The Basketball Truthsayers - A Dozen Plus Truths

Trust cannot happen without truth. The best coaches and leaders traffic in truth in both art and reality. Great coaches are in the truth business. 

Where do art and reality collide to find truth? 

1. Kevin Eastman's Truth

"You have to TELL it. As Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” More than that, telling the truth is just the right thing to do.

You have to LIVE it. Truth doesn’t stop at telling. We need to live it every day.

You have to TAKE it. Sometimes people say the truth hurts. I think it may sting, it might embarrass us, but in the end it will help us. You have to learn to take it and move on. You do have to handle it."

2. Coach Norman Dale's Truth

"I love you guys." Truth isn't transactional; it's relational.

3. Dean Smith's Truths

• "It's just a game."
• "A lion doesn't roar after a kill."
• “If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to  have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."

4. Coach Ellis Lane's Truths (New England Basketball Hall of Fame)

• "The ball is gold."
• "Sacrifice." 

5. The truth about studying basketball. 

"Video is the truth machine." 

6. Bon Jovi's Truth

"You can't win until you're not afraid to lose." 

7. John Wooden's Truth

“Tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember a story.” In Wooden’s philosophy, truth-telling was practical rather than just moral. He believed that deception created mental clutter and distracted players from their performance.

8. Pete Newell's Truth

Newell defined the fundamental truth of basketball as a game of mistakes, asserting that the team making the fewer mistakes generally wins. He believed that each lost ball translated to about 1.5 points.

9. Don Meyer's Truth

Don Meyer emphasized that great players want to be told the truth, Good players who merely want to be coached.

10. Ted Lasso's Truth

"Be curious not judgmental." What are the underpinnings of our identity and our performance? Curiosity opens doors; judgment closes them.

11. Billy Beane's "Moneyball" Truth

"Adapt or die." Every team has different sets of resources in finance, talent, coaching, and more. The best coaches maximize the return on what they have and don't whine about what they don't have. 

12. Ernest Hemingway's Truth

"The first draft of anything is garbage." We have a creative vision and a critical vision. Coaching involves both - the ability to develop a system, to teach and refine the system, and improve the players within the system. 

Find your truths. 

• "Win this possession." Basketball is a game of possessions. 
• "Players, not coaches, make out the lineup via performance." 
• "Create a learning culture." If not, we create a losing culture.
• Soft skills win because life is hard. 

Lagniappe. The evolution of the game...an extension of "the ball has energy." 

🏀 Golden State Warriors assistant coach Jerry Stackhouse explains how good things happen when guards attack the "red zone" and demonstrates the actions available within the framework of the offense if a spray pass is made on either side of the rim. pic.twitter.com/vUu1c3gWu6

— Coaching U (@Coaching_U) June 1, 2026