conference tournaments. Dunleavy was assigned the 2019 Big Ten Tournament. That’s the weekend he became a vocal Jordan Poole believer, convinced the skill, shooting touch and creativity could translate to the NBA if cultivated and developed correctly.
Dunleavy wasn’t alone. LaMont Peterson and Reggie Rankin, the Warriors’ two lead scouts, were on board, and Larry Harris, the assistant general manager in charge of the Warriors’ draft process, became a Poole advocate.
Poole wasn’t without question marks. John Beilein, his college coach, wasn’t the most complimentary of his former player in the pre-draft process. Beilein had become the Cavaliers’ head coach. Cleveland had the 26th pick. The Cavs passed on Poole and selected Dylan Windler. That circumstance gave the Warriors draft room pause. But their consensus big board had Poole as the highest-ranked player when they were on the clock for pick No. 28.
Joe Lacob might be more involved in the draft process than any other owner. He attends workouts, involves himself in interviews and forms strong opinions. He has the power to overrule. But everyone involved insists he listens and empowers those he’s hired.
For example, Lacob was fond of Corey Kispert as an option for the No. 14 pick the Warriors owned in the 2021 draft. But he was prepared to defer to his scouts and the room’s consensus, which had Trey Murphy III as the higher-ranked selection. It didn’t end up mattering. Moses Moody fell to 14. The Warriors had Moody in their top 10.
Myers operates similarly. He and Lacob ultimately make every personnel decision and shoulder the public credit and blame. Still, they maintain a collaborative approach.
“I’ve always taken the tact of ‘I speak the least and I speak last,'” Myers said. “I don’t want to influence your decision. I don’t want to browbeat. I want to give you a full platform to say whatever you want. If I start out in the meeting saying who I like, it’s undoubtedly going to influence what you say.”
The Wiseman, Moody and Jonathan Kuminga draft picks are too early to judge. Kuminga and Moody look like early hits. Wiseman hasn’t been healthy. His rookie season was rough and Kerr, on the coaching side, admits he could have “done better trying to fit James into a more comfortable situation.”
Next season, Wiseman’s third, is massive. The Warriors’ front office always tries to give any draft pick at least three seasons before coming to any strong conclusions. Good thing, too, because Poole didn’t break out until his third season.
Poole’s rapid rise has been one of the most vital factors in reigniting a dormant dynasty. Grabbing him 28th is a defining win for a front office that now includes Dunleavy in a prominent role. Dunleavy, even amid Poole’s early career struggles, was one of the more vocal behind-the-scenes believers Poole was worthy of patience.
His breakout season changes the perception of the Warriors’ recent draft history. Their four-year run of late first-round picks, which include center Damian Jones and wing Jacob Evans, looks so much better now with the growth of Poole and Kevon Looney.
“Probably not a popular choice at the time,” Myers said of the Poole draft. “We had to have conviction. Some people would say we shouldn’t do this because he’s not rated very high in the mock drafts. That stuff is powerful, to be honest. Getting an immediate F is never great. We hear it.”
Dunleavy left New York City in 2019 and moved to the Bay Area, committing full throttle to a front-office role. He’s around the team regularly. He travels on many road trips. He’s a leading voice for many of the daily on-the-ground decisions, as compared to Harris, who runs the scouting leg of the front office from Dallas. Dunleavy’s promotion means the Warriors now need a new scout based on the East Coast. Jonnie West, director of pro personnel, is based in Los Angeles and handles the West Coast.
In comparing the structure to previous versions of the front office, Dunleavy’s advancing role is akin to Schlenk’s. He’s right under Myers from a personnel decision-making standpoint, next to Kirk Lacob, who dabbles between the basketball and business sides. His trajectory seems to be as his father’s likelier successor, running the entire franchise.
Dunleavy wasn’t the only recent hire with playing experience. In 2020, the Warriors convinced Shaun Livingston to join the front office. He currently sits right in that upper layer, next to Kirk Lacob, Dunleavy and Harris.
Livingston’s job is crucial. He’s a connector between the veteran core, the coaching staff and the executive branch. There isn’t another human in the building who can navigate those waters as seamlessly.
“Shaun can say to Bob, ‘Hey, if you do this, this is how Steph’s going to feel and this is what Draymond’s going to think,'” Kerr said. “It might not determine the actual move that’s made, but it could determine the process. It could determine whether you do something or not.”
Myers said they sought Livingston’s perspective when weighing whether to add three teenage lottery picks to this core. Livingston was 19 when he joined the Clippers and spent his first couple of seasons behind Marko Jarić and Sam Cassell. Livingston’s advice: Bet on talent and trust your culture to guide them through an inevitably rocky road. Livingston is an immense part of that culture.
“I would say his value is in his presence, his maturity, his experience,” Myers said. “We use that for everything. We’re talking about player development. What’s the best way to develop Kuminga? That means he’s talking to Kuminga. But he’s also talking to Jama (Mahlalela, director of player development) and he’s talking to Steve and saying, ‘This is how I’d utilize him. This is how I’d prepare him. This is what I’d tell him.’ If Kuminga or Moody or Wiseman is great in three years, he will have a big hand in it.”
That’s often how it works for a front office. Validation or condemnation is delayed for weeks, months, years, depending on the gravity and ramifications of the move. But the end of any season is always a valuable checkpoint.
And the Warriors are back in the Finals. Many didn’t believe they would get back here, and the front office was often singled out as one of the reasons. But they are on the verge of a fourth championship, they have a thriving core still proving to be elite and a collection of young talent that bodes well for the future.
It seems Myers is correct. They aren’t idiots. They do know a little bit.
“The organization is significantly bigger,” Joe Lacob said. “We’ve added a lot of depth all the way through. People have gotten more experience and maturity. These guys are going to grow. They’re going to get jobs in other places. Just like our coaches. You expect some of that. But it’s the same principles and we run it the same way. I’m still here. Bob’s been here 10 years. Steve has been here eight. Kirk has been here with me for 12 years. It’s the same organization. We just keep adding firepower, which is how any good organization should run.”
Connected
When I watch the Celtics play, especially late in the year and in the playoffs, the word I think about is 'connected.' They are connected on both ends of the floor, but especially on the defensive end. The hardest teams to beat - and the best teams I've ever coached - are connected. They play for one another, with an unselfish mentality, as one unit.
Connected teams are tough to beat because they refuse to let one another down. Every team wants to win, they want to execute the game plan and they want to help their teammates. But not every team is fully connected. There is a difference when you are playing for one another, with a bond that drives your competitive edge.
Connected teams are great to coach and tough to beat. How do you get there? It's interesting to look at the Celtics journey this year, under first-year head coach Ime Udoka. They were a bit of a mess early in the year, with Marcus Smart calling out his teammates for selfish play. They seemed disconnected for the better part of two months. Clearly, getting connected doesn't happen overnight. But there are certain approaches that can help you get there.
A great place to start is to celebrate unselfishness. Define the actions that are unselfish and help your team win - the extra pass, calling out screens loud and early, communicating in rotation on defense - and make sure you celebrate them constantly. Give out an extra point in drills for an assisted basket to emphasize the importance of ball movement. Work on scramble situations where everyone has to work together to get a stop. You don't have to force people to share the ball or sprint back on defense. Define them as a way of taking care of your teammates and get your players bought in to one another.
We often use the word 'chemistry' when it comes to teams that play well together, but I define it as an unselfish approach to playing the right way. And the right way is what helps our team win. I don't necessarily think that all of your players have to like hanging out with each other to be able to play well together on the floor (although it certainly doesn't hurt). They have to be committed to one another on the floor, and it's hard to do that if they aren't unselfish.
Another aspect of connected teams is a relentless competitive edge. Connected teams play really hard, and they don't take plays off. It's one of the things I loved about the Heat-Celtics series. Both teams compete at a high level all of the time as part of their DNA. Again, I think everyone wants to win, but a competitive edge is different. It's built over time, and it's build with discipline and accountability in what you do every day. I'm not really sure how to manage that over an NBA season, with teams playing over 100 games. I understand why there are some nights in that league where the players just don't seem to compete. I'm not sure how you can do it at a high level over that many games. Creating competition around everything you do in your program will help create a connected group. Define what it means to compete in your program and demand it. Don't ever let up on competing. Make sure your players know they are in an environment every day where their best approach is expected.
I've talked a lot in this space about the importance of a defined defensive system, and I think it's a big part of your team being connected. They have to know exactly what is expected of them, with no grey area. Most players grow up with an understanding of how to play offense - when to pass the ball, when to shoot the ball, etc. But how to defend as a team isn't taught as much, and doesn't come as naturally. To be connected as a unit on the defensive end there can be no doubt. You can make mistakes. But there can't be any uncertainty. Decide how you want your team to play, teach it to them clearly, and then drill it every day, until it becomes second nature.
Personnel always makes a difference, so consider the make-up of your team when it comes to forming a connected group. Both the Celtics and the Heat are great examples, when you look at players like Jimmy Butler and Marcus Smart. They both play like the are trying to make the team, night in and night out. So many of the players on both teams play that way. It helps to have guys with something to prove on your roster. Overachievers and guys with a chip on their shoulder will go a long way towards your teams connectivity. There is no big ego with them, just blue collar work ethic. I've always said I want a couple of guys on my team who aren't "good enough" to be there. They drive the competitive edge and the commitment you need to have to one another to be elite.
I've also found that it helps to play a lot of guys. It's harder to get everyone bought in to your culture if there are haves and have-nots, and certain guys know they are going to play, regardless of what happens day to day. Playing time needs to be earned, and I'm not saying you just play 11 to see if it's a good idea. But give everyone an opportunity to earn real minutes and it will add to the connection you are looking for.
Connected teams are great to coach and hard to beat. It helps to have great players with no ego like Jimmy Butler, but those guys are pretty rare. You can help your team become more connected with the right personnel and the right approach.
Earn Your Time
An old article I've always liked about how Chris Haack, the golf coach at Georgia, sets his lineup. The players have to earn it, in competitive practice rounds, every week.
https://www.golfchannel.com/article/college-central/uga-coach-makes-players-earn-their-playing-time
Motivational Interviewing
From Adam Grant's book "Think Again."
In the early 1980 a clinical psychologist named Bill Miller was troubled by his field's attitude toward people with addictions. It was common for therapists and counselors to accuse their substance-abusing clients of being pathological liars who were living in denial. That didn't track with what Miller was seeing up close in his own work treating people with alcohol problems, where preaching and prosecuting typically boomeranged. "People who drink too much are usually aware of it," Miller told me. "If you try to persuade them that they do drink too much or need to make a change, you evoke resistance, and they are less likely to change."
Instead of attacking or demeaning his clients, Miller started asking them questions and listening to their answers. Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don't know what might motivate someone else to change, but we're genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn't to tell people what to do; it's to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors. That can activate a rethinking cycle, in which people approach their own views more scientifically. They develop more humility about their knowledge, doubt in their convictions and curiosity about alternative points of view.
The process of motivational interviewing involves three key techniques:
- Asking open-ended questions
- Engaging in reflective listening
- Affirming the person's desire and ability to change
Listening well is more than a matter of talking less. It's a set of skills in asking and responding. It starts with showing more interest in other people's interests rather than trying to judge their status or prove our own. We can all get better at asking "truly curious questions that don't have the hidden agenda of fixing, saving, advising, convincing or correcting," journalist Kate Murphy writes, and helping to "facilitate the clear expression of another persons thoughts."
Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.
What if you took this approach in your conversations with your players? Would you get more out of them? Would it make you a better coach?
Lead From Behind
“It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when a nice thing occurs. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people would appreciate your leadership.” – Nelson Mandela
It takes great courage to lead your team from behind.
Nick Saban on Presence
From a recent article in The Athletic about how college football coaches hire assistants. Nick Saban nails it on the importance of presence for anyone who eventually wants to be a head coach.
Saban goes, ‘Hey, let me tell you something. I’m not worried about what they know. Is he able to articulate what he’s trying to say? Does he have presence?’” Saban proceeded to give his new guy a dissertation about owning a room. “If this guy doesn’t have a confident feel to him, and if he gets in a room with strong personalities, they’re gonna see through this guy. It’s not about, ‘Does this guy know the best pass play versus Cover-2?’ It’s, ‘Is this guy a fit for our program?’”
Tom House
King of Throws
A really good New York Times article on pitching coach Tom House, who goes about teaching and coaching with a different approach.
Tom House rebuilt Nolan Ryan and fixed Randy Johnson. He worked with Tom Brady and Drew Brees. At 75, he has reinvented himself (again) with an app that teaches young players to pitch the right way.
When most of the world first became familiar with Tom House, he was catching Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th homer in 1974. House, then a relief pitcher for Atlanta, was stationed in the bullpen beyond the left-field fence at Fulton County Stadium, just where the ball happened to come down.
Exactly as House had planned it.
As it turned out, House was more than just a guy in the right place at the right time. Watch the clip on YouTube, and you’ll see a rooted figure who takes not so much as a shuffle step in either direction. All House had to do was lift his glove and catch the ball.
The man on the mound, Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, was, like House, a soft-tossing left-hander. House, having pitched spring training batting practice to Aaron, had an idea what might happen.
“If the pitch was outside and elevated, I knew he would hit it to left-center field,” House said. “So when I got the choice of where I wanted to be, where do you think I put myself?”
In just the right spot, of course. House has exhibited that kind of knack throughout his decades-spanning career in which catching a milestone homer barely cracks the list of interesting things about him.
After eight years as a big league pitcher, and eight more as a big league pitching coach, he earned a doctorate in sports psychology to better understand how pitchers think. He wrote or co-wrote 22 books on pitching. So profound are his theories about how human arms release small objects that a parade of N.F.L. quarterbacks, including Tom Brady and Drew Brees, has come to him for mechanical tutelage.Sign up for the Sports Newsletter Get our most ambitious projects, stories and analysis delivered to your inbox every week. Get it sent to your inbox.
His influence, and the loyalty it has garnered, got some attention last September, during an episode of the “Manningcast” edition of “Monday Night Football,” when Eli Manning was discussing Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott’s outlandish warm-up routine. Manning exuberantly explained, “That’s the Tom House stuff!
It is reasonable to suggest that nobody on the planet knows more about throwing things than Tom House. And after decades of perfecting the mechanics of some of the greatest athletes to walk the planet — sometimes going as far as fixing the flaws in an opponent’s delivery, only to watch that opponent subsequently beat his team — House has shifted gears with a simple goal for his latest act: Fixing the way young players throw baseballs — for free.
Taking It to the People
Today, House is putting his knowledge and experience into an app called Mustard, designed to help parents and coaches correct mechanical flaws in young pitchers. The app’s A.I., built from tens of thousands of three-dimensional models he has compiled over decades of motion-capture studies, analyzes uploaded video and makes recommendations for things like head angle and hip separation. It then feeds the user an assortment of recorded drills, almost all of them executable without the need of a partner, to address whatever issues are identified.
In an age when exclusive coaching carries more cachet than ever, the Mustard team keeps the bulk of the service free, House said, to democratize instruction and keep children involved. (Mustard also includes a subscription model that allows access to seminars and sessions featuring House and assorted big leaguers.)
The face of that democratic movement is a 75-year-old coach who has made a career of working with Hall of Famers yet loves to post earnest encouragements of young players and coaches on Twitter— he insists all the posts come directly from him.
Of huge concern to House is the astounding number of 13-year-olds in this country who quit organized sports by the time they reach high school — 70 percent of them, according to a poll by the National Alliance for Youth Sports. “Giving out elite instruction to 12-year-olds not only helps them play better, but with more fun,” House said. “It keeps them in the sport.”
It is not as simple as that, of course. By House’s calculations, every inch of growth or five pounds gained pushes a growing teenager backward neurophysiologically by two months.
“A 6-foot-7 18-year-old is going to be three years behind a 6-foot-1 18-year-old because of the massive road trip between big toe and release point,” he said.
Coaching 10-year-olds is very different from coaching 16-year-olds. This is all baked into the equation. And House is thriving as a voice of reason who is unafraid to issue a controversial opinion even as he exudes warmth for baseball and its participants.
A Pioneer in the Field
Keen analysis of players’ bodies and movements should not be surprising when it comes to House, who was an early adopter of training technology, even as the rest of baseball actively rejected such things. In the 1980s, he encountered Gideon Ariel, who competed in the Olympics for Israel in the discus and the shot-put and became a pioneer in the field of motion capture. House was so taken by the process that he sold his stake in a San Diego baseball school, where he taught in the off-season, and took a second mortgage on his home to purchase the equipment for use on pitchers.
Not long after, the Texas Rangers, fresh off a 92-loss, last-place season in 1984, came calling. General Manager Tom Grieve, 37 at the time, had just hired Bobby Valentine, who was only 35 himself, as manager. The young-gun organization didn’t have money to hire an adequate scouting department; both men knew that sticking with the status quo would not be enough.
House, they decided, was a perfect fit.
He brought Ariel’s system to Arlington and recorded Rangers pitchers in previously unheard-of ways. He connected with a Canadian Olympic rowing coach who used thermography — heat maps — to help gauge recovery time. He installed a weight room (an unusual technique because of a longstanding fear of compromised flexibility) and focused on the rear-facing rotator cuff muscles that serve as de facto brakes for the arm. Given the increased gravity of working down a mound, House concluded, deceleration after a pitch causes more damage than everything leading up to it. “If your accelerators are stronger than your decelerators,” he said, “you’re going to break.”
Fortunately for House, his new manager afforded a very long leash for such theorizing.
“We converted a closet into a little lab with three VHS recording machines and two tiny TVs,” Valentine said of House’s setup. “When we started doing motion capture, Tom showed a javelin thrower, a left-handed tennis player and Kenny Rogers, who was a young, lefty pitcher on our team. Then he showed how, at strike point — as the racket hit the ball or the ball left the hand — the front leg was firm and the front side had stopped. The bodies and the arms all looked identical. When I saw that, I said, ‘Wow, you’re on to something here.’”
House expanded his experimentation to the realms of sleep and nutrition, things that today are standard in big league clubhouses but were a shock to the 1980s system. He created subliminal audiotapes to aid visualization. (“I really wanted my voice on those tapes,” Valentine said. “Tom never let me.”)
House’s primary weakness as a pitching coach — and on this he will agree — was that he was more interested in process than outcome. Failure was tolerable if it benefited a player’s long-term goals, which was a problem in a sport that pays big league coaches to win games. The Rangers’ front office, however, understood that House’s methods had long-term value.
“I trusted Tom implicitly,” Grieve said. “If he wanted to teach his guys to throw left-handed instead of right-handed, I wasn’t going to tell him not to do it.”
Because most of House’s alchemy occurred behind closed doors, few outside the program had any real idea about what he was doing.
That all changed with a football.
At some point along the way, House realized that the mechanics for throwing footballs and baseballs were identical, so he started putting pigskins in his pitchers’ hands. Tight spirals on a football made for easy assessment, offering a visual clue about whether the pitcher was doing things correctly. Moreover, the weight of the football built functional strength and aided in recovery for pitchers, not to mention it was a workout they enjoyed.
In football-crazy Texas, the sight of Rangers pitchers playing quarterback in the outfield before games was nothing short of sacrilege. Soon, their coach earned a slew of pejorative nicknames like Nuthouse and Outhouse. Even pitcher Charlie Hough got in on the action, joking once to The Los Angeles Times, “We’re leading the league in third-down conversions.”
Then Nolan Ryan showed up.
When Ryan joined the Rangers as a free agent before the 1989 season, he was 42 years old and 22 years into a career that had largely established him as the greatest power pitcher in baseball history. Two hundred seventy-three wins were augmented by 4,775 strikeouts, the most in history by a wide margin.
As it turned out, one of the right-hander’s greatest strengths was his curiosity. Ryan agreed to give the footballs a try, and soon found himself immersed in an injury-prevention program aimed at prolonging a career that was already historically durable. “There was an instant connection,” Grieve said.
The moment reporters saw Ryan — a cattle-ranching Texan who had earned intense respect in the state — tossing a football with teammates, criticism of the practice disappeared.
“That drill was different, and the traditional baseball people didn’t believe in it,” Ryan said. “Because of that, I think Tom got the stonewall from a lot of different angles. He didn’t deserve it.”
Over Ryan’s first three years with Texas, during which he was 42, 43 and 44 years old, he went 41-25 with a 3.20 E.R.A. and led the league in strikeouts twice, whiffing three times as many men as he walked — something he had done only once to that point.
“Nolan was better after age 40 than before,” House said. “He threw three pitches to two locations, and fewer pitches per inning. He added a changeup. He never got hurt. That was this Hall of Fame time.”
“Tom helped me slow down the aging process,” Ryan said. “He brought recovery to my attention — how long it takes to recuperate from a start and be ready again five days later. That was very different at 44 than it was at 24, and the routine we developed was vital to my process.”
It almost defies belief, but five of the Rangers’ nine primary pitchers during Ryan’s first two seasons with the club — the other four being Hough, Rogers, Kevin Brown and Jamie Moyer — played into their 40s. Ryan, Hough and Moyer make the list of the eight oldest players of the modern era. They were righties and lefties, control artists and fireballers and each was looking for ways to extend their careers. No matter their demographic, they had one thing in common: They all learned how to maintain their pitching arms from Tom House.
‘I’m a Teacher First’
Randy Johnson was struggling. It was 1992, and Johnson, a tall left-hander with a Ryan-like fastball, was in his fourth full big league season. His talents, though, were undercut by a profound lack of control. At 6 feet 10 inches, Johnson simply possessed too many moving parts for consistent coordination. When the Rangers arrived in Seattle that August, Johnson was 2-7 over his previous nine starts, having walked 52 batters over 56 innings while posting a 5.46 E.R.A.
From the visitors’ dugout, House and Ryan knew what he was going through. House had followed Johnson, a fellow University of Southern California alumnus, since the pitcher’s college days. Ryan had once been a wild fireballer himself, leading the league in walks eight times in an 11-year span. In 1989, however, which was Ryan’s first season under House, the 42-year-old topped 300 strikeouts for the first time in a decade while walking only 98.
He and House wanted to help Johnson. A meeting was arranged for early in the morning, before anyone else arrived at the Kingdome. The three men talked through Johnson’s mechanical issues, and House offered one primary suggestion: He wanted Johnson to land on the ball of his foot instead of his heel while striding toward the plate. The results were immediate.
“I’d been losing my arm slot, falling off toward the third-base side, and that tip helped me stay balanced,” Johnson said. “I didn’t play for the Texas Rangers, but Tom helped me anyway. That meeting was extremely impactful.”
Johnson closed his season by striking out 117 batters over his final 11 starts while walking only 47 and shaving about two full runs off his E.R.A. That dominant stretch included a game in September in which he struck out 18 Rangers batters — a result that gained extra notice when Johnson credited House with his improvement.
For House, any negative attention he drew was worth having helped a struggling pitcher. “I’m a teacher first and everything else second,” he said. “It wasn’t even a question for me, really.”
It was certainly worth it for Johnson, who pitched until he was 46, winning 303 games and five Cy Young Awards, while striking out 4,875 batters, the second most in history behind Ryan.
Discussing that meeting decades later, Johnson, now a Hall of Famer, was left with one nagging question.
“That help that Tom House gave me — why didn’t I get it in high school, or in college, or in four years of the minor leagues?” he said. “Why couldn’t someone else have seen it along the way?”
Why? Because Tom House has made a career of seeing things that other people can’t. He continues to prove it every day, with a decidedly 2022 approach of having an A.I. version of his deep knowledge available to any player who wants to download it. It is a teaching method that could and should outlive him. To House, having a say in the future of how the game is played is all he needs to make it worth the time and effort.
“I’m 75 years old, and we’re here talking about Mustard,” he said. “It makes me realize that we’re just getting started.”
Let Them Be Themselves
Not everyone is a natural, vocal leader. Not everyone shows great emotion when they play. Not everyone is naturally talking or engaging with their teammates on the court. Not everyone handles success and failure the same way.
I had Arkansas coach Eric Musselman on my Dynamic Leadership Podcast and we talked about his approach with is players. He told me that he used to demand leadership out of all of his players. I asked him what he did with guys that just weren't comfortable leading and he gave me an interesting quote. He said he finally asked himself "Why am I forcing a sandwich down his throat when he isn't hungry?"
That quote has always stuck with me when I think about my approach to coaching players. While I do think you can (and should) require leadership of all of your players, there is a way to define leadership to make it comfortable and accessible to everyone. Not everyone is going to be comfortable speaking up, providing emotion, or criticizing their teammates when it is necessary. It doesn't mean they don't want to win or they can't lead. It's just that approach doesn't fit their personality.
It strikes me that there are a lot of teams out there where we expect and demand traditional leadership (positive energy, speaking up) out of many of our older and better players, and we don't really expect it out of our younger players. But there are plenty of those younger players who are actually better, more comfortable natural leader than their older teammates. Still, we expect it and demand it out of some older guys who don't want to do it.
I've learned that if you force your players out of their personality comfort zone on the court, you aren't going to get the most out of them. I had a first team all-league center for two years at Rhode Island College named Mike Akinrola, one of the best players I've coached. For a year I was trying to get him to show more fire, to speak up more, to be more of a "leader" in the traditional sense, and it just didn't fit his personality. I was trying to stuff that sandwich in his mouth. When I finally realized he wasn't comfortable with the vocal leadership approach, I left him alone, and I got the most out of him. I told him he needed to lead by being our best player every day - in how he approached practice and how hard he competed. He did just that. He was a monster in practice every single day in the way he competed. That was a comfortable way of leading for him, and I needed to recognize that. When I asked him to do something he wasn't comfortable with, I was making him worse.
We've all coached players who are naturally quiet and don't like to talk. They just keep to themselves, on and off the court. Expecting those guys to become really vocal players on the court just isn't going to happen. Yes, there is a certain level of communication you have to have to be a good teammate - talking defensively, executing plays - but as far as being a vocal leader, it just isn't going to happen. Those guys are uncomfortable talking when they don't need to, and forcing them to try and do it isn't going to help. Some players can't do their job when they are talking.
It's not as simple, however, as just leaving everyone alone. Of course you have to coach your players to get better, and you don't simply want to accept their shortcomings. You have to figure out who they are and where you can make them better. But when it comes to their personality, I don't think you are going to change much. That laid back kid isn't going to grow into being an emotional barometer for your team. The quiet kid who stays to himself won't be your vocal leader. Yes, you can work on helping them to come out of their shell and be better in those areas. But if you spend a lot of time trying to force them to be someone they aren't comfortable with, you'll make them worse.
It's all about knowing who your players are and figuring out how to get the most out of them. Too often we have an idea of what a senior leader is supposed to look like or how our veteran players should act on the court. Not everyone is going to fit into the mold you have for your team. Getting the most out of them is more about who they are than about what you want to see. Forcing a sandwich down their throat when they aren't hungry isn't the way to go.
Someone Else Is Open
Time and score rule: Someone else is open. Everyone defensively gets attracted to the ball.
Smart took 3 dribbles before he got ripped. Look across the court.
Steve Jobs
“It doesn't make any sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Transactional Relationships
I got my first head coaching job at Rhode Island College in 2005, and I was hired in September, after school had started. When I got the head job at the University of Maine in 2014, I got hired in May, after school had ended. I met with the team on campus during my interview, but by the time I got hired most of the players had gone home for the summer (Maine did not have money to pay for summer school). I didn't see them again until late August.
It takes time to establish your own culture when you take over a program. I learned in both situations that what we did on the basketball court wasn't nearly as important as the time I spent with my players away from the gym. They need to learn who you are and what you are all about before they are willing to follow your lead. It's not enough to give them a basketball plan that makes sense, and help them get better on the court. Those things are certainly important. But what you can teach them in the gym is only going to go so far.
One reason why you always hear about how hard it is taking over a new program, or how long it may take to establish a new culture, is because when you first take charge your relationships with your players are transactional. There isn't a lot of depth to them, and how can there be? You don't know each other very well. You are the new coach, and they are supposed to do what you tell them. It's a transaction. I tell you what to do, and you listen. It will help make you a better player, and your points and rebounds will help our team win. I will make you better, you help me win. That's the transaction.
It takes time to establish a relationship, and therefore it takes time to get the most out of your players. Your job is to make sure it's not transactional. Your players have to see that it's not just about how many points they score or how well they defend. They have to know that who they are matters to you, and that the development is about more than just basketball. It's about character development and constant improvement. When they see that you are driving them hard to make them better as people, and you genuinely care about them, then you can really push their limits.
It's your job to make sure your relationships are not transactional. When you first take over an organization, the time you spend making sure they do the job right isn't nearly as important as the time spent getting to know them as people. I realized when I took over at Maine that they weren't going to respond to the things I said on the court until we had a deep sense of trust off of it.
Make sure your relationships aren't just transactional. Get into the depth of who they are and they'll start to buy in to what you do.
4 Types of Leadership
Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is a form of leadership where decisions are made by the leader alone. These leaders don't consider their teams' thoughts and opinions before making a decision or heading a new direction with training, processes, or otherwise.
An example of an autocratic leader is someone who changes the schedules of several employees without consulting anyone, let alone the affected employees.
This leadership type is not effective and is not recommended for organizations if they want to retain and empower their employees.
Democratic Leadership
Democratic leadership is based on a leader that asks for the thoughts and opinions of staff members when making a decision or executing a project plan. The leader makes the final decision, of course, but they take other team members' viewpoints into consideration before doing so.
This is an effective leadership style because it encourages collaboration and prepares employees for future leadership positions they may take on.
Let's say there's a leader that has to make a decision about some new software for their team to use. A democratic leader will give the team a few options, and they'll have a discussion about it before a decision is made for new software to be implemented.
Laissez-Faire Leadership
This is one of the least intrusive forms of leadership that can be effective in some instances. The translation of laissez-faire is "let them do," which means leaders who apply this style give a good amount of authority to their employees.
A good example of a laissez-faire leader would be a founder of a startup who doesn't make any rules, guidelines, or deadlines and puts full trust in his employees to get things done.
This type of leadership encourages trust, but it may fall short because it limits an employee's development and overlooks growth opportunities.
Strategic Leadership
Leaders that adopt the strategic leadership style are often at a crossroads between growth opportunities for their company and daily operations.
This leader essentially accepts executive level interests while supporting lower-level employees to make sure the work environment is stable for them.
Many companies like this form of leadership because it supports a variety of employees at one time. However, this type of leadership can cause problems in regards to how many people a leader can actually support at one while maintaining a clear direction or stability.
*** From Blueadz.com
Halftime
Kansas was down 40-25 at halftime of the national championship game against North Carolina. They outscored Carolina by 18 in the second half to win the national title by 3. I'm not sure what was said or done at halftime, but the team clearly responded and played a great second half with their back against the wall.
What to do at halftime is always and interesting question. If you want to give your team a little time to warm-up, you've really only got 10 minutes to make sense of what happened in the first half, figure out what adjustments you need to make, and deliver that message to your team. It's not an easy task, and it's something you have to be intentional about. Halftime happens quickly.
The first thing to me is to start with the facts. You want to take the emotion out of it. What is the score, what does the box score look like, and how did we get here? It's important to remember that it isn't about how you are feeling as a coach, it is about what your team needs. Always. We often get too caught up in the emotion of the end of the half, and we bring that emotion to our players. Give them what they need, not what you are feeling.
Say you are playing a team you are better than, and you are controlling the game most of the half, up by double digits. But you get a little sloppy in the last minute, turn the ball over and give up a couple of transition 3s. You are up 5 instead of being up 11, in a game you feel like you had in hand. The emotional response is anger because your team didn't close out the half and let your opponent get some confidence late. You go into the locker room pissed off. The facts are you really dominated most of the half, and you have a 5 point lead. That is what's most important, and that's what you should act on. Take the emotion out of it and think about what your team needs.
Your team may need some emotion. That's always a hard one to judge, but you have to have a feel for your them. There are definitely times when they need a jolt and you need to change the energy. You have to get after them to snap them out of a funk. But it's important to assess how your team played and not necessarily get caught up in the score. You might have missed a lot of open shots. Maybe you missed a few free throws. A mistake that is often made is we go to the emotion - "We aren't playing hard enough!" - when the reality is the issue is technical. That is how you feel, not what they need. Your team may have been ready to play, they just couldn't make any open jump shots.
I've found that sometimes, from an emotional standpoint, it's actually a littler bit easier to be down 15 than to be down 6. I wonder if this helped Bill Self a little bit with his approach. Being down 6 when you haven't played very well is aggravating, and it grates on you. Being down 15 (especially when you are Kansas) can be startling, but it's so out of character that you almost just have to shake your head and reset. At that point you aren't worried about one or two technical points to make, you have to get your team to reset mentally. What you saw was way out of character, and you know that isn't the team you've seen all year. Take a deep breath and get everyone back to being themselves. It's odd to say, but sometimes being down by a larger margin can make you a better coach at halftime.
We never ask our players to do anything they haven't practiced, but I wonder why we do that as coaches. We can practice 30 second timeouts, where you only have 20 seconds to diagram something and get your message across. We can also practice halftime. You can get your kids used to taking a break, trying to reset, and coming out with a different approach.
When your team is really struggling one day in practice and you are yelling and screaming to try and get something out of them, give them a break. Put 15 minutes on the clock and send them to the locker room. Take 5 minutes to take to your staff, settle down and figure out how you are going to get more out of your players. Go into the locker room and tell them this is just like halftime of a game, but you guys are down 11. You haven't been focused and you haven't executed well. Figure out how you are going to go out and win the rest of the day.
When I've lost winnable games as a head coach, I think about halftime a lot. Did I take the right tone? Did the team need to see more emotion out of me? Should I have been more composed? It's always about how to get the most out of your team and make the right adjustments needed to win the game in the second half.
It's never easy to figure out the right approach to halftime, and there are a lot of different ways to play it. You can argue over the importance of it - how much of an impact does it really have? My approach usually falls into one of two categories - composed and deliberate, or intense and emotional. I'm more comfortable with a composed approach talking about the details of how we are going to play better. But there are definitely times when they need to see some intensity out of me to shake things up. I base my approach on the facts of the first half, and the feel I have for my team and their mentality.
It's never easy. Halftime is a high pressure situation with a small window of time to deliver your message. Think about the best approach that fits you and also fits your team, and practice it. Getting the right adjustments to your team can make a difference. When you see a team like Kansas come out in the second half and play the way they did to win a national championship, it makes that clear.
Challenge Network
From Adam Grant's book "Think Again," which is all about learning to re-think what you believe in.
We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn't limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.
Do you have a "Challenge Network" as a leader? Do you actively seek out people who are going to challenge what you do, or are you surrounded by people who agree with you. Progressive leaders seek out a challenge network and want people to question why they do what they do. It makes them stronger leaders. Unfortunately, once we get into a leadership position, we often don't want people around us who disagree with us, and we stop getting better.
Balance on Offense
In 9 years as the head coach at Rhode Island College we only had one player who averaged more than 15 points per game. We had a ton of success and were generally either the best or second best team in our league every year. We went to the NCAA Tournament in our last 8 seasons. We had a lot of good players who were unselfish and willing to buy in to playing as a team. Trust me when I tell you we had plenty of guys good enough to average 15+ points per game. The balance we had was not due to a lack of talent.
One interesting thing about the way we played wasn't intentionally part of the plan. It wasn't like we talked about getting everybody the right amount of shots or keeping everyone involved. We just coached them to make the right play. Our two main offenses were motion and a dribble drive offense, both designed to space the floor, move the ball, and attack off the dribble. We weren't always the best shooting team - probably below average from 3 over the 9 years - but we did have skilled guards and athletes who could go by you. We always wanted the ball to have energy and that would dictate where our shots came from. We wanted our guys to be unselfish, but we never talked about spreading out the number of shots. I just figured with good players and good ball movement, we'd find the right shots.
I've heard the argument that if you don't have that one go-to guy who can get you a bucket when you really need it, you are going to struggle offensively. A lot of coaches feel like that one plus-level talent who can create offense on his own makes you more dangerous on offense. I'm not so sure. I learned that our balance made us really hard to guard. Teams couldn't load up on just one or two guys, and they couldn't really came plan to take certain things away. We had enough talent to beat you in different ways, and when you took away one good option we usually had another good option to score. Late in games I was never concerned with who was going to get a shot, or how we would get the ball to the right guy. I made sure my playmakers were on the floor and I trusted them to make the right play. We won a ton of close games, and I'm not sure we ever had the best offensive player in the league. We only had one player of the year in the league over 9 years, and he averaged 12 points per game that season.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a guy who can go get 20. I used to joke with the guys, "It's okay to get 20 if you want." And I feel like I had a bunch of guys that could get 20, and that's what made us dangerous. But no one had to get 20 to feel comfortable. We'd often look at the box score after a game and I ask my team who they thought took the most shots in that nights game. It usually took them 2-3 guesses to figure out who shot the ball the most, because our attack was so balanced. No one cared. We were hard to guard, we were really good offensively, and we won a ton of games.
I'll take a balanced offensive attack over a team with clear go-to guy all day long. I don't think it creates any problems down the stretch with your team wondering who's going to take the big shot. In fact, it avoids the disaster late in a close game of everyone loading up on your best player, and him forcing a shot because he thinks he's supposed to shoot it. A balanced offensive team is really hard to guard, and more often than not they are going to make the right play to get a good look. It just might come from a different guy each night.
The Right Ones Will Find You
"You don't need them all, but if you build your teams on strong principles the right ones will find you."
- John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead
I'm a strong believer that the culture of the organization is the best recruiter you have. It is going to attract people, right or wrong.
When it comes to recruiting, we pull out all of the stops. We want to make any visit as attractive as possible to a potential player or employee. We want them to feel welcome and comfortable, and we paint the prettiest picture possible. But ultimately anyone visiting is going to remember how they felt about your organization. The fancy dinner is nice, but what they really want to know is what it feels like to be a part of it. No matter what you do, it's hard to fake that. It's real, and they are going to see it.
I recently finished John Bacon's book on a high school hockey team in Michigan that he coached for four years. It's an easy read and a good look into how he turned around one of the worst hockey teams in the country. He established the right culture and then gave ownership of it to his team (it actually reminds me a lot of Entitled To Nothing).
There is a lot in his approach, and especially in that quote up top, that I like. The first thing is "you don't need them all." Turning around an organization and trying to establish an elite culture is hard, and not everyone is a fit. I used to say that about our program at RIC all the time to my time - "it's not for everyone." What we are doing here is hard, and not everyone is willing to do it. You are going to lose some people along the way, and sometimes some good people. You have to be prepared for that. They may be good people that you like and want to have success, but they don't fit what you are trying to do. You have to be ready to let them go.
Every elite culture has to have "strong principles," but notice he didn't get specific about his principles. The principles of different elite cultures aren't all the same. There are plenty of ways to build a culture, and it has to fit your personality. Regardless of what the principles are, they have to be worth fighting for. They need to be clear for everyone on your team. Strong principles are going to be evident, and they are going to attract people that believe in them.
I learned early as a head coach that the right ones will find you. Once your culture is established you will attract the people that fit. The ones willing to fight for your values. Our culture at RIC was based on toughness, something we valued and rewarded every day. It fit the culture of our school, a blue collar, state school located in a city. It fit the players we had on our team, and it fit the players we wanted to recruit.
But it wasn't like we just went around picking the toughest players we saw. The coaches, families and players who valued toughness themselves were attracted to our program. They wanted to be a part of it. Rare was it that we got a long way down the road with a kid who wasn't very tough. Most of the kids we even considered had a plus level of toughness. When they came to campus and watched us play, or played pick-up with our team, they saw how tough our kids were. When they watched practiced, the saw toughness being celebrated and rewarded. They talked to friends and people who knew us, and the heard the same thing. The kids who considered themselves tough wanted to be a part of it.
That doesn't mean you can just sit around and throw your culture out on the floor and expect elite talent to come and sign up. You still have to work to recruit them. But with an established culture based on strong principles, the ones who won't fit will usually weed themselves out. The right ones will find you.
Discipline and Ownership
I've gotten a lot of great feedback and had some great discussions about my book Entitled To Nothing, An Uncommon Approach to Leadership that I recently released. I love having conversations about some of the leadership concepts I discussed in the book and how to practically make them a part of your culture.
A big part of what I learned as a young head coach, and a theme that runs throughout the book, is the idea of ownership. It's the idea that the culture of your organization isn't really yours, it is theirs, and the players have to take ownership of the behaviors for you to sustain an elite level of success.
A conversation I have a lot with other coaches is about discipline, and how it relates to the ownership you give your team. When you have an incident that requires discipline, how do you go about holding your team accountable when you are trying to give them ownership of the program? Accountability is an essential piece of a championship culture, and it means there are consequences for your actions. Everyone is going to make mistakes, and sometimes your team won't live up to the standards you (or they) have established. Action is required.
If you've read the book (thanks!) or this blog on a somewhat regular basis, you probably know that I love the approach of asking questions. I like to put the responsibility on the team, so they continue to take ownership of their standards. When we are discussing an issue within the team, I'll usually ask "So, what are we going to do about it?" and give the guys the chance to take ownership of a solution. That doesn't mean they get to make the decision. It just means I want to hear from them.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that giving your players ownership means they get to make all of the disciplinary decisions. There is a chain of command, for sure, and our culture of ownership does not eliminate that. The head coach sits at the top of that chain of command, and certain issues have to be dealt with from the top down. This isn't contradictory to an ownership of culture, it is an essential part of it. We don't hold a vote very time a decision is made.
If the pick-up games are getting sloppy and lazy, or someone shows up late for a meeting, I might ask the team how we are going to handle it. But if there is a major issue that requires attention and clearly disregarded the standards of the program, I'm going to handle it. I always tell my teams that they are in charge of their behavior off the court. But if an issue off the court gets to my desk, you've made it clear you can't handle it, so I will. And you probably won't like the result.
Every situation that requires discipline isn't a sign of weakness in your culture. The strength of your culture is what allows you to handle those situations and get better as you get past them. I had a championship team one year that had a party in the dorms over Christmas break when no one was allowed to be there, and I had to suspend 6 players. I had two key players get into a fight in the locker room one year, and they and a few teammates lied to me about it. Those aren't situations where I'm asking the team how they think we should handle it. Clearly, you've proven you can't handle the ownership of the program, and I'm going to make it clear that's unacceptable.
Holding your team accountable with discipline as the head coach does not mean you are taking away ownership of the culture from the players. You are teaching them the responsibility that comes with having ownership. When they prove they aren't up to the task, you have to make it clear that behavior that doesn't meet your standards won't be accepted. You are still in charge, and there is always a chain of command. When something serious happens, you should be the one to respond. Giving them ownership doesn't mean you are giving up the discipline.
Time and Score - The Right Play
Marcus Smart caught the ball down by 1 with 3.5 seconds on the clock. Two Nets flew at the ball. Someone else had to be open.
Smart made a shot fake, took a dribble and delivered a pass to a cutting Jayson Tatum who still had time lay the ball in. Tatum made a great cut.
All in 3.5 seconds.
There is almost always someone else open. There is time to make the right play.
Kansas Guards
Bill Self did a lot of things right this year on the way to winning the National Championship. One of his best moves was how he handled his two point guards.
Dajuan Harris Jr. was a redshirt sophomore who averaged 2 points and 2 assists as a freshmen. He's a solid floor general not known as a great shooter who is a good defender and gets his teammates the ball in the right spots.
Remy Martin is a scoring point guard, a transfer from Arizona State who scored close to 2,000 points in his career there. He came in with a big time reputation and was expected to have a huge impact - he was chosen as the pre-season Big 12 Player of the Year. He's a big time scorer and playmaker. He got hurt midway through the year, but even prior to his injury wasn't having the impact many expected.
Self went with Harris as a starter and it seemed like he was the guy he really trusted. After his injury, Martin came off the bench and was used as a game-changer, a microwave type who could come in and get buckets. The contrasting abilities and approaches gave self a tough decision in close games. He could stick with Harris, a guy who really trusted to make the right play, or go with Martin, the guy with 2,000 points but more of a score-first mentality. Two guys he knew could help him win in different ways. Not an easy decision to make.
In the second round of the NCAA Tournament Kansas matched up with Creighton, a team who will scheme their defensive game plan to the scouting report as much as any team in the country. They will usually find one player on the other team they feel is a non-scorer and leave him open most of the game, staying in the paint with his man and making him a rover/help guy. They did this with Dajuan Harris, daring him to shoot (he stepped up and made a 3 in the first half). Creighton was fine letting the point guard try and beat them. Self went with Martin pretty early in the half when Kansas was struggling to score, and Creighton didn't really adjust. Martin made two 3s (it looked like Creighton was daring him to shoot as well), and finished with 21 points in a very close game. Martin was the difference between winning and losing.
In the Sweet 16 against us, although we couldn't score in the first half, we defended Kansas well enough to stay in the game. Seeing his team having trouble scoring, Self went to Martin early again and he changed the game, scoring 7 straight points in the first half to break the game open. Seeing that we were trying to help off Harris as well in the second half, Self had him attack off of ball screens and get down hill. When we went under the ball screens, they'd re-screen to get Harris in the paint, and he was able to finish over our guards at the rim. Both players played a key role in getting Kansas past us, in a game we led by a point with 5 minutes to play. Martin played 26 minutes and had 23 points, while Harris played 20 and had 6 points and 2 assists.
Against Miami in the Elite 8, both guys played and played well, scoring 9 points each in 20+ minutes in a game Kansas won going away. Against Villanova in the Final Four, Harris played 31 minutes and drilled three 3s, while Martin played 20 minutes and didn't do much, going 1-5. Harris was a key guy in their blowout win.
So, what do you do in the final? Harris played 21 minutes and wasn't at his best with 4 turnovers. But Martin came off the bench, played 27 minutes and made some huge 3s during a key stretch of their comeback in the second half. He finished with 14 points in 21 minutes and arguably was the most important Jayhawk on the floor.
Playing two guys who play the same position a lot of minutes, and sometimes together, when both guys expect to play a lot, isn't easy. Throw in the fact that they have very different skill sets, and it's even harder. Deciding who you want on the floor for key minutes down the stretch is one of the toughest decisions a coach has to make. Getting the most out of both of them is your goal, but often times the result is the opposite - you don't get much out of either.
Remy Martin had the reputation as the better player, and was supposed to have a bigger impact. But he came off the bench. He was the better player in the Creighton game and the Providence game, and they don't win those games without him. In the Villanova game, Harris was the better player and Martin not much of a factor. But Martin came back and had a huge impact in the final, fueling part of their great comeback that led to a national title.
How do you find the right balance when you have two guys sharing minutes at one position, and you want to play them both? Keep in mind, Kansas had a first-team All American in Ochai Agbaji at the other guard spot. And a double digit scorer in Christian Braun playing the wing. It's a nice problem to have, I get it, but not an easy balance to find. One of those four players was going to be on the bench. I give Bill Self a ton of credit for how he handled that dynamic.
I'd be willing to bet that Bill Self had direct conversations - maybe on multiple occasions - with both Martin and Harris. What I've learned is that communicating directly and consistently, while sharing some of the issues I'm having figuring out who to play with the players involved helps in a couple of ways. It creates transparency first and foremost, so the players always know what you are thinking, even if they may disagree. They know where they stand. Secondly, you show your players some vulnerability, which I think helps them accept your decision a little easier. It's okay to tell them that you are struggling with who to play, and you won't always make the right decision. You want them to know that.
Look, there are going to be times when you both play a lot of minutes and play together. But there will also be times where one of you is sitting watching the other one in crunch time. I'm always going to make the decisions based on what gives our team the best chance to win. I won't always make the right choice, but that will always be my thinking. I need you guys to buy in to that for us to be as good as we can. This is about the team, and you two guys are both going to be a huge part of our success.
In communicating with them directly and showing some vulnerability, you are asking them to take on some of the responsibility of handling the situation. While they might not like it all the time, I think most players enjoy the responsibility they have in helping the team win. It becomes a shared trust, not something they are being told they have to do. They'll take some ownership of the situation, and try and make it work as much as you will.
I don't know exactly how Bill Self handled the situation with his two guards. But I do know he handled it very well and got a lot out of both of them, sometimes on the same night, and they are hanging another banner in Phog Allen Field house. I'm sure that dynamic was not an easy one, it never is. He's in the hall of fame for a reason.