"Rhetoric is what makes anything you say memorable."
Good ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. Education changes behavior. We want sticky ideas. Emblazon ideas upon player consciousness.
Phraseology formulas create memories. "The ball is gold." Coach Lane imprinted that upon us.
Alliteration is omnipresent and omnipotent. "Winners want the ball."
Forsyth shares the technique progressio, saying something and its opposite. Ecclesiastes 3: "There is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to rejoice, a time to kill and a time to heal..." Well, "there is a time to shoot and a time to hold the ball, a time to play fast and a time to stall, a time to press and a time to lay back..."
Forsyth celebrates Katy Perry as a master of rhetorical progression.
We can use other techniques, too. Americans have an attachment to chiasmus, turning a phrase. "We put an end to turnovers or turnovers put an end to us."
We use antithesis. "Fight like champions or lie down like dogs," or "the hardest criticism in basketball is being called soft." Billy Ocean knew chiasmus.
Colin Firth used antithesis in Kingsman.
We've all used hyperbole (exaggeration). In a following season, a player told me, "you told us, you play basketball as you live your life. You can't let other people push you around. That really stuck."
Keanu Reeves used tricolon in The Replacements, phrase comprised of three equal parts.
"Pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever."
"Rhetoric is what makes anything you say memorable. Rhetoric is what makes what you say stick...rhetoric is what persuades people of your position...rhetoric is what provokes emotion."
Learn and teach how to change the world, possession by possession.
Lagniappe: Spurs SLOB - Scissors, Zipper, Stagger
