Don't separate sport and education. "I learned to be a good student, and that sometimes you just do what you have to do - not what you want to do." Nick Saban in How Good Do You Want to Be... after nearly failing music, Saban's father forced him to turn in his basketball uniform.
"We can talk everyday about the importance of academics but we can't force them to buy into it."
"You never know when you are giving an education, and you never know when the lessons learned will be put to work."
Lesson 1. Learning never ends. Learning helps you impact everyone around you. We never know when one lesson will change a life.
Lesson 2. Education does not promise success, but it makes it easier. "It is not easy being a Division I athlete and a full-time student." I achieved relative success in college and pitched ONE inning as a varsity player at Harvard. I guess that was the Peter Principle in action.
Lesson 3. Emphasize education with your actions. Six months after I expressed my disappointment with the girls resilience ("how you play is how you live your life"), one approached me saying, "that how you live your life stuff really hit me." She later attended The College of the Holy Cross, an elite school in Massachusetts.
Lesson 4. Don't judge ability just by statistics. Coach Saban advises us to evaluate commitment, work ethic, character, and discipline. Test scores alone do not predict success. Hard work is a skill. Toughness is a skill.
Lesson 5. Remember that progress in education takes time. Readers remember that Coach Wooden's top of the Pyramid of Success is flanked by the words faith and patience. Some prefer belief and time. Patience is a skill, too.
Lesson 6. Education can be a great equalizer. "George Perles used to say that boys do what they want to do, men do what they have to do." If you can learn the skills and strategies of basketball, you absolutely can succeed in the classroom.
Lagniappe. You can do this.
The ability to jump early can cause problems for shot blockers.
— Reid Ouse (@reidouse) July 11, 2023
We call this a "1st Step Finish".
A standard layup would be a "2nd Step Finish" but that gives the defender two full steps to time up a potential block. Jumping off of the 1st step is much more difficult to defend. pic.twitter.com/2U36sttq1Q
Lagniappe 2. Nash shooting workout. You've surely seen the video.
When it’s just a ball, a hoop, and you? Nash Shooting is the way to go. We made this 15 minutes and changed some of it up. The one Steve Nash did is actually 20 minutes. Simple but efficient. You should be gassed if you get after it. Will be a July staple at Open Gyms for warmup. pic.twitter.com/sT9wRqmPe2
— Chris Abaray (@ChrisAbaray) July 10, 2023
