DOC RIVERS & TRYONN LUE: THE IMPORTANCE OF FINDING AND UTILIZING A MENTOR

For young coaches in the game, there can be nothing more important than a mentor.  Someone who believes in you and takes the time to show you the ropes.  The other part of the equation is your ability to soak up as much from that mentor as possible..take notes...ask questions.

There's a great article on SI.com written by Jake Fischer about Doc Rivers seeing something in one of his young Orlando point guards, Tyronn Lue.  Doc told him when he was done playing to give him a call.  And a mentoring relationship began:

Lue ended up calling Rivers after his 11-year playing career came to a close in 2009. When Lue was a player, Rivers noted his impeccable attention to detail and a yearning to be a part of the coaches’ scouting reports—preparation most players didn’t concern themselves with. Rivers had no idea where to put Lue on his Boston Celtics staff, but he convinced team president Danny Ainge to take a chance on the veteran point guard most commonly known for being on the wrong side of Allen Iverson’s legendary step-over.

What began as somewhat of an internship blossomed into an apprenticeship. Lue sat right behind Rivers during games, a row back from the Celtics’ bench. As television cameras panned to the sidelines during dead ball stoppages, Rivers would constantly be captured leaning backward and whispering to Lue. “I like his brain,” Rivers says. “Every time I drew up an ATO [after timeout] or anything, he would write it down. If it was something in practice we were experimenting, he loved coming in and wanted to know why. What did you see? Why did you run that? What do you think about doing this and this and that?”

When Doc went to the Clippers, he took Lue with him -- there was more to teach.  Also from the same article:

“What I wanted him to understand was the workload,” Rivers says. “As hard as players think coaches work, when they get on the other side, they’re always surprised at the workload, the time and the fact that it never goes away and it’s never off your mind. He accepted it, he did it and he knew, from that point on, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Lue passed Rivers’s test with flying colors. His work in the film room ultimately resulted in Rivers amending his defensive philosophy to be more congruent with the Clippers’ roster than that of the Celtics. “We had more athletic bigs with Blake [Griffin] and D.J. [DeAndre Jordan]. We could switch more things, our bigs could show and get back,” Rivers says. “Ty saw those things in film, brought ‘em up, we talked about ‘em and implemented a lot of them. He was great.”

And now that Lue has secured his first head coaching job in the NBA and has his team in the Finals, he never stops learning or listening to his mentor.  Again, from the same article:

“He’ll text me at times, 'What do you see? How would you score against this action?'” Rivers says. “I’ll draw it up on a napkin at a restaurant and take a picture of it and send it.”

PETE NEWELL ON REBOUNDING AND A STORY OF WHY THE GREAT ARE GREAT

The following comes from the USA Coaches Clinic: Instant Review Basketball Notebook, Volume 2, written in 1999.  But it's a great passage that shares a powerful message that far too many young players don't get.  That message is that the best are the best because they are intentional and deliberate about their improvement.  If they make the game look easy, it's because they have spent countless hours in quiet gyms improving their game.  It also means that even though they have reached levels of greatness that they are still looking to improve.

The following was written by coaching legend Pete Newell:

About six years ago during my NBA camp, I got a call from Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar).  He asked me to work with him on his rebounding.  I certainly wasn't going to bring him into camp because of his stature.  I had a lot of young NBA players there.  He said that he would bring over a couple of tapes.  He came over and we talked.  He said his rebounding stats had fallen off and he didn't know why.

I looked back at them over the weekend and he came back Monday.  Actually, the problem was very simple.  You get into bad habits in basketball even as as he is.  On defense, when the shot was taken, he was releasing right away and getting caught under the basket and was not in jumping position.  He has always been worried about his eyes, and when he got caught in there he wasn't aggressive.  But when he screened, his angle would change, his rebounding arc become much better and he become much greater and he became a much better rebounder.  Offensively, when the shot was taken, he was looking at it.  Then when the shot missed, he would react.

One of the purisms of offensive rebounding is when a teammate shoots, you should anticipate the miss.  All great rebounders move when the shot goes up.  They are moving all the time.

10 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR COACHING

The following comes from a passout via Coach Mike Dunlap: 

The evolution of a master teacher takes years of skill development. The outstanding coach is an exceptional teacher. We believe that there are fundamental steps that should be considered when teaching your team:

1) Know the five laws of learning
• Explain what you want
• Demonstrate for the learner
• Player demonstrates
• Correct demonstration
• Repetition is lord and master

2) Know how players learn
• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinetic
• Writing/Drawing
• Player as coach
• Cooperative versus competitive technique
• Whole, part, whole versus part whole method
• Feedback system – negative versus positive

3) Teaching techniques
• Universal teaching technique (i.e. find the problem and fix it)
• Praise, prompt, and leave (i.e. find positive, correction, and next step, leave)
• Relay teach – the cooperative method
• Create your own language (e.g. anachronisms)
• Use your voice as a tool
• Speak in word pictures, analogies, and metaphors
• Overload to get conditioned response (i.e. consistently give the student the advantage when they are demonstrating as early success breeds confidence)
• Progression – teach in sequence and then reverse it (i.e. inductive & deductive)

4) Use the four steps of shaping
• Set the stage
• Modeling
• Prompt
• Forms of feedback (i.e. ask questions, make observations, reinforce the correct response)

5) Talk less, do more
• We need to reduce out verbal instruction

6) Recognize the power of observation, listening, and gathering information
• Behavior patterns
• Myers/ Briggs psychological exam, self-aggression evaluation, and the “I am sheet”

7) Role declaration is paramount to a coaches’ success

8) Know your audience, circumstance, and be ready to adapt or change course

9) Competition means time, score, and personal records (e.g. individual/group)

10) Apologize
• We will make mistakes. We humanize ourselves when we go public and our players will accept us more readily.

SUCCESS LEAVES FOOTPRINTS -- STRIVING FOR IMPROVEMENT

Success leaves footprints -- I firmly believer that.  Follow (and study) those that are successful and you will learn a great deal.  However there are always a few common traits of the great and one is they are they are continually looking to improve -- no matter at what level they currently hold.  To follow is a great story that comes from "3 Things Successful People Do," by John Maxwell:

It's said that when Spanish composer-cellist Pablo Casals was in the final years of his life, a young reporter asked, "Mr. Casals, you are ninety-five years and the greatest cellist that ever lived.  Why do you still practice six hours a day?"

What was Casals's answer?  "Because I think I'm making progress."

THE WORK ETHIC OF TED WILLIAMS

One of the problems with young athletes today is that when they see the best they believe in large part that they have achieved greatness naturally -- though their talent.  The great ones can at times make it look easy. I spend a lot of times sharing stories of hard work and sacrifices of sports finest with my teams so that they hopefully realize that greatness comes with a price and that it must be earned.

One of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball is Ted Williams.  What made him great was a tremendous desire to be the best.  In the book "The Kid" written by Ben Bradlee, Jr., there was a story of someone who told Ted when he was young that he went to see too many movies and that it might strain his eyes.  Ted stopped going to the movies.

In 1936, Ted signed a minor league contract with San Diego.  Here is story from the book:

Frank Shellenback (William's manager) was impressed early on by Williams's work ethic, drive and determination.  After home games Ted would ask Shellenback for a couple of old baseballs.  When the manager asked what he did with them, Ted said he used them for extra batting practice after dinner at the park near his house. Shellenback found that hard to believe, having seen Ted come in to Lane Field at ten in the morning for extra hitting in addition to the regular workout every day.  As Shellenback told the Boston Herald's Arthur Sampson in 1949, one evening he drove to Williams's neighborhood to investigate and saw the rookie "driving those two battered baseballs off over the field.  Ted was standing close to a rock which served as home plate.  One kid was pitching to I'm.  A half dozen others were shagging drives.  The field was rough and stony.  The baseball I had given him were already showing signs of wear.  The stitching was falling apart.  The covers were rough as sandpaper.  Blood was trickling from Williams's hands as he dripped a chipped bat.  But he kept swinging.  And hitting.  Ted made himself the great baseball players he is today."

MIKE NEIGHBORS WITH POINTERS FOR GROWTH

At last week's A Step Up Assistant Coaching Symposium, Mike Neighbors was one of the key note speakers to talk about his journey to becoming a head coach.  When I was done, I had five pages of notes!  Here are just a few of some his thoughts he shared with us:

Figure out what you'll sacrifice.

Have your philosophy in writing.

You've been accused of being a good coach -- what will be your evidence.

Don't get ready, stay ready.

Everyday is an interview.

Pet peeve: Assistants that point out obvious stats at half-time -- "They are killing us on the boards."  Don't tell me what, tell me how and why and give me a solution.

Reading allows you to learn from other's experiences.

If you share it, you'll make it good.

Mike talked about creating culture and all the things you do to assist that.  For example, he likes enthusiastic teams.  He charted the number of high fives his team gave vs. Maryland -- it was 971.

If you haven't signed up for Mike's newsletter you're really missing out.  Here's how to sign up.

10 THINGS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE NEVER DO AGAIN

I'm taking the time to catch up on a little reading before game time and one of the places I love to go is www.Success.com.  It is an amazing resource of information.  I came across the following article written by Henry Cloud.  While it certainly can benefit anyone, it really made a lot of sense for us in the coaching profession.  You can read about 10 Things Successful People Never Do Again here but below is the abbreviated list:

1. Return to what hasn’t worked. Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not. In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person. When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone. Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit. Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless. It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture. We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that – each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence. No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves. One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success. The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.

ARE YOU PREPARED WHEN YOUR NUMBER IS CALLED?

Another great passage from Coach Urban Meyer's book "Above the Line."  We read this one to our team last week.  Players all want more playing time, more opportunity, but what are they doing to maximize that opportunity when it arises.  This is a great story:

The outcome is that you are prepared to make the play when your number is called.  There is no better example than Kenny Guiton.

In 2012, Kenny was a junior backup to quarterback Braxton Miller.  Throughout all of our practices that fall, Kenny was the most mentally and physically engaged player on our team.  When Braxton was running players, Kenny was 10 yards directly behind him, make the same reads and checks, executing the play mentally.  Then, when the ball was snapped to Braxton, Kenny would perform the correct motions just as if he were taking the life rep.  That was our culture at work.  He was preparing in case his number would be called.

That October, Kenny's number was called.  We were down against Purdue by 8.  On the last play of the third quarter, Braxton went down and was injured for the rest of the game.  Kenny game in.  It was the final drive of the game and down by 8 points with 60 yards to go, forty seconds left on the clock, and no timeouts left.  He led the offense down the field, and threw the game-tying touchdown pass to receiver Chris Fields with only three seconds left in regulation.  On the very next play, Kenny tied the scored on a perfectly executed pass play to tight end Jeff Heuerman for the 2-point conversion.  After taking the game into overtime, running back Carlos Hyde dived over the line for the game-winning score.

We won that game and kept our undefeated season intact because Kenny Guiton fully embraced our culture of competitive excellence.

Our third core believe is power of the unit, and it means that our players have an uncommon commitment to each other and to the work necessary to achieve our purpose.

People see the remarkable performances of these players on Saturday, but they do not see the tireless work that those players and their unit leaders put into training and preparing to compete.  And they did the work not knowing when, or even if, their numbers would be called.

TODAY MATTERS

Our motivational passout to our team today with an assistant from Lipscomb head coach Greg Brown who tweeted this yesterday.

PLAYER-COACHED TEAM VS. COACH-COACHED TEAM

Our team's motivational passout today includes a great quote and concept via Tom Izzo.  Team's that take ownership of their program, that hold themselves and each other accountable, have a far great opportunity of succeeding and achieving their potential than those teams that rely on their coaching staff for everything.  Team ownership and accountability is the ultimate culture.

THE THINGS THAT MAKE COACH BELICHICK THE BEST

Shout out to Coach Buzz Williams for passing this article on to me.  If you're not following Coach Williams on twitter you are really missing out.  The article was written about Bill Belichick for the Washington Post by Adam Kilgore.  It's a lengthy, well-written article and you can read it in its entirety here but I wanted to share some of my take aways.

Coach Belichick is a forward-thinking individual.  He has no time to think about pass accomplishments or failure.  He is about coaching and living in the moment.

He was asked what was the most important thing he had done over those four decades to evolve as a coach.

Belichick looked up from the questioner, gazed at the back of the room, and replied, “I don’t know.” He snorted. He stared. The room waited for him to say something else. He didn’t.

Belichick has left it to others to fill in the blanks behind his gloomy facade, and the effects of his success — admiration, animosity, loyalty, jealously — have created wildly divergent portraits. 

 

Coach Belichick, despite being at the top of his profession is a driven, continual learner which goes a long way to explain why he has been able to stay at the top:

 

People close to him describe a reliable friend, a voracious learner, an ardent student of the game, a man whose grim public demeanor hides sharp intelligence and understated humor. He engenders loyalty with both surprising kindness and utmost competence. “As a player, what more do you want?” former Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy said. “You don’t want that fluffy [stuff]. He just wanted us to be focused on ball.”

 

Supporters, associates and former players say Belichick has adapted with a wickedly dexterous mind and a curious bent. “Probably the story of his career, from my vantage point, would be his attitude toward learning,” said Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz, a Belichick confidante. Belichick once told his college economics professor that what he studied in class helped him stay under the salary cap. (“That’s an application of marginalism,” said Dick Miller, the professor.) His current defensive coordinator, Matt Patricia, was a rocket scientist before he became a football coach. Belichick seeks. He listens.

 

“It’s really amazing when you think about it: He’s been coaching longer than any player on this team has been alive,” Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater said. “That says something about his leadership, the way he learns. The way he views the game is very unique. He’s been able to stay ahead of the curve because of the mind the good Lord has given him for football.”

 

And how's this for the being a servant leader:

 

For nearly three decades as a coach in the NFL, Belichick had divined creative solutions to complex problems, the skill that fueled his rise from playing center at Wesleyan to coaching at the top of the sport. On the day the Patriots arrived in New Orleans for his first Super Bowl as a head coach in late January 2002, he confronted a problem without precedent in his career: Milloy, his star safety, wanted a new hotel room.

 

At a walk-through practice, Milloy explained to Belichick that he had heard first-year defensive tackle Richard Seymour beaming about how spacious his room was. Milloy could barely squeeze luggage into his. What was up with a rookie scoring a bigger room than a veteran? “Really, Lawyer?” Belichick responded. Belichick was already trying to prepare a two-touchdown underdog to face the St. Louis Rams; he didn’t need another headache.

 

When Milloy returned to the team hotel after practice, a concierge greeted him with a key to a new room: “Big as hell,” Milloy recalled, and with a panoramic view of Bourbon Street, a Jacuzzi and, oddly, a treadmill in the corner.

 

At the Patriots’ team dinner that night, Belichick approached Milloy. “How do you like that room, Lawyer?” Belichick asked.

 

“It’s cool,” Milloy replied. “But I don’t know why they put that treadmill in there.

 

“That’s because it was my room,” Belichick said.

 

One of the things that makes Belichick a better leader while assisting him in his quest for knowledge -- he's a great listener:

 

“I hate to think what his IQ is,” Rick Forzano said. “He looks beyond what’s happening.”

 

“Bill’s always moving forward,” said Al Groh, an assistant alongside Belichick with the New York Giants. “He’s not just thinking about this season. What is distinguishingly unique for somebody who is very bright and on top is he’s a terrific listener. He’s interested in anybody and everybody’s opinion because out of that might come a good idea. That was the case even when he knew he wanted to do.”

 

The great ones are always looking for ways to improve and not sit status quo:

 

In the spring of 2007, Belichick — a better lacrosse player than football player at Wesleyan — called Johns Hopkins lacrosse Coach Dave Pietramala to congratulate him on winning the national championship. They talked on the phone for an hour. Later, after an awards banquet both men attended, they met at a restaurant afterward and chatted for three hours. Pietramala realized Belichick had as many questions for him as he did for Belichick. They still talk or text weekly.

 

“The amazing thing to me with Coach, he’s always in search of a way to do things better,” Pietramala said. “I’m really taken back at how inquisitive he is about lots of different things. It doesn’t have to be in coaching. If we have a guest speaker, he wants to know, what did he talk about? What was good about it? For a guy who’s extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily successful, he’s always searching for a better way, a different way.”

 Championship level coaches understand the importance of details:

 

“He knew everything,” Evans said. “Literally. He knew every detail. There was instant accountability, every second of the day. Bill just knew everything. It was scary sometimes.”

 

One season during his tenure in Cleveland, Browns coaches met with Chicago Bears coaches to swap notes about teams in their respective divisions. “I swear, he knew more about Tampa than the Bears, who played them twice,” said Ferentz, then Belichick’s offensive line coach. “Their guys were looking at us like, ‘Holy smokes.’ ”

 

Belichick prepares for everything. During staff meetings, he asks questions about a tactic an opposing coach used a decade prior. During Super Bowl XLVI, in 2012, the Patriots’ headsets malfunctioned in the second half, leading to harmful miscommunication. And so, in the week leading into last season’s Super Bowl, Belichick stopped practice and shouted for the coaches to drop their headsets.

 

The best coaches know how to challenge and, in turn, prepare their players and team:

 

During practice, he can spot a fullback missing a block out of the corner of his eye, halt the drill and correct the mistake himself.

 

“It’s still mind-boggling how I sat there and watch that take place,” said former Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest, now an NFL Network analyst. “He would break down both sides of the ball and be instrumental in planning every phase of the game. Other coaches can’t do that. That’s just amazing to me, having been in the league 15 years.”

 

Playing for Belichick can be stressful. Evans would pass him in a hallway or the locker room, and Belichick would present a situation and play and ask him, “What is their linebacker going to be thinking?”

 

The strict standard also brought comfort. Players understand their role with uncommon clarity, and they trust Belichick’s detailed instructions will reap success. “Playing for Belichick was the most pressure-packed and most peaceful experience of my career,” Evans said.

 

“He’ll put it up on the board,” McGinest said. “He’ll say, ‘This is what’s going to happen. This is how they’re going to attack you. If you do X, Y and Z, you’ll be okay.’ And it seems like every single week, it happens. So it’s not hard to play in that system.”

 

THE ADVANTAGES OF READING

If you follow my blog or follow me on twitter you know I'm a big fan of Michael Hyatt.  His blog is outstanding in terms of helping us with organization, time management, social media, technology and much more.  And he is absolutely a must follow on twitter.  You also know of passion and belief in the importance of reading which makes this post by Michael a must read in my book.

Here are some brief excerpts from a recent post from his blog titled "5 Ways Reading Makes You A Better Leader."  Again, these are just short takes form the post and you can (and should) read it in its entirety here.

"One of the best ways to become

an indispensable leader?

Crack open a book."

-Michael Hyatt

1. Reading Makes us Better Thinkers

Reading is one of the most efficient ways to acquire information, and leaders need a lot of general information to keep perspective and seize opportunities. But reading does more than give us a toolbox of ideas. It actually upgrades our analytical tools, especially our judgment and problem-solving abilities.

Research by Anne E. Cunningham compared the general knowledge of readers and television watchers. The readers not only knew more, but they were also better at deciphering misinformation. In other words, reading improved their judgment.

2. Reading Improves Our People Skills

Sometimes we think of readers as antisocial introverts with the their nose in a book and ignoring the people around them. But reading can actually improve a leader’s people skills.

Stories give us an opportunity to walk in other people’s shoes and see the world through their experiences and with their motivations—this is especially true for novels, biographies, and memoirs. When asked about the reading that helps her lead her business, one CEO said the insights about human nature in fiction and poetry has made all the difference in understanding and relating to her people.

3. Reading Helps us Master Communication

When we read, especially widely and deeply, we pick up language proficiency that transfers across the board, including speaking and writing.

Reading uniquely expands our vocabulary. According to Cunningham, the books, magazines, and other written texts we read as adults use double and triple the number of rare words we hear on television.

4. Reading Helps us Relax

An ongoing challenge every leader faces is managing stress. The great news is that while we’re reading and picking up the benefits of Ways 1, 2, and 3, we can simultaneously lower our stress levels.

One study compared reading to other stress relievers like walking, listening to music, or drinking a cup of tea. Reading was found the most effective, and it worked to lower heart rates and relieve tension in as few as six minutes.

“It really doesn’t matter what book you read,” according to the doctor who conducted the study. “By losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world.”

5. Reading Keeps us Young

I recently explained why older people make better entrepreneurs. They typically have advantages in experience, knowledge, and social networks.

It’s the same with leaders—and readers are especially positioned to leverage these advantages because reading has been shown in research by Keith E. Stanovich to keep us mentally sharp as we age. By exercising our brains with books and other reading we might even be able to prevent dementia in later years.

 

TODAY MATTERS: DON'T LOOK PAST IT

I've been reading "Coach Wooden" by Pat Williams and he had a great story about understanding the importance of today and how today truly matters to the best:

Greg Maddux is the only pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win at least fifteen games for seventeen consecutive seasons. He recalls some advice he once received from then-Cubs manager Tom Trebelhorn. “You know what the problem is with players these days?” Trebelhorn said. “They are always looking forward to something. They’re never trying to do something today. They’re always looking forward to the next off-day, the All-Star break, the end of the season. They never stop and enjoy the day that’s here.”

Maddux says that he thought about that and saw that Trebelhorn has a point. In fact, Maddux realized that he had that same mind-set of looking only to the future and never enjoying the present moment. From that day forward, Maddux concluded, “I started enjoying each day… and really started loving the games from that day on.”

And as Pat quoted Coach Wooden:

“When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece… It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day.”

MADDON BECOMES "PROCESS-ORIENTED" WITH THE CUBS

There's a great article on Chicago Cubs' manager Joe Maddon written by Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune.  You can read the entire article here but there were some direct takeaways the resonated with me.  The first, as all outstanding leaders, Maddon is a continual learner and his philosophy evolved from conversations with a football coach.  That evolvement included a great understanding for being process-oriented in his approach.

Cubs manager Joe Maddon has a great appreciation for football coaches, particularly assistant head coach Tom Moore of the Arizona Cardinals who won three Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts.

Before the Cubs’ 3-2 comeback win over the Washington Nationals on Tuesday night, Maddon spoke of how he learned from Moore that in football, teams are trying to break the other team’s will.

“And how do you do that?” Maddon said. “Through the relentless execution of fundamentals and technique. Not one time do you talk about winning? Not once. I don’t even know if when I’ve talked to our guys this year, if I’ve talked about winning a lot.

“I’ve talked about process a lot. So a lot of my philosophy was validated through Coach Moore, whom I have a ton of respect for.

“When you come down to really these close moments between winning and losing, everyone wants to win every night. I want to win. How do you do that? Through the relentless execution of fundamentals and technique. The better we get at that, the more often we’re going to win and win one-run games.”

“You got to understand it’s not easy to fight through that at that age with that lack of experience.”
But Maddon continues to stress his theme of doing simple better.

“It’s not a complicated issue,” Maddon said. “The more basic we can become in our approach, the more successful we’ll become.”

BRIAN KIGHT: 5 THINGS I WISH I'D LEARNED EARLIER IN LIFE

I've came across an amazing blog by Brian Kight. Brian is part of a leadership team titled Focus 3.  I came across Brian and Focus 3 reading a story about Urban Meyer and how he has utilized the Focus 3 program to develop leadership skills with his Ohio State Buckeyes.  This particular blog was titled "5 Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier in Life."  I've seen lists like these before but no effected me quite like this one.  They are each profound in their own right.  You can read the entire blog here:

1. Don't equate the delay of consequences with the absence of consequences.
My dad said this all the time. All. The. Time. As a kid & young adult it mostly annoyed me. Now I see how true it is. Just because you don't see the cause & effect of your actions in the moment doesn't mean they're not happening. You can't see gravity either. There are consequences for all of our decisions. Sometimes they take years to realize. 

2. You will work hard early in life or late in life, but you will have to work hard.
In general, most people avoid truly hard work. I don't mean staying busy or active. I'm talking about hard, uncomfortable work that creates explosive growth. Things like changing habits, launching your own business, addressing your fears, or practicing an unfamiliar skill. If you don't put in the work early it doesn't go away. It just comes later at an inconvenient time when you're more set in your ways. Do your hardest work early so you can reap the benefits later. 

3. Studying & practicing is about building skills.
Whether high school, college, or a job -- it's about developing your skills. It's not about what you know or memorize. It's about what you can do & how well you can do it. Devote less time time to showing what you know. Devote more time to building life skills & job skills. And understanding how those skills help you perform on the field or in the workplace.

4. Caring is a choice, not a feeling.
I learned this years ago & it changed my life. I can choose to care. Despite how I feel. It has transformed the way I interact with strangers, my family & my fiancé. Here is the definition I use, "Find out what is important to the other person & make it important to you in a way they can feel it." What's the best part? It creates an emotional connection! People feel better when you choose to care. And so will you.

5. You can be "right" & ineffective.
This was a big one for me. Being right was important. And I often made the mistake of hammering people with facts, opinions, examples, & conclusions until they conceded the point. I failed to grasp that in the process of proving myself right, I annoyed people & made the situation much worse. It's better to focus on being productive. Focus on understanding the situation better or what it looks like from another person's perspective. Remember that the end result is far more important than whoever is "right". In today's world, being "right" is usually a combination of many inputs.

 

THE WAY TO SUCCESS IS THE WAY OF THE CRAFTSMAN

The following comes from "The Carpenter" by Jon Gordon.  I love this so much I'm going to print it and frame it and put in my office -- constantly reading it to reaffirm it.  I'm also going to print it off and laminate it and place it in each player's locker -- I think it's that good:

The way to success is the way of the craftsman, where you work really hard for years. You show up every day. You do the work. You see yourself as an artist dedicated to your craft with a desire to get better every day. You put your heart and soul into your work as you strive for excellence. You desire to create perfection, knowing you’ll never truly achieve it but hoping to get close to it. You try new things. You fail. You improve. You grow. You face countless challenges and tons of rejection that make you doubt yourself and cause you to want to quit. But you don’t. You keep working hard, stay positive, and persevere through it all with resilience, determination, and a lot of hope and faith. Then you make it! Everyone wants to work with you. And the world says, ‘Where have you been?’ And you say, ‘I’ve been here all along, and hopefully getting better day by day.’ To the world, you are an overnight success. To you, the journey continues. You’re a craftsman who wants to make your next work of art your best work no matter what you have accomplished in the past.

11 TRAITS OF THE BEST OF THE BEST

Big thanks to Los Angeles Sparks head coach Brian Agler for passing this great list on to us:

1. The Best know what they truly want.

2. The Best want it more.

3. The Best are always striving to get better.

4. The Best do ordinary things better than everyone else.

5. The Best zoom focus.

6. The Best are mentally stronger.

7. The Best overcome fear.

8. The Best seize the moment.

9. The Best tap into a greater power than themselves.

10.  The Best leave a legacy.

11.  The Best make everyone around them better.