Explore an Uncommon
Approach to Leadership!
Steve Jobs
“It doesn't make any sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Transactional Relationships
I got my first head coaching job at Rhode Island College in 2005, and I was hired in September, after school had started. When I got the head job at the University of Maine in 2014, I got hired in May, after school had ended. I met with the team on campus during my interview, but by the time I got hired most of the players had gone home for the summer (Maine did not have money to pay for summer school). I didn't see them again until late August.
It takes time to establish your own culture when you take over a program. I learned in both situations that what we did on the basketball court wasn't nearly as important as the time I spent with my players away from the gym. They need to learn who you are and what you are all about before they are willing to follow your lead. It's not enough to give them a basketball plan that makes sense, and help them get better on the court. Those things are certainly important. But what you can teach them in the gym is only going to go so far.
One reason why you always hear about how hard it is taking over a new program, or how long it may take to establish a new culture, is because when you first take charge your relationships with your players are transactional. There isn't a lot of depth to them, and how can there be? You don't know each other very well. You are the new coach, and they are supposed to do what you tell them. It's a transaction. I tell you what to do, and you listen. It will help make you a better player, and your points and rebounds will help our team win. I will make you better, you help me win. That's the transaction.
It takes time to establish a relationship, and therefore it takes time to get the most out of your players. Your job is to make sure it's not transactional. Your players have to see that it's not just about how many points they score or how well they defend. They have to know that who they are matters to you, and that the development is about more than just basketball. It's about character development and constant improvement. When they see that you are driving them hard to make them better as people, and you genuinely care about them, then you can really push their limits.
It's your job to make sure your relationships are not transactional. When you first take over an organization, the time you spend making sure they do the job right isn't nearly as important as the time spent getting to know them as people. I realized when I took over at Maine that they weren't going to respond to the things I said on the court until we had a deep sense of trust off of it.
Make sure your relationships aren't just transactional. Get into the depth of who they are and they'll start to buy in to what you do.
4 Types of Leadership
Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is a form of leadership where decisions are made by the leader alone. These leaders don't consider their teams' thoughts and opinions before making a decision or heading a new direction with training, processes, or otherwise.
An example of an autocratic leader is someone who changes the schedules of several employees without consulting anyone, let alone the affected employees.
This leadership type is not effective and is not recommended for organizations if they want to retain and empower their employees.
Democratic Leadership
Democratic leadership is based on a leader that asks for the thoughts and opinions of staff members when making a decision or executing a project plan. The leader makes the final decision, of course, but they take other team members' viewpoints into consideration before doing so.
This is an effective leadership style because it encourages collaboration and prepares employees for future leadership positions they may take on.
Let's say there's a leader that has to make a decision about some new software for their team to use. A democratic leader will give the team a few options, and they'll have a discussion about it before a decision is made for new software to be implemented.
Laissez-Faire Leadership
This is one of the least intrusive forms of leadership that can be effective in some instances. The translation of laissez-faire is "let them do," which means leaders who apply this style give a good amount of authority to their employees.
A good example of a laissez-faire leader would be a founder of a startup who doesn't make any rules, guidelines, or deadlines and puts full trust in his employees to get things done.
This type of leadership encourages trust, but it may fall short because it limits an employee's development and overlooks growth opportunities.
Strategic Leadership
Leaders that adopt the strategic leadership style are often at a crossroads between growth opportunities for their company and daily operations.
This leader essentially accepts executive level interests while supporting lower-level employees to make sure the work environment is stable for them.
Many companies like this form of leadership because it supports a variety of employees at one time. However, this type of leadership can cause problems in regards to how many people a leader can actually support at one while maintaining a clear direction or stability.
*** From Blueadz.com
Halftime
Kansas was down 40-25 at halftime of the national championship game against North Carolina. They outscored Carolina by 18 in the second half to win the national title by 3. I'm not sure what was said or done at halftime, but the team clearly responded and played a great second half with their back against the wall.
What to do at halftime is always and interesting question. If you want to give your team a little time to warm-up, you've really only got 10 minutes to make sense of what happened in the first half, figure out what adjustments you need to make, and deliver that message to your team. It's not an easy task, and it's something you have to be intentional about. Halftime happens quickly.
The first thing to me is to start with the facts. You want to take the emotion out of it. What is the score, what does the box score look like, and how did we get here? It's important to remember that it isn't about how you are feeling as a coach, it is about what your team needs. Always. We often get too caught up in the emotion of the end of the half, and we bring that emotion to our players. Give them what they need, not what you are feeling.
Say you are playing a team you are better than, and you are controlling the game most of the half, up by double digits. But you get a little sloppy in the last minute, turn the ball over and give up a couple of transition 3s. You are up 5 instead of being up 11, in a game you feel like you had in hand. The emotional response is anger because your team didn't close out the half and let your opponent get some confidence late. You go into the locker room pissed off. The facts are you really dominated most of the half, and you have a 5 point lead. That is what's most important, and that's what you should act on. Take the emotion out of it and think about what your team needs.
Your team may need some emotion. That's always a hard one to judge, but you have to have a feel for your them. There are definitely times when they need a jolt and you need to change the energy. You have to get after them to snap them out of a funk. But it's important to assess how your team played and not necessarily get caught up in the score. You might have missed a lot of open shots. Maybe you missed a few free throws. A mistake that is often made is we go to the emotion - "We aren't playing hard enough!" - when the reality is the issue is technical. That is how you feel, not what they need. Your team may have been ready to play, they just couldn't make any open jump shots.
I've found that sometimes, from an emotional standpoint, it's actually a littler bit easier to be down 15 than to be down 6. I wonder if this helped Bill Self a little bit with his approach. Being down 6 when you haven't played very well is aggravating, and it grates on you. Being down 15 (especially when you are Kansas) can be startling, but it's so out of character that you almost just have to shake your head and reset. At that point you aren't worried about one or two technical points to make, you have to get your team to reset mentally. What you saw was way out of character, and you know that isn't the team you've seen all year. Take a deep breath and get everyone back to being themselves. It's odd to say, but sometimes being down by a larger margin can make you a better coach at halftime.
We never ask our players to do anything they haven't practiced, but I wonder why we do that as coaches. We can practice 30 second timeouts, where you only have 20 seconds to diagram something and get your message across. We can also practice halftime. You can get your kids used to taking a break, trying to reset, and coming out with a different approach.
When your team is really struggling one day in practice and you are yelling and screaming to try and get something out of them, give them a break. Put 15 minutes on the clock and send them to the locker room. Take 5 minutes to take to your staff, settle down and figure out how you are going to get more out of your players. Go into the locker room and tell them this is just like halftime of a game, but you guys are down 11. You haven't been focused and you haven't executed well. Figure out how you are going to go out and win the rest of the day.
When I've lost winnable games as a head coach, I think about halftime a lot. Did I take the right tone? Did the team need to see more emotion out of me? Should I have been more composed? It's always about how to get the most out of your team and make the right adjustments needed to win the game in the second half.
It's never easy to figure out the right approach to halftime, and there are a lot of different ways to play it. You can argue over the importance of it - how much of an impact does it really have? My approach usually falls into one of two categories - composed and deliberate, or intense and emotional. I'm more comfortable with a composed approach talking about the details of how we are going to play better. But there are definitely times when they need to see some intensity out of me to shake things up. I base my approach on the facts of the first half, and the feel I have for my team and their mentality.
It's never easy. Halftime is a high pressure situation with a small window of time to deliver your message. Think about the best approach that fits you and also fits your team, and practice it. Getting the right adjustments to your team can make a difference. When you see a team like Kansas come out in the second half and play the way they did to win a national championship, it makes that clear.
Challenge Network
From Adam Grant's book "Think Again," which is all about learning to re-think what you believe in.
We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn't limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.
Do you have a "Challenge Network" as a leader? Do you actively seek out people who are going to challenge what you do, or are you surrounded by people who agree with you. Progressive leaders seek out a challenge network and want people to question why they do what they do. It makes them stronger leaders. Unfortunately, once we get into a leadership position, we often don't want people around us who disagree with us, and we stop getting better.
Balance on Offense
In 9 years as the head coach at Rhode Island College we only had one player who averaged more than 15 points per game. We had a ton of success and were generally either the best or second best team in our league every year. We went to the NCAA Tournament in our last 8 seasons. We had a lot of good players who were unselfish and willing to buy in to playing as a team. Trust me when I tell you we had plenty of guys good enough to average 15+ points per game. The balance we had was not due to a lack of talent.
One interesting thing about the way we played wasn't intentionally part of the plan. It wasn't like we talked about getting everybody the right amount of shots or keeping everyone involved. We just coached them to make the right play. Our two main offenses were motion and a dribble drive offense, both designed to space the floor, move the ball, and attack off the dribble. We weren't always the best shooting team - probably below average from 3 over the 9 years - but we did have skilled guards and athletes who could go by you. We always wanted the ball to have energy and that would dictate where our shots came from. We wanted our guys to be unselfish, but we never talked about spreading out the number of shots. I just figured with good players and good ball movement, we'd find the right shots.
I've heard the argument that if you don't have that one go-to guy who can get you a bucket when you really need it, you are going to struggle offensively. A lot of coaches feel like that one plus-level talent who can create offense on his own makes you more dangerous on offense. I'm not so sure. I learned that our balance made us really hard to guard. Teams couldn't load up on just one or two guys, and they couldn't really came plan to take certain things away. We had enough talent to beat you in different ways, and when you took away one good option we usually had another good option to score. Late in games I was never concerned with who was going to get a shot, or how we would get the ball to the right guy. I made sure my playmakers were on the floor and I trusted them to make the right play. We won a ton of close games, and I'm not sure we ever had the best offensive player in the league. We only had one player of the year in the league over 9 years, and he averaged 12 points per game that season.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a guy who can go get 20. I used to joke with the guys, "It's okay to get 20 if you want." And I feel like I had a bunch of guys that could get 20, and that's what made us dangerous. But no one had to get 20 to feel comfortable. We'd often look at the box score after a game and I ask my team who they thought took the most shots in that nights game. It usually took them 2-3 guesses to figure out who shot the ball the most, because our attack was so balanced. No one cared. We were hard to guard, we were really good offensively, and we won a ton of games.
I'll take a balanced offensive attack over a team with clear go-to guy all day long. I don't think it creates any problems down the stretch with your team wondering who's going to take the big shot. In fact, it avoids the disaster late in a close game of everyone loading up on your best player, and him forcing a shot because he thinks he's supposed to shoot it. A balanced offensive team is really hard to guard, and more often than not they are going to make the right play to get a good look. It just might come from a different guy each night.
The Right Ones Will Find You
"You don't need them all, but if you build your teams on strong principles the right ones will find you."
- John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead
I'm a strong believer that the culture of the organization is the best recruiter you have. It is going to attract people, right or wrong.
When it comes to recruiting, we pull out all of the stops. We want to make any visit as attractive as possible to a potential player or employee. We want them to feel welcome and comfortable, and we paint the prettiest picture possible. But ultimately anyone visiting is going to remember how they felt about your organization. The fancy dinner is nice, but what they really want to know is what it feels like to be a part of it. No matter what you do, it's hard to fake that. It's real, and they are going to see it.
I recently finished John Bacon's book on a high school hockey team in Michigan that he coached for four years. It's an easy read and a good look into how he turned around one of the worst hockey teams in the country. He established the right culture and then gave ownership of it to his team (it actually reminds me a lot of Entitled To Nothing).
There is a lot in his approach, and especially in that quote up top, that I like. The first thing is "you don't need them all." Turning around an organization and trying to establish an elite culture is hard, and not everyone is a fit. I used to say that about our program at RIC all the time to my time - "it's not for everyone." What we are doing here is hard, and not everyone is willing to do it. You are going to lose some people along the way, and sometimes some good people. You have to be prepared for that. They may be good people that you like and want to have success, but they don't fit what you are trying to do. You have to be ready to let them go.
Every elite culture has to have "strong principles," but notice he didn't get specific about his principles. The principles of different elite cultures aren't all the same. There are plenty of ways to build a culture, and it has to fit your personality. Regardless of what the principles are, they have to be worth fighting for. They need to be clear for everyone on your team. Strong principles are going to be evident, and they are going to attract people that believe in them.
I learned early as a head coach that the right ones will find you. Once your culture is established you will attract the people that fit. The ones willing to fight for your values. Our culture at RIC was based on toughness, something we valued and rewarded every day. It fit the culture of our school, a blue collar, state school located in a city. It fit the players we had on our team, and it fit the players we wanted to recruit.
But it wasn't like we just went around picking the toughest players we saw. The coaches, families and players who valued toughness themselves were attracted to our program. They wanted to be a part of it. Rare was it that we got a long way down the road with a kid who wasn't very tough. Most of the kids we even considered had a plus level of toughness. When they came to campus and watched us play, or played pick-up with our team, they saw how tough our kids were. When they watched practiced, the saw toughness being celebrated and rewarded. They talked to friends and people who knew us, and the heard the same thing. The kids who considered themselves tough wanted to be a part of it.
That doesn't mean you can just sit around and throw your culture out on the floor and expect elite talent to come and sign up. You still have to work to recruit them. But with an established culture based on strong principles, the ones who won't fit will usually weed themselves out. The right ones will find you.
Discipline and Ownership
I've gotten a lot of great feedback and had some great discussions about my book Entitled To Nothing, An Uncommon Approach to Leadership that I recently released. I love having conversations about some of the leadership concepts I discussed in the book and how to practically make them a part of your culture.
A big part of what I learned as a young head coach, and a theme that runs throughout the book, is the idea of ownership. It's the idea that the culture of your organization isn't really yours, it is theirs, and the players have to take ownership of the behaviors for you to sustain an elite level of success.
A conversation I have a lot with other coaches is about discipline, and how it relates to the ownership you give your team. When you have an incident that requires discipline, how do you go about holding your team accountable when you are trying to give them ownership of the program? Accountability is an essential piece of a championship culture, and it means there are consequences for your actions. Everyone is going to make mistakes, and sometimes your team won't live up to the standards you (or they) have established. Action is required.
If you've read the book (thanks!) or this blog on a somewhat regular basis, you probably know that I love the approach of asking questions. I like to put the responsibility on the team, so they continue to take ownership of their standards. When we are discussing an issue within the team, I'll usually ask "So, what are we going to do about it?" and give the guys the chance to take ownership of a solution. That doesn't mean they get to make the decision. It just means I want to hear from them.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that giving your players ownership means they get to make all of the disciplinary decisions. There is a chain of command, for sure, and our culture of ownership does not eliminate that. The head coach sits at the top of that chain of command, and certain issues have to be dealt with from the top down. This isn't contradictory to an ownership of culture, it is an essential part of it. We don't hold a vote very time a decision is made.
If the pick-up games are getting sloppy and lazy, or someone shows up late for a meeting, I might ask the team how we are going to handle it. But if there is a major issue that requires attention and clearly disregarded the standards of the program, I'm going to handle it. I always tell my teams that they are in charge of their behavior off the court. But if an issue off the court gets to my desk, you've made it clear you can't handle it, so I will. And you probably won't like the result.
Every situation that requires discipline isn't a sign of weakness in your culture. The strength of your culture is what allows you to handle those situations and get better as you get past them. I had a championship team one year that had a party in the dorms over Christmas break when no one was allowed to be there, and I had to suspend 6 players. I had two key players get into a fight in the locker room one year, and they and a few teammates lied to me about it. Those aren't situations where I'm asking the team how they think we should handle it. Clearly, you've proven you can't handle the ownership of the program, and I'm going to make it clear that's unacceptable.
Holding your team accountable with discipline as the head coach does not mean you are taking away ownership of the culture from the players. You are teaching them the responsibility that comes with having ownership. When they prove they aren't up to the task, you have to make it clear that behavior that doesn't meet your standards won't be accepted. You are still in charge, and there is always a chain of command. When something serious happens, you should be the one to respond. Giving them ownership doesn't mean you are giving up the discipline.
Time and Score - The Right Play
Marcus Smart caught the ball down by 1 with 3.5 seconds on the clock. Two Nets flew at the ball. Someone else had to be open.
Smart made a shot fake, took a dribble and delivered a pass to a cutting Jayson Tatum who still had time lay the ball in. Tatum made a great cut.
All in 3.5 seconds.
There is almost always someone else open. There is time to make the right play.
Kansas Guards
Bill Self did a lot of things right this year on the way to winning the National Championship. One of his best moves was how he handled his two point guards.
Dajuan Harris Jr. was a redshirt sophomore who averaged 2 points and 2 assists as a freshmen. He's a solid floor general not known as a great shooter who is a good defender and gets his teammates the ball in the right spots.
Remy Martin is a scoring point guard, a transfer from Arizona State who scored close to 2,000 points in his career there. He came in with a big time reputation and was expected to have a huge impact - he was chosen as the pre-season Big 12 Player of the Year. He's a big time scorer and playmaker. He got hurt midway through the year, but even prior to his injury wasn't having the impact many expected.
Self went with Harris as a starter and it seemed like he was the guy he really trusted. After his injury, Martin came off the bench and was used as a game-changer, a microwave type who could come in and get buckets. The contrasting abilities and approaches gave self a tough decision in close games. He could stick with Harris, a guy who really trusted to make the right play, or go with Martin, the guy with 2,000 points but more of a score-first mentality. Two guys he knew could help him win in different ways. Not an easy decision to make.
In the second round of the NCAA Tournament Kansas matched up with Creighton, a team who will scheme their defensive game plan to the scouting report as much as any team in the country. They will usually find one player on the other team they feel is a non-scorer and leave him open most of the game, staying in the paint with his man and making him a rover/help guy. They did this with Dajuan Harris, daring him to shoot (he stepped up and made a 3 in the first half). Creighton was fine letting the point guard try and beat them. Self went with Martin pretty early in the half when Kansas was struggling to score, and Creighton didn't really adjust. Martin made two 3s (it looked like Creighton was daring him to shoot as well), and finished with 21 points in a very close game. Martin was the difference between winning and losing.
In the Sweet 16 against us, although we couldn't score in the first half, we defended Kansas well enough to stay in the game. Seeing his team having trouble scoring, Self went to Martin early again and he changed the game, scoring 7 straight points in the first half to break the game open. Seeing that we were trying to help off Harris as well in the second half, Self had him attack off of ball screens and get down hill. When we went under the ball screens, they'd re-screen to get Harris in the paint, and he was able to finish over our guards at the rim. Both players played a key role in getting Kansas past us, in a game we led by a point with 5 minutes to play. Martin played 26 minutes and had 23 points, while Harris played 20 and had 6 points and 2 assists.
Against Miami in the Elite 8, both guys played and played well, scoring 9 points each in 20+ minutes in a game Kansas won going away. Against Villanova in the Final Four, Harris played 31 minutes and drilled three 3s, while Martin played 20 minutes and didn't do much, going 1-5. Harris was a key guy in their blowout win.
So, what do you do in the final? Harris played 21 minutes and wasn't at his best with 4 turnovers. But Martin came off the bench, played 27 minutes and made some huge 3s during a key stretch of their comeback in the second half. He finished with 14 points in 21 minutes and arguably was the most important Jayhawk on the floor.
Playing two guys who play the same position a lot of minutes, and sometimes together, when both guys expect to play a lot, isn't easy. Throw in the fact that they have very different skill sets, and it's even harder. Deciding who you want on the floor for key minutes down the stretch is one of the toughest decisions a coach has to make. Getting the most out of both of them is your goal, but often times the result is the opposite - you don't get much out of either.
Remy Martin had the reputation as the better player, and was supposed to have a bigger impact. But he came off the bench. He was the better player in the Creighton game and the Providence game, and they don't win those games without him. In the Villanova game, Harris was the better player and Martin not much of a factor. But Martin came back and had a huge impact in the final, fueling part of their great comeback that led to a national title.
How do you find the right balance when you have two guys sharing minutes at one position, and you want to play them both? Keep in mind, Kansas had a first-team All American in Ochai Agbaji at the other guard spot. And a double digit scorer in Christian Braun playing the wing. It's a nice problem to have, I get it, but not an easy balance to find. One of those four players was going to be on the bench. I give Bill Self a ton of credit for how he handled that dynamic.
I'd be willing to bet that Bill Self had direct conversations - maybe on multiple occasions - with both Martin and Harris. What I've learned is that communicating directly and consistently, while sharing some of the issues I'm having figuring out who to play with the players involved helps in a couple of ways. It creates transparency first and foremost, so the players always know what you are thinking, even if they may disagree. They know where they stand. Secondly, you show your players some vulnerability, which I think helps them accept your decision a little easier. It's okay to tell them that you are struggling with who to play, and you won't always make the right decision. You want them to know that.
Look, there are going to be times when you both play a lot of minutes and play together. But there will also be times where one of you is sitting watching the other one in crunch time. I'm always going to make the decisions based on what gives our team the best chance to win. I won't always make the right choice, but that will always be my thinking. I need you guys to buy in to that for us to be as good as we can. This is about the team, and you two guys are both going to be a huge part of our success.
In communicating with them directly and showing some vulnerability, you are asking them to take on some of the responsibility of handling the situation. While they might not like it all the time, I think most players enjoy the responsibility they have in helping the team win. It becomes a shared trust, not something they are being told they have to do. They'll take some ownership of the situation, and try and make it work as much as you will.
I don't know exactly how Bill Self handled the situation with his two guards. But I do know he handled it very well and got a lot out of both of them, sometimes on the same night, and they are hanging another banner in Phog Allen Field house. I'm sure that dynamic was not an easy one, it never is. He's in the hall of fame for a reason.
To Make It Special, Make It Hard
"The first thing you do is to make it special to play for Huron. And the best way to make it special is to make it hard. You need to make the players feel like they had to do something hard just to make the team - something not everyone would be willing to do - so they know just making the team means they accomplished something. And once that culture is established, it is relatively easy to maintain because the players, with a little guidance, will do it for you."
From John U. Bacon's book Let Them Lead. Al Clark, his former boss and a legendary high school hockey coach, on how to get started coaching the Huron hockey team.
Everything Is Different
Every coach is trying to figure out the formula. How do you get your team to play their best in the post-season? It's a great conversation, one I have with countless coaches in the off-season.
One thing I learned that impacted the way we prepared for the post-season was that everything was going to be different. It's one of the oddities of college basketball when you get into post-season play. I'm not just talking about the stakes, the pressure or the intensity - of course that is different as well. But the structure of the post-season is different. You cannot stick to your usual routine, and that is something you can prepare for.
The NCAA dictates just about everything in the post-season. They tell you when you are leaving and how you are getting there, along with limiting how many people you can "officially" bring. They tell you what hotel you are staying in, when you get practice times in the arena, and when you have to be available for the media. They have open practices that you have to be at for 45 minutes to an hour the day before the game, usually right in the middle of the day. They dictate the times that are available for the shoot around on game day and they limit the time you have. Our option in Chicago for the Sweet 16 was only 30 minutes, when normally we'd have an hour, and it was later than we wanted to shoot. And it didn't matter that the arena was open earlier and we were fine going earlier, we couldn't do that. We had to go at our prescribed time after Kansas (as the higher seed) chose their time. We went to Illinois-Chicago to shoot that day rather than the United Center.
Think about it for a minute. On the day before the biggest game of their lives, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Villanova had a public practice in the Superdome that was free for everyone to watch. Then they had to go somewhere else (or maybe they were coming from somewhere else) find a gym, and actually get a practice in to prepare for the game. That's all driven by the NCAA and I understand why. But it couldn't be more different than what you are used to doing in preparing for a big game.
When you arrive for the game you only get 60 minutes to warm up. They literally guard the basketballs to make sure no one touches them before the 60 minute mark. Normally for a game guys are on the floor getting shots up at least 90 minutes before tip, but that isn't the case in the NCAA Tournament. Everyone has to get the same amount of time across the country, so if Duke is only getting 60 minutes in San Francisco, Providence is only getting 60 minutes in Chicago. There is no getting shots up early in the arena.
The time outs are longer, and there are more of them (10 media time outs, as opposed to 9). Halftime is 20 minutes, not 15. The anthem is done earlier, the lineups are announced differently. The games take longer. Everything is different.
At the Division III level you face the same challenges. I realized this the first year we went to the NCAA Tournament at RIC. Every game was played with media timeouts in the DIII tournament, which most schools didn't do all year. Therefore you got less timeouts to call. For a team that played a lot of guys and liked to wear teams out, that impacted the game. Teams that had a short bench got more rest for their starters. There were no open practices, but your practice on the game court was regulated and limited to 90 minutes - a pretty tight window to go start to finish for practice when you include stretching, shooting and the scout. It all felt different because it was the NCAA Tournament. But the structure of your routine was much different. You had to to adjust to a new approach for the biggest games of the season.
Preparing your team to play well in the post-season is preparing them for something that is very different. After our first trip at RIC, I realized if we wanted to continue to have success in the NCAA Tournament we had to prepare for the unexpected during the regular season. We intentionally changed our routine consistently. We made our kids uncomfortable at times, having practices at different hours or giving them a short window to finish drills. We created some distractions, whether it was music playing during drills or practicing in our schools recreation center with other students around to increase focus. We changed our approach to practice, sometimes forcing them to stretch on their own in the hallway before practice so they stepped on the floor ready to go. We would sometimes practice with everyone in the same color, forcing them to adjust and communicate in a different way. The point was to constantly mix things up on them. We were intentional about getting them used to different situations, because we knew in the post-season it was all going to be different.
Getting ready to win in the post-season starts with a mentality borne out of the way you operate every day in the regular season. You will not be able to control all the variables in the post-season - even before you play the game. You will have to get out of your routine. Doing things to get your guys out of their routine during the regular season will prepare them when March comes around.
Somebody Else Is Open
A time and score truth I really believe: If the guy who starts with the ball isn't the guy who shoots the ball, you will get a better shot. Somebody else is usually open.
Watch the final play from the national championship game. The play breaks down when Brady Manek trips, so the second option is Caleb Love. He has 4.3 seconds to make a play, but Carolina needs a 3. Not an easy task. Take a close look as love pulls up for a contested 3. One pass away, in the opposite slot, Puff Johnson is standing by himself. His man is helping towards the ball. With 2.2 seconds left when Love raised up to shoot it, there was more than enough time to make one more pass and get a shot off.
The defense is always attracted to the ball in time and score situations. Somebody is going to lose sight of their man. It's not an easy play, I get it, because the clock is ticking and you need to get a shot off. But if you practice it enough and train your guys to make the extra pass on time and score situations, I'm sure you'll end up with better shots.
Everyone is attracted to the ball. Someone is always open. If the person who starts with it doesn't shoot it, you will get a better shot.
The Big Games I've Lost
There's a famous story about Super Bowl XXIII when the 49ers get the ball down 3 with just over 3 minutes to play on their own 8-yard line. Joe Montana sensed that his team was a little uptight in that moment, and one of his key lineman specifically, Harris Barton, was really tense. So, before the drive began he looked into the crowd, tapped Barton and say "Hey look, that's John Candy." It broke the tension in the huddle, calmed Barton down, and the Niners went down the field and scored to win the Super Bowl.
In many of the big games I've lost - especially the games we were expected to win - I've had one central thought when looking back on my performance as the head coach: I couldn't find a way to break the tension. When things got tight, the game got really intense and the pressure of the result hung over my team, I couldn't find a way to snap them out of it. I couldn't find a way to get them to relax and be themselves.
It almost never goes the way you think it's going to go. When it does, you don't have much to worry about. We recently had one of those, against Richmond in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. We played great from the tip on both offense and defense, we made 12 threes and guarded the entire game, and the result was never in doubt. We didn't have to do much. But it is rare when that happens, and those aren't the games you need to prepare for.
In a big game with a lot on the line, especially in the post-season when it's win or go home, your team is going to have to handle some pressure and adversity. At some point you'll be faced with the fact that you might lose, and your kids will get tight. One of your best players gets into foul trouble, the other team goes on an 8-0 spurt, the crowd starts to get into it - you are all going to feel it. That's the nature of a big game. It's how you handle that pressure that will give you a chance to win.
When I've lost those games, my team usually played tight and couldn't handle that pressure. They started to think about the result, what it would be like to lose. And I couldn't find a way to break that tension and get them back.
Having a great pulse of your team is really essential here, because there isn't a default blueprint for how to loosen up. You have to judge how they are responding to the moment in front of them and give them what they need - regardless of how you feel. Often I find I have to make sure they see the opposite of how I feel. If I'm starting to feel tight I need to make sure I loosen them up. Or if I'm a little too relaxed for whatever reason, I may have to get after them to get them going. The key is to find a way to get them to be themselves, to play without fear and win the game. Sometimes talking about the pressure of losing can break the tension, believe it or not. Letting them know it's the way you play for each other that matters, not the result.
It might be a joke that will make a few guys laugh. Maybe you make fun of yourself. In one huddle in the conference championship game when I was at RIC I sensed our guys were too tight, so after we got done with all the instructions I yelled over the noise in the gym - "I've got one more question for you guys! How does my tie look?" They all started to laugh. "This is a big game, TV cameras are here, I don't want to look like a slob." Everybody smiled as they left the huddle. It's just basketball guys. Let's remember to have some fun.
Big games come with pressure and tension that your team might not be used to. Your job is, when that tension hits, to find a way to break it. The pressure of a big game gets to all of us. Getting your team to loosen up in that moment is more important than any basketball decision you will make.
Core Values Must Be Tested
"Your core values aren't values until they are tested." - Bob Richey - Furman Basketball
Most high-performing organizations have a defined set of core values. You see them everywhere - on the letterhead, signs on the wall or on the back of t-shirts. They are the non-negotiables, the things you stand for and really believe in.
The problem with many organizations is they don't turn these core values into action or behavior. A lot of times they are just words you see on the wall, or things you say at the end of a practice or a meeting. They are just words or phrases, and most people in the organization can see right through them, because the behavior they see doesn't match up.
I love Bob Richey's quote about testing your core values. They aren't actually your core values until they are tested. If you say you stand for integrity, what do you do when one of your team members lies to you? That is when your core value is tested. If you look the other way on dishonesty because you need to keep it moving and it wasn't that big of a deal, then integrity really isn't a core value. When the value got tested, you didn't stand up for it.
If you talk about competing as one of your core values, but you bend towards talent and play the guys with the most ability who don't really compete, guess what? Competing isn't really a core value for you. Competing may be something you like to see, but it's not a core value. You want your kids to compete, but you don't value it enough to stand up for it when it is tested.
If you really value good ball movement, what do you do with the one on one scorer who becomes a ball stopper to try and get a basket? He's talented and can get a bucket, but he doesn't move the ball the way the rest of the team does. Do you get on him to move the ball, or do you let him take his 5-6 dribbles and try and work his man to get a bucket? If you are going to let him get his and not move the ball, then it's not something you value. And that is fine - that may be how you want to coach, and it might be best for your team. You may want your best player to play iso ball because you need him to score. But if you do, ball movement really isn't a core value.
Values have to become behaviors for them to be effective and have any real impact. They are more than the phrase on your shooting shirts. You want to define the behaviors that represent your values - first for yourself, then for your team - but then you have to hold your team accountable towards those behaviors. Reward them when you see the right ones, correct them when you don't.
If your values are real, they are going to get tested consistently. When they do, you have to be willing to fight for them. You have to know what really matters to you and what that looks like in practice. If your values get tested and you aren't willing to fight for them, they aren't really values. They are simply things you like to see.
Shaheen Holloway and St. Peter's
Edert, whose cool play under pressure and ‘70s porn-star mustache landed him a sponsorship with Buffalo Wild Wings, jumped on the press table and pumped his fist. When asked at the postgame press conference about that moment of pure joy, Edert began to answer when Holloway interrupted him. The exchange that followed was perfect.
Holloway: You hopped on the table?
Edert: Well, I found a little opening and was so excited ...
Holloway: (Disapproving glare)
Edert: Next question.
Ask Questions To Create Alignment
An excerpt below from my book Entitled to Nothing. Asking your players questions gives them ownership of your culture, and creates alignment between your team and staff. The way we played pick-up in the off-season was a huge part of our championship culture.
Questions Create Alignment
Like most aspects of our culture, the first key with our pickup games was the kids. We had kids who loved to play, kids who played hard, and kids who were tough. Giving them ownership was pretty easy. I wanted to provide the structure they needed but still make it theirs. I started to discover the value of asking questions.
After talking with KP, I asked the players in an informal meeting about the pickup games. Did they think they were good enough? Should they be better? Did we need to do something different? There was a consensus – some days the games were good, some days they were bad. They weren’t consistent, and they definitely needed to be better. I asked them if they thought the games were important, and they all said yes. They were playing four days a week for almost two hours at a time. If we were going to invest that much time in it, should we make sure we do it the right way? They all agreed. They wanted to change the way we played pickup.
I learned that asking questions of my players really helped my devel‐ opment as a leader. It started us down the road of developing real trust. Asking questions creates alignment, and alignment creates a safe space for change and growth. When you come across the inevitable difficult times, you can circle back to your questions and reinforce your alignment. This strengthens the trust within your team when you need it the most. You can never ask too many questions.
The players felt like I valued their opinion, and it allowed them to take more ownership. There’s an old adage that applies to leadership “If I say it, you doubt it. If you say it, it’s true.” By asking them questions about the pickup games I was giving them freedom to establish what needed to change. And perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t coming in and laying down the law. Lao Tzu said ,“To lead people, walk beside them,” and that’s what I was doing. I didn’t want to be the new coach who had all of the answers and blamed any lack of success on them. Asking questions created alignment, ownership, and trust, while showing them a pathway towards meaningful change.
The whole team agreed that the pickup games were important and that they needed to change. My next question was “What can we do about it?” Again, I allowed them to take some responsibility and give feedback. Then I was able to give some suggestions. “How about if we brought some structure to it? How about if we made all of the games more competitive? Do you think you guys can handle that?”
We talked it out and came up with a structure:
Each week we’d pick three teams, and everyone stayed on the same team for the week.
The players would count the wins and losses each day, and the team at the end of the week with the most losses would get up and run a timed mile on Monday morning. This made the games very competitive. No one wanted to run on Monday, and guys took great pride in never being on the team that had to run.
Games were straight to seven, with no three pointers. Everything was a point. We didn’t want the games to run too long and get lazy, and we wanted to avoid arguments about a shot being a two or three. I also wanted to encourage guys to get to the rim.
On the seventh point, the scorer had to make a free throw to win the game. If you missed the free throw the bucket didn’t count and you played the rebound live. The game continued.
If the offense scored a basket and all five offensive players hadn’t crossed half court, the basket didn’t count, the ball was turned over to the defense. If the offense scored a basket and all five defensive players hadn’t crossed half court, the bucket counted, and the offense got the ball back. This forced players to run hard and play every possession.
The offense was not allowed to call fouls. All fouls were called by the defense. There’s no stopping after a contested shot so people would just assume you got fouled. If the defense fouls somebody, they call it. If there is no foul called, keep playing. This is perhaps the most important and most challenging rule. You certainly need buy-in from your leaders, but it goes a long way to developing trust. You might think there were a lot of arguments over fouls with this process, but the opposite was the case. Everyone knew they couldn’t stop and assume a foul would be called. You had to play through it.
The more we talked about our pickup games, the more excited the guys got about them. It may seem like a lot of structure, but it was theirs, even though I had provided some suggestions. They owned it, and when they played, they knew I wouldn’t be there. They had to execute the plan.
St. Peter's
A good story about St. Peter's big win over Kentucky with some insight on how Shaheen Holloway built the program.
I love his thoughts on playing a lot of guys. "You can't have one or two guys hold you hostage."
Coach K On Rules
He went into the locker room with his first USA team and said, look guys, you’re not college players so I’m not gonna tell you the rules. Freshmen come into Duke, here’s the rules. But we do need a set of rules, so you guys tell me. So he pulled out a whiteboard and said, “OK, who’s got a rule?” And one of them, Jason Kidd, said, “I think it should be defense first.” And Mike said, “Does everybody agree?” Because he said, “Let’s agree on what the rules are. So, everybody agree? OK, defense first.” And then he asked somebody else.
He’s looking at LeBron, I think it was, and he says, “LeBron, you’re not saying anything. Don’t you have a rule?” And LeBron stood up and he says, “I say, no F-ing excuses!” And he looked at everybody and said, “Everybody agree with that?” Yes. So he (flipped) the whole board over, and then in big writing put NO F-ING EXCUSES. But he just realized that with a group of professional all-stars, they have to be the ones to say, “This is how we’re going to manage ourselves.”