Thursday, March 30, 2023

Basketball: Ageism and the Aging Coach

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations." -Isaac Disraeli

Coaching is art. Grandma Moses started painting at 76 years old. 

Mike Krzyzewski, 76

Gregg Popovich, 74 

Jim Larranaga, 73

Tara VanDerveer, 69

Geno Auriemma, 69

Tom Izzo, 68

John Calipari, 64

I hear the whispers. "Have you thought about hiring him?" "He's really old. Cripes, he knew God's dog when he was a puppy." 

Yes, coaches are not immune from aging. Remember President Reagan's line about youth and inexperience. Sometimes physical decline beats us. 

The twin torments of older coaches are 1) resume and experience and 2) the inevitable failures to use against them. Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger (age 99) says, 

"We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent."

Part of the coaching game is study to become better year after year. Older coaches have the advantage of "compounding," leveraging gains accrued over time. "Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes the tuition is high." It's the "he's forgotten more than most coaches will ever know." 

There's something called the 'survivor effect'. You seldom see full-on hatchet jobs done on older coaches. If they were so incompetent and contentious, they'd already be out. 

Use analogies. Here's another Munger quote on Berkshire-Hathaway, their company in Munger's book, Poor Charlie's Almanack: 

"The key is having good businesses." There's a lot of momentum here. I don't think our successors will be as good as Warren at capital allocation. Berkshire is drowning in money-we have great businesses pounding out money.

Restate: "The key is having good players. I don't think our successors will be as good at player development. (We) are drowning in performance- we have great players pounding out performance." 

Another Munger quote, "We're trying to buy businesses with sustainable competitive advantages at a low, or even a fair, price." The question for us old coaches becomes, "what are the sustainable competitive advantages?" A legacy might help with recruiting but not necessarily player development. 

1) Recruiting. There are some programs that aggregate talent. I'll credit the coach for his recruiting. Great job finding those players. 

2) Player development. I've seen a number of highly competitive youth teams whose development didn't translate into high school. I doubt it was because the high school coach was incompetent. I suspect the players scattered to the winds. I can name exceptional coaches who develop players and teams, but get overshadowed by the aggregators. 

The lessons? Study, study greatness, keep getting better, see sustainable competitive advantage, whatever our age.

Lagniappe. Among the "big four" - skill, strategy, physicality, and psychology, don't neglect your body. 


Lagniappe 2. Give-and-go drill off a face cut. 



at