Among
all the things I believe, and all I've gathered from the people who have influenced
me, I think one tops the list:
The importance of preparation.
We talk in
coaching about "winners"--kids, and I've had a lot of them, who just will not
allow themselves or their team to lose. Coaches call that a will to win. I don't.
I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Everybody has a will to win.
What's far more important is having the will to prepare to win.
I've said that
often enough that there's a man on the Supreme Court now, justice Clarence Thomas,
who told me he saw that quote attributed to me in a newspaper or a magazine years
ago, clipped it out, and carries it-to this day in his billfold. I'm flattered,
but credit for it should go to Bud Wilkinson, the great Oklahoma football coach.
I grew up an Oklahoma football fan, because that's where my dad was born, and
Coach Wilkinson was one of the great middle-of-the-century football coaches that
I later got to talk to about coaching. Somewhere along the line I read that Wilkinson
said, "The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win:' Ralph
Waldo Emerson said that next to the author of a good phrase is the first to quote
it. So, though I'm sure I wasn't the first, maybe I deserve a little credit. But
certainly not full. That
feeling hasn't changed for me and I'm sure never will, but a whole lot of other
things have changed in basketball since I first began to coach. Certainly, the
pay is enormously better. But that's about the only change I'd consider a positive.
I hate the elements that recruiting has brought into college basketball-the know-it-alls
but know-nothings who have made fortunes by feeding the national recruiting frenzy
with gossip and guessing that is passed off as inside information; way out-of-control
AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) summer programs; shoe-company financial involvement
that attracts unqualified and sometimes undesirable people in. The worst effect
of all this may be the damage done to the egos of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old
kids, in way too many cases convincing them they're far better than they are.
I don't like the three-point shot and the shot clock. Those
two changes take away some of the control I felt I had on the outcome of the game.
The three-point shot exclusively favors raw talent-the ability to shoot the basketball,
period. I think the intent of the rule was to take the zone defense out of college
basketball: by awarding three points for an outside shot over the zone. I don't
think rules should ever be made that favor the team with the most talent. And
both the shot clock and the three-point shot are talent-oriented rules. I say
these new rules reduce my control of the game as a coach. It's not truly a matter
of control; it's a matter of teaching a game in which intelligent play is rewarded
by giving it an edge. Playing
smart, in discussing how to play basketball, is a function of percentages. Playing
smart is a function of positioning, of placement, of recognition. We try to teach
our players to play intelligently. A key to that is getting them to understand
not just that something works but why. Identifying what each player can do and
can't do is important. I can't expect any player to do everything well. 'I consider
it my fault if one of my players who can't shoot the ball shoots it. I think it's
my fault if the ball is in the hands of a poor free-throw shooter at a critical
time at the end of the game and he's fouled. I think it's my fault if I don't
have the right defensive match-up. Not every kid can guard every opponent. I have
to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of every player who plays for me,
and make sure they understand them, too. What
a player can't do is every bit as important for him to know as what he can do.
Part of my teaching process is to tell our players: "Learn what you do well. Learn
your strengths and weaknesses. You can, on occasion, improve your weaknesses.
You can work to steadily improve your strengths, but there will be some inherent
weaknesses that you have as a player-or as a team-that you just can't improve
greatly. In your play, stay away from weaknesses like those. "Learn your shot
range, what kind of shot you can take effectively. Then, don't shoot out of your
range. Take shots that have a fifty percent chance of going in, not thirty percent.
"Don't try to make passes that you can't make. Play to your strengths and away
from your weaknesses, while at the same time understanding each teammate's strengths
and weaknesses. Help
them to play to their strengths and away from their weaknesses. If one is a big
man who doesn't handle the ball out on the floor, don't throw him the ball when
he's moving toward the bucket on a break, thirty-five feet out. Give him the ball
where all he has to do is catch it and lay it in. It's just as important to know
the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates as it is to know your own. "Great
players maximize their talent and make everybody around them better. It's no accident
that they do this. They understand the game, and they understand the strengths
and weaknesses of their teammates and their opponent. That comes from thinking.
There's nothing more important that a basketball player can do. Above all else,
think!" The
worst phrase ever used in teaching kids how to play a sport is, "Don't think,
just do it" If you can't think, you can't play: A quick way for an player to make
himself better is to think about what he himself doesn't like to play against.
On offense, no one likes to play against a guy who's in his jock, all over him,
making it tough for him to do anything. No one likes to play against a guy who
won't let him get the ball, who makes it tough for him to get a good shot. And
it's the same thing on defense-no one likes to play against a guy who is moving
all the time, a guy who goes to the offensive board on every shot, a guy who makes
good fakes and takes the ball hard to the bucket. "Be hard to guard" is one of
the things we continually emphasize to our players on offense. "Think about those
things that you don't like to play against," we tell our players. "Then do them
yourself, at both ends of the floor." I
use the word "understand" often. I want my players to understand why teams lose:
poor shot selection, bad passing, failure to block out defensively, lack of pressure
on the ball. Often the reason players and coaches give for losing a game is how
well the other team shot, when the actual reason is how poorly their own team
played defensively in giving up so many good shots. Another extremely poor excuse
for losing a game is that "we just couldn't hit anything tonight," when in actuality
the team that lost didn't work hard enough to get good shots and took a lot of
bad ones. To
me, concentration is basketball in a nutshell. Concentration leads to anticipation,
which leads to recognition, which leads to reaction, which leads to execution.
The concentration I'm talking about involves four key words. The first two are
"look" and "see." Everybody who plays basketball looks, but very few players see.
Very few players train themselves to use their eyes. Not everybody has the same
shooting ability as everybody else, nor the same size, nor the same quickness.
But each person who's playing this game can develop the ability to see what's
happening on the court-see the open man, see where to take the ball, see the guy
who's being defended, see who's open on the break. "Hear"
and "listen" are the next two words. Most people only hear. The key is listening
to what you're being told, what's being said, what is expected of you in your
role as part of any team. A basketball player who learns to see and to listen
has improved tremendously without doing a single thing involving physical skills.
Once learned, "seeing" and "listening" are valuable traits for anyone doing anything.
We
all want to win. We all talk about winning. But I'm a great believer in understanding
what goes into losing, because if we know how we can lose, if we know those factors
or reasons that cause us to lose, and we eliminate those things, we stand a much
better chance of winning. I don't apologize to anybody for really wanting to win
or for hating to lose. Win at any cost? No. Absolutely not. I've never understood
how anybody who cheated to get a player, or players, could take any satisfaction
whatsoever out of whatever winning came afterward.
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