Netflix has a series on coaches entitled "The Playbook." Coaches explain their raison d'etre. Steal from Doc! Here are Glenn Rivers' thoughts from Episode 1. Doc's eloquence speaks from experience, victory and defeat.
"I'm Doc Rivers...and I'm gonna make mistakes."
"Every decision I make will be about what's good for the team." (See John Wooden.)
"If it's good for the team, it's good." (It may not be good for Doc or for an individual.)
"I never called it practice...I'm going to play basketball."
Rule No. 1: "Finish the Race"
As a child, he wrote on the board, "I want to be a pro basketball player."
His father said, "whatever goal you have, just finish the race."
"I like getting to the office before people get there...I love my job."
"You're not going to be someone else's victim," is the lead-in to the Donald Sterling story. Rivers talks about the players' body language, how closed off they were. He said to the players, "you don't see my blackness right now...we are not going to be victims." He explains being demeaned in school, in life, vilified in an interracial marriage, and having his home torched in San Antonio.
Rivers explains that it will never be all good all the time. "If we're gonna win, we're gonna have to sacrifice...the challenge...was getting them (Garnett, Pierce, Allen) to buy in."
A woman brought the concept of UBUNTU to him. "Ubuntu is the essence of being human...a person is a person through other people." "The better you are, the better I am." "Our team started living UBUNTU."
Kevin Garnett called him at half-time after Doc's father died, "When you're sad, I'm sad."
Rule No. 4 "Pressure is a privilege." Banners remind you that you haven't done it. He put a spotlight on the wall at the Celtics' (Waltham) facility on a blank wall...for Banner 17.
"You can play your whole life and never win."
"People think that if you're the champion, that you don't get hit." (His idol was Ali.). How many punches can you take and keep moving forward?"
Jack Nicholson said to Rivers during the 2008 Finals, "we are dead men walking."
"You have to put your heart on the line."
He said that he never went into the locker room after the 2008 Championship game...went to his office and smoked a cigar that Red Auerbach had given him.
"You get pleasure in watching young men grow up...your job is to make them better players, better people, better teammates."
"I'm gonna coach you to who you should be someday."
Lagniappe: I'm following my player as a competitor and as a young woman. In this clip, her AAU team runs scissors through her.
Lagniappe 2: Teach "Proximity." Ball pressure, communication, switching. #NoEasyBaskets
What a great defense here by Bayern
— MaxFrontini (@MaxFrontini) October 21, 2020
Ball pressure
Lucic ready to jump to the ball pic.twitter.com/QAkBUIqYK9