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Monday, January 6, 2025

Basketball - Badness

Things go wrong. Relationships go sour. A book chapter or a column wastes time. Our team gets blown out amidst inferior talent, low energy, or bad coaching. 

A fellow assistant once said, "it's unrealistic to expect consistency with players this young and inexperienced." Move on and go back to work the next practice.

Return to "control what you can control..." our attitude, our choices, and our effort.

1) Injury. Our best player gets injured or ill. Prepare the team to go on without her. Everyone has to make "one more" play...get an extra rebound, an extra stop, and extra hustle play. That's a tall order if the injury spans the season. 

2) Uncontrollables. We miss a lot of practice because of weather (snow days). Probably our opponents are missing more practice, too. When the Force Majeure (act of God) happens, move on. 

3) Talent. "We don't have enough talent." Most coaches have said this, except the master recruiters. Which is why player development matters. "Every day is player development day." That also explains why NIL has developed such a following. 

4) Officiating. We couldn't buy a call. Before one game, the officials asked me how they got paid. I explained that I only coach, the league handles payment. We got murdered by the refs. The other coach literally came over to me at halftime saying, "did you steal something from those guys?" 

For a playoff game in New Hampshire years ago, the other coach asked me for forty bucks for the officiating. Do you want lottery tickets, too? 

In the last fifty games I coached, I don't think the officials determined one outcome. 

5) Player attitudes. Sometimes a quote explains it best. Casey Stengel was on to something. 

6) Parents. Overall, I'm grateful for the relationships I developed with parents. I'm not delusional; some still hold me (in the words of former House Speaker John McCormack) in "minimal high regard." 

"Legendary Speaker of the House of Representatives and Texas native Sam Rayburn was, in addition to serving the longest tenure for a Speaker of the House, “a man of many sayings.” Riddlesperger recalls that Rayburn’s favorite saying, which “captures his view of governing,” was: "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." Riddlesperger also notes that “though his successor John McCormack was fond of saying, ‘I hold all of my colleagues in high regard, but some I hold in minimal high regard,’ Rayburn just referred to the folks he couldn't stand as "sh**a**.""

7) Politics. Because I never took any compensation to coach (no cents?), nobody was after my job. And I'm not after anybody's job...

Lagniappe. Leg training is critical. 

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Lagniappe 2. "Low man wins." 

Lagniappe 3. The best players are "professional" in their ability to take coaching.  


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