concerned. They could see the love of the game going out of me.”
Says Alford, “Coach’s Holy Grail was the mistake-free game.” Uh-oh. We know which mindset makes mistakes intolerable. And Knight’s explosions were legendary. There was the time he threw the chair across the court. There was the time he yanked his player off the court by his jersey. There was the time he grabbed his player by the neck. He often tried to justify his behavior by saying he was toughening the team up, preparing them to play under pressure. But the truth is, he couldn’t control himself. Was the chair a teaching exercise? Was the chokehold educational?
He motivated his players, not through respect for them, but through intimidation—through fear. They feared his judgments and explosions. Did it work?
Sometimes it “worked.” He had three championship teams. In the “season on the brink” described by John Feinstein, the team did not have size, experience, or quickness, but they were contenders. They won twenty-one games, thanks to Knight’s great basketball knowledge and coaching skills.
But other times, it didn’t work. Individual players or the team as a whole broke down. In the season on the brink, they collapsed at the end of the season. The year before, too, the team had collapsed under Knight’s pressure. Over the years, some players had escaped by transferring to other schools, by breaking the rules (like cutting classes or skipping tutoring sessions), or by going early to the pros, like Isiah Thomas. On a world tour, the players often sat around fantasizing about where they
It’s not that Knight had a fixed mindset about his players’ ability. He firmly believed in their capacity to develop. But he had a fixed mindset about himself and his coaching ability. The team was his product, and they had to prove his ability every t tht. They were not allowed to lose games, make mistakes, or question him in any way, because that would reflect on his competence. Nor did he seem to analyze his motivational strategies when they weren’t working. Maybe Daryl Thomas needed another kind of incentive aside from ridicule or humiliation.
What are we to make of this complicated man as a mentor to young players? His biggest star, Isiah Thomas, expresses his profound ambivalence about Knight. “You know there were times when if I had a gun, I think I would have shot him. And there were other times when I wanted to put my arms around him, hug him, and tell him I loved him.”
I would not consider myself an unqualified success if my best student had considered shooting me.
Coach John Wooden produced one of the greatest championships records in sports. He led the UCLA basketball team to the NCAA Championship in 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1975. There were seasons when his team was undefeated, and they once had an eighty-eight-game winning streak. All this I sort of knew.
What I didn’t know was that when Wooden arrived at UCLA, it was a far cry from a basketball dynasty. In fact, he didn’t want to work at UCLA at all. He wanted to go to Minnesota. It was arranged that Minnesota would phone him at six o’clock on a certain evening to tell him if he had the job. He told UCLA to call him at seven. No one called at six, six thirty, or even six forty-five, so when UCLA called at seven, he said yes. No sooner had he hung up than the call from Minnesota came. A storm had messed up the phone lines and prevented the six o’clock phone call with the job offer from getting through.
UCLA had grossly inadequate facilities. For his first sixteen years, Wooden held practice in a crowded, dark, and poorly ventilated gym, known as the B.O. Barn because of the atmospheric effect of the sweating bodies. In the same gym, there were often wrestling matches, gymnastics training, trampoline jumping, and cheerleading workouts going on alongside basketball practice.
There was also no place for the games. For the first few years, they had to use the B.O. Barn, and then for fourteen more years, they had to travel around the region borrowing gyms from schools and towns.
Then there were the players. When he put them through their first practice, he was shattered. They were so bad that if he’d had an honorable way to back out of the job, he would have. The press had (perceptively) picked his team to finish last in their division, but Wooden went to work, and this laughable team did not finish last. It won the division title, with twenty-two wins and seven losses for the season. The next year, they went to the NCAA play- offs.
What did he give them? He gave them constant training in the basic skills, he gave them conditioning, and he gave them mindset.
Wooden is
He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but
He was not a softy. He did not tolerate coasting. If the players were coasting during practice, he turned out the lights and left: “Gentlemen, practice is over.” They had lost their opportunity to become better that day.
Like DeLay, Wooden gave equal time and attention to all of his players, regardless of their initial skills. They, in turn, gave all, and blossomed. Here is Wooden talking about two new players when they arrived at UCLA: “I looked at each one to see what he had and then said to myself, ‘Oh gracious, if he can make a real contribution, a
He respected all players equally. You know how some players’ numbers are retired after they move on, in homage to their greatness? No player’s number was retired while Wooden was coach, although he had some of the greatest players of all time, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. Later on, when their numbers were retired, he was against it. “Other fellows who played on our team also wore those numbers. Some of those other players gave me close to everything they had.… The jersey and the number on it never belong to just one single player, no matter how great or how big a ‘star’ that particular player is. It goes against the whole concept of what a team is.”
Wait a minute. He was in the business of winning games. Don’t you have to go with your talented players and give less to the second stringers? Well, he didn’t
Was Wooden a genius, a magician able to turn mediocre players into champions? Actually, he admits that in terms of basketball tactics and strategies, he was quite average. What he was really good at was analyzing and motivating his players. With these skills he was able to help his players fulfill their potential, not just in basketball, but in life—something he found even more rewarding than winning games.
Did Wooden’s methods work? Aside from the ten championship titles, we have the testimony of his players, none of whom refer to firearms.
Bill Walton, Hall of Famer: “Of course, the real competition he was preparing us for was life.… He taught us the values and characteristics that could make us not only goodplayers, but also good people.”
Denny Crum, successful coach: “I can’t imagine what my life would have been had Coach Wooden not been my guiding light. As the years pass, I appreciate him more and more and can only pray that I can have half as much influence on the young people I coach as he has had on me.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hall of Famer: “The wisdom of Coach Wooden had a profound influence on me as an
