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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Basketball: Voices from the Dinner Party

Find ways to deliver messages. Tolstoy uses 'literary constructs' to comment on society. Why not us? 

Imagine hosting a dinner party to stimulate conversation, an opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall. 

Whom should we invite? Do we want likes or diversity by age, gender, geography, sport? I've settled on Jack Clark, Dawn Staley, Geno Auriemma, and Jerod Mayo. 

We're serving cheddar broccoli soup, roasted squash and onions, pan fried wild salmon, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert. 

Host: "Great to have you here. It's your story. What makes you tick? Off you go." (Quotes come from a variety of sources)

Clark (Cal Rugby coach): "Grateful for Everything, Entitled to Nothing." 

Staley (South Carolina women's basketball coach) : "A lot of people notice when you succeed, but they don't see what it takes to get there."

Auriemma (UCONN women's basketball coach): "I demand sometimes more than they can give. But I don't know what that is until I find out you can't give it."

Clark: "'I know what it's like to lose, and I refuse to feel it again.' What each of you chooses to do with these scars will define you as a person."

Mayo (New England Patriots coach): “What I will say is the more I think about the lessons I’ve taken...hard work works — hard work works and that’s what we’re all about.”

Staley: "I like the challenge of getting players to rise to certain levels, but that's the easy part. The biggest challenge is to get them to believe in what we're doing. They have to understand that it's O.K. to have good days and bad days."

Host: "Where do you see the challenges?"

Clark: "we don't give scholarships, and everything we have we've built ourselves."

Auriemma: "As a head coach you're probably only as good as your players and your assistants."

Mayo: “I want people around me that are going to question my ideas and the way we have done things in the past. “I don’t want to teach them what to think. I want to teach them how to think."

Staley: "I think most of the players who have jumped from playing to coaching have their egos in check. You played the game at a high level and that brings instant respect, but what you do to maintain that credibility is the key."

Clark: “We have a lot to work on.”

Host: "What keeps you going?"

Staley: "There were too many instances...we weren't ourselves. We didn't have enough fight. We had too many lapses to compete."

Auriemma: "I've never lost sight of the fact that it is just a game—it is a bunch of people trying to get together to accomplish something that individually you can't do by yourself."

Clark: "We are trying to uphold everyone's expectations of us. The campus has a mantra concerning "comprehensive excellence" and there is an expectation we're chasing excellence in everything we do. We accept this responsibility."

Host: "What are your thoughts on leadership?" 

Mayo: "“As far as developing leaders, I think of it more as gardening,” Mayo said. “Gardeners, they don’t really grow anything. They just make sure the soil is right, they grab the weeds out of there, they water it every day. Whatever grows, grows."

Auriemma: "This time of year, it's the individual player that makes the difference. The things you do as a program get you to this point. Then individuals decide the outcome of the games."

Clark: "I believe in chain of command...I don't necessarily believe that everyone can't be a leader...ability to make those around me better and more productive." 

Staley: "I think I’m very consistent with who I am. As a young person, I didn’t really talk. I was the youngest of five kids, so I sat back and observed. Once I got older, I started figuring out the things that have to be said. I govern my life, being a leader, a coach, a colleague, on how something looks, feels and sounds. If something looks or sounds or feels wrong, I’m going to say something."

What did their conversation teach us? 

  • Be yourself.
  • Lead. 
  • Make others better. 

Lagniappe. What is your standard? 

Lagniappe 2. Get separation. 

 Lagniappe 3. What harms offense? Poor spacing, poor player and ball movement, lack of urgent cutting, poor decision-making, bad shot selection. 

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