Decisive
“It’s more important to be decisive than to be right.” - Brad Faxon, 8-time PGA Tour winner, talking about putting.
I was at Manhattan’s summer workout yesterday watching John Gallagher with his new team, and they were focused on offensive execution. Gal has always been a great offensive coach, his teams running fluid motion with great spacing and relying on skill and sharing the basketball. With only 2 returning players on his roster his team was far from perfect, but they had a very good idea of the spacing and timing needed to be hard to guard.
The offense involves a lot of reads, with the ball movement and the cutters dictating what happens next. The offensive players have a lot of freedom to read the defense and. make the right play. Gallagher was constantly teaching his guys how to make the right play, not run the play. One word that kept coming out of his mouth was “decisive.” He kept telling his team they had to be decisive on offense, because the decision made by the ball would dictate the rest of the action.
It reminded me of the above quote from Brad Faxon, something I read early in my career as a head coach and have repeated to my teams ever since. It is more important to be decisive than to be right. It always resonated with me and fit exactly what I was trying to get out of my teams. But I usually find myself saying it on the defensive end, not the offensive end. When it comes to help, attacking the ball, rotations, and all of the the things that need to be in sync to have a great defense, I wanted my guys to be decisive. I didn’t want them to worry about being right.
I had never really thought about the term on the offensive end, but it’s applicable as well, especially if you aren’t a set play guy and you want your guys making plays. We are trying to score on offense, we are not trying to run the play. I want our guys to have the freedom and confidence to do so. If they are too worried about being “right” - and pleasing the head coach - they aren’t going to react properly and make the right play. I want playmakers on offense, guys who aren’t afraid to make mistakes.
It’s more important to be decisive than to be right. On both offense and defense, the committed action of one player tells all of the other ones where they need to be. Get your guys to be decisive - and top worrying about being right - and you’ll have a much more confident team.