The lengthy off-season in 2020 was an opportunity for thorough reflection. After attending dozens of virtual clinics, talking to other coaches and reading, I’ve settled on ten ideas that I think complement my coaching philosophy and can be implemented for the next season. I was not seeking to make significant change but incremental improvements.
Ranking Tracy McGrady and Allen Iverson
This month, both Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady announced their intent to retire from basketball. Two athletes who were highly regarded when they were drafted (first pick overall in 1996 and highest high school player drafted in 1997 respectively) who came to symbolize the leadership vacuum and problematic Collective Bargaining Agreement of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both players became first team all-stars but fell short relative to the high expectations they faced and the accomplishments of their superstar peers.
Transformational Leadership with the Toronto Raptors
The Toronto Raptors hired Masai Uriji to replace Bryan Colangelo as General Manager. In addition to managing the roster, Ujiri needs to establish a team culture and follow through in order to truly change the team.
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Alex Ferguson
This week, Sir Alex Ferguson, one of the most successful coaches in recent years, inhabiting the same rarefied air as other legends like Phil Jackson and Mike Krzyzewski , retired from his post at Manchester United. Ferguson had served as manager at Old Trafford for twenty-seven seasons and captured thirteen English league titles, two Champions League trophies and countless cups. Since 1986, other rivals have come and gone while United has remained at the top, providing an example that other coaches around the world can follow.
What I Learned this Summer, Part I
Earlier, I described a desire to become a more empathic leader. I hoped to become better at building relationships with other coaches, players, and people in general. I endeavoured to become more sensitive as to what others were feeling and discover how I can help student-athletes on and off the court and inside and outside the classroom. To do so, I read a couple of books which described examples of excellent relationships that resulted in personal development and basketball championships: Red and Me and The Gold Standard. Bill Russell’s tribute to his mentor Red Auerbach was a quick read that …
Paradigm Shifts
Recently I read War as They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest and Coach: The Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant. The books chronicled three iconic college football coaches during a time when their profession and the world around them were evolving at breakneck speed. The first book is about the Hundred Yard War and how the coaches reacted to each other and unrest on their respective campuses; the second book focuses on Bear Bryant’s life, especially his time in Tuscaloosa. Thomas Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions talks about how …
The Audacity of Whatever
Now that Barack Obama has finally become President of the United States, he must put his plans into motions. Grand ideals must transform into nuts and bolts, a campaign of change into possibly a deficit budget. Hyperbole has become acceptable discourse in politics. Rather than debate the details of Stéphane Dion’s carbon tax and how it would be implemented, Stephen Harper called exaggerated the policy and called Dion another tax and spend Liberal (if a government is going to tax, it should be a consumption tax). Rather than introduce his own policies, John McCain tossed key words like Socialist at …
Basketball Relativism
Seeking to avoid the tendency to move players around like Stratego pieces but still recognizing that the basketball season is like a game of Labyrinth. Balancing the motivation of a group of student-athletes towards meaningful goals while encouraging them when they falter. Generating elite performance from the team on the court and inspiring personal improvement away from it. Coaching becomes much more challenging than diagramming a sideout play down two with two seconds left on the clock. As a moderate Platonist, I try to avoid moral relativism. I think that there are standards of success, of good performance, that shouldn’t …
Ifs and Buts
If he were alive, Red would be proud: a Boston Celtics squad that sacrificed individual glory for team success and when faced with adversity knew no other recourse that to turn up the defensive intensity won the Association title. And they smoked the Los Angeles Lakers to do so. Certainly the team had talent – a modern triad to match Russell, Cousy, and Havlicek – but they came closer to the Auerbach intangibles than any other recent champion. These Celtics didn’t necessarily run the court but Pierce and Garnett dominated the screen and roll at both ends of the court. …
House Alone
In the fourth season premiere, House – without his usual team – faces a philosophical dilemma. Normally, the doctor believes that people lie but symptoms speak truthfully. Throughout the episode, the patient’s reactions contradict the information on her chart and her health deteriorates. Cuddy becomes so infuriated by House’s actions that she commands him to find a new team and orders other hospital staff to “stop enabling him” with conversation. The solution is simple: an allergy goes undetected because family members have misidentified the victims of a building collapse, resulting in swapped charts. The delay was not necessarily caused by …
I’m Not There
Six actors, portraying six diverse phases of Bob Dylan’s life. Under aliases, a half-dozen stories intertwine smoothly, roughly, and sometimes indescribably. Certainly, the creativity of the protagonist(s) and the director remain the film’s defining quality. Themes such as conformity, change, and challenges also abound, as illustrated by forums like a Macarthyism-style hearing, a 1960s documentary, and a fictional epilogue for Billy the Kid, if he survived Sherriff Garrett’s bullets. Spectators draw their own unique conclusions, branches of the same tree. Everything is nothing without the people who define it. Je est un autre. Jane Jacobs argues that every city, neighbourhood, …