GREAT TEACHING CONCEPTS FROM KEVIN EASTMAN

You can’t be tired and you can’t be bored. It’s not easy getting better. It takes work and discipline. We have a choice of pain of discipline or pain of regret.

Workout discipline:
•Maximum intensity on every repetition.

•Machine like mechanics

•Focus on every repetition - we’re going to take one shot 500 times.

Philosophy:

•Becoming a good shooter is lots of reps.

•Becoming a great shooter is lots of reps at game speed from game spots at a game angle.

Theory of two:
•It takes two minutes to show any skill.

•It takes two weeks doing it every single day to get comfortable with the skill.

•It takes two months working on a skill everyday to get good enough to execute in a game.

Shooting form:
•Be ready on the catch.

•Ten toes to the rim (if you have ten toes to the rim you will be square to the basket).

•Only change his form if the shot doesn’t go in. Make him the best worst form shooter.

•Two second rule: As soon as it’s 1 cm into our players fingers I’m counting one two. Players don’t have a great understanding of game speed when working out.

•The better the shooter you are, the better your shot fake needs to be. Definition of a shot fake is a real shot that you don’t shoot.

Free-throws:

•Shoot free-throws until you miss, and count how many in a row.

•Players tend to fall forward rather than backward.

Give your players statistical feedback:

•When you chart your players’ shots give them percentages for free-throws, lay-ups, jump shots and three-point shots.

•Break it down so they know what to work on.

•Players can be receptive to stats.

Make time to practice shooting:
•You will be surprised how little your guys shoot during practice when you exclude shooting drills.

•We recorded how many shots our players took in a 2.5 hour practice:

•Paul Pierce – 16.

•Ricky Davis – 13.

•Al Jefferson – 7.

•During an hour pickup we shoot on average 12.8 shots per player.

•Average number of shots taken in a game is 16 per player.

My goal right now is to get everything you can teach in the game down to three bullet points. It makes it easier for players to take in:

For shooting:

•Perfect feet.

•Ready for catch.

•Perfect follow through.

Coaches must maintain their intensity everyday:

•A coach can never get bored.

•The intensity that a coach brings to the floor helps the player have a more intense workout.

•Coaches have body language too. Be careful of your body language, and how it could be interpreted by your players.

Three things skill development can do for you:
•It can create a career.

•It can improve a career.

•It can revitalize a career.

ANOTHER KOBE WORK EHTIC STORY

Kobe's professional trainer was fast asleep. Could you blame him? It was 3:30 am in the morning. All a sudden his phone starts ringing. It's Kobe. He must be in trouble, or in some kind of emergency. His trainer is freaking out, and nervously picks up the phone.

Kobe says that he's doing some conditioning work and could use his trainer's help. The trainer then proceeds to get ready and head over to the gym. He arrives around 4:30 am. 

What did he see? He saw Kobe by himself practicing. Drenched in sweat, it looked like he just jumped in a pool. It wasn't even 5am in the morning yet.

From "4 Stories About Work Ethic" written by A. J. Agrawal for INC.com

KYLE KORVER ON THE WORK ETHIC OF LEBRON JAMES

The following comes from Stack.com in which Kyle Korver talks about the work ethic of Lebron James.  You can see the entire article here which also includes some video of Lebron and the Cavs workout out on VersaClimbers.

Here is what Korver had to say:

"Behind the scenes, just how hard he works. He's a machine. You don't see guys this late in their careers, guys who've had this much success, be the first guy in the gym. He's still there," Korver said. "I was blown away." Korver would know—this is his 14th season in the NBA.

As an example of LeBron's unparalleled work ethic, Korver pointed to the morning after a regular-season game against the Utah Jazz. The night before, the Cavs had defeated the Jazz on the back of a Herculean 33-point, 10-rebound, 6-assist effort from LeBron. The next morning, LeBron was in the gym before anyone else.

"He played [38] minutes, he played hard. And the next morning, he was on the VersaClimber when everybody else got there, in full sweat doing a massive strength and cardio workout," Korver said. "He was like, 'The playoffs are coming! I've got to be ready! I've got to be able to play big minutes and play at a high level!'"

UNTIL

We shared the following post on our HoopBoost blog for players but thought we'd share with our coaches as well.

One of the most important elements to your practice, especially when you are working without your coaches, is that it is both deliberate and intentional.  In other words, don't just pick up a basketball and start shooting.  What shot are you working on?  What move are you trying to develop?

Make sure you are concentrating on the elements of execution and going at a pace and speed that will translate to success on the court.  We had Kevin Eastman speak to our team last season and he told some stories on Kobe Bryant and the "intentionality of his workouts."

Eastman had been told that Kobe might go to the gym and spend two or three hours working on one move -- ONE MOVE!  

When Eastman ran into Kobe they talked about that and he asked Kobe, "How long do you work on a particular move?"

To which Kobe replied, "Until."

That's the mentality of a professional and a great player.  They don't get bored with the repetition of developing their skill.

They work "until."

This reminded me of past post on the same subject.

One of my original mentors in the game of basketball is Marianne Stanley.  During my early years of coaching I worked her summer basketball camps at Old Dominion.  In fact, I was good for two weeks for about nine years in Norfolk.  Marianne ran a great camp -- it was a teaching camp -- because she is first and foremost a teacher.  She is one of the greats of our profession that have fought to get our game where it is now.  That's why Sunday was such a special day as she came by to observe our practice.  Marianne is currently an assistant coach for the Washington Mystics and is doing her homework for the upcoming draft. 

She took the time to talk to our team about elements that go into taking your game to the next level and the word that came to the forefront is passion.  You have to be passionate about your profession to excel in it.

She also took a few minutes to pass on a conversation she had had with Coach John Wooden.  Many years ago she was asking Coach Wooden about what made Bill Walton such a great player.

"He didn't get bored with the repetition that you need to be great," replied Coach Wooden.

How many players are good but don't work at something long enough and hard enough to excel at it?  The word Marianne used was "mastery."  She said the great ones didn't mind the constant repetition because their goal was to master the parts of their game.

THE MIAMI HEAT AND THEIR CULTURE OF CONDITIONING

There was recently an outstanding article written by Alex Kennedy of Hoops Hype.  The artciel deals with the a behind-the-scenes look at the Miami Head.  You can (and should) read it in it's entirety here but here are some key take aways I got in regard to the culture of the level of conditioning of the Heat:

The organization and in particular Pat Riley demand it and sell it.  From Kennedy's article:

Riley has made this promise to other free agents over the years, and he has an iPad full of before-and-after pictures that serve as success stories to back up his claim. When a player joins the Heat, it doesn’t take them long to realize that this organization does things differently.

Prior to joining the Heat, Waiters thought he was already in excellent shape after playing four years in the NBA. James Johnson, who had been in the NBA for seven seasons and can literally kick the rim on a regulation hoop, thought the same thing prior to signing with Miami last offseason.

Most players have this reaction. Then, they show up for the team’s workouts.

“After one week, my body [was] shot,” Waiters recalled. “I was damn near throwing up in trash cans like in the movies.”

The Heat’s offseason workouts, training camps and practices are the stuff of legend. Players work extremely hard, spending a ton of time on conditioning and weight training. And it never really lets up. This year’s team was still doing full-contact practices in the final week of this season  – even when a playoff berth was a realistic possibility.

........

Miami has a rule that players can’t put their hands on their knees for a breather during a practice or game. Any player who does this is fined $100, according to a league source who’s close with several former Heat players. 

........

“This culture is real,” Jame Johnson said. “We have the kind of practices where you can’t go out and hang out all night and think you’re going to be able to come to practice and really go hard because I’ll call you out, everybody on this team will call you out. We won’t leave it to the coaches to call you out. We take care of that ourselves.”

.......

“Miami is an organization that isn’t for everybody,” an agent said. “Either you buy in and you’re part of the Heat culture, or you’re not. They go after players who want to work and put in the necessary time to get better. They look for those kind of guys – the ones who have good character and want to work. They go extremely hard. They like to lift heavy and run a lot. Their strength-and-conditioning program is an emphasis. They like for guys to report early – usually about six weeks early – so that guys can focus on weightlifting and their agility and getting quicker. They’ve been doing it for a long time and they take it very seriously. Some other teams will let guys go work out on their own and do whatever they want, but Miami isn’t like other teams. It’s very organized in Miami; guys have a strict schedule, they’re working with the strength-and-conditioning team and they go hard. They will push you to the limit. After they’re done, the players exhausted because of how hard they go.”

PREPARATION AND THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL

Below are excerpts from an article on Minnesota Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau.  You can read the entire article at the Star Tribune.  But here are a few take aways that speak to his attention to detail:

What the Wolves now have is a meticulous preparer who scrawls scouting information on a locker room white board for 15 or 20 minutes before every game. It's a task most head coaches relegate to an assistant.

"He takes his time, too," Towns said. "He'll erase and write, erase and write and when he feels he has it perfect, he leaves it."

Kerr calls it "attention to detail that probably is second to none." Kerr said he considers Thibodeau one of two coaches who most shaped the modern NBA game. Mike D'Antoni did it offensively in Phoenix, Thibodeau did it defensively as associate head coach for three seasons with the Celtics, including the 2008 champions.

"He puts so much thought and preparation into the game, you know he's putting you in the best possible position to win games," Wolves veteran center Cole Aldrich said. "That's what you really have to respect about the guy. He knows his stuff."

YOU IMPROVE WITH WORK AND THE PROPER MENTALITY

A shoutout to Jeanne Kenney who forwarded me this article written by Chandler Rome of The Advocate.  It talks about the work and mentality Alex Bregman of the Houston Astros organization has made to grow his game.  It's always about the process: 

“I had never seen him hit balls that far in my life,” said Goldstein, the Astros’ director of pro scouting. “Just was consistently barrelling balls and throwing them over the fence like that. This was the first day of spring training. We had never seen that kind of power before, ever, out of him.”

Bregman, a nonroster invitee, added 20 pounds in an offseason when he and his longtime hitting coach, Jason Columbus, split home plate in half. The focus was twofold for a right-handed hitter who had yet to showcase the power major league evaluators knew was present.

Bregman concentrated on fastballs that tailed in on the inner half of the plate. He’d grown accustomed to rolling over them for grounders to the left side. Columbus emphasized line drives, lifting to the opposite field.

“Sacrificing what you are now for what you’ll become,” Bregman said Tuesday night. “That’s kind of the mentality for making that change.”

“Wherever it is,” Bregman said. “I don’t care where I play. I just want to try to help contribute and win games.”

SABAN ON COMPLACENCY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

The following were a few takeaways from an article written for USAToday by George Schroeder on Alabama's Nick Saban and his annual battle with complacency:

“People think success is a continuum. Success is momentary. And to be really successful you have to have consistency in performance, so you have to do it over the long term.”

“The challenge is always when you have success, people tend to forget what made them successful, And complacency creates a blatant disregard for doing the right things or continuing to do the things that you’ve always done to help you be successful. So consequently you’re not at the top of your game when that happens.”

“The human condition is to survive. It’s not to win the championship. It’s not to be the best you can be. It’s to survive. … So when you tell me I’ve got to sell this many cars this month and that’s my quota — well, when I sell that many cars I’m ready for a couple of days off and go sit in my chair and, you know, eat Tostitos and cheese. I’m not trying to set the world record.

“That’s the human condition. So it’s actually special to be the other way, to be somebody that wants to win a championship, to be somebody that wants to be the best they can be.”

COACH SUMMITT'S DEFINITE DOZEN

Hard to believe there is anyone that doesn't have a copy of this but just in case here is Pat Summitt's Definite Dozen:

TO STAY HERE:

BE COMMITTED TO YOUR ACADEMICS – Know your catalog … make a plan … get a degree. Go to class every day. Be on time. Sit up front. Take good notes. Do all extra work possible. Plan ahead and talk to professor when we travel or you are having a problem. Get tutors when you need them.

BE COMMITTED TO HAVING CLASS – Treat teachers, trainers, support staff, chapel workers, Marriott workers, and all you meet with respect. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Moody people are rude. Remember to smile, to say please, thank you, yes sir, and yes ma’am, and give people the benefit of the doubt.

BE COMMITTED TO DOING THE RIGHT THING – We have plenty of school rules … know them. Realize if you just try to do the right thing you will be OK. Try to do the next right thing right and you are as close to perfect as any person can be.

BE COMMITTED TO THE PROGRAM – We realize that our players are in a fish bowl at lipscomb. Every word and action will be watched. Our program’s reputation provides many opportunities yet brings many responsibilities. We must be committed to build on to the tradition of our program and respect those that have gone before us and paid the, price to build the program.

TO PLAY HERE:

BE COMMITTED TO HARD WORK – Our program is built on the concept that hard work pays off. We believe that we work harder than anyone else … and because of that we always deserve to win. There is a reason we are the best … we work at it.

BE COMMITTED TO BECOMING A SMART PLAYER – Our players must be ready to learn. We believe we work smarter than anyone else … We must develop players who understand the game. Our players must be good listeners andlearn by watching. We must make good decisions, we must play with poise. We prepare mentally for practice and games.

BE COMMITTED TO OUR TEAM ATTITUDE CONCEPT – We must have players who believe in our team concept. Our program is built on the concept that the team/program is bigger than anyone player … We need unselfish players.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO A WINNING ATTITUDE – Our players must be-committed to winning but understand we don’t measure our success by winning alone. Each time we play we evaluate ourselves on reaching our potential. The test for our team is to play against the game not just our opponent. We never quit. We always are looking for a way to win.

TO WIN HERE:

BELIEVE IN OUR SYSTEM – commit yourself to our philosophy, to our system of play. Be a sponge and soak up the con cepts of how we play. learn your role … then accept your role and do it the best you can.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF – Play with confidence … think positive … realize you are a great player in a great program. Don’t get down when you play poorly … you were chosen to be here … be a leader. lead by example.

BELIEVE IN YOUR TEAMMATES – Communicate with each other … help each other. Remember the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Encourage each other and support each other. Don’t ever forget the importance of the shell around the team. Be a friend. We understand that we are all different – be tolerant of team mates and others.

BELIEVE IN YOUR COACHES – Understand that your coaches are trying to help make you better people and players. Ask questions … don’t whine and complain. learn to take tough coaching.You must believe that the coaches are doing what they think is right for the team and you.

PREPARATION: THE TOM LANDRY WAY

The following are some take aways from a chapter out of the book "The Landry Legacy; 20 Principles of Success." The book was well-written by Michael Thornton and looks into 20 keystones of the culture that Coach Landry utilized to develop one of the most consistently championship programs in professional sports. It's an outstanding book for coaches as well as anyone looking to lead an organization. This particular section dealt with the importance of preparation:

  

Nothing is more important to winning than preparation.

Coach Landry did not use emotion to get a player motivated. He used preparation. Emotion can come and go. Preparation is more concrete. Preparation removes questions, doubts, and indecision from a players mind.

Coach Landry’s philosophy was this: if you get a player thoroughly prepared to play, then he will be confident and excited about going out and performing. The greatest thing you can do for a football player or a person in life is to prepare them for success. Conversely, the worst thing you can do is send an individual out there unprepared.

You have to have determination. You cannot just want to win. You have to be determined to win. You have to have the will to win. You have to be willing to do the things that are necessary to win.

If everyone on the football team is not on the same page in their commitment to preparation, then inevitably it will cause conflict, which can grow into dissension, which can become a major distraction for a football team. If some guys are working hard to get prepared and other guys are not, then it is going to create a problem.

Everyone needed to be getting the most out of every minute of preparation. That’s how you get ready to win.

All of those teams had certain common denominators.

Those teams always had great leadership. Those teams always work hard as a whole. Those teams were always prepared to play week after week. Our teams were always completely committed to doing whatever we could do to accomplish team goals.

Some things are out of your control, but what you can control is how hard you work to be prepared to win. That is in your control. Our teams wanted to win and we were prepared to win. An unwillingness to work and to prepare was never a problem for our teams.

Ultimately, you can tell how competitive a person is by how hard they are willing to work in order to put themselves in a position to win. Great preparation puts you in a great position to win. How hard a guy is willing to prepare to win will tell you everything about how bad he wants to win.

Winners hate to lose, and they will do anything and everything in their power not to lose. No player wants to lose or likes to lose, but some players are willing to lose. Rather than having a willingness to win, some players have a willingness to lose. In reality, they choose to lose, because they refuse to do everything they possible can in order to prepare themselves to win. 

J.J. REDICK'S OFF-SEASON SHOOTING PROGRAM

There's a great article J.J. Redick via CoachingClipboard.org.  It’s well worth reading in its entirety here.

The piece talks about Redick’s off-season shooting program:

◄Full speed perimeter shuttles into 140 spot up two-pointers

◄Full speed perimeter shuttles into 140 spot up three-pointers

       •Must make 20 shots at seven difference spots

◄42 pull-up jumpers off the dribble

       •21 to the right...21 to the left

◄20 free throws

Coaching Clipboard points out that Redick can be a perfectionist.

“It’s more OCD. I’m pretty obsessive about things,” Redick said. He expects himself to shoot 80 to 90 percent in the Sunday drill, no excuses. “I don’t take a shot unless I expect to make it. I expect to make every shot I take.”

It was also pointed out that once Redick starts these workouts in July, he goes six days a week and does not travel -- that commitment.

DO YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR SUMMER WORKOUTS? HOW ABOUT PRACTICES?

One of our discussion points with our team this past week is their ability to maximize their workouts.  Not just the individual workouts with the coaching staff but those workouts on their own -- unsupervised.  We have stressed the concepts of "deliberate" and "intentional."  Don't just roll to the gym and jack up some shots -- have a plan before you leave your apartment...a goal to accomplish during your time on the court.

I read somewhere this past week that Kobe Bryant would go to the gym and work on the same shot or same move for one complete hour...deliberate...intentional...that's how you grow towards mastery of your skills.

Whether its a summer workout or even practices during the season -- how much better would a player be if they mentally and physically prepared for a practice. If they made sure they had the proper rest.  If they were following the correct diet.  If they got there early and actually took time to map out some objectives for the workout.  And if you could get a majority of your players dedicated to pre-practice preparation, you'd be well on your way.

There's an old Adidas video with Bob Knight where he talks about preparation -- and he's referring to practice preparation.  He speaks about when the ball is tossed up, everyone wants to win.  But the successful players are those that want to win "the day before, and two days before and three days before, because the will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win."

Most players however think preparation is solely directed towards readying for your next opponent.  But tremendous improvement can come about by being deliberate and intentional in your summer workouts and preparing for practices during the season.

As Jay Bilas wrote in his book "Toughness" --

"If I could go back and be a player again, one area in which I would strive to be better would be my daily preparation.  I would take more time to mentally prepare myself for practice.  It would have made me a better player if I had consistently taken the extra time to mentally prepare myself and focus on what I expected to get out of that day's practice, and to mentally preapre myself to truly compete that day from the first drill to the last."

Deliberate.

Intentional. 

STEPH CURRY'S APPROACH TO WORKING ON HIS SHOT

The great ones are intentional and deliberate in the approach to work and improvement.  Listening to Mike Dunlap at a coaching clinic a month ago he talked about a big key in Steph Curry's success is hit ability to create space -- before and after the catch -- to get his shot off.  This is not an accident.

There was an outstanding article on SI.com’s written by  Rob Mahoney. It a lengthy, well-written article and should be printed and passed out to your players -- you can read it in its entirety here.

For now, here are a few take aways starting with the price paid on the college level under the tutelage of his college coach:

Stephen Curry saw the white flag wave. It danced before him in a taunt as he went bullied and beaten, made to second-guess himself as he never had before. The wispy guard was put through the wringer in one-on-one workouts against bigger, stronger, more experienced players lined up one after another by Davidson coach Bob McKillop. This was Curry’s first day and McKillop intended to test the freshman’s mettle.

“I was tired and kind of frustrated and he came out and waved this white towel in my face,” Curry said. “He kept saying, over and over again: 'You wanna surrender, don't you? You wanna surrender? Go ahead, surrender.’”

Curry played on but never triumphed. Instead, he endured just as McKillop hoped he might—standing up, again and again, to be humbled.

Mahoney also writes of Curry’s growth from the standpoint of understanding shot selection:

“The biggest thing for me was the coaching aspect of understanding the balance between taking chances or making the simple play,” Curry said. “When to force the issue and when not to and understanding that dynamic of what happens on the court. I can go out and not be afraid to make mistakes, to turn the ball over every once in awhile if you're trying to make a pass through a tight window or something like that. But over the course of the game, you've got to make smart decisions and then use whatever footwork, whatever coordination to get the ball from point A to point B.”

The key? Curry’s relentless work ethic.  We talk about game shots at game spots at game speed — Curry takes it to another level.  Writes Mahoney:

"We do a warm-up drill every day that we practice where we literally work on just pivoting, stepping through, and pick-and-roll footwork. Just break it down, step by step. Those things happen so many times in a game that you might take it for granted—just the coordination it takes to be explosive in certain situations on the floor.

So we work on that in practice. Outside of that, I just kind of work on footwork in moves that I normally will make in a game, whether it's dribble moves into shots or the footwork coming off a screen, things like that. You drill that while you're getting shots up so that you'll obviously be efficient and make your workouts tough. But staying on top of that simple fundamental makes you a little bit faster, a little bit more creative, a little bit more efficient on the floor."

“With the stuff he does, he challenges himself to get less rhythm and use harder cuts and more speed,” said Warriors assistant Bruce Fraser. “He's always constantly pushing himself to make shots challenging so that when he gets in the game he's done that a lot.” 

Mahoney also points out that not only Curry coachable, but he wants to be coached and coached hard:

“I respond best when a coach is able to get on me where he's raising his voice, yelling and whatever, because he expects greatness from me—especially when I'm not performing the way I'm supposed to,” Curry said. “I like to have, obviously, a mutual respect, and a guy who can be as consistent as possible with his message. But if I need to be yelled at and refocused, I'm open to that and I usually respond well.”

THE ONE INTANGIBLE THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE -- WORK ETHIC

There is so much that evolves and changes in our business.  Technology advances in everything from video to so many advanced pieces of equipment that we can use to develop our players.  Computers have certainly impacted how we do our jobs.  But there is one thing necessary for success that will never change -- WORK ETHIC...especially if you are an assistant coach.

I was rereading on of my old journals and came across this passage which I do not know where it originated:

When Lombardi was an assistant coach with the New York Giants, head coach Jim Lee Howell recalled that when left the office late at night, "there was always one light burning, the one in Vince Lombardi's office."

INTENT VS. IMPACT

I believe it is a great measure of someone's character as to what they do -- beyond just what they say.  Results come from actions and not intentions.  Those results can be measured. Intentions not so much.

"A garden requires patient labor and attention.  

Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. 

 They thrive because someone expended effort on them."

-Liberty Hyde Bailey

Here is a passage regarding intent vs. impact from "Above the Line" by Urban Meyer:

We have a saying that is fundamental to what we do:

I see better than I hear.

Or as Andrew Luck told me, "Your actions are so loud I can't hear what you're saying."

Sometimes we express it another way: Don't give me theory.  Give me testimony.

We are not measured by our intentions, but by our actions.

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."

CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP -- WHEN THE COACH IS WAY

There was an article that ran on Al.com written by Michael Casagrande regarding Coach Nick Saban and how he handled spring break with his team.  You can read the entire article here.  There were a few things that stood out to me in the article and they were related to the culture that Coach Saban has built.

I'm a big believer in the fact that great teams, championship teams are developed when the coaches aren't around -- the locker room, off-season workouts, in the community.  "Who's running your locker room" is always a key factor.  Can your leaders work in such a way that the young one's will follow?  This is where culture comes in.

In a meeting with his team before parting for spring break, Coach Saban told his team he wanted them to workout four times over the break. Saban commented:

"And we'll know the players who worked out four times and did not dissipate in terms of gaining weight and who took care of themselves, because you won't be able to respond in practice like you want to if you don't do those things. Now, we don't call and make sure they do it. We don't have a postcard that they fill out. We can't make them do it, so we encourage them to do it."

I believed this statement showed trust on Coach Saban's part as well as a standard of accountability that could be checked when they returned.

The other statements from this article that was impressive came from the players themselves that showed both leadership and commitment to their team:

When linebacker Ruben Foster was asked how his trip to Miami he said he didn't make it to the beach.  Instead he:

"Worked out. Studied. Tried to call the young guys, check up on them, them checking up on me."

Tight end O.J. Howard and quarterback David Cornwell travelled to Houston together to work on routes with each other.  As Howard stated:

"We both want to win for the team so whenever you've got a bunch of guys on the team who are dedicated like that it's going to help the team in the long run."

Culture and process makes the difference over the long haul.  One final statement from Coach Saban shows his trust in his players and the belief that culture is strong:

"I didn't ask anyone how much they worked out over spring, but it's a real indicator of how important football is to them, and how important that is for them to be a good player. If a guy just went and did nothing for the whole time, he's not very committed to improving himself and having a significant role on the team. I think it tells you a lot about a player's competitive character, how important football is to them, and how important the team is to them in how he does those things."

SEIMONE ON WORK ETHIC AND STEPH CURRY

I am obviously a huge Seimone Augustus fan -- was incredibly blessed to have coached her.  But there is a reason I'm a "fan" of Mone -- she gets it!  And she got it at an early age.  You can read here a blog post I wrote a few years ago about what made her one of the best to ever player the game.

Yesterday, in Instagram, I saw this post from Seimone and wanted to share it because I thought it was outstanding:

The most common questions I get asked as a professional basketball player is, ‘What drills do you do to get better? How many shots did you take a day? What all did you focus on to be a better player?  I HATE BEING ASKED THAT.  My answer is the same — I can’t count the number of shots I took, I can’t tell you what drills I did because I used everything from a lawn chair to a bowling ball glove to help with getting better, as well as watched a VHS tape of Pistol Pete until it didn’t work anymore.  An still when you reach what you think is your goal or dream, people will still DOUBT YOU and will be UNCERTAIN of your success at the next level.  HINT: Steph Curry in the photo below.  But all you can do is KEEP WORKING, BELIEVE in yourself, STAY FOCUSED and let the universe take you an amazing ride!

 

A CHAMPIONSHIP MESSAGE TO OUR TEAM FROM A CHAMPION

With our team playing a nationally televised game today, ESPN's Sue Bird is in town to do the game.  To try and put it in perspective, Sue is a consummate champion.  She has won two National Championships at Connecticut, two WNBA titles and three Olympic Gold Medals.  So we had an Aggie team locked in when Coach Gary Blair asked her to say a few words to our team after practice today. 

Here are some great take aways that she shared with our team:

"The difference between good and great are the little things.  Little things that I'm still learning about."

Some of the little things she spoke of was nutrition and working out at a high level.  She told our team that even though she is on the road a lot covering games for ESPN that she very often asks the coach of the arean she is covering a game in if she can get shot shooting time in while she is in town.  She spoke of the amazing amount of video that pro players watch on their own.

"The great ones know how to play in the moment.  They are not still thinking about the previous player or possession.  They realize that the next possession is everything because its the only one they can control."

Of course this reminds me of Coach Don Meyer who always said you had to be an "NBA" player -- meaning that you concentrated only on the "Next Best Action."

Sue also spoke of personal accountability in terms of being a professional player.  You were responsible for so much that in college you hadn't had to worry about because a coaching staff took care of it for you.

She talked about when you move on to the next level that you won't be your pro team's best player.  This means you aren't their first option offensively.  So her question was "What are going to do to separate yourself from the rest of the squad if you want to make the team?"

Coach Blair asked her where she and her Connecticut team got their confidence from.  Without any hesitation she replied, "Practice."  She went on to say that their practices were so difficult and demanding that the games were easy and they couldn't wait for the games.

She also told our team that confidence can't come from coaches.  It has to come from the work you put in and the level of your effort in practice and workouts.

Nothing like a great message from a great player to start our day!