Winning Is Everything

I've been the guy accused of having the win at any cost attitude. I get where that comes from. When I have a team, and I will be coaching my own team in the spring - probably two - I demand things from them. Like a great effort, and aggressiveness, and being completely vested in the outcome of the game. But winning the game? Trophies? B.S. like that? Nah, not for me. And it shouldn't be for you.

No, what I'm after is empowering my players. And that comes from failure. Yep, you are empowered when you fail then try again. I was talking with a very dear friend of mine - someone you will get to know as you continue to read - and she has a book coming out about this from a different perspective. More on that as we go. But we were talking about how being empowered means that you have the consciousness to fail and then try, then repeat. Sometimes hundreds of times.

So I push my players to go beyond what they know they can do and try what they think they might be able to do. Then, after hundreds of failures, they succeed that one time. And they run down the floor thinking, "Hey, that was pretty cool. I'm gonna do that again."

I'll give a concrete example from a game last week. I was watching this kid play. He's an exceptional technical player. He knows how to play, but physically he is behind. He's a bit slow, he's smaller than the guys he's playing against, he hasn't gone through that next stage of development. Where the guys he's playing agains have muscles, he has skin. So he found himself under the basket, being checked by some huge monster who has 6 inches and 60 pounds on him. And his coach has continuously demanded that in that situation he shoot it. 1 foot from the goal, it's gotta go up. But what to do? Any other day, he would have tried some weak crap that would have been slapped down on his forehead. So what did he do?

He ball faked, Then ball faked again, and got his goy off ballance. Then he pivoted and used the basket to his advantage and shot an underhand scoop shot on the other side of the goal. Last week, he would have passed it and got yelled at - rightfully so. A year ago, he would have gotten scared and turned it over. But this day? He did something different because that was what was demanded. And he made it.

He ran back thinking, "Hey, that was cool. I'll do that again." That's empowering. That's basketball.