Tulsa Race Riots

How is it possible that I have never heard of one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in the history of our country?

On what was known as "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, 36 blocks were burned, 1,200 houses destroyed, and over 300 people were killed. It happened 99 years ago and this is the first I've ever heard of it.

I have a long way to go to understand. If you want to get better today, learn more.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tulsa-1921-how-an-act-of-racial-violence-reverberates-across-generations/

Who Cleans Your Office?

Who cleans your office?

It always struck me as a little odd. Every morning I try and get a workout in and then sit down at my desk to get the day started. I usually have a banana and some yogurt for breakfast. And usually at some point between 10-11 AM, someone comes into my office, grabs my garbage, and cleans it out. Takes away the banana peel and my yogurt cup and spoon.

I mean, I could have done that, right? I could grab the bag of garbage at the end of the day, take it outside with me and drop it in the dumpster before I get in my car. That's essentially what we do at home, isn't it?

Do you know his or her name? Do you ever have a conversation with them? Ask them their name, where they are from, if they have a family? This is someone that I see every day, who works at the same college as I do. They usually come in and maybe say a quick hello, and try somewhat nervously to stay out of the way (you know, us basketball coaches, we have very important work to do). We work at the same college, but we have very different jobs. We don't engage in regular conversation about Villanova's ball screen coverage or Creighton's transition offense.

Do your players know who cleans up their locker room for them? Do they know their names? Somebody goes in there every night and vacuums, cleans the bathrooms, the showers, and mops the floor. I wonder how many of your players know the names of the people doing that.

My point is this - how often do we intentionally engage in conversation with people from different walks of life? And maybe the person cleaning your office isn't from a different walk of life - you might have grown up together. Maybe they have a friend you went to school with. I don't know. But think about others in your life - the person you buy your coffee from in the morning, the people who work in the cafeteria, the guy who drops off the mail, or the waitress at the local sandwich place. Maybe it's the VP of the college who you see in the staff cafeteria. Maybe it's the lacrosse coach. Do you get outside of your circle and really get to know people?

I don't think we have to wait until Election Day to help bring about change. What can we change in our day to day lives? Have conversations with people who might be different than you. Get to know people you normally wouldn't, because you don't socialize them or see them outside of their place of work. Learn about them. Ask them questions. Create a dialogue with others who might have a different background and therefore a different perspective. Ask them how the events of the world are affecting them.

Tell your players that once a day they should introduce themselves to someone they don't know. Have a conversation with them. Sit next to them in the cafeteria. We are preparing them to be leaders when they get out into the real world, right? Many of them can be more impactful change agents than we can at this point. Encourage that behavior, so everyone starts to learn a little more about the things that make us different.

Having conversations with people who may be from different backgrounds is one way to broaden our perspective. It can help bridge the gap between the differences we all have, and create better understanding. It's something small, for sure, but something we can all do immediately. I know it's something I can do a lot better. I want to understand people who are different than I am, to broaden my perspective. (By the way, Adam and Rui are the two guys who take care of my office).

Day to day, we can all help bridge the gap. Facebook posts, Zoom webinars and retweets are all great. But we can do more in our everyday life to help bring about change.

What Can I Do?

When I was in high school I was walking through my hometown of Larchmont, NY on a Friday night with a couple of my teammates, heading towards a friends house. We were pretty bored and obviously stupid walking down a dark street that didn't have street lights. We walked past a few houses that had some big painted stones lining their driveways, and we came up with a brilliant idea. What if we put a couple of these stones in the middle of the road, and watched as the cars who drove by had to swerve out of the way at the last minute? I really have no idea why that came up or how we thought it was a fun idea, but we did it, dragging a few of the bigger stones into the middle of the street. We hung around, watched as some cars had to slow down at the last minute and swerve out of the way, never once thinking that it might actually be really dumb and dangerous. We laughed like idiots. We kept on walking.

A little while later we noticed a police car driving up behind us slowly. We tried not to look at it, kept walking, "acting natural" in a way that I'm sure looked anything but. The cops pulled up next to us and shined their spotlight in our faces. The exchange went something like this.

"Hey, fellas, where you guys headed?"

"We're going to see one of our friends, officer. He lives a few blocks up the street."

"Do you guys live around here?"

"Yes, we do. Two of us do. We both live in Larchmont."

"I'm from the Bronx," my other teammate said.

"The Bronx. Really? What are you doing up here?" At this point, the officers got out of their car. The conversation was not as casual anymore, their tone a little more aggressive.

"I came to see my friends. We go to high school together."

At that point, after they heard one of us was from the Bronx, they asked us for ID. We showed them our ID, and then one of them asked us what high school we went to.

"Regis. In the city."

"Oh. You guys to go Regis?"

"Yes, sir."

Regis High School is a pretty well-known catholic school in Manhattan with a very good reputation for academics. Kids used to joke and say "Oh, you go to the smart school." Looking at the Friday night activities of myself and my friends, clearly not the case. But Regis carried with it a strong reputation.

As soon as the officers heard we went to Regis, the tone of the conversation changed. When they heard one of us was from the Bronx, they got more curious and wanted ID and more information. When they heard we went to Regis, they were much less concerned. We were now 3 white, Irish-catholic middle or upper-middle class white kids walking through our upper-middle class suburb of New York City. We didn't look like who they were looking for.

"Is everything alright officer," I asked, seizing the change in momentum and finishing off our "act natural" approach.

"Yes, everything is fine. Have you guys seen anyone around here who looks like they don't belong?" At that point, we clearly went from suspects to concerned citizens in the eyes of the two police officers.

"No sir, officer. We haven't seen anyone at all."

"Thank you gentlemen, have a good night."

Have you guys seen anyone around here who looks like they don't belong?

I've remembered that night for a few reasons. One, because I was scared as hell that we were going to get in real trouble with the police for doing something really stupid. But secondly, I'll never forget the way the tone of the conversation changed when we said "Regis." They looked at us differently. At that point we became white, suburban kids who were well-off who went to the "smart" school, who wouldn't be involved with anything as dumb as putting small boulders in the middle of a dark road. We couldn't possibly be the guys the police were looking for.

Yet, in fact, they were staring right at the guys they were looking for.

I didn't realize it at that moment, but as I got older I realized what that was: white privilege. I wasn't really smart enough or experienced at the time to know really what that meant, but I knew enough to know that telling them where we went to high school made a big difference in how we were perceived. I grew up with the benefit of white privilege.

When I first became a head coach, at Rhode Island College in 2005, I took over a pretty diverse team. One of the things I loved about RIC was the diversity within the school. It is an affordable state school located in a city, although the campus is not downtown. But it attracts a very diverse group of students, many of whom are first-generation college kids. It is a blue collar student body from all different backgrounds.

We had a lot of success over my 9 years at RIC, and as we got it rolling I realized we could attract some really high level players from different cities around the region who would feel comfortable on campus and in the dorms. Diversity was an asset to us. Aside from Providence, we had kids from Fall River, Massachusetts, New Haven, CT as well as New York City. But we also had kids from Greenfield, ME, Newport, RI and Plainfield, CT. We had a diverse group, but over time the majority of our best players were black kids who grew up in urban areas.

A funny thing happened as we continued to have success. I'd get more and more coaches who wanted to send me their talented players who didn't get the right scholarship offers, and what I'd hear a lot was "you know how to coach those types of kids." Hmmm. I would always chuckle to myself when I heard that, because I grew up in upper-middle class Larchmont, NY, a New York City suburb, a product of white privilege. But my immediate response was always "Well, if you mean talented, tough kids who are willing to sacrifice for their teammates, yes, absolutely. I love coaching those types of kids."

I knew exactly what they meant. They were talking about city kids, mostly black kids, and giving me credit for knowing how to "handle" them. I always responded that way because I wanted no part of anyone labeling my players as "those types" of kids. Nor did I want credit for knowing how to handle them. But I knew exactly how we were perceived, as an inner-city athletic team (read: black) that was well-coached and disciplined. As if the norm for "those types" of teams was the opposite.

The one thing I knew about coaching "those types" of kids was what I didn't know. I was smart enough not to try and say too much on topics I didn't know much about, and because of that I learned so much more from my players. I had no idea what most of them had gone through growing up, and I made sure I told them that. I tried to understand their background and the challenges they faced. I got to know them as people. But to say I knew where they were coming from would just have been false.

Where I grew up, you went to college, and your parents had money to pay for it. I was very lucky. Mine certainly did. I got to choose where I wanted to go to school (Hamilton College) and I didn't have to worry about cost. In fact, I remember joking with my mother when she cried on my graduation day, saying to her "Mom, c'mon, we knew this day was going to happen." Half of that was arrogance and the other half was insensitivity to the idea of how big a moment it really is when a parent sees a son or daughter walk across that stage into adulthood. White privilege, remember? My parents were hard-working, blue collar people from the Bronx who put themselves through college and worked extremely hard to set up a better life for my brother and I. There was no arrogance or entitlement in my house growing up. But I was comfortable knowing that getting a college degree was supposed to happen. My biggest concern that day was where we were going to watch Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals (yes, Hubert Davis got fouled).

So at RIC I reminded myself to regularly celebrate my players for showing up every day. Most of them faced real-life challenges - jobs to pay for school, younger siblings they helped raise, kids of their own - things that might have an impact on their ability to close out on a shooter during shell drill. I never acted like I knew what they were going through, because I didn't. I had no clue. But I made sure they knew I was there to help, and that I believed in the impact our culture could have on their future. I wanted to connect with them. Sure, the fact that I could talk about Tupac's "Me Against The World" with them probably helped. But learning about where they came from instead of telling them I knew where they were coming from created authentic relationships.

I knew what I didn't know. I had no idea what it was like to have to work to pay for school. Or to have to bring some money home for my Mom so she could help feed my brother and sister. I had no idea what it was like to have only one parent in my life. Or to walk into Target and have people watching me as I went up and down the aisles. Or to get uncomfortable every time a cop car drove down the block. Or to have people make assumptions about me because of the way I looked. When people made assumptions about me, they assumed I was doing the right thing. I didn't get the benefit of the doubt from others. There usually wasn't any doubt to begin with. White privilege.

Have you guys seen anyone around here who looks like they don't belong?

Heck, if you looked into the gym at RIC, I was the one who looked like he didn't belong. But I was the head coach. I had the power, the control. So it wasn't uncomfortable for me. I looked like what the people in charge were supposed to look like (insert your own height joke here).

So what can I do?

I can be better. I'm sure we all can.

One of the teams I coached at RIC had only 3 white players on it. All good players, all played key roles, two seniors and one freshmen. Everyone else on the team was black. The team got along very well and we were very talented. We would go on to win the Little East Championship and play in the NCAA Tournament. But I remember the dynamics of that team for a reason.

The joke on that team was that the 3 white kids were "the klan." When they sat together at a restaurant the guys would joke "there goes the klan right there." When they were on the same team in practice, they would joke "let's go, we got the klan right here." All of the players, black and white, were part of the joke, and laughed about it. They called themselves the klan, and everybody else did. Everyone had a laugh about it at some point.

It made me uncomfortable. Any reference to race or stereotypes that were joked about made me uncomfortable. Although everyone was laughing about it and it was "no big deal," some of them probably weren't comfortable with it. And if someone went to my AD and complained about it, obviously it would make the program look terrible. And it could cost me my job. I looked at it from that point of view. We couldn't have that. It might make people uncomfortable, and it can hurt our program and possibly my career.

But I should have been looking at it much differently. I should have thought about the social impact it could have, and the way it perpetuated stereotypes and ignorant thought. Coaches stay in a vacuum way too much. It wasn't a big issue within our team, right? Everyone laughed, everyone knew it was a joke. No big deal. But it does matter. Everything that influences or perpetuates the way we think matters. Hey, fellas, let's talk about this for a second. Do you guys understand what the Klu Klux Klan means in this country? The negative impact they have had on so many. Is it really something we are comfortable joking about? Let's talk about how that contributes to the way we think, and eventually the way we treat people. Perpetuating stereotypes continues a thought process that stifles conversation and leads to division. I could have done a lot better.

Do you have any friends who tell you a story that starts with, "While I was driving over here, this black guy cut me off..." or "I was walking out of the store, and this Chinese woman said to me...?" You've heard those stories. Do you ever stop them? "Hey, Jonesy, why did you say he was a black guy? What difference did that make?" Is that something that bothers you, or maybe it's not that big of a deal? Do you speak up?

It is a big deal. It speaks to the way we think, the way we normalize stereotypes. If that guy who cut him off was a white guy, would he have told you he was white? Or would he just have said he was a guy? I'm usually one who speaks up in that situation. That kind of stereotyping makes me cringe. Usually, that is, when it's comfortable enough for me to do so. If it's not comfortable, I let it go, even though it bothers me. If it's not someone I know that well, I stay quiet.

Claude M. Steele in his book "Whistling Vivaldi" explores the idea of "stereotype threat."

"Evidence consistently shows that contingencies tied to our social identities do make a difference in shaping our lives... and identity threats play an important role in some of society's most important social problems. These range from the racial, social class, and gender achievement gaps that persistently plague and distort our society to the equally persistent intergroup tensions that often trouble our social relations."

I can do better. We can all do better.

I'm not saying police brutality against black men wouldn't happen if I had done better, and in no way am I trying to trivialize any of the senseless deaths, assaults or arrests that happen way too often in our country. But I do think the way we think, what we tolerate and how we normalize stereotypes has an impact on all of us. It silently perpetuates negative group think. And I think we can all do something to help change that way of thinking. We can speak up. We can educate. We can start a conversation.

I've always felt a huge challenge with racism in this country - or any other difficult topic - is our inability or unwillingness to talk about it. It is really hard, I get it. It's an uncomfortable topic to begin with, and it's one where by definition we can't really show empathy. I can't put myself in your shoes if you grew up in the South Bronx, and you can't place yourself in the Larchmont Shore Club. There are cultural differences that we have to accept from the beginning. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to talk about it. We take the easy way out. It's not that big of a deal. It doesn't really affect me that much. It's easier to stay quiet, so that's wha we do.

I know I can do better.

We also live in a hot-take society where just about everything is recorded or posted somewhere. And if you say the wrong thing, it can cost you everything. So how do we have a conversation about it? Is it worth it to me personally? Say the wrong thing, you lose everything. So it's easier not to say anything. Why have the discussion if it can cost me everything, I'm not a racist. I know that. It's not worth the risk.

George Floyd. That's why. We can all do better.

I don't necessarily agree with your opinion, but I'm really interested in hearing more about it.

Have you ever said that previous sentence out loud, or something like it? Look at it again. Do you ever say, hey, I'm on the other side here generally, but I really want to know why you feel this way? Help me understand. I want to know more. How often do we do that? Listen to the other side, even if we disagree. If we were just willing to take that approach - without emotion or aggression - I feel like we could make small steps towards progress. We could get more comfortable talking to one another if we were more willing to listen.

It's such a sensitive topic, everyone has to be careful around it. Am I allowed to write this? White privilege, remember. Can I tweet my feelings after the killing of George Floyd, or am I better off keeping it to myself? On the night of Barack Obama's inauguration I cried. Am I allowed to say that? I don't tell people that. I saw Jesse Jackson crying on television during the celebration, and it made me cry. He was on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel with Dr. King, for heaven's sake. And there he was looking at our first black President. What a moment in the history of our country. I cried. But white privilege, remember. Am I allowed to cry? How would people look at that? I don't know the struggle. That can't be genuine. Why do I feel uncomfortable about it, when I know it's genuine? Probably because I'm letting society tell me how I should feel. And I need to be stronger.

To be completely honest, as I write this, I'm going to ask my wife to read it before I post it. I've never done that before. I've written probably 2,000 posts on this blog, and normally I just write it and post it. Sometimes I don't even read it myself (you've probably noticed). But I'm going to ask her to read this one, because I don't want to say the wrong thing. Not on this topic. Say the wrong thing on this topic and it changes your life. It's a challenge, one that keeps us from speaking freely and honestly about important issues.

Does that fear influence my ability to be transparent about difficult topics in everyday life? I'm sure it does. But that's not on society. That's on me. I have to be better.

There is only one thing that's really keeping those things inside of me, making me uncomfortable having the discussion. And that's me. I can be stronger, I can be more open, I can think more clearly about why I feel the way I do. I can say something when guys in the locker room use offensive language. I can tell people I'm not comfortable when they tell a racist joke. I can openly encourage my friends and colleagues to attend more inclusion and diversity events. I can go to more of them myself. Is that going to save George Floyd's life. Nope. Probably not. But can we all make a small difference? Absolutely. And if we all do that, maybe we start moving towards real change. I believe that. I know I can be better.

I can also ask a lot more questions. I can listen with more concern. I can genuinely show interest in people who think differently than I do. If you are thinking right now about the rioting and looting, and not about the senseless killing of another black man, then let's talk. I can't defend the response, but all I can think about is the amount of anger and pain so many have due to systemic racism. They have experienced something that I can't even begin to fathom. What is happening now is not the cause, it's the response. Let's talk about the cause. Let's talk about how we see things differently.

If Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem really bothered you, let's talk. It seemed to offend so many people, and I never got it. He was peacefully protesting, reminding us that we have a problem in this country without hurting anyone. And it cost him his career, literally. Regardless of whether you consider yourself red or blue, those are facts. Can we agree on that? Let's talk. If we can't agree, let's talk. I want to understand more, rather than just pass off your opinion as wrong because it differs from mine. Listen to me, and I'll listen to you. No emotion, just honest discussion.

I don't necessarily agree with your opinion, but I'm really interested in hearing more about it.

We can all be better.

Are you one of those people who is bad with names? You know, the guy who says five minutes after you met someone, "I'm sorry, I'm really bad with names, what was your name again?" Maybe you can listen better. I know I can. It's really just about how much you care about what they are saying. Can you remember someone's name, you know, someone who just told you their name? If not, does it really matter to you what they may think? If not, listen better. It's a small example, but a good indicator. I know I can listen better. I'm sure we all can.

Facebook posts, twitter messages, nifty hashtags. I'm sorry, it all rings kind of hollow for me at this point. Action steps. What is the plan? What are the behaviors that are going to change in my every day life? I can't really #Stand with anyone anymore. I'm not #InsertYourCityHereStrong. I can do a lot more than express my sorrow and grief and go back to watching The Last Dance.

What was it that Margaret Mead said? “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world." I don't think she was talking about trending on twitter.

I can intentionally listen better. I can ask more questions. I can put myself in different situations and try to understand more people who aren't like me. I can encourage my players to not always sit in the cafeteria with their teammates, but to sit with someone they don't know, who doesn't look like them, and introduce themselves. I can say hello to more people. I can talk to my neighbors. I can attend events with speakers I've never heard of, on topics I don't know a lot about. I can try and understand my friends who don't feel the same way I do, without always trying to make my point.

I can read a book by an author I don't agree with. Watch movies like Parasite, that show me a world , and a culture I didn't even know existed. Find a documentary on Netflix about something that really isn't my thing instead of binging Ozark. I can appreciate the passion others have for what they believe in, even if I don't believe in it. I can make myself uncomfortable a lot more often, and get used to having uncomfortable conversations about simple things. Things I don't know much about. So, maybe, when the time comes to have an uncomfortable conversation about something that really matters, I don't walk away from it. I'm ready to talk, willing to listen.

I can learn to be stronger and clearer on my opinions about topics that are really difficult. Topics that really matter to the people I work with, the kids I coach, my family, everybody. I can be a bigger part of civil discourse on important issues, and encourage others to do the same. I can be vocal about what really matters in a respectful way. I can stand up in front of my team when they are using nicknames or telling jokes that aren't appropriate. And I can lead them on a discussion towards understanding why.

The more we seek out and understand different perspectives, the better equipped we will be to learn, to discuss, to educate and to initiate change.

Have you guys seen anyone around here who looks like they don't belong?

Maybe I don't belong in this discussion. That would be the easy way out. Feel sorrow for George Floyd, stay quiet. That would be comfortable. Nah, that can't be true. All of this matters too much, to all of us. I'm in a position where I can have some influence on others. We all are, aren't we? It's more than retweeting a Dr. King quote on twitter with a trendy hashtag. It's pretty clear what we are all doing, it's not enough.

I can be devastated about what I saw in Minneapolis this week and not be conflicted about how I'm supposed to respond, feeling a little guilty about white privilege. It's part of how I grew up and who I am, not something I should apologize for. But to acknowledge it and to move forward with a stronger commitment to help? Instead of staying safe and comfortable in a world that has been set up for me, since the day I was born, for me to be successful? I can do that.

I can never, ever forget the feeling I still get when I see the video of George Floyd, asking for his mother, hearing his voice struggle to say "I can't breathe." I can breathe. And if I ever told someone I couldn't, I'm pretty sure they'd take their knee off my neck.

I can do more than feel bad. Action steps. I can change my behavior, and I can impact the behavior of others around me. I can learn more. I can listen better. I can be smart and measured in my approach, yet still be impactful. I can avoid adding my emotion to emotional situations. I can understand the other side better.

I can do all of this. Right now, it's what I know I can do.

For starters, anyway.

John Stockton

If you ever needed a reason to like John Stockton even more... he throws teams out of his gym if they aren't playing hard enough in Sunday pick-up.

From Seth Davis' article in The Athletic about the culture Gonzaga has built.

The most exclusive game in town is the weekly Sunday morning run overseen by Stockton, a third-generation Zag who played from 1980 to ’84. The games take place at The Warehouse, a downtown rec center that Stockton owns. (One of the courts is a floor with a Utah Jazz logo that used to be in the old Delta Center.) If someone whom Stockton hasn’t invited tries to play, that person will be shown the door. Stockton is 57 now, but he’s still John Stockton. He has been known to chastise a high school kid if he isn’t going hard enough, and if the game isn’t being taken seriously he’ll kick everyone out. “He’s surly,” Raivio says with admiration. “He’ll give you an elbow, he’ll ride you. He still gets every call.”

Ralph Willard's Advice To His Son On Getting Into Coaching

Great advice for anyone who wants to get into coaching, from Dana O'Neil's article in The Athletic on Kevin Willard.

Once he realized there was no turning his son away from coaching, Ralph urged Kevin to start from the ground up, take the hardest job he could find to make sure he really wanted in.

The Worm

It's interesting to see how much analysis there is of a 10-part series that involves an inside look of one of the greatest basketball dynasties, when that series is shown during a global pandemic and there are no live sports. I found "The Last Dance" to be an interesting watch, although I was disappointed that Michael Jordan and his production team scrubbed everything first.

Winning 6 titles in 8 years has a way of altering perception and changing the way a lot of behavior is analyzed. I've really been fascinated by the way Dennis Rodman has been perceived. Keep in mind, the way everybody was portrayed in the film was how Michael wanted them portrayed, but I feel like Rodman came out on the good side.

Rodman was a terrific NBA player with a unique skill - the ability to rebound the ball - that generally translated into winning in that league ("No rebounds, no rings" - Pat Riley). He was tough and played hard for the most part when he was on the floor, and playing alongside two of the top 50 players of all time in the prime of their careers certainly helped mask his weaknesses. He also played for one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time. He could defend and he could rebound, with no real offensive skill to appreciate.

There is no doubt Rodman was a big part of the second three-peat with the Bulls. He brought an edge and a willingness to do the dirty work that translated very well for his team. But it seems like the impression is that he was this hard-working, role-playing winner who did all of the little things his team needed to win.

I think Rodman was an unreliable player who forced his teammates to overcome his inconsistency and lack of commitment to win. Did he help his team win? Absolutely. Would they have won without him? I'm not sure, but given his contributions on the court, you can probably make a better case that they would not have. I'm a believer you can win with anyone. I don't believe that there are certain types of players who you can't win with. I think that narrative is lazy and tired, and Dennis Rodman is a perfect example.

I'm not arguing against Dennis Rodman or his value to the team. But our perception of him certainly seems different 20 years down the road, now that we are celebrating the dynasty.

When Michael Jordan talked about Scottie Pippen waiting on his surgery until the season started because he didn't want to ruin his summer, he said "Scottie quit on us." And maybe he has a point. But Dennis Rodman literally did quit on them, during the season. He went to Vegas with Carmen Electra for a team-approved vacation DURING THE SEASON. Think about that for a minute.

The response was a lot of, well, that was Dennis, and he needed a break, and we knew when he came back we could count on him, and no one competed harder. All of that. To me, the Bulls and Phil Jackson figured out a way to make it work. They overcame that fact that he was a bad teammate, and a lot of the credit for that goes to the head coach and the other players. They were willing to put up with it, hoping that he would provide what they needed during the games. And they made it work.

But the idea that Dennis Rodman was some kind of glue guy who could be counted on to do all of the dirty work is laughable to me. In fact, using the term "counted on" with Dennis Rodman is also a joke. Even during the games, when he was playing hard and rebounding, they still never knew when he might just blow up. He was a loose cannon, not generally something you are looking for on high-performing teams. He had an unbelievable ability to rebound, and he was willing to defend and play physical without getting the ball very much. He added great value to the team. But most of the credit for why he was able to help the team goes to the rest of his teammates, and the way Phil Jackson handled the situation.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade

I was recently able to participate on a Zoom call with Jeff Duncan-Andrade, a former basketball coach and now professor at San Francisco State University. Jeff has written multiple books and has a unique approach education. Below are my notes from his Zoom discussion.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/5-practices-of-highly-effective-urban-educators/264628/

• Biggest mistake coaches and teachers make - "they don't clearly define their purpose." If you can't clearly define your purpose so that everyone understands it, you are going to get off-course when things get hard.
• The onion really gets peeled back on people when things get hard - when you are supposed to win by 20 and you are down 4 with 3 minutes to go.
• Purpose is philosophical - it grows, it gets deeper.
• When you watch film, do you watch yourself? Or do you just watch your team? Because very often your team is just a reflection of yourself as a coach.
• Spent a day with John Wooden - the most important time I've ever spent as a teacher and a coach. He really helped me define my purpose, my philosophy, what I believe in.
• Coach Wooden's doorstop is Shaq's shoe filled with pennies.
• "You can be good at a lot of things, but you can only be great at a few." - Advice he got from John Wooden - "that changed me as a coach. I had to let stuff go."
• That helped me get the foundation right. I cut out the noise. I became a minimalist.
• Practice = Action + Practice - that's how you grow.
• Critical practice - Becoming increasingly aware of participation and involvement of all forms of inequality.
• 3 things we wanted for our young people in English class - love reading, love writing, and think for themselves in a way that was critical - to allow them to use their reading and writing to make an impact.
• Coaches can be really deliberate and explicit about how their teams can crossover skills to social inequalities.
• As coaches and teachers we don't have to have the answers, we have to have the questions.
• Turn statements into questions. Don't make statements, they kill dialogue. Develop a spirit of genuine inquiry and explore to solve problems.
• Your ability to understand your players interests relates directly to your ability to drive them and push them.
• When they have a negative influence in their personal lives - ask questions - what does that person want for you?
• Do not screw up that relationship for them as a coach - that person wants what's best for them. Do not question the way they care about you.
• The best coaches are gophers - they get what people want and need.
• The mindset of young people is the direct reflection of the mindset of the adults around them.
• Conflict does not concern me.
• Every year you have a new team - you have to constantly stay in learning mode, and humble enough to realize you don't know it all.
• Very often your expectations and their expectations are misaligned. Write them out, get connected on them.
• The best way to learn something is to teach it. One big mistake we make is we have study hall in silence - study hall should be interactive and collaborative - it should mirror your practice.
• Wealthy kids tend to study in groups - first generation kids study by themselves.
• Create a rich, vibrant learning environment in practice.
• He had a rule with his team - you can ask me to take you to a book store and I'll buy you a book any time you want.
• If you care more about what they did in the box score than what book they are reading, they are going to figure out pretty quickly what you think of them.
• "We measure what we treasure" - Angela Duckworth
• "Part of our responsibility as coaches is to create an environment for self-love - and that doesn't come from getting twenty."
• "Everyone is biased. Get over it. The people that weren't biased, between the giraffe and lion, are dead."
• "I started speaking my truth, when being free became more important than guarding the fear of my ego." - Yung Pueblo, Inward

Joe Maddon on Coaching

Coaching doesn't mean you have to attempt to impart everything you know on somebody. Really good coaching is understanding who you got, and then communicating with them in a way that permits them to be great. And you only interfere when it's necessary.

Takeaways From The Last Dance

• MJ is probably the greatest competitor I've ever seen (Brady? Kobe?).
• Jordan's competitiveness turned into a lot of pettiness.
• I'm disappointed that Jordan had to approve it and his production company played a role in producing it. While it was entertaining and a fun watch, it's not a documentary, it's a tribute.
• Did the timeline jumping back and forth drive anyone else crazy, or was it just me?
• Tough for Phil to get laryngitis on interview day.
• Still believe we conflate winning and individual ability way too much.
• MJ's teammates deserve a ton of credit. The edge that he brought every day could not have been easy to deal with.
• Great old-school hip-hop soundtrack "Scenario," "I Got It Made," "Can I Kick It?" "The Choice Is Yours," among others. Well done.
• We didn't really learn much that we didn't already know.
• Jerry Krause is unfairly skewered. Look at the moves he made to put the dynasty together - he belongs in Springfield.
• Scottie Pippen should have been more mad at his agent than Jerry Krause.
• Sam Bowie averaged 11 points, 8 rebounds and 2 blocks per game for his NBA career.
• Phil Jackon's ability to manage personalities within the dynamic of a team are second to none.
• For a great read on his approach, pick up Jackson's "11 Rings."
• I thought MJ popped Kerr in practice, not Will Perdue. Or was it both?
• The Dream Team scrimmage footage was the best inside look of the entire show - a game some have called the greatest basketball ever played.
• I thought Jordan's answer on the "Republicans buy sneakers too" comment made sense and was genuine. He said it off the cuff on a bus to some teammates, and he never saw himself as an activist. His energy was as a basketball player. You don't have to agree with it, but I thought it was authentic.
• The "you might want to be MJ for a day," but not for longer than that comments are still repulsive to me. C'mon man.
• I loved how after that pick-up game in Barcelona, people started to realize the torch had been passed.
• Why did we have to put a college player on that team again?
• Sure, Mike, Rod Thorn called you and told you Isaiah wasn't going to be on the team.
• As a native New Yorker and a big Knick's fans in the '80s and '90s, having no sports on TV right now and seeing nothing but Bulls dynasty highlights from 25 years ago is a nightmare.
• Willow Bay talking about how the Reebok issue with the Olympic uniforms showed us how "competitive" Michael was made me want to puke. Either that, or he really liked money.
• Scottie Pippen didn't come across as a great teammate - waited on surgery until the season started so as not to ruin his summer, and sat out the last play of a playoff game because he wasn't getting the ball. And then said he wouldn't change a thing. Yikes.
• The fact that there was once a narrative that Jordan was a great individual scorer who couldn't lead his team to a championship should tell you why that narrative should never exist. It's only a story until you win, and then it's dropped.
• Krause hiring Tex Winter and Phil Jackson, and bringing along the triangle offense, doesn't get enough publicity.
• "I don't want Bill Cartwright with the ball with 5 seconds to go on the clock... that's fucking stupid."
• Not a fan of the "this documentary shows the young generation why Jordan was the best ever" narrative at all.
• I'm surprised about the response to Jordan's "leadership style" being so positive. Jordan's talent was the number one element in his "leadership style." He was the best in the game, so he could behave however he liked without fear.
• How about the fact that he showed up to play in the Olympics with his golf clubs? I'm sure other players did too. Think about being so good at a sport that you can represent your country in the Olympics, and bringing your equipment to play another sport while you are there.
• We remember Jordan's attempt at baseball as a failure, but what he did that year was actually very impressive.
• Acting like Rodman was a great teammate to have or someone that could be counted on is a joke. They made it work with him, but great teammates don't constantly put their team at risk. I don't care how many rebounds they can get.
• How much scotch did MJ drink during his interviews?
• It's hard for me to look at what you are saying as authentic when you had to approve it all and your production company helped produce it.
• You know what, Mike, I could handle being MJ for more than a day.
• BJ Armstrong was an NBA All-Star?
• Michael didn't come across as very likable to me. Cannot deny his talent, competitiveness, and success. But just doesn't seem like a person I'd like.
• Someone has to explain to me why they went with the flu instead of just saying it was food poisoning.
• Really, Tim Grover, you "had a bad feeling" about the pizza before he ate it?
• The depths to which MJ would reach to create a competitive edge for himself were truly mind-boggling.
• Come on with the jump ball with 7:00 to play in a 3-point game in game 7 was the key to beating the Pacers. Pretty sure the Bulls would have found a way.
• The "We had the better team, I really do believe that," from the team that just got beat is pretty tired.
• Luc Longley and Greg Ostertag got the same amount of burn in this documentary. What did Luc ever do to MJ?
• "Scottie was hurt, so I had to take all the shots, I had to bring all of the energy." MJ has some ego.
• It's hard to celebrate Dennis Rodman. Did so many things that hurt his team, both on the floor and off.
• Usually when a unique situation like his works out, it's not because of the players, it's because of the rest of the team.
• Phil Jackson was brilliant at not inserting his own ego into difficult situations.
• Getting on the other teams bus to congratulate them after a big game is more about you than it is about them.
• Winning is hard. Even for the teams that made it look easy.
• He has to be the most relentless competitor we've ever seen.

Virginia's SOW Culture

https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-basketball-players-reap-what-they-sow?utm_source=DailyReport&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

Handling Adversity

I've been working with a bunch of teams and organizations over the last 2 months on leadership development. As we get into the discussion, one topic seems to come up more than any other - how do you handle adversity?

It's something we all have to deal with, as individuals or as a part of a team. There have probably been a million books written on the topic about turning negatives into positives, but one things I've realized is, like most leadership topics, it is situational. Context really matters, and what might work in one situation or for one team might not work for another. So there is no strict blueprint.

A few things I've discovered about overcoming adversity:

Your Long-Term Culture Matters

The ability to handle tough times does not start when the tough times hit. Belief and confidence in your long-term approach, and what you are doing every day, is very powerful when it comes to difficult challenges.

What is the overall purpose for why you do what you do? There needs to be something that drives you that is bigger than you. If it's a basketball team, and winning is all that matters, when you lose a few in a row you are going to feel like the world is caving in on you. But if you believe in the way you operate day to day and the impact it will have on the way you live your life long-term, that is something that will continue to motivate you when adversity strikes. Think about your long-term purpose and what you believe in.

Separate From The Results

If the results are what drives you, they day-to-day becomes a lot harder when things aren't going well. Focus hard on the process, and evaluating what you are doing every day. If you can honestly say you are giving a great effort, and you know you are getting better, you'll start to feel better about yourself.

Think long-term when it comes to your culture and what you believe in. Think short-term when it comes to the way you have to battle out of it. Focus on getting better today and just add to that tomorrow. You can't control the situation you are in any more, but you can control your daily approach.

Win Anyway

Your mentality is really important. We use the term "win anyway" as our way of saying "no excuses." It's a long-term mentality that we live and breathe in our program. The officials are bad? Win anyway. Two of our starters are hurt? Win anyway. You don't feel your best at practice today? Win anyway.

Whatever adversity just struck, you have to get over it. You can't feel sorry for yourself. Don't make any excuses or talk about the bad luck that has hit you and your team. It can't help you. Winning anyway is about how you respond. Make it a part of your mentality.

No one really cares about what happened to your or how you got here. Time to get over it.

Trust Your Teammates

Great teammates are essential to any high-achieving organization, but they are most valuable when things aren'g going well. Trust is the most essential element of great organizations. When adversity hits, you need the best out of everyone to turn things around. There isn't going to be one person who does remarkable things to pull everyone out of it.

I've found that natural tendency is that everyone wants to do more. People are driven because they are upset with what has happened, so there is renewed intensity and commitment to make a change. This leads to a lot of focus on yourself and a narrow scope. Don't forget about your teammates. Renewed drive is a good thing, but use the strength of your team to make impactful change.

Positivity

It's simple to say "stay positive." Yeah, but things stink right now, so it's hard to stay positive. But it's important to set the right mindset. Surround yourself with as much positivity as you can. Speak only positive things about your team or your program. Encourage everyone else to do the same. Celebrate the small daily successes you have with a high level of energy. Compliment your teammates on simple moments of progress.

Get any from the negative talk that naturally comes with the adversity that hit. It doesn't do you any good. Intentionally put yourself in only positive situations to create the mindset you need.

Find Solitude

I've found that when things aren't going well, I enjoy spending some time alone. It's great to keep a positive attitude, not to make any excuses and to count on your teammates, but adversity is also hard to deal with. It's not as simple as waking up and saying "I've got this" today and going to work. The fight you need takes time to process and can make you feel bad.

Find 15-30 minutes each day to get away from everyone, and just organize your thoughts. Get comfortable with how you are feeling and how you want to go about making changes. I don't think you want to try and be tough alone, but I need to be alone at times to figure out how to be tough. Take a break and spend some time alone and get your mind ready for the fight.

See Reality

Phil O'Brien, the Chairman of the York Consulting Group, always says "See reality for what it is, and act accordingly." This is a much more intentional process than it sounds.

You cannot overcome adversity if you are not realistic about the situation you are in, and why you are in it. We all have difficulty being brutally honest with ourselves because the truth doesn't makes us feel good. Ask for some help from someone outside your organization about your situation. Have direct discussions within your team about what happened and where you stand. It will be very hard to overcome adversity if you aren't dealing in reality.

Learn From It

Ask yourself where you are going to be as an organization when this is all over. Think about what this situation can teach you about your team, and how it can make you better. The toughness and togetherness it takes to overcome adversity are long-term assets for your organization.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that the challenges you face right now are going to make you better. But only if you take an intentional approach toward fighting your way out of it. Figure out how your challenge is going to make you better, and then put a plan in place to get there. The long-term positive can help fuel the way you recover.

Landry Kosmalski And The Motion Offense

Enjoyed this article from Mike Jensen on Swarthmore head coach Landry Kosmalski, his relationship with Harry Perretta, and the motion offense.

https://bit.ly/2YW1odd

The Malady Of The Five Monkeys

Liked this parable that addresses the idea of "that's how we've always done it," sent to me by Coach Daniel Gauthier.

https://www.kelleramerica.com/five-monkeys.html

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the others monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey approaches the stairs, the remaining monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey soon sees the banana and tries to climb the stairs, but to his horror, all the other monkeys attack him! After another attempt and resulting attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked! The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with great enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey, then a fourth and finally the fifth.

Every time a new monkey approaches the stairs, he is attacked! The new monkeys have no idea why they are not permitted to climb the stairs nor why they are beating the newest monkey.

After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Yet, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why? Because as far as they know, that's the way it has always been done.

Challenge The Way You Think

It's always struck me how much in basketball we connect to traditional thinking. I remember watching college basketball growing up in the 1980s, and seeing John Thompson and John Chaney benching any player who had two fouls in the first half. It just became an accepted strategy and everyone started to do it.

I've kind of been a contrarian by nature, so I've always liked questioning things and looking at the other side. I always hated sitting on the bench if I got two fouls. It's the second quarter, there's only about 20 minutes of the game left, and I'm pretty sure I can play that amount of time without committing 3 more fouls. Plus, half-time is such a random barrier. To end the first half you can't have that guy on the floor, but to begin the second half he's good to go.

So I've always remained open to a different way of thinking. I like to challenge the reasoning behind we do what we do to see if there is a better way. I'm a believer that the most dangerous words for a business or team are "because that's how we've always done it."

I recently spoke on an online clinic, and I decided to take a different approach. Rather than just pick a basketball topic and talk about it for an hour, I put together a list of different coaching strategies/approaches that involved a common way of thinking, where I tended to think differently. I wanted to have a discussion about uncommon approach.

Challenge Your Thought Process

Good Shot/Bad Shot

How do you coach good shot/bad shot? It's not easy. Obviously we all want our team taking good shots. But I also want my team playing with confidence. I don't want them thinking about it.

So I don't coach it. I don't talk about it. I let the players figure it out. We make everything around our program competitive, including the pre-season pick-up games. So the players work it out. If you start jacking bad shots when the game is on the line and the losing team has to run a minute drill, you better believe you are going to hear about it.

I tell my teams I want the defensive end, they can have the offensive end. It's not like I don't coach them or we don't run some plays, but I don't talk to them about shot selection. I'd rather trade a bad shot here or there for the freedom and confidence I want them to play with.

Role Definition

Your role on our team is to help us win. That's it. I don't define anybody's role other than that. Sure, we coach you on what you are good at. The great Pete Carril said it the best, "Figure out what you are good at, and do that a lot."

We certainly coach our guys on what they are good at, but I don't put them in a box and tell them what they are supposed to be doing. I want to learn about what they can do to help us. And I'm sure I'm going to need them to do some things outside of their comfort zone at some point.

If you constantly do things that don't help the team win, you are a bad player. And you aren't gong to play. If you can't figure that out before we get to our first game, you can cheer hard for your teammates. Your role is to help us win.

Body Language

I think we make too big of a deal out of body language. I started thinking this way when I realized I just wasn't very good at evaluating it. I would make decisions based on body language and what I didn't like or thought might be about to happen, and I'd get it wrong. A lot.

I'm pretty sure if your starting senior captain reacts to something a certain way, and your freshmen who comes off the bench and has been complaining about playing time reacts the exact same way, you are going to see those two actions differently. I'm confident in that. Who the player is helps us determine how to respond to his body language (watch Tom Brady play quarterback, and you'll see "great leadership" and a "great competitor" when he reacts poorly).

I want to coach the behavior, not the personality. It's not like I'm a fan of bad body language. But I'm not going to make decisions on it. If it leads to bad behavior, then I have to do something. And it's good to see that body language first because I know what's coming. Not to mention, have you ever looked at your own body language on the bench as a coach? I just think we look at body language conveniently and tend to overreact to it, so I don't pay much attention to it.

Leadership/Captains

I'm just not a big believer in the top down model of leadership, where we have a coaching staff, then a few veteran captains, and the rest of the team, and we let the message trickle down. I think leadership is a skill, it's not a rank, and too often we see it the other way. Most of our "leaders" are our oldest, best and loudest players. But that doesn't make them our best leaders.

I want to empower everyone to lead. We define leadership as making the people around you better, and it's required of everyone. And you can do it in your own way, to fit your personality. We have captains, and they have technical responsibilities, but they aren't required to lead more than anyone else. Everyone is a leader.

Family

I know just about everyone considers their team or program a family these days, but I'm not buying it. I don't like it. My love for my family is unconditional. But membership on a high-performing team is highly conditional. If my brother screws up big-time, I'll always be there to help him. But there are limits to how often you can screw up on a team and still be a part of it. That's just the way it is, and it's okay.

I think we devalue the importance of a team, and what it means to be a great teammate, by talking about family. Great teammates have agreed to the conditions, some of which are hard, and chosen to be a part of it willingly. That's powerful, but that's not a family. The people that buy into that, those are guys I want to win with. I've got plenty of members of may family who I enjoy spending time with and sharing a beer with on the holidays - but I don't want to try and win with them.

I feel like the family thing is inauthentic. We are only family until you screw up too many times, but then we have to make a change. Being a part of a team is special, and should be treated that way.

Mentality

There are a lot of things we say or do as coach that can affect our players mentality, and I don't think we think about it too much. You'll never hear me say "on the road" when I'm preparing my team, like "we have to be really locked in, especially on the road." Road environments can be tough, but guess what, that's why we prepare the way we do. To win in those environments. I don't want my guys thinking it's going to be especially harder or we have to do something out of character to win on the road. We are prepared.

Do you play a different defense on the last possession of a game? Do you switch everything, when you normally wouldn't switch? A lot of teams do that. I don't like it. Why would I want to play a defense we hardly use on the most important possession of the game? I don't like what that does to our mentality, either. It looks like we don't trust our defense.

Have you ever heard the one about how it's hard to beat a team three times? That one gets thrown around in March a lot. Except it's not true. Over 10 years, in that scenario, the team that had won the first two games won the 3rd game 72% of the time. At RIC I was in that scenario 12 times, and we were 11-1 against those teams the third time. We hear people say it, it sounds good, but it's not true. And it affects our teams mentality in a negative way.

When you have a lead at halftime, do you tell your team to be ready for the opponent to make a run? I don't like the one either. If all goes well, we aren't going to let them make a run. I don't want our guys thinking that a run against us is going to happen. I want them thinking we are going to control the last 20 minutes of the game.

There are a lot of these thoughts that we use as coaches, that have become common in the game, that may actually have a negative effect on our team. I hope you find them worth thinking about.

Stretching

I hate stretching. When I was in college, practice started at 4, and when it started we met quickly and got right into our first drill. You got there early and got yourself warmed up and ready to go. But we never stretched.

I think there is value in telling your guys when to be ready for practice, and then getting started. Give them time before hand to do what they have to do to get ready, but when practice starts we are rolling. There's no time to warm-up or to ease our way into it. It's on the kids to get them self physically and mentally ready to play.

Now, you certainly want to show your guys how to take care of their bodies so they aren't coming into practice from the cold and playing live. But the important thing is it's on them. Get yourself ready to play. By warming up, then stretching, then easing in to practice drills, you are telling them "we'll give you time to get going."

When that horn goes off and it's time to go, I want them ready to play. And I want them to get used to getting there as players.

Communication - Ask Them What They See

I got to participate on a coaches zoom call recently with Dave Niland, the very successful long-time head coach at Penn State - Behrend. Coach Niland has a terrific approach to basketball and is a great guy to have a conversation with if you ever get the chance.

He was talking about communication and the issues we all have with getting our players to talk more. He brought up the idea that before you can get them to talk, you have to make sure they can see what is really happening on the court. They have to be aware, and be able to process exactly what is happening in order to be able to communicate properly. Many guys have trouble seeing the game very clearly and processing it quickly, and that inhibits their ability to communicate.

Coach Niland's point was before you can ask them to communicate, ask them what they see. Get them to describe for you what they saw on a certain play, and see if it matches with what you saw. You have to get on the same page with how to read and process plays before you can communicate to one another.

I love the point and think it's a really good way to approach communication. You can scream at your guys all day about taking on the court, but if you don't get to the bottom of what they are seeing and how they process it, you'll never get them to talk.

Great Competitors

Pat Riley had a great line once about one of the best feelings for a coach. He said it was when you ran into a former player 10 years down the line, someone that you were hard on and maybe didn't always see eye-to-eye with, and you gave each other a big hug. And you understand that all of the difficult stuff that happened between you was all part of the relentless pursuit of excellence.

Watching "The Last Dance" one ESPN, one of my main takeaways is that Michael Jordan might be the greatest competitor I have ever seen (Tom Brady? Kobe?). He is relentless in his pursuit of excellence, to the point where it can be a negative (when asked about gambling, he says he's "addicted to competition"). His competitive drive, even with all of the success he was having, might be unmatched by any great athlete anywhere.

One thing that gets lost with great competitors is the importance of the rest of the team. Great competitors can be hard to play with. They can be over-the-top at times, and they can make things very uncomfortable. Even if you have a team and a culture that is built on competition. Part of being a great competitor is challenging your teammates to get to a place where they've never been. To make them uncomfortable, to drive them to be great.

I think of the best competitors I have ever coached. Competition was always a core value of our teams, and we defined ourselves by how we competed. But the best competitors were still hard to deal with. They constantly challenged myself and their teammates in different ways, and it wasn't always positive. Trust me, I'll take an elite competitor on my team any day of the week, and I'll deal with the issues that arise. But the truth is, great competitors aren't always easy to deal with.

That is where everyone else comes in. I think it's important that you have discussions as a team about how you are going to connect, interact and communicate with one another. There has to be an understanding that at times it will get intense and uncomfortable. What we do in the athletic arena is intense. It isn't always team meetings and post-practice discussions. There is an intensity to it that is going to effect the way we deliver the message, and therefore the way we respond to it. So we need to connect on how we are going to interact, with an understanding that it won't always be positive and certainly won't always be comfortable.

The best teammates are connected and understand where the rest of their teammates are coming from. It is that understanding that really becomes the fuel for elite teams. There are going to be laid back guys who don't get all fired up every day, and there are going to be intense competitors who can't help themselves from getting after it. As a group, you have to recognize this and create and accept an atmosphere where your team can thrive. An elite competitor adds so much value to your team, but can also create some difficult situations.

MJ's ability to be an elite competitor relied on two factors - one, his own greatness, and the second, his teammates. Obviously he had all the credibility he needed as the best player in the league, maybe of all-time. He could say or do what he wanted, and his teammates had to accept it. But a big factor to me was there willingness to accept the way he was as a driving force behind what made their team great, even if it meant putting up with some tough behavior (was it Will Perdue that he punched, or was it Steve Kerr? Or both?). I'm sure those guys had some brutal days being teammates with MJ, but they got to a point where they realized it was all worth it.

Elite competitors are essential on high-performing teams, but their teammates play a big role in allowing that competitiveness to happen. Elite competitors really rely on the rest of the team, and MJ had a group of great teammates that allowed him to be himself.

And like Pat Riley said, I'm sure these days when he sees his teammates they give each other a hug and get past all of the hard stuff, understanding that it was all in the pursuit of excellence.

Power

"Perception matters greatly, because power rarely resides within just an individual. Power is not an absolute state but an arrangement among stakeholders. It is bestowed upon the leader as much as it was taken by the leader. While we speak about power as something that a leader seizes and dispenses, it is more accurate to say that power exists within the system that envelops a leader, and reflects that systems expectations of its leaders."

• General Stanley McChrystal, Leaders

Billy Martin

I'm currently reading a great biography on Billy Martin by Bill Pennington.

I found this excerpt from the 1977 American League Playoffs to be fascinating. The Yankees were down 2 games to 1 in the best of 5, in Kansas City for game 4.

As much as the Yankees pounded on Gura, Yankees starter Ed Figueroa was also struggling. In the fourth inning, the Yankees were leading 5-4 when the Royals put runners on first and third with two outs and George Brett coming to the plate.

In a move that was so unorthodox it seemed absurd at the time, Billy brought in his closer, Sparky Lyle, to the mount to face Brett. As Billy later explained, if the Royals took the lead, the Yankees might never have recovered and would have been eliminated from the series.

"Why save your closer for some other moment when that could be the do-or-die moment that decides a do-or-die game?" Billy reasoned.

Lyle got Brett to fly out to left field, then pitched five more scoreless innings, a rare achievement for a closer.

Billy Martin brought his closer in to face George Brett in the 4th inning, and then left him in to pitch the rest of the game.

In game 5, with the Yankees facing a tough lefty in Paul Splittorf, Martin made the decision to bench Reggie Jackson, his superstar clean-up hitter, because he had an awful time dealing with Splittorf.

Catfish Hunter famously said before the game "If we win, Billy's a genius. If we lose, he's fired."

Jackson pinch-hit in the 8th inning and drove in a run with a single to cut the Royals lead to 3-2. Then Paul Blair, who started in Jackson's place, singled in the 9th inning to ignite the Yankees rally to take the lead. The Yankees would win game 5, and go on to win the World Series.

How bold are you willing to be as a head coach? How willing are you to make some uncommon decisions to give your team the best chance to win?

Self-Awareness Leads To Authenticity

CBS Sunday morning did a segment on leadership which featured retired 4-star General Stanley McChrystal.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-kind-of-leadership-does-our-nation-need/

McChrystal made a comment about the importance of being self-aware as a leader. He pointed out that if you aren't genuinely self-aware, you will end up doing things that you said you wouldn't. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a leader is to say one thing and do another.

He brought up one of my favorite quotes on leadership that has been credited to Diane Sawyer.

"People will forgive you for not being the leader you want to be, but they will never forgive you for not being the leader you claim to be."

I absolutely love what that quote says about the importance of authenticity as a leader. If you aren't genuine you simply can't be an effective leader.

McChrystal's point about self-awareness is a great one to think about. You have to be really comfortable, confident and honest with yourself about who you are. If you aren't, you'll have a hard time being honest with the people you are trying to influence - even if you don't know it. Show any signs of being inauthentic and your credibility as a leader is crushed.

Work on being brutally self-aware. Have tough conversations with people you really respect and trust. Take a close look at the people around you and measure how they react to what you do and say. Evaluate yourself constantly. Listen more than you speak. Take notes or keep a diary on the decisions you make and the impact they have. Ask your players or employees for honest feedback. Do not let difficult emotions take over your mindset and cloud your way of thinking.

Self-awareness is a huge factor in the ability to lead well. It's hard to be authentic without being honest with yourself first.

Communication Strategy

I've worked with a number of teams and organizations at different levels during this stay-at-home period on leadership, and one central issue that seems to be a point for discussion with many teams is communication. When talking about a leadership approach and the behavior that goes along with it, the way teams communicate with one another comes up often. A lot of questions are asked - what is the best way to communicate with each other? How do we know when it's okay to speak up? How do we avoid too many people trying to get their point across at the same time? Communication seems to be a difficult issue for many teams.

Communication can never be an issue in high-achieving organizations. As a head coach, I said that to every one of my teams - communication can never be an issue for us. We have the most efficient means of communication available to us in the history of the world. We can face time with someone in China at any point in the day. We can never have issues with communication within our own team, especially when we know it is crucial to our success.

That's not to say communication is easy. It's difficult. How many times have you asked, yelled, demanded to your team that they have to communicate more on the court? It's a challenge. And part of that is because we don't have a plan. We tell our guys to communicate, but we don't talk about how to communicate or when communication is most important. We just tell guys to talk more, and we think it's going to happen.

It's crucial for every team to have an intentional plan for communication. Yes, one of the main reasons why we struggle to communicate is because we don't communicate about it. Get your team together and talk about it. Start with how important it is to be able to communicate with each other. I'm pretty sure everyone will be on board with that. Then talk about the best ways to communicate with each other - how are we going to give the message, and how do we receive the message. We might have some guys who are sensitive to getting yelled out or hearing voices raised. We might have some guys who need to hear it at loud volume to be able to get the point across. We all deliver messages differently, and we all receive them differently. So talk about the best way to get the point across.

Context matters, as it always does. So talk about that as well. Sure, on a Sunday night when we have a day off we can all get together and talk openly about what is going on with the team. But when there's 3:00 to play in a tie game and we need to beat a ball screen, we don't have time for a team meeting. I'm going to say it differently then, to get my point across and make sure it is heard. What we do is intense, and at times our communication is going to reflect that. That's okay, we just need to acknowledge it and get comfortable with it. It's not personal. Sometimes in the heat of the action, when a message needs to be sent, it's going to be sent in a certain way.

Give everyone on the team a chance to express how they respond to messaging. Spend some time getting to know the personalities in the room, and the goal of direct communication. Come to an agreement on how it is okay to talk to each other, and what the best way is to get the message across in different situations.

Communication must resolve conflict on a high-performing team, not cause it. My sense is that communication on teams causes more problems than it solves. And that is a huge obstacle in the way of elite success. Come up with an intentional game plan for how your team is going to communicate. It's an essential dynamic for any organization.