WANT CONSISTENT DEFENSE? PROVIDE A GOAL...

Playing good defense takes a lot of effort... playing great defense takes a lot of sustained effort.  One of the things I would use to help the athletes sustain that level of effort was a simple motivational poster I would keep in the locker room as a daily reminder of what they were capable of.

The poster had the title "Club 30" across the top and the rest of the poster was blank.  The goal was to hold every team we played to 30 points or less.  If the team reached the goal, we would write-in our opponent's name and how many points we held them to as a visual reminder of accomplishing our defensive goal.  As we entered the playoffs, I would reprint the poster with a list of our season accomplishments as a motivator of what is possible if we stay focused on defense.

This was a simple idea that really kept the athletes focused on defense throughout the entire game, regardless of the score.  The closer our opponent got to scoring 30, the more the bench would remind them to stay sharp on defense by yelling "club 30" as a reminder.

The picture here represented what the team accomplished by the time we entered the playoffs a few years ago.  

IT'S WITHIN YOU

Your success or failure has very little to do with your opponent, your coach or the referees. It is a choice every athlete makes within themselves... whether they realize it or not. You must believe it to achieve it.

IMPOSSIBLE IS JUST A WORD

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. Refuse to accept impossible... it's just a word.

SECOND CHANCES

Danny Greene has been a rock-solid role player for the Spurs all season and getting plenty of air-time on Sports Center as a result; but there is a reason why... he became a "team player."

"Green's initial contact with the Spurs was thanks to a stint in Cleveland with the Cavaliers under Danny Ferry. When Ferry lost his job as Cleveland's general manager in 2010 and returned to the Spurs organization that had given him his post-playing start, he recommended they bring in Green. They signed him on Nov. 17, 2010, and waived him on Nov. 23, 2010. They couldn't stand him. The Spurs didn't like his attitude and didn't think he'd fit in with their team-oriented culture.

Then, Green did something that didn't fit in with our unapologetic, text-message culture. He asked for a second chance -- on a voicemail message he left for Gregg Popovich.

Green says he told him, "I'll do whatever you need me to do. Rebound, defense, towel boy, water boy … whatever you need me to do, I'm going to do that."

Popovich took it to heart. He brought back Green that March and signed him through the end of the 2010-11 season. By the next season, Green started more than half of the 66 games in the lockout-shortened schedule.

"Pop's a really good dude, and he gave me a second chance and I appreciate that," Green said. "The whole way along he's been pushing me and teaching me to be better, and I've grown within the system."

How much has Green improved since joining the Spurs?  He was 27.3% from outside before joining the Spurs and now shoots 42.9%.  He was 66.7% at the FT line before falling into Pop's system, now?  He shoots 84.8% from the line.  Rebounding?  Pre-Spurs Green was 0.9% rebounds per game...now?  3.1 RPG. In fact, Greene has improved in almost every statistical category.  

Thanks J.A. Adande | ESPN.com

WANT MORE MINUTES?

Unless you are one of the 5 or 6 "star" players on your team, your minutes will always be determined by how much you can contribute to your team.  The players who can consistently help their team win games are the ones who get playing time - it's just that simple.   Want more minutes?  Then you need to understand how to make yourself valuable to your team.

You do this by embracing your role and focusing on things other than scoring.  Sure, you've spent your whole basketball life developing and displaying your offensive game, but suddenly you aren't getting those scoring opportunities in games.  You take thousands of shots in the offseason, you work on your shot before and after practice, yet you may go weeks without taking a jumper in a game.

If you can become really good at things like screening, passing, defending, communicating, boxing out and rotating defensively, you can have a huge impact on your team winning a game.  If those parts of your game become a habit and you develop consistency and embrace whatever role your coach places you into, you are going to be valuable to your team and  you will get more minutes.

A lot of players can't or won't do these things because they don't see the value in it.  However, those that "get it" look at it as sacrificing your own game for the greater good.  This is true to an extent, but you don't just play this way because you are a nice player and you are willing to let other players shine. You do it because you want to win, to be a part of a championship team, and you do it because you want to create value for yourself.  If you come off the bench and you start to take more shots, to take your scoring average from three points a game up to five points a game, not many people are going to notice.  You are doing the same things, just in a more inefficient way. 

On the other hand, if you average only five points a game but defensively you can adequatelty cover the othe team's best 3 or 4 players,  you are going to be able to play plenty of minutes  over your career.  At the same time, your play will have more of an effect on winning than it would otherwise. 

The goal is to try to make it very difficult for your team to replace you, so that they have to do what it takes to keep you around. That's how a player creates value for himself.

(Thanks Nick Collison & Bob Starkey)

DON'T BE SATISFIED WITH AVERAGE

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and countless others that decided they wanted to achieve what others said was impossible… The only person holding YOU back from achieving greatness is YOU!  

SWAGGER IS THE BY-PRODUCT... NOT THE PRODUCT

"For us the swagger was developed by demonstrated performance and from having a chip on your shoulder and from work ethic and from being the hardest-working team and from being a tough team and from playing with passion. And all of a sudden people said, ‘Miami plays with swagger.’ Well, then it only takes a couple years where you have kids that put on the uniform and think you automatically get the swagger because you wear the U. But they don’t want to do the things that made the U special."

- Alonzo Highsmith
(Thanks SUSAN MILLER DEGNAN, Miami Herald)

COACHES (AND PARENTS) NEED TO LOOK A LITTLE CLOSER

Had a chance to speak at length with a first year Middle School coach this week at the Nike Higher Level Camp in Florida, who also happened to have her daughter at the camp.  (Important point here, this was her daughters first "intense" ball handling camp).

Her question was (paraphrased), "how hard do I push my daughter and after being here at this camp, I'm beginning to wonder if she even likes basketball"

Her daughter was a rising Freshman and seemed to only give noticeable effort when playing defense while scrimmaging.  On offense, her daughter was clearly not engaged.  The second thing that I noticed,  her daughter didn't give the same level of effort while working on individual ball handling drills, she would only give minimal effort.

Was she lazy?  Probably not.

Coaches do not have the time to push every athlete to reach their full potential.  As bad as that may sound, think about it for just a second... ever had an athlete that just doesn't seem to care?  How many times have you wasted a lot of time and energy into trying to motivate them and show them the right way to do things, only to have them remain in that state of giving only 70% on drills?

In this particular situation, I began to watch her daughter and quickly noticed that every time she was put into the spotlight on individual ball handling drills, her effort immediately dropped as if she didn't really care one way or another.  My guess is, that it wasn't that she didn't care... it was more than likely that she felt exposed and insecure in her skills and abilities when compared to the other athletes at the camp (there were some die-hard ballers there).

As coaches, we often overlook that simple explanation and tag that type of player as being lazy and we give up on trying to motivate them.

After discussing this with her mom (and coach), it became evident that more ball handling skill work was needed to get her daughter over the confidence hump and to a point where she felt like she could compete with others.

Rather than label players as lazy, coaches need to look at the circumstances before giving up on a player.

4:13

THE GREAT EQUALIZER - COMPETITIVENESS

You can’t always be the strongest or most talented or most gifted person in the room, but you can always be the most competitive. 

There are bound to be days when you run into someone who is better than you.  What can you do about it?  You can compete, that’s what.  You can put forth so much effort that you cut your opponent down to size and force them to play below their abilities.  Competitiveness allows you to influence your opponent.

(Thanks Pat Summitt)

FRIDAY'S MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES

I know I've been slacking off on the Blog entries for a while now and decided this morning that I will get back to it.

"Trust (from your teammates) doesn't develop from always doing the right thing. It comes from taking responsibility when you make a mistake."
- Simon Sinek

"Players are about their team. Pretenders are about themselves!"
- Joey Burton

"High school players play with their hands. College players play with their feet. NBA players play with their minds."
- Coach Holub

"You hit a bad shot, you have to get over it right there and then so you can get focused on the next one."
- Tiger Woods

"I am always ready to learn, though I do not always like being taught."
- Winston Churchill

"If losing doesn't sting, you don't need to be playing!"
- Coach Farris

"Self-discipline, competitive fire & self-belief. All the talent in the world is useless if you are missing any 1 or all 3 of these qualities."
- Chris Oliver

"Focus on your potential instead of your limitations."
- Tony Gaskins

HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT?

DRAFTING A PLAYER WITH HEART

In basketball, the difference between winning or losing can often come down to a single centimeter. That’s what Kawhi Leonard’s college coach always told him.

It could be a loose ball, a coin-flip rebound, a tip-in, a charge taken, a shot denied.

“You can’t take any play off,” said Leonard, the Spurs’ soon-to-be rookie forward. “Getting that loose ball could be the play that helps us win the game.”

The every-possession-counts approach that coach Steve Fisher preached at San Diego State helped transform Leonard from under-recruited high school prospect from Riverside, Calif., into one of the country’s best college players in two short years.

It helped Leonard transform SDSU from college basketball wasteland into a top-five NCAA program.

Thursday, it helped make Leonard the 15th pick in the NBA draft.

(Thanks Jeff McDonald)

DO YOU MAKE TOO MANY EXCUSES?

Came across another great nugget about "excuses" on the PGC Blog that every player should read...

--------
Excuses are for mediocre players.  Forget them.  There are thousands of excuses available to all losers.  To have a good excuse is to have what every other loser in the history of the world has had.

Don’t make the ridiculous mistake of thinking that your particular brand of excuse is somehow more valid than the last 20 million that have been uttered.  You can hope your mother will believe you and maybe your girlfriend - or at least they may sympathize and keep their mouths shut if they don’t, but everyone else knows an excuse when he hears it.

Your particular excuse is just as stupid as everyone else’s.  There.  Now you know it.  Now you are free to accomplish things, and to work, and to concentrate.

Forget about excuses. They are enormous wastes of time and words.

"A successful person is not one who has found the right set of circumstances, but rather, one who has Developed the right set of attitudes."
- Dick DeVenzio

(Thanks PGC)

THE REAL RUDY

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Two hours before the Lakers played the Kings Wednesday night, a man and his 13-year-old daughter walked up to Kobe Bryant.

Bryant had already been on the court for two hours and normally doesn't take a break from his pregame shooting routine for pictures and autographs, but he had just heard the girl finish a stirring practice rendition of the national anthem and happily obliged as the man thanked him and introduced himself and his daughter.

"I'm Rudy Ruettiger and this is my daughter Jessica Ruettiger," he said. "She's singing the national anthem before the game."

"Rudy?" Bryant said as a smile came over his face. "The movie?"

"Yeah," Ruettiger said.

"That movie changed my life," Bryant said.

Suddenly the roles were reversed and Bryant was the star-struck fan who wanted a picture.

Bryant was a sophomore at Lower Merion High School when he first saw the movie "Rudy" in 1993. He would see it at least a handful of times in theaters and by his estimation, "a hundred" times on tape. Bryant said the film motivated him to work harder than he ever had before and continues to inspire him to be the first one at the practice facility and the last to leave.

"When I saw it I told myself if I can play as hard as Rudy with the talent I have, anything's possible," Bryant said. "I've met a lot of people in my life but that one there, man, that one [messed] me up."

Ruettiger and Bryant spoke about adversity and the importance of giving back and inspiring those who might look up to them as role models.

"We talked about struggles and I said it's not how hard you take a hit, it's how hard you get back up," Ruettiger said. "When you hit a certain status in life you want to help people. It meant so much to hear him say that the movie changed his life. It blew my mind. I couldn't believe it. What do you say to a guy like Kobe who is so excited to meet you?"

As Ruettiger walked away with Jessica and his son Danny, Bryant turned to a Lakers staffer who had just walked onto the court and pointed to Ruettiger.

"You want to meet the person who's had the biggest influence on my life?" Bryant said. "That's Rudy. The real Rudy Ruettiger."

(Thanks Arash Markazi, reporter and columnist for ESPNLosAngeles.com.)

CHAMPIONS EMBRACE ADVERSITY

"Desiring fair treatment is the province of the mediocre. Champions don’t want to be treated like everyone else. Champions don’t want to be put on an equal plane with others, they welcome the opportunity to show what they are made of under all sorts of conditions. They don’t worry what has happened to anyone else. They are eager to demonstrate what they can do." - Dick DeVenzio

(Thanks Sefu Bernard)

TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO BUILD TEAMWORK

On a recent flight I sat next to a woman with wisdom.  And, of course, wisdom is what we learn after we know it all.  That’s who and what she was: A wise person who could teach others simply by how she lived. 

As we chatted, she shared that when she first moved to a certain big city with her husband and three young children, not one neighbor came to greet them.  The weeks went by, they unloaded boxes and hung pictures and drapes, but nobody welcomed them to the neighborhood.  So one day she told her kids, “Let’s bake cookies for all!” —and they did.  Then, loading up their little red Radio Flyer wagon, they spent a Saturday morning delivering fresh, still-warm homemade cookies and big smiles to their new neighbors, up and down the street.

Upon hearing her story, I commented, “Um, gee, that’s really something.  Your family was the new family in the neighborhood and yet you took cookies to people!?”  Her response was wise.  Leaning toward me with a hint of mischief in her eyes, she nearly whispered, “Sometimes you just gotta teach people how to live.”

(Thanks John G. Mille, Authorr)

THE NEXT NBA POINT GUARD PHENOM?

Aquille Carr is being touted as the next phenom point guard to hit the NBA... and he's only a Sophomore.



(Thanks SI.com)

10 DAYS TO PROVE IT

Zabian Dowdell arrived in Phoenix with 10 days' worth of clothes, two Bibles and a copy of a letter saved on a laptop.  He wrote the original letter to himself a decade ago, by hand in the bedroom where he grew up, 595 words with the title I Will Make It.

He was 16 then, a basketball player in a football town, worried that college recruiters would not notice him in Pahokee, Fla.  "Nothing will stop me from making it to the NBA," Dowdell wrote.  "I am on a mission."

After going undrafted in 2007, Dowdell rode the bench in France, dodged paper airplanes thrown from the stands in Italy and stayed up until 3 a.m. in Spain to watch NBA games on his computer, still seething at the fellow point guards drafted instead of him.  When his mother stumbled across his old letter while cleaning out his room, she typed and e-mailed it to him, sensing he could use his own motivation.  Dowdell recognized the defiant tone of his younger self and saved the e-mail, to read whenever his resolve was tested.

Last October, after the Suns cut him out of training camp for the second year in a row, Dowdell rejected a $750,000 contract in Europe and took $13,000 from the Tulsa 66ers of the NBA Development League because Tulsa offered something Europe did not: the possibility of a mid-season NBA call-up.

Finally, at age 26, after three seasons in Europe and two stints in the D-League, summers spent running on golf courses and shooting jumpers past midnight, Dowdell finally signed an NBA contract... a 10 day contract.  He took those 10 days and played his way into a regular season contract.

What is it that you want to do or want to accomplish?  Are you on a mission?

(Thanks Sports Illustrated)

WILL YOU BE READY?

Trailing Florida in the second half of the Southeast Regional final, Butler coach Brad Stevens did the most preposterous thing: he put Chrishawn Hopkins in the game.

The Indianapolis product had played seven minutes total in the previous two months. He had scored two points in that time. He had failed to even remove his warmups in 13 of Butler’s last 18 games.

So when Stevens turned and called, "Hop!" even Hop was a bit startled.

"That was a pretty tough situation to be in," he acknowledged.

But assistant coach Micah Shrewsberry gave him some brief encouragement -- "Just play, don’t be scared" -- and there went Chrishawn Hopkins to the scorer’s table. Nobody in America could have guessed he’d help save Butler’s season.

Down nine with just more than seven minutes to go, Hopkins drove to the basket and fired a pass to big man Matt Howard for a layup. On Butler’s next possession, Hopkins let fly a 3-pointer that swished.

"They tell us to shoot when we’re open and don’t hesitate," Hopkins said. "It felt good as I let it go."

Next thing anyone knew, Gators coach Billy Donovan was calling timeout. The Florida assistants were undoubtedly squinting at their scouting reports, wondering who No. 20 was. Their lead was cut to four and would never again be more than two possessions.

And the Bulldogs were swarming Hopkins to congratulate him on the biggest minute of his basketball career.

"It shows he’s always ready to go, which is one thing we emphasize," said sophomore center Andrew Smith. "You always need to step up and be ready when you’re asked."

(Thanks ESPN)

FRIDAY'S QUOTES

“You are doing one of three things during practices and games. You are getting better, staying the same, or getting worse.”
- Coach Rebecca Tillet

"Great Teams Have Great Teams"
- sign in Butlers Team Room

"It's amazing how much knowledge you can receive if you just LISTEN."
- Christopher Michael Jones

“If you tell me you desire to play at the collegiate level, yes...I have to hold you at a higher standard. My job is to prepare you.”
- Coach Stewart

"Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong."

“Soft, selfish or stupid. You can be one of these things, but you can’t be two [and remain on the team].”

- Jeff Van Gundy