Fifty years ago, we prepared for the postseason as a team that had won nothing for years. Unranked in the top division, we got a Division 1 North four seed in the "Tech Tourney."
What lessons propelled us forward?
1. Sacrifice. Coach Sonny Lane reminded us that, a lot. "Suicides at the end of practice" were shared sacrifice.
2. Who are those guys? A nine-game win streak in the formidable Middlesex League seemed like an achievement. But we got no ink in the Boston papers. There was no Internet for hype or hate. Coach said, "who are those guys?” Yes, the "No Respect card" worked for us.
3. Discipline determines destiny. Three years prior, Coach planted his flag on the road to the postseason. He "pulled paint cans and brushes from his car and instructed the team to get to work sprucing up the playground court and painting the wooden backboards that were nailed to telephone polls. On one of those poles Lane painted in red, “Tech Tourney ‘73” which is what the state high school basketball tournament was called in 1970."
4. "The ball is gold." Turnovers kill winning, kill coaches, and kill dreams. Over and over we heard, "the ball is gold." Wakefield 1973 averaged 65 points per game, before shot clocks or three-point shooting. Take care of the ball and take good shots.
5. "It's not who starts it's who finishes." Earn the confidence of the coaches and teammates by being reliable. The previous season, I started no games and played seven seconds in a game against a neighboring rival. The championship season I played 36 minutes in the overtime title win against twice-defending State Champion Lexington in Boston Garden.
6. Vince Lombardi said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." We had twelve guys focused on winning, not on statistics. Coach preached "win this quarter." "Play present" is what people say now.
7. Senior leadership matters. We had eight seniors, including five who were at least 6'5" tall. We spent a lot of time together since Junior High School basketball. Traveling to summer league games, I spent a too much time in the middle of the back seat, crunched between big guys.
8. Ignore the noise. While we kept on winning, a School Committee member whose son had been cut sought to undermine both the coach and the program with a series of meetings questioning the direction of the Athletic Department. In 1970, the school won a State Football Championship and the town sent the team to Bermuda. Less than three years later, people asked should winning or playing time be a priority? Winning settles a lot of arguments.
9. "Basketball is sharing." All five starters averaged ten points per game and six seniors scored at least 300 career points. "It's amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit."
10."Embrace your role." We had an excellent point guard, scorers, two dynamite rebounders, and two 'defensive specialists', including me. My best game might have been holding an All-State guard, son of a Boston Globe sportswriter to ten points on the road. I scored two points on two shots in a 70-54 win. We could hear a pin drop in the State Champions' gym at the end.
Those lessons served us well during the thirteen game winning streak and through the next five decades.
Lagniappe (something extra). Kobe understood life.
Lagniappe 2. Our 1-4 High offense ("Syracuse") was incredibly simple. And we seldom used PnR. The principle was mostly pound the ball inside to the 6'7" and 6'6" posts. If you doubled down on the post, pitch it out for an open jumper.
