BEHIND THE MICROPHONE

My Meeting with Coach Wooden

The date was November 11, 2002. The place, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Marina Del Rey, CA.

 

Then Atlanta Hawks GM Pete Babcock arranged a meeting for the team with Coach John Wooden.

 

The entire traveling party made its way to a small banquet room, and in came Coach Wooden. He sat with us for over an hour. He knew our coach, Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkins very well. (How incredible to have two men in the same room who were selected as Hall of Famers as both players AND coaches.) But for many of us, we were stangers.

 

That did not matter to Coach Wooden. He spoke to us like we were an extension of his UCLA teams, reviewing his Pyramid of Success. He stressed conditioning (physical, mental, moral), skill (do it quickly), and team spirit (be considerate of others on and off the court).

 

Coach spoke of how winning was a by product of all of those characteristics. He stressed how the game was OFF the ball, both offensively and defensively. I was taking notes as fast as I could write.

 

We were all mesmorized. At the end, coach Wooden took the time to autograph each person’s copy of his book, "Wooden. A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court".

 

“For Bob. Best wishes John Wooden.”

 

An unforgettable moment in time that I will take with me forever.

All Great Leaders are Readers

OK, troops, how are those New Year’s Resolutions coming?
Well, all righty then! Let’s hit that re-start button!
One of the great people in sports and education is Dr. Paul Schempp from UGA’s Sports Instruction Research Laboratory.
Paul was kind enough to send along his study of readings recommended by expert coaches.
One distinguishing characteristic propelling experts to consistently superior performance is their extensive knowledge. One source often identified by experts as fundamental to their knowledge base is reading. Paul has done us the favor of asking coaches to identify the books that the great coaching leaders would recommend to beginning coaches.
I can think of no better way to get 2008 started than by going out and getting these books to start your own high performance library.
392 coaches from 29 different sports were sent letters explaining the study. 107 coaches from 17 sports responded. The participants recommended 156 authors and 177 book titles.
With Paul’s permission, here are the Top 5:

1. The Winner Within. Pat Riley, 1993. New York: Putnam’s Sons.
2. Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. John Wooden and Steve Jamison, 1997. Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary Books.
3. Search for the Perfect Swing, The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your Game. Alistair Cochran and John Stobbs. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books.
4. My Personal Best, Life Lessons from an All-American Journey. John Wooden and Steve Jamison, 2004. new York: McGraw-Hill.
5. Season of Life, A Football Star, A Boy, A Journey to Manhood. Jeffrey Marx. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Isn’t it interesting that three of the top five books are authored by basketball coaches? And Paul notes in his research that the authors most frequently identified were Wooden, Riley, and Dean Smith.
Marx, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, wrote A Football Star to chronicle the work of Joe Ehrmann, the former Baltimore Colt, and his teaching of life lessons through football at Gilman High School in Maryland.

Dr. Schempp will present these findings later this month in Japan at a Sport Science Conference. The entire reading list of 177 book titles would keep you going for years. Exceptional material.

My goal for 2008 is the same as 2007—a book a week, minimum of 52. I’ve got my first one done, working on number two. Paul has given us five must-reads!

On Winning and Losing

Labor Day weekend, 2007, marked the start of another college football season.
And if you follow the sport at all, you heard about one of the biggest upsets in the history of the game---tiny Appalachian State’s incredible victory over mighty Michigan before 109,000 fans in Ann Arbor.
The miraculous victory was straight out of a Damon Runyon novel: big school invites little school up to its legendary stadium for a warm up game, giving the visitors a big check for their trouble.
Little school is supposed to roll over at the sight of big school, its fans, its athletes and its traditions.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Big House. No one told Appalachian. They thought they were going to the Fun House.
Outplaying the heavily favored Wolverines, little Appalachian kicked a field goal to go ahead then blocked a Michigan field goal attempt to win it. It was game that sent shock waves throughout college football and the Mountaineers to the cover of Sports Illustrated. But what about Michigan? How will they handle this adversity? The criticism?
It’s a story, I think, from the Michigan perspective, that was written before the game was played.
Its coach, Lloyd Carr, admitted after the game that his team was “unprepared”. This seems unthinkable…the opening game of a new season? 
But let this lesson sink in: if you are not prepared to play, the opposition—in what ever business form that might take—is ready to zoom right past you.
If you take that opposition lightly, the same thing will happen.
If the game plan is faulty, the execution not crisp, it is a given, no matter what level of expertise the opposition offers, defeat is inevitable.

So, the worst thing that can happen has for Michigan. Now what?
I’m reminded of the story of Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino. Going into his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh, Marino was expected to lead the Panthers to another banner season.
Marino was the pre-season favorite for the Heisman Trophy. After all his teams were coming off three straight 11 win seasons.
But the Panthers were not ready for that season. Upset three times, Pittsburgh under-achieved, and Marino took the brunt of the criticism.
But Dan didn’t sulk. He made the most of the adversity.
In his autobiography, Dan wrote, “Sports and life are like a roller coaster ride. You have to take the ups with the downs. All the struggle and criticism my senior year made me mentally tough in the long run. Looking back, that season prepared me more for my NFL career that if I had won the Heisman Trophy.”
Marino went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Miami Dolphins. In 17-years, he was arguably the most proficient passer in this history of the game.
How did he do it? By focusing on his skills. His stick dropped after his senior year.
Dan wrote, “I made a decision not to be bitter at the teams that passed on me. Instead, I chose to count my blessings and focus my energy on the opportunity at hand.”
A chance to be bitter. Or a chance to be better.
It will be interesting to see which choice the Michigan Wolverines make.