Researchers at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, recently compiled a list of 128 characteristics of what makes a good athlete a winner. They divided the list of 128 traits into half psychological and half physical characteristics. Examples of psychological characteristics were: they perform well under pressure, they are teachable, etc. Examples of physical characteristics were items such as body size, natural physical strength, and general talent or athletic attributes.
They then asked 658 coaches from 43 different sports to choose five of these characteristics that they felt defined winners. The majority of these coaches chose psychological qualities over physical abilities for determining successful/winning athletes.
These researchers determined that the top five characteristics for success in sports to be:
1) That these athletes love to play their game or sport.
2) They have a positive attitude in general toward life.
3) They are teachable and coachable.
4) They are self-motivated.
5) They have the discipline and drive to take the necessary steps to improve their game.
The “natural physical athlete” characteristic ranked 19th out of 128 characteristics listed in this study. These finding support the belief of many sports psychologists that success in sports is as much as 90% mental.
12.11.2010
D-ROSE: OVERCOMING LA
It's not very often young players earn the praise of Kobe Bryant, which is why many in the pro basketball community seemed to notice last month when Bryant sought out Derrick Rose for a hug and some kinds words after the Bulls' 98-91 loss in Los Angeles.
"I can tell when a player truly wants to be better and does what it takes to improve," Bryant said Thursday, one night before the rematch in Chicago. "It was a quality I had when I was growing up. … I admire that about him. I could really see it from last year to this year."
Kobe is now one of the elder statesman in the league, at 32 years old and in his 15th season, his blessing now means every bit as much as Michael Jordan's did in the late 1990s, when Bryant was a young pup. And Rose has caught his eye. We've seen enough to know now, six weeks into the season, that D-Rose wasn't being presumptuous when he essentially asked in the preseason, "Why not me?" for MVP.
"He's got a long-range ball now," Bryant said. "He can pop behind the pick and shoot the jumper. He can pull up off the dribble and shoot it, and him getting to the rim goes unquestioned. He's putting the time in the gym, and I certainly respect that."
The best sign yet of how desperately Rose wants to win came after the Bulls' narrow victory over Cleveland on Wednesday, a game that could have gone either way, the kind of game the Bulls shouldn't be nearly squandering if they have serious aspirations about contending. Rose knows winning alone isn't enough. It is if you merely want to make the playoffs, but not for teams such as the Celtics and Magic, Spurs and Lakers, for whom that's the minimum required. Rose was too annoyed to eat the postgame spread, not easily satisfied -- in the tradition of Bryant and Jordan. Rose isn't blessed with their height, but increasingly he seems to have their hatred of losing. Friday's game with the Lakers is one of those chances to see to what lengths Rose will go to not lose because Kobe is wary of all comers now.
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Before Friday night's game, before he led the Bulls to their first win over the Los Angeles Lakers in four years, before he wowed a national crowd with 29 and 9, Derrick Rose told reporters with a straight face that he's not a star.
"He did?" Joakim Noah said. "When he plays on the court, you really believe he thinks that?"
No, of course not.
"Exactly," Noah said. "He might tell you guys that, but when he's dribbling that ball up the court, he knows what he's doing."
He knows what he's doing, all right. What he did Friday night was score 29 points, knock down three of five 3-pointers, dish out nine assists and, by force of will, lead the Bulls to their most impressive win of this young season, a wildly entertaining 88-84 victory over the defending champion Lakers.
"His swag is crazy right now," Noah said. "That's good. That's a good thing. We need that."
This wasn't just an early December win. The Bulls hadn't beaten Los Angeles since Dec. 19, 2006, and coming off disappointing losses to Orlando and Boston last week, this team needed to make a statement that it was really a player in the big picture.
Do the players feel the same way about one win?
"Of course," Rose said. "When you beat the champions, there's nothing you can say about that. We won this game fair and square."
Rose's pure desire, clichéd as it sounds, separates him from the pretenders and the second-tier players. And it's why he is a star.
"Derrick is somebody who wants to be great," Noah said. "I've never been around somebody who's so hard on himself. He really wants to be the best player he can be. He's special because, you know, he has a lot of abilities, but his mindset is what makes him so unique. I've never seen somebody with that much ability be so humble off the court, but on the court, his swag is unbelievable."
"What he's doing right now is unbelievable," Noah said.
In a game that defined the rising arc of his young career, Rose's most memorable move came with 5 minutes, 31 seconds to go and the Bulls up 74-67.
It was an accidental homage to the ghost he'll chase until the end of his career.
The move came on a catch-and-shoot play out of a timeout with 3 seconds on the shot clock. Rose caught the pass, faded back, off balance, into the Lakers bench. He uncorked his body and buried a 21-foot jumper.
Oh, and Rose hit another shot clock beater, a 15-foot fadeaway, with 25.2 seconds left to keep a dwindling lead at 85-80. He scored nine points in the fourth.
"I don't mean to bring my agent B.J. Armstrong in it, but he said that's when good players are supposed to take over a game," Rose said. "And that's all I was trying to do. And the shots, thank God, went in."
The fans were up for this one, with chants of "Beat L.A." and cheers of "MVP" for Rose.
Rose said the MVP chants feel good, but he's not going to let it go to his head.
"I'm not a star," Rose said before the game. "I'm just playing in the NBA, and trying to do anything to get my team a win, just passing the ball, doing whatever. But you can see the difference between a star and a superstar, especially in this league where superstars like Kobe and other players -- there's only a few of them -- they can take over games and do it on a consistent basis."
Like Noah said, he's always hard on himself.
"I can tell when a player truly wants to be better and does what it takes to improve," Bryant said Thursday, one night before the rematch in Chicago. "It was a quality I had when I was growing up. … I admire that about him. I could really see it from last year to this year."
Kobe is now one of the elder statesman in the league, at 32 years old and in his 15th season, his blessing now means every bit as much as Michael Jordan's did in the late 1990s, when Bryant was a young pup. And Rose has caught his eye. We've seen enough to know now, six weeks into the season, that D-Rose wasn't being presumptuous when he essentially asked in the preseason, "Why not me?" for MVP.
"He's got a long-range ball now," Bryant said. "He can pop behind the pick and shoot the jumper. He can pull up off the dribble and shoot it, and him getting to the rim goes unquestioned. He's putting the time in the gym, and I certainly respect that."
The best sign yet of how desperately Rose wants to win came after the Bulls' narrow victory over Cleveland on Wednesday, a game that could have gone either way, the kind of game the Bulls shouldn't be nearly squandering if they have serious aspirations about contending. Rose knows winning alone isn't enough. It is if you merely want to make the playoffs, but not for teams such as the Celtics and Magic, Spurs and Lakers, for whom that's the minimum required. Rose was too annoyed to eat the postgame spread, not easily satisfied -- in the tradition of Bryant and Jordan. Rose isn't blessed with their height, but increasingly he seems to have their hatred of losing. Friday's game with the Lakers is one of those chances to see to what lengths Rose will go to not lose because Kobe is wary of all comers now.
-----------------------------------------------
Before Friday night's game, before he led the Bulls to their first win over the Los Angeles Lakers in four years, before he wowed a national crowd with 29 and 9, Derrick Rose told reporters with a straight face that he's not a star.
"He did?" Joakim Noah said. "When he plays on the court, you really believe he thinks that?"
No, of course not.
"Exactly," Noah said. "He might tell you guys that, but when he's dribbling that ball up the court, he knows what he's doing."
He knows what he's doing, all right. What he did Friday night was score 29 points, knock down three of five 3-pointers, dish out nine assists and, by force of will, lead the Bulls to their most impressive win of this young season, a wildly entertaining 88-84 victory over the defending champion Lakers.
"His swag is crazy right now," Noah said. "That's good. That's a good thing. We need that."
This wasn't just an early December win. The Bulls hadn't beaten Los Angeles since Dec. 19, 2006, and coming off disappointing losses to Orlando and Boston last week, this team needed to make a statement that it was really a player in the big picture.
Do the players feel the same way about one win?
"Of course," Rose said. "When you beat the champions, there's nothing you can say about that. We won this game fair and square."
Rose's pure desire, clichéd as it sounds, separates him from the pretenders and the second-tier players. And it's why he is a star.
"Derrick is somebody who wants to be great," Noah said. "I've never been around somebody who's so hard on himself. He really wants to be the best player he can be. He's special because, you know, he has a lot of abilities, but his mindset is what makes him so unique. I've never seen somebody with that much ability be so humble off the court, but on the court, his swag is unbelievable."
"What he's doing right now is unbelievable," Noah said.
In a game that defined the rising arc of his young career, Rose's most memorable move came with 5 minutes, 31 seconds to go and the Bulls up 74-67.
It was an accidental homage to the ghost he'll chase until the end of his career.
The move came on a catch-and-shoot play out of a timeout with 3 seconds on the shot clock. Rose caught the pass, faded back, off balance, into the Lakers bench. He uncorked his body and buried a 21-foot jumper.
Oh, and Rose hit another shot clock beater, a 15-foot fadeaway, with 25.2 seconds left to keep a dwindling lead at 85-80. He scored nine points in the fourth.
"I don't mean to bring my agent B.J. Armstrong in it, but he said that's when good players are supposed to take over a game," Rose said. "And that's all I was trying to do. And the shots, thank God, went in."
The fans were up for this one, with chants of "Beat L.A." and cheers of "MVP" for Rose.
Rose said the MVP chants feel good, but he's not going to let it go to his head.
"I'm not a star," Rose said before the game. "I'm just playing in the NBA, and trying to do anything to get my team a win, just passing the ball, doing whatever. But you can see the difference between a star and a superstar, especially in this league where superstars like Kobe and other players -- there's only a few of them -- they can take over games and do it on a consistent basis."
Like Noah said, he's always hard on himself.
12.08.2010
PATTY MILLS - WAITING HIS TURN
With a horde of media members, bright lights, video cameras and microphones surrounding his stall in the Trail Blazers' locker room, Patty Mills sheepishly swiveled around in his chair and quipped:
"What, are you guys waiting for me?"
The Blazers had just defeated the Phoenix Suns 106-99 Tuesday night and Mills had played a significant, if not starring, role. His final statistical line was mostly modest -- nine points, seven assists and three rebounds in 29 minutes -- but perhaps teammate Wesley Matthews summed it up best when he said Mills had been the "player of the game."
The second-year point guard from Australia, who assumed a more prominent role because starting point guard Andre Miller had been suspended for the game, was a blur of energy, excitement and electricity at a time the reeling Blazers desperately needed such traits. It was only Mills' fourth game since joining the rotation as Miller's backup, and it was easily his most impressive and important performance in a Blazers uniform. The previous 17 games he has played a total of 6 mintues.
"He's earning the right to be out there and play more minutes," Blazers coach Nate McMillan said. "He has a high basketball IQ ... he's a very good passer, he sees the floor well and he's very crafty with the ball."
Mills turned in the highlight of the night -- a driving no-look pass through traffic that resulted in a three-point play for Rudy Fernandez. He also recorded six assists in the first half, swished two clutch pull-up jump shots in the third quarter and successful harassed All-Star point guard Steve Nash with his high-energy defense. And Mills did it all with exuberance and flash.
One week ago, before McMillan elevated Mills into the player rotation before the Blazers' game at the Boston Celtics, Mills' NBA career seemed destined to be defined by the upbeat antics and effervescent personality he revealed off the court.
But that personality has also surfaced on the court since Mills entered the rotation. The Blazers are just two games removed from a demoralizing string of six consecutive losses in which they fell to some of the NBA's cellar dwellers. Players admitted their confidence had wavered, and as the team returned to Portland from its worst trip in years, the Blazers were emotionally drained and depressed.
It might just turn out that Mills' upbeat personality has spread through the locker room at a time the Blazers desperately needed it.
"He's never sad," Nicolas Batum said after the Phoenix game. "He's always smiling. And now everybody has a smile on his face. We didn't see that the last two weeks. Everybody was thinking too much, feeling too much. Now we have two wins in a row. We need (Patty's) energy and I think everybody can grab onto that energy."
That Mills has reached this position is nothing short of astonishing. The Blazers' management group didn't expect him to show up for training camp in the fall because rookie Armon Johnson had earned the Blazers' 15th and final roster spot during summer league. And even after he showed up, Mills' odds of making the team featured the words, "slim," and "none." He's not even listed in the Blazers' media guide.
But Jeff Pendergraph tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, opening a door for Mills to be added to the roster just before opening night. The Blazers traded Jerryd Bayless before the regular season and Johnson assumed backup point guard duties. But after a strong start, Johnson struggled and McMillan went to Mills, who has registered 17 points and eight assists on 7-for-12 shooting the last two games -- both Blazers victories.
The recent success is a byproduct of Mills' patience and mental fortitude.
"It was hard," Mills said after practice Wednesday. "But I just knew this opportunity was going to come at some stage. I believed that, whether it was now or in a couple years, it was going to come one day. I've listened to the guys ... They've been telling me to be patient and just be ready because you never know when your time is going to come. You'd be an idiot not to listen to them and that was ringing inside my head the whole time."
Now Mills has a chance to be the catalyst behind what potentially can be a dynamic -- and much-needed -- second unit. Mills is effective in pick-and-roll sets and he's most dangerous in a fast-paced style that features fast breaks and transition offense. With Rudy Fernandez and Batum running the wings, the second unit -- which offered so little during the Blazers' losing streak -- can evolve into a legitimate and fun-to-watch weapon.
Mills has been given a chance. He hopes it's only the beginning.
"What, are you guys waiting for me?"
The Blazers had just defeated the Phoenix Suns 106-99 Tuesday night and Mills had played a significant, if not starring, role. His final statistical line was mostly modest -- nine points, seven assists and three rebounds in 29 minutes -- but perhaps teammate Wesley Matthews summed it up best when he said Mills had been the "player of the game."
The second-year point guard from Australia, who assumed a more prominent role because starting point guard Andre Miller had been suspended for the game, was a blur of energy, excitement and electricity at a time the reeling Blazers desperately needed such traits. It was only Mills' fourth game since joining the rotation as Miller's backup, and it was easily his most impressive and important performance in a Blazers uniform. The previous 17 games he has played a total of 6 mintues.
"He's earning the right to be out there and play more minutes," Blazers coach Nate McMillan said. "He has a high basketball IQ ... he's a very good passer, he sees the floor well and he's very crafty with the ball."
Mills turned in the highlight of the night -- a driving no-look pass through traffic that resulted in a three-point play for Rudy Fernandez. He also recorded six assists in the first half, swished two clutch pull-up jump shots in the third quarter and successful harassed All-Star point guard Steve Nash with his high-energy defense. And Mills did it all with exuberance and flash.
One week ago, before McMillan elevated Mills into the player rotation before the Blazers' game at the Boston Celtics, Mills' NBA career seemed destined to be defined by the upbeat antics and effervescent personality he revealed off the court.
But that personality has also surfaced on the court since Mills entered the rotation. The Blazers are just two games removed from a demoralizing string of six consecutive losses in which they fell to some of the NBA's cellar dwellers. Players admitted their confidence had wavered, and as the team returned to Portland from its worst trip in years, the Blazers were emotionally drained and depressed.
It might just turn out that Mills' upbeat personality has spread through the locker room at a time the Blazers desperately needed it.
"He's never sad," Nicolas Batum said after the Phoenix game. "He's always smiling. And now everybody has a smile on his face. We didn't see that the last two weeks. Everybody was thinking too much, feeling too much. Now we have two wins in a row. We need (Patty's) energy and I think everybody can grab onto that energy."
That Mills has reached this position is nothing short of astonishing. The Blazers' management group didn't expect him to show up for training camp in the fall because rookie Armon Johnson had earned the Blazers' 15th and final roster spot during summer league. And even after he showed up, Mills' odds of making the team featured the words, "slim," and "none." He's not even listed in the Blazers' media guide.
But Jeff Pendergraph tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, opening a door for Mills to be added to the roster just before opening night. The Blazers traded Jerryd Bayless before the regular season and Johnson assumed backup point guard duties. But after a strong start, Johnson struggled and McMillan went to Mills, who has registered 17 points and eight assists on 7-for-12 shooting the last two games -- both Blazers victories.
The recent success is a byproduct of Mills' patience and mental fortitude.
"It was hard," Mills said after practice Wednesday. "But I just knew this opportunity was going to come at some stage. I believed that, whether it was now or in a couple years, it was going to come one day. I've listened to the guys ... They've been telling me to be patient and just be ready because you never know when your time is going to come. You'd be an idiot not to listen to them and that was ringing inside my head the whole time."
Now Mills has a chance to be the catalyst behind what potentially can be a dynamic -- and much-needed -- second unit. Mills is effective in pick-and-roll sets and he's most dangerous in a fast-paced style that features fast breaks and transition offense. With Rudy Fernandez and Batum running the wings, the second unit -- which offered so little during the Blazers' losing streak -- can evolve into a legitimate and fun-to-watch weapon.
Mills has been given a chance. He hopes it's only the beginning.
12.03.2010
LEBRON RETURNS
I thought the snarky signs and chants would bother him. I thought he would be freaked out by the security guards ominously flanking the Heat bench, and maybe even by news that they were serving fans beverages in paper cups as a safety precaution. I thought Miami's lack of cohesion in its first 19 games would doom him over everything else. If you're walking into a potential ambush, you need to be strong, you need to trust each other, you need to know who you are.
Did I think the Cavaliers would win? Actually, yes. I thought the fans would push them to another level, that it would play out like a sports movie: the overachieving underdog taking down the big bully. When TNT's Kenny Smith said he had never felt such electricity in an arena before a regular-season game, I was convinced even more. The fans were ready for a war. As LeBron was warming up, an unmistakable "A--hole" chant reverberated through the building. A few seconds later, TNT showed us a fan wearing a "Lyin' King" T-shirt, another holding a "Quitness" sign, then eight fans standing in a row with T-shirts that spelled out "B-E-T-R-A-Y-E-D."
When the starting lineups were introduced, the booing for LeBron almost sounded like a beehive. He seemed to enjoy it.
Before the opening tap, LeBron let everybody know he was gonna bring it by whipping the powder defiantly into the air like he used to do for each home game when he was with Cleveland. Why not? They hated him, anyway. LeBron was making it clear: I am not backing down.
"I really love the looseness of LeBron James," Reggie Miller said.
The teams traded baskets as the fans either booed or yelled out indecipherable chants. At one point, we could clearly hear an "Akron hates you!" chant. Almost on cue, LeBron drew a foul and strode to the free throw line, accompanied by so many yells, boos and chants that it blended into one giant haterade.
And … freeze!
Stop it right there: 3:35 mark, first quarter, Cleveland leading by two. As LeBron (two points to that point) was making both free throws, Miller and Steve Kerr had this exchange:
Miller: "There's no way that you can possibly prepare for something like this, and knowing that all eyes have been on you since you made that decision … [you're] in that stationary position, with time not going off the clock, at that free throw line, everyone's looking at you. You wonder what's going on in that 26-year-old's mind."
Kerr: "I wouldn't wish it on anybody."
I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
Was that the tipping point? Those six words? That specific moment? Five months of vitriol cresting with LeBron at the line for the first time -- just him and the fans, their first chance to truly let him know how they felt -- and LeBron simply shrugging them off? It's a fascinating 15 seconds to rewatch. As he steps to the line, the noise begins to swell. TNT cuts to the crowd. We see someone booing LeBron and wearing a "VICTIM" T-shirt. We see a close-up of someone with a mustache angrily screaming "BOOOOOOO!" We see a wide shot of fans waiving "BENEDICT ARNOLD" and "MISS IT" signs. There's a close-up on LeBron, then a wide shot. He makes the first free throw. He turns to his bench and smiles, as if to say, "Wow, this is crazy."
Then, TNT cuts to the crowd. We see two "QUITNESS" signs, a sign with LeBron and Pat Riley that says "LeQuit and the Cheat," and a sign with Charles Barkley and the caption, "Punk Move, 'Bron." Panning back, we see another sign: "What should you do? BEG FOR MERCY." Everything bounces off him. Everything. His second free throw doesn't even touch the rim.
And we were off. On the next two possessions, LeBron scored on a gorgeous reverse layup and a long jumper. Miami by four. Timeout. Wade took a breather, and LeBron took over like he always does when Wade sits: setting up a James Jones 3, swishing a jumper over a double-team, then finding Juwan Howard for an open jumper. Just like that, Miami had ripped off a 16-0 run and grabbed a double-digit lead. The game was never the same. As Kerr pointed out later, it was like watching a March Madness underdog hanging with a 1-seed but being unable to overcome the talent disparity.
LeBron's confidence surged as the second quarter closed. He started yapping at his old buddy Boobie Gibson (sitting on Cleveland's bench), as everyone who grew up in the Rick Mahorn/Charles Oakley era waited for one of the Cavaliers to stand up and punch him in the face. Nope. Nothing. For the Cavaliers fans, this probably felt like the bastard brother of their team quitting in those final 90 seconds of Game 6 in Boston this past spring. Show some fight. Show some pride. Show something, for God's sake. It was a pathetic moment. LeBron punked them!
"It was impressive," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "It takes a special player and a person to be able to respond to all of this scrutiny."
It continued in the third quarter, when LeBron exploded for 24 points and made a variety of outrageous shots. No Cavalier knocked him down, bumped him, shoved him, swore at him … they just took it on the chin. In retrospect, that was my big mistake with picking a Cleveland upset: thinking the Cavs cared about avenging their honor after their leader basically told them, "You guys suck, I'm leaving." How sad that the Celtics took LeBron's decision more personally than his former teammates did.
Lebron played some of the best basketball of his career, scoring 36 points in a devastating 27-minute stretch that re-established Miami as a contender. James sat on the bench for all of the fourth quarter, with dozens of security guards and police lining the team's entrance to the court and guarding against objects thrown at him.
This was the LeBron we had been missing all season: attacking LeBron, larger-than-life LeBron, ball-always-in-his-hands LeBron, force-of-nature LeBron, guy-who-could-absolutely-beat-you-in-a-playoff-series LeBron. For one night, he reinvented the Heat, assumed control and relegated Wade to sidekick status … which is how it should have been all along.
Full disclosure: I don't care about "The Decision" anymore. He handled it wrong. He got bad advice. He can't take it back. Whatever. Any people who say they handled their mid-20s perfectly are lying. But as a basketball fan, I thought watching his talents get wasted these first five weeks was somewhat tragic. He will never be Magic Johnson; Magic made everyone better and dominated games without necessarily scoring, whereas LeBron's scoring opens up the game for everyone else. Big difference. And he will never be happy awkwardly trading possessions with Wade.
On Thursday night, LeBron finally looked like LeBron again. Maybe he needed his old court. Maybe he needed to taste the bile of 20,000 passionate Cav fans. But I thought it was one of his greatest nights; instead of folding which a lot of people would of done, he rose to the occasion and even relished it. Of course, greatness usually has a casualty: in this case, Cleveland. The fans made their point (and then some), never disgraced themselves and were betrayed only by their own players. They deserved better in July; they deserved better Thursday night.
The King is gone. You buried him, and then, he buried you. If it's any consolation, you finally brought the best out of him.
Did I think the Cavaliers would win? Actually, yes. I thought the fans would push them to another level, that it would play out like a sports movie: the overachieving underdog taking down the big bully. When TNT's Kenny Smith said he had never felt such electricity in an arena before a regular-season game, I was convinced even more. The fans were ready for a war. As LeBron was warming up, an unmistakable "A--hole" chant reverberated through the building. A few seconds later, TNT showed us a fan wearing a "Lyin' King" T-shirt, another holding a "Quitness" sign, then eight fans standing in a row with T-shirts that spelled out "B-E-T-R-A-Y-E-D."
When the starting lineups were introduced, the booing for LeBron almost sounded like a beehive. He seemed to enjoy it.
Before the opening tap, LeBron let everybody know he was gonna bring it by whipping the powder defiantly into the air like he used to do for each home game when he was with Cleveland. Why not? They hated him, anyway. LeBron was making it clear: I am not backing down.
"I really love the looseness of LeBron James," Reggie Miller said.
The teams traded baskets as the fans either booed or yelled out indecipherable chants. At one point, we could clearly hear an "Akron hates you!" chant. Almost on cue, LeBron drew a foul and strode to the free throw line, accompanied by so many yells, boos and chants that it blended into one giant haterade.
And … freeze!
Stop it right there: 3:35 mark, first quarter, Cleveland leading by two. As LeBron (two points to that point) was making both free throws, Miller and Steve Kerr had this exchange:
Miller: "There's no way that you can possibly prepare for something like this, and knowing that all eyes have been on you since you made that decision … [you're] in that stationary position, with time not going off the clock, at that free throw line, everyone's looking at you. You wonder what's going on in that 26-year-old's mind."
Kerr: "I wouldn't wish it on anybody."
I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
Was that the tipping point? Those six words? That specific moment? Five months of vitriol cresting with LeBron at the line for the first time -- just him and the fans, their first chance to truly let him know how they felt -- and LeBron simply shrugging them off? It's a fascinating 15 seconds to rewatch. As he steps to the line, the noise begins to swell. TNT cuts to the crowd. We see someone booing LeBron and wearing a "VICTIM" T-shirt. We see a close-up of someone with a mustache angrily screaming "BOOOOOOO!" We see a wide shot of fans waiving "BENEDICT ARNOLD" and "MISS IT" signs. There's a close-up on LeBron, then a wide shot. He makes the first free throw. He turns to his bench and smiles, as if to say, "Wow, this is crazy."
Then, TNT cuts to the crowd. We see two "QUITNESS" signs, a sign with LeBron and Pat Riley that says "LeQuit and the Cheat," and a sign with Charles Barkley and the caption, "Punk Move, 'Bron." Panning back, we see another sign: "What should you do? BEG FOR MERCY." Everything bounces off him. Everything. His second free throw doesn't even touch the rim.
And we were off. On the next two possessions, LeBron scored on a gorgeous reverse layup and a long jumper. Miami by four. Timeout. Wade took a breather, and LeBron took over like he always does when Wade sits: setting up a James Jones 3, swishing a jumper over a double-team, then finding Juwan Howard for an open jumper. Just like that, Miami had ripped off a 16-0 run and grabbed a double-digit lead. The game was never the same. As Kerr pointed out later, it was like watching a March Madness underdog hanging with a 1-seed but being unable to overcome the talent disparity.
LeBron's confidence surged as the second quarter closed. He started yapping at his old buddy Boobie Gibson (sitting on Cleveland's bench), as everyone who grew up in the Rick Mahorn/Charles Oakley era waited for one of the Cavaliers to stand up and punch him in the face. Nope. Nothing. For the Cavaliers fans, this probably felt like the bastard brother of their team quitting in those final 90 seconds of Game 6 in Boston this past spring. Show some fight. Show some pride. Show something, for God's sake. It was a pathetic moment. LeBron punked them!
"It was impressive," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "It takes a special player and a person to be able to respond to all of this scrutiny."
It continued in the third quarter, when LeBron exploded for 24 points and made a variety of outrageous shots. No Cavalier knocked him down, bumped him, shoved him, swore at him … they just took it on the chin. In retrospect, that was my big mistake with picking a Cleveland upset: thinking the Cavs cared about avenging their honor after their leader basically told them, "You guys suck, I'm leaving." How sad that the Celtics took LeBron's decision more personally than his former teammates did.
Lebron played some of the best basketball of his career, scoring 36 points in a devastating 27-minute stretch that re-established Miami as a contender. James sat on the bench for all of the fourth quarter, with dozens of security guards and police lining the team's entrance to the court and guarding against objects thrown at him.
This was the LeBron we had been missing all season: attacking LeBron, larger-than-life LeBron, ball-always-in-his-hands LeBron, force-of-nature LeBron, guy-who-could-absolutely-beat-you-in-a-playoff-series LeBron. For one night, he reinvented the Heat, assumed control and relegated Wade to sidekick status … which is how it should have been all along.
Full disclosure: I don't care about "The Decision" anymore. He handled it wrong. He got bad advice. He can't take it back. Whatever. Any people who say they handled their mid-20s perfectly are lying. But as a basketball fan, I thought watching his talents get wasted these first five weeks was somewhat tragic. He will never be Magic Johnson; Magic made everyone better and dominated games without necessarily scoring, whereas LeBron's scoring opens up the game for everyone else. Big difference. And he will never be happy awkwardly trading possessions with Wade.
On Thursday night, LeBron finally looked like LeBron again. Maybe he needed his old court. Maybe he needed to taste the bile of 20,000 passionate Cav fans. But I thought it was one of his greatest nights; instead of folding which a lot of people would of done, he rose to the occasion and even relished it. Of course, greatness usually has a casualty: in this case, Cleveland. The fans made their point (and then some), never disgraced themselves and were betrayed only by their own players. They deserved better in July; they deserved better Thursday night.
The King is gone. You buried him, and then, he buried you. If it's any consolation, you finally brought the best out of him.
11.09.2010
New Orleans Hornets
Approaching the 30-minute post-practice mark Monday at the Alario Center, New Orleans Hornets Coach Monty Williams surveyed the scene on the two practice floors and saw activity at all four baskets, led at separate locations by All-Star captains Chris Paul and David West.
Six weeks ago, when this team convened for training camp, there were seven new faces on the roster and before the preseason ended, the number had swelled to nine.
Yet two weeks into the regular season, the Hornets (6-0) are one of two unbeaten teams in the NBA, along with the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers (7-0).
General Manager Dell Demps, admits the speed in which this group has created a bond, and resulting chemistry, is surprising.
"I would say a little bit, " Demps said. "I think it's a credit to the guys and the coaching staff. They've really worked hard at it, and it's good to get some fruit from all the labors."
And Demps is quick to credit Williams, the youngest coach (39) in the league, for the unexpectedly quick transformation into a cohesive unit.
"As you can see, we finished practice 20 minutes ago, and guys are still going at it -- and they'll probably be here for a while. I think they enjoy being around each other, but it also helps to have certain leadership on the team with Chris and the starting group and Willie (Green) on the bench. Those guys kind of hold it down and keep the groups together."
What most impressed Paul after Saturday night's win at Milwaukee, coming 24 hours after an emotional upset of the Heat at the Arena, was the single-minded cohesion the Hornets exhibited in the second of a back-to-back, as well as the team's complete acceptance of Williams' defense-first philosophy.
"The craziest thing is we're still not where we need to be defensively, " said Paul, though the Hornets rank third in total defense through Sunday, allowing 91.5 points per game. "I think that says a lot about our team. Everybody understands that it's all about winning. Right now, this team is mad when other teams score."
Six weeks ago, when this team convened for training camp, there were seven new faces on the roster and before the preseason ended, the number had swelled to nine.
Yet two weeks into the regular season, the Hornets (6-0) are one of two unbeaten teams in the NBA, along with the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers (7-0).
General Manager Dell Demps, admits the speed in which this group has created a bond, and resulting chemistry, is surprising.
"I would say a little bit, " Demps said. "I think it's a credit to the guys and the coaching staff. They've really worked hard at it, and it's good to get some fruit from all the labors."
And Demps is quick to credit Williams, the youngest coach (39) in the league, for the unexpectedly quick transformation into a cohesive unit.
"As you can see, we finished practice 20 minutes ago, and guys are still going at it -- and they'll probably be here for a while. I think they enjoy being around each other, but it also helps to have certain leadership on the team with Chris and the starting group and Willie (Green) on the bench. Those guys kind of hold it down and keep the groups together."
What most impressed Paul after Saturday night's win at Milwaukee, coming 24 hours after an emotional upset of the Heat at the Arena, was the single-minded cohesion the Hornets exhibited in the second of a back-to-back, as well as the team's complete acceptance of Williams' defense-first philosophy.
"The craziest thing is we're still not where we need to be defensively, " said Paul, though the Hornets rank third in total defense through Sunday, allowing 91.5 points per game. "I think that says a lot about our team. Everybody understands that it's all about winning. Right now, this team is mad when other teams score."
10.26.2010
KEVIN DURANT - 50/40/90?
Only five players in NBA history have shot 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free-throw line. Could Kevin Durant be the sixth?
Kevin Durant could soon become the sixth.
In just his fourth season, Durant looks to be on the cusp of joining the 50-40-90 club. It's a society of shooting efficiency so great that its five members are either already in the Hall of Fame or likely headed there someday.
The numbers stand for field-goal percentage, 3-point percentage and free-throw percentage. Since the NBA instituted the 3-pointer for the 1979-80 season, Larry Bird, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki are the only players to compile the percentages in each category while meeting the league's requirements to qualify. Bird accomplished the feat twice. Nash has recorded those numbers four times, including each of the past three seasons.
With Durant, it seems to not be a question of if he'll join the club, but when.
Last season, at just 21, Durant made 47.6 percent of his shots from the field, 36.5 percent of his 3-pointers and 90 percent of his foul shots. Two seasons ago, Durant hit 42.2 percent of his 3-pointers.
And by all accounts, this will be Durant's biggest year yet.
The Thunder's star forward has quickly become more knowledgeable about the game. In each of his previous three seasons, Durant has added a new wrinkle to his offensive repertoire to make him a more complete scorer. Last year, Durant boosted his free-throw attempts from 7.1 per game to a league-leading 10.2 per game.
Now, after a summer of bulking up and experiencing his first bout with a more physical international game, Durant could return as an even better finisher at the rim and in the paint.
Durant also has shown more awareness when it comes to hoisting 3-pointers. Rather than settle for long-range shots, Durant now looks to beat his man off the dribble more often and work his way to the rim for more high-percentage shots or earn a trip to the foul line.
But duplicating the free-throw percentage might ultimately prove to be the most difficult challenge. Durant made just 21-28 foul shots in six preseason games, good for 75 percent.
History says, however, that whenever it is that Durant does add his name to the exclusive 50-40-90 club it will be nothing but good for the Thunder.
Kevin Durant could soon become the sixth.
In just his fourth season, Durant looks to be on the cusp of joining the 50-40-90 club. It's a society of shooting efficiency so great that its five members are either already in the Hall of Fame or likely headed there someday.
The numbers stand for field-goal percentage, 3-point percentage and free-throw percentage. Since the NBA instituted the 3-pointer for the 1979-80 season, Larry Bird, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki are the only players to compile the percentages in each category while meeting the league's requirements to qualify. Bird accomplished the feat twice. Nash has recorded those numbers four times, including each of the past three seasons.
With Durant, it seems to not be a question of if he'll join the club, but when.
Last season, at just 21, Durant made 47.6 percent of his shots from the field, 36.5 percent of his 3-pointers and 90 percent of his foul shots. Two seasons ago, Durant hit 42.2 percent of his 3-pointers.
And by all accounts, this will be Durant's biggest year yet.
The Thunder's star forward has quickly become more knowledgeable about the game. In each of his previous three seasons, Durant has added a new wrinkle to his offensive repertoire to make him a more complete scorer. Last year, Durant boosted his free-throw attempts from 7.1 per game to a league-leading 10.2 per game.
Now, after a summer of bulking up and experiencing his first bout with a more physical international game, Durant could return as an even better finisher at the rim and in the paint.
Durant also has shown more awareness when it comes to hoisting 3-pointers. Rather than settle for long-range shots, Durant now looks to beat his man off the dribble more often and work his way to the rim for more high-percentage shots or earn a trip to the foul line.
But duplicating the free-throw percentage might ultimately prove to be the most difficult challenge. Durant made just 21-28 foul shots in six preseason games, good for 75 percent.
History says, however, that whenever it is that Durant does add his name to the exclusive 50-40-90 club it will be nothing but good for the Thunder.
DAVID LEE - BLUE COLLAR
After David Lee tweaked his quadriceps in practice Oct. 4, he went home and estimates that he iced it "about 65 times." He spent the next day, an off day, at the Warriors' training facility and returned early the next morning to test his leg.
All of that, just so he wouldn't miss Wednesday's practice.
Yes, we're talking about practice!
Those are not the actions of a typical NBA All-Star.
Lee's the type of guy who puts no stock in a phrase like "All-Star status," because he has had plenty of days filled with phrases like "above average," "good enough" and "end of the bench."
"There are some guys in the league who can sit out every practice and take a couple of casual jumpers right before the game - not even go through the layup lines - and go out there and perform," the power forward said. "I can't do that. I'll have an anxiety attack.
"I have this fear of failure. I have this fear about not getting any better, about somehow starting to level off, and I can't allow that to happen."
So Lee practices.
First. Longest. And hardest.
When coach Keith Smart granted "veteran days off" to Monta Ellis, Stephen Curry and Dorell Wright during training camp, Lee declined. When Andris Biedrins joined Ellis, Curry and Wright on the sideline during the last portion of Monday's practice, Lee was still sweating away with the reserves.
He is like the tennis player who realizes he'll never be as good as the wall, so he keeps slamming forehand after backhand. It's like he's doing a day-to-day experiment to see how much further he can push his body.
"I've gone from the last guy on the bench to the captain, and my work ethic hasn't changed," said Lee, who was acquired by the Warriors in a sign-and-trade deal after five seasons in New York. "In a lot of ways, I still see myself as the last guy on the bench, and that drives me.
"I had to pinch myself (at the All-Star Game) last year in Dallas. When I came into the league, I was hoping to hang on as the last guy on the bench for eight to 10 years."
A PHILOSOPHY OF WORK:
Lee, 27, seems to be indulging in false modesty for a 6-foot-9, 250-pound man who was one of three players in the league to average 20 points and 10 rebounds a game last season. But his original goal of finding a way just to stick in the league probably was logical five seasons ago.
That's when the Knicks drafted him with the final pick of the first round. Coach Larry Brown said Lee was eighth on the depth chart on a team that didn't have eight power forwards. He averaged 5.1 points and 4.5 rebounds a game as a rookie.
"I realized that I had to outwork everyone," Lee said. "I had to go after every rebound and bring an energy that no one else could match. That's the only way I could get on the court."
He knew what to do once he got there. Lee averaged a double-double in three of the next four seasons, including 20.2 points and 11.7 rebounds last season.
Lee had pulled similar transitions in college and high school. At the University of Florida, Lee was plodding through a mediocre career until he decided to flip the switch.
"I was still trying to burn the candle at both ends," Lee said. "Basketball was secondary to being cool."
"I've got a big contract, I've been an All-Star and I've accomplished a lot of things that should make me personally happy, but I haven't been to the playoffs. I haven't won a championship," Lee said. "If I average a double-double and am an All-Star, but we win 25 games, in my opinion, my season has been a failure and I expect to be reviewed as a failure."
What if the Warriors win a championship?
"Oh, I'll always find something new to chase."
All of that, just so he wouldn't miss Wednesday's practice.
Yes, we're talking about practice!
Those are not the actions of a typical NBA All-Star.
Lee's the type of guy who puts no stock in a phrase like "All-Star status," because he has had plenty of days filled with phrases like "above average," "good enough" and "end of the bench."
"There are some guys in the league who can sit out every practice and take a couple of casual jumpers right before the game - not even go through the layup lines - and go out there and perform," the power forward said. "I can't do that. I'll have an anxiety attack.
"I have this fear of failure. I have this fear about not getting any better, about somehow starting to level off, and I can't allow that to happen."
So Lee practices.
First. Longest. And hardest.
When coach Keith Smart granted "veteran days off" to Monta Ellis, Stephen Curry and Dorell Wright during training camp, Lee declined. When Andris Biedrins joined Ellis, Curry and Wright on the sideline during the last portion of Monday's practice, Lee was still sweating away with the reserves.
He is like the tennis player who realizes he'll never be as good as the wall, so he keeps slamming forehand after backhand. It's like he's doing a day-to-day experiment to see how much further he can push his body.
"I've gone from the last guy on the bench to the captain, and my work ethic hasn't changed," said Lee, who was acquired by the Warriors in a sign-and-trade deal after five seasons in New York. "In a lot of ways, I still see myself as the last guy on the bench, and that drives me.
"I had to pinch myself (at the All-Star Game) last year in Dallas. When I came into the league, I was hoping to hang on as the last guy on the bench for eight to 10 years."
A PHILOSOPHY OF WORK:
Lee, 27, seems to be indulging in false modesty for a 6-foot-9, 250-pound man who was one of three players in the league to average 20 points and 10 rebounds a game last season. But his original goal of finding a way just to stick in the league probably was logical five seasons ago.
That's when the Knicks drafted him with the final pick of the first round. Coach Larry Brown said Lee was eighth on the depth chart on a team that didn't have eight power forwards. He averaged 5.1 points and 4.5 rebounds a game as a rookie.
"I realized that I had to outwork everyone," Lee said. "I had to go after every rebound and bring an energy that no one else could match. That's the only way I could get on the court."
He knew what to do once he got there. Lee averaged a double-double in three of the next four seasons, including 20.2 points and 11.7 rebounds last season.
Lee had pulled similar transitions in college and high school. At the University of Florida, Lee was plodding through a mediocre career until he decided to flip the switch.
"I was still trying to burn the candle at both ends," Lee said. "Basketball was secondary to being cool."
"I've got a big contract, I've been an All-Star and I've accomplished a lot of things that should make me personally happy, but I haven't been to the playoffs. I haven't won a championship," Lee said. "If I average a double-double and am an All-Star, but we win 25 games, in my opinion, my season has been a failure and I expect to be reviewed as a failure."
What if the Warriors win a championship?
"Oh, I'll always find something new to chase."
10.13.2010
STEVE NASH - THE BEST SHOOTER EVER?
Is Steve Nash the best shooter to play in the NBA, at least since the NBA incorporated the three-point line. While my belief is based primarily on observation, the numbers support the theory. John Hollinger, the creator of the player efficiency rankings, ranks Nash as the all-time #1 shooter based on a combined shooting range (CSR) which adds 2-point percentage, 3-pt % and FT%.
According to Hollinger’s rankings, four players are career 180 Shooters: Nash(184.9), Steve Kerr (181.2), Reggie Miller (180.7) and Mark Price(180.7). Also, Steve Nash and Larry Bird are the only players to finish multiple seasons in the even more difficult 90-50-40 club (90% FT, 50% 2-pt FG% and 40% 3-pt FG%). Bird accomplished the feat twice, while Nash has accomplished the feat four times ('06, '08, '09, and '10). Based on the numbers, I do not see much room to argue for anyone else.
If we agree that Nash is the best shooter of all time, why don’t more players emulate him?
According to Hollinger’s rankings, four players are career 180 Shooters: Nash(184.9), Steve Kerr (181.2), Reggie Miller (180.7) and Mark Price(180.7). Also, Steve Nash and Larry Bird are the only players to finish multiple seasons in the even more difficult 90-50-40 club (90% FT, 50% 2-pt FG% and 40% 3-pt FG%). Bird accomplished the feat twice, while Nash has accomplished the feat four times ('06, '08, '09, and '10). Based on the numbers, I do not see much room to argue for anyone else.
If we agree that Nash is the best shooter of all time, why don’t more players emulate him?
9.27.2010
Peyton Manning - A Savy Leader
The undrafted rookie wideout who’d been plucked off the practice squad a day earlier had a suggestion for Peyton Manning at a key stage of Sunday’s game, and the NFL’s best quarterback rightfully could have rolled his eyes and told the kid to shut up and block somebody.
After all, logic suggested that allowing an untested player to improvise an end-zone route against the Denver Broncos might play out like a horror flick for the Indianapolis Colts.
Well, Manning listened.
Veteran nose tackle Jamal Williams said after his Broncos had suffered a 27-13 defeat to the defending AFC champions and their future Hall of Fame quarterback, “He’s a monster, man. F*#%*@g Peyton Manning.”
That’s as good a description as any of an all-time great at the height of his powers.
On Sunday, Manning showed up at Mile High without two key wideouts Pierre Garcon and Anthony Gonzalez. He was going with three unfamiliar newbies on his offensive line as well.
White, perhaps the rawest receiver Manning has broken in over the course of his 13-year career, was a former Michigan State walk-on who signed with the Colts as a free agent after being blown off in April’s NFL draft. He was released after a strong preseason and signed to Indy’s practice squad, earning a promotion Saturday after starting wideout Garcon was ruled out with a hamstring injury.
With the Broncos making a concerted effort to take away Manning’s top targets, White joined second-year wideout Austin Collie as prime options.
As Manning said after the game, “It’s hard to play with 10, right? You have to play your reads. You try to give White some plays that he knows and give him a chance.”
With five minutes left in the third quarter and the Colts trying to extend a 13-10 lead, Manning had to be a bit surprised when White sidled up to him with a second-and-5 from the Denver 9-yard line ahead and offered his unsolicited input.
Um, excuse me, Peyton. So, uh, I was thinking that maybe, since the defender seems to be cheating to the inside that, uh, we might be able to fool him, Sir. If you think it’s a good idea, that is…
“I probably should have called him ‘Mr. Manning’, right?” White acknowledged afterward. “He’s probably thinking, ‘Who is this kid? Get the hell out of here.’ ”
What White actually said to Manning – “My guy’s playing me inside. I think I can get him on the slant and up” – was enough to inspire the crafty quarterback’s trust. In fact, the young receiver had already laid the groundwork when few others were watching.
After the game, Manning made a point of stressing that his familiarity with White was a product of countless repetitions during offseason workouts.
“The NFL is trying to get rid of offseason workouts,” Manning said. “Offseason workouts – that’s how we’ve gotten our edge over the years. It’s how you really develop a player and improve your craft.
“Without the offseason, how do we get anybody ready to play? I’ve thrown to Blair White since we picked him up in April, and there’s no way he’s ready to play Sunday if I don’t have those reps with him. In training camp, there just aren’t enough reps to get familiar with a guy near the bottom of the depth chart. You’ve got be able to throw to him in the spring – otherwise I wouldn’t feel good about rushing him out there.”
Even if White never catches another NFL pass, he’ll feel warm and fuzzy about the nine-yard touchdown grab that put Indy up 20-10: As he’d humbly suggested, White ran a slant on cornerback Perrish Cox, who bit on Manning’s cold pump fake, then turned it back outside as the perfectly delivered ball settled gently into his hands.
Manning threw 43 passes on Sunday, completing 27 for 325 yards and three TDs, with no interceptions or sacks. Those are impressive numbers and it’s not too early to proclaim that Manning, who won an unprecedented fourth MVP award last year, has a solid shot at No. 5.
What Manning has done so far in 2010 is complete 70 percent of his passes for nine TDs and zero interceptions. The Colts, who’ve won 12 or more games for seven consecutive seasons, are 2-1, tied for first atop the AFC South.
After all, logic suggested that allowing an untested player to improvise an end-zone route against the Denver Broncos might play out like a horror flick for the Indianapolis Colts.
Well, Manning listened.
Veteran nose tackle Jamal Williams said after his Broncos had suffered a 27-13 defeat to the defending AFC champions and their future Hall of Fame quarterback, “He’s a monster, man. F*#%*@g Peyton Manning.”
That’s as good a description as any of an all-time great at the height of his powers.
On Sunday, Manning showed up at Mile High without two key wideouts Pierre Garcon and Anthony Gonzalez. He was going with three unfamiliar newbies on his offensive line as well.
White, perhaps the rawest receiver Manning has broken in over the course of his 13-year career, was a former Michigan State walk-on who signed with the Colts as a free agent after being blown off in April’s NFL draft. He was released after a strong preseason and signed to Indy’s practice squad, earning a promotion Saturday after starting wideout Garcon was ruled out with a hamstring injury.
With the Broncos making a concerted effort to take away Manning’s top targets, White joined second-year wideout Austin Collie as prime options.
As Manning said after the game, “It’s hard to play with 10, right? You have to play your reads. You try to give White some plays that he knows and give him a chance.”
With five minutes left in the third quarter and the Colts trying to extend a 13-10 lead, Manning had to be a bit surprised when White sidled up to him with a second-and-5 from the Denver 9-yard line ahead and offered his unsolicited input.
Um, excuse me, Peyton. So, uh, I was thinking that maybe, since the defender seems to be cheating to the inside that, uh, we might be able to fool him, Sir. If you think it’s a good idea, that is…
“I probably should have called him ‘Mr. Manning’, right?” White acknowledged afterward. “He’s probably thinking, ‘Who is this kid? Get the hell out of here.’ ”
What White actually said to Manning – “My guy’s playing me inside. I think I can get him on the slant and up” – was enough to inspire the crafty quarterback’s trust. In fact, the young receiver had already laid the groundwork when few others were watching.
After the game, Manning made a point of stressing that his familiarity with White was a product of countless repetitions during offseason workouts.
“The NFL is trying to get rid of offseason workouts,” Manning said. “Offseason workouts – that’s how we’ve gotten our edge over the years. It’s how you really develop a player and improve your craft.
“Without the offseason, how do we get anybody ready to play? I’ve thrown to Blair White since we picked him up in April, and there’s no way he’s ready to play Sunday if I don’t have those reps with him. In training camp, there just aren’t enough reps to get familiar with a guy near the bottom of the depth chart. You’ve got be able to throw to him in the spring – otherwise I wouldn’t feel good about rushing him out there.”
Even if White never catches another NFL pass, he’ll feel warm and fuzzy about the nine-yard touchdown grab that put Indy up 20-10: As he’d humbly suggested, White ran a slant on cornerback Perrish Cox, who bit on Manning’s cold pump fake, then turned it back outside as the perfectly delivered ball settled gently into his hands.
Manning threw 43 passes on Sunday, completing 27 for 325 yards and three TDs, with no interceptions or sacks. Those are impressive numbers and it’s not too early to proclaim that Manning, who won an unprecedented fourth MVP award last year, has a solid shot at No. 5.
What Manning has done so far in 2010 is complete 70 percent of his passes for nine TDs and zero interceptions. The Colts, who’ve won 12 or more games for seven consecutive seasons, are 2-1, tied for first atop the AFC South.
9.24.2010
Mary Lou Retton
One of the most inspirational moments in my years serving as Chairman of Psychology on The U. S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Council was witnessing the first perfect 10 ever scored by an American gymnast in the summer games, by Mary Lou Retton in the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984.
Mary Lou wasn’t born a classic gymnast. She didn’t have the movements of a ballet dancer. She was just 4 feet 9 inches tall, with a compact, muscular body. She said, “I knew I wouldn’t look graceful in floor exercises, or doing those ballerina moves. But I was a good sprinter and I had a lot of power and explosiveness. So I could do some things some of the other girls couldn’t do.”
By the age of 14 she was West Virginia State Champion, and winning gymnastic meets throughout the world. But as young as she was, she was mature enough to realize she needed to do much more. “I needed someone pushing me,” she said. “I needed some other girls around me who were shooting for the same goal I was.”
So, at a time when most teenagers are thinking about anything but commitment, Mary Lou Retton made an enormous sacrifice. She left the comfort of her home in Fairmont, West Virginia, and moved to Houston, into the home of a family she didn’t know, just for the opportunity to train under one of the world’s greatest, but most demanding, gymnastic coaches, Bela Karolyi.
While other kids were watching TV, going to a movie, hanging out with friends, and going on trips, she was practicing four hours a day, seven days a week. Karolyi changed everything she had been doing for eight years, from the way she tumbled to the way she ate.
A grind? No doubt.
Fun? Not much.
Then why? Because winners work at doing things the rest of the population won’t even consider trying. She may not have enjoyed the routine, but she loved the sport, the challenge, and the dream. Then, just a few weeks before the summer games, her right knee suddenly locked. Fragments of torn cartilage had broken loose and had become wedged in the knee joint. Less than 10 days after arthroscopic surgery, she was back in the gym for a full workout. There was no time to lose, only time to get ready to win.
In her final event, the vault, Mary Lou needed a 9.95, a near-perfect performance, to tie the Romanian favorite for the gold medal. One writer described her effort this way: “She raced down the line, sprang off the vault, twisted at high altitude, and landed as still as a dropped bar of lead, yet as soft as a springtime butterfly.”
She scored a perfect 10, the ultimate. But to the surprise and awe of spectators, officials and myself, she went ahead and executed the optional, second vault. Incredibly, the result was the same again: a perfect 10.
The only two individuals not surprised were Mary Lou Retton and her coach, Bela Karolyi.
In an interview, I heard her remark that her self-talk leading up to those two perfect vaults went something like this: “Relax. Concentrate. Thanks for all the car pools, Mom. This vault’s for you. Let’s go!”
Mary Lou wasn’t born a classic gymnast. She didn’t have the movements of a ballet dancer. She was just 4 feet 9 inches tall, with a compact, muscular body. She said, “I knew I wouldn’t look graceful in floor exercises, or doing those ballerina moves. But I was a good sprinter and I had a lot of power and explosiveness. So I could do some things some of the other girls couldn’t do.”
By the age of 14 she was West Virginia State Champion, and winning gymnastic meets throughout the world. But as young as she was, she was mature enough to realize she needed to do much more. “I needed someone pushing me,” she said. “I needed some other girls around me who were shooting for the same goal I was.”
So, at a time when most teenagers are thinking about anything but commitment, Mary Lou Retton made an enormous sacrifice. She left the comfort of her home in Fairmont, West Virginia, and moved to Houston, into the home of a family she didn’t know, just for the opportunity to train under one of the world’s greatest, but most demanding, gymnastic coaches, Bela Karolyi.
While other kids were watching TV, going to a movie, hanging out with friends, and going on trips, she was practicing four hours a day, seven days a week. Karolyi changed everything she had been doing for eight years, from the way she tumbled to the way she ate.
A grind? No doubt.
Fun? Not much.
Then why? Because winners work at doing things the rest of the population won’t even consider trying. She may not have enjoyed the routine, but she loved the sport, the challenge, and the dream. Then, just a few weeks before the summer games, her right knee suddenly locked. Fragments of torn cartilage had broken loose and had become wedged in the knee joint. Less than 10 days after arthroscopic surgery, she was back in the gym for a full workout. There was no time to lose, only time to get ready to win.
In her final event, the vault, Mary Lou needed a 9.95, a near-perfect performance, to tie the Romanian favorite for the gold medal. One writer described her effort this way: “She raced down the line, sprang off the vault, twisted at high altitude, and landed as still as a dropped bar of lead, yet as soft as a springtime butterfly.”
She scored a perfect 10, the ultimate. But to the surprise and awe of spectators, officials and myself, she went ahead and executed the optional, second vault. Incredibly, the result was the same again: a perfect 10.
The only two individuals not surprised were Mary Lou Retton and her coach, Bela Karolyi.
In an interview, I heard her remark that her self-talk leading up to those two perfect vaults went something like this: “Relax. Concentrate. Thanks for all the car pools, Mom. This vault’s for you. Let’s go!”
9.14.2010
Welker Proves Skeptics Wrong Again
In January, doctors suggested to Wes Welker(notes) that his ripped-up left knee would take about one calendar year to heal. The New England Patriots receiver had torn both his ACL and his MCL. For added fun, he also needed rotator-cuff surgery.
The 2010 season, they said, was all but shot.
“You know doctors,” Welker said with a smile Sunday. “What do they know?”
Welker’s story as an undersized, unwanted everyman who became the most prolific pass-catcher in the NFL was already bordering on saccharine Disney sports-flick levels. Then came Sunday, when he shaved a remarkable three-plus months off the predicted recovery time and returned to action 252 days after his massive injury.
He wasn’t just “back,” either. He was back, immediately displaying the darting speed and slippery form that helped him lead the league in receptions two of the past three seasons. He caught eight passes for 64 yards and two touchdowns in the Patriots’ 38-24 victory over Cincinnati.
“It was awesome,” quarterback Tom Brady said.
Like a bad Hollywood script, the ending was entirely predictable, at least to the people who know Welker. The doctors may have focused on the actual medical tests when predicting a recovery time. Everyone else just considered the name of the patient.
“I knew in February he was going to be back out on the field opening day,” said Brady, who had to overcome his own ACL injury prior to last year’s season opener. “The determination he has is pretty remarkable.”
This is what Welker does: upend conventional wisdom, surprise critics and make the improbable seem like no big deal.
“There [were] different scenarios kind of talked about, like [injured reserve] and ‘save my body’ and different things like that,” he said Sunday. “But that’s just not in me. I can’t sit there and watch my team out there playing.”
He said this in his calm, dry drawl. On the field, he’s a burst of energy. Off it, he’s a laid-back, matter-of-fact, take-it-all-in kind of guy. There wasn’t going to be a lot of look-at-me emotion postgame. Maybe it all still seems so tenuous. Welker was a prep star in Oklahoma City, a state player of the year, who didn’t receive a single scholarship offer in light of his diminutive size – now listed at 5-foot-9, 185 pounds, then even smaller and lighter. He thought about walking on somewhere. He thought about joining the Navy.
Eventually, another kid backed out of a scholarship with Texas Tech and the Red Raiders took a late flyer on him. He wound up scoring 31 touchdowns for Tech – including eight on punt returns, which still stands as a NCAA record.
It wasn’t enough to attract NFL interest. Forget about being drafted; he wasn’t even invited to the NFL scouting combine. His height and weight were considered so un-NFL-like they weren’t even worth measuring. He was deemed as nothing more than the byproduct of then-Tech coach Mike Leach spread offense.
Welker managed to secure a tryout with the San Diego Chargers anyway, made the team and then was cut after the first game. The Miami Dolphins picked him up as a special-teams player and, over three seasons, began using him more and more as a wide receiver. They were never sold on him, though, and ultimately traded him to New England.
That was 2007, and since then Welker has become the only player in NFL history to catch at least 110 passes in three consecutive years. Last year, he caught 123 – tied for second most for a single season in NFL history.
People stopped doubting Welker, at least until his left knee crumpled as he tried to make a cut in the season finale in Houston. The critics had always wondered how long he could hold up in the NFL. And while the injury didn’t come on a hit, the result was the same. When he returned, they wondered if he would still have the water-bug speed so essential to his game.
Welker cared only about getting back on the field by Sept. 12. He told his doctors as much.
“They were kind of like, ‘Well, let’s wait and see where we’re at when we get there,’ ” Welker said. “So I tried to put it in their heads early. … I think when they saw my quad and how all the muscles were the same size as the other side, they were a little bit shocked but at the same time very cautious.”
Welker flew much of his family in for the game Sunday, acknowledging this was a bit of a rebirth. He’s vowed not to take a moment of being a NFL player for granted. When he caught the first pass of the season, the Gillette Stadium crowd roared with admiration. So, too, did his teammates. Then he brought home the first Patriots TD. And then another.
Other than having to wear “a stupid knee brace that I hate and can’t wait to burn,” the day was better than he dreamt.
“It’s kind of a special deal,” Welker said. “It was definitely a cool thing.”
Welker isn’t the most feared receiver in the league; he’s just the most frustrating to attempt to cover. He’s found a way to make his size an advantage. His low center of gravity allows him to push away from stronger defenders and create space. He’s a master at avoiding hits and is consistently among the league leaders in yards after the catch.
And, of course, he catches just about everything thrown in his direction.
He’s the perfect complement to Randy Moss, the Patriots’ fast deep threat who “takes the top off the defense” and allows room for Welker to work underneath. Conversely, Welker prevents defensive backs from focusing solely on Moss. The combo will be a handful for the Jets in next Sunday’s early-season divisional clash.
Welker’s loss was crushing to the Patriots last season – the team was listless and ineffective in a playoff loss to Baltimore. Sunday, it looked like the powerhouse of old, with the return of the NFL’s unlikely star raising everyone’s emotions.
Welker would just shrug at all the fanfare. His play was a surprise only to those foolish enough to still doubt him.
The 2010 season, they said, was all but shot.
“You know doctors,” Welker said with a smile Sunday. “What do they know?”
Welker’s story as an undersized, unwanted everyman who became the most prolific pass-catcher in the NFL was already bordering on saccharine Disney sports-flick levels. Then came Sunday, when he shaved a remarkable three-plus months off the predicted recovery time and returned to action 252 days after his massive injury.
He wasn’t just “back,” either. He was back, immediately displaying the darting speed and slippery form that helped him lead the league in receptions two of the past three seasons. He caught eight passes for 64 yards and two touchdowns in the Patriots’ 38-24 victory over Cincinnati.
“It was awesome,” quarterback Tom Brady said.
Like a bad Hollywood script, the ending was entirely predictable, at least to the people who know Welker. The doctors may have focused on the actual medical tests when predicting a recovery time. Everyone else just considered the name of the patient.
“I knew in February he was going to be back out on the field opening day,” said Brady, who had to overcome his own ACL injury prior to last year’s season opener. “The determination he has is pretty remarkable.”
This is what Welker does: upend conventional wisdom, surprise critics and make the improbable seem like no big deal.
“There [were] different scenarios kind of talked about, like [injured reserve] and ‘save my body’ and different things like that,” he said Sunday. “But that’s just not in me. I can’t sit there and watch my team out there playing.”
He said this in his calm, dry drawl. On the field, he’s a burst of energy. Off it, he’s a laid-back, matter-of-fact, take-it-all-in kind of guy. There wasn’t going to be a lot of look-at-me emotion postgame. Maybe it all still seems so tenuous. Welker was a prep star in Oklahoma City, a state player of the year, who didn’t receive a single scholarship offer in light of his diminutive size – now listed at 5-foot-9, 185 pounds, then even smaller and lighter. He thought about walking on somewhere. He thought about joining the Navy.
Eventually, another kid backed out of a scholarship with Texas Tech and the Red Raiders took a late flyer on him. He wound up scoring 31 touchdowns for Tech – including eight on punt returns, which still stands as a NCAA record.
It wasn’t enough to attract NFL interest. Forget about being drafted; he wasn’t even invited to the NFL scouting combine. His height and weight were considered so un-NFL-like they weren’t even worth measuring. He was deemed as nothing more than the byproduct of then-Tech coach Mike Leach spread offense.
Welker managed to secure a tryout with the San Diego Chargers anyway, made the team and then was cut after the first game. The Miami Dolphins picked him up as a special-teams player and, over three seasons, began using him more and more as a wide receiver. They were never sold on him, though, and ultimately traded him to New England.
That was 2007, and since then Welker has become the only player in NFL history to catch at least 110 passes in three consecutive years. Last year, he caught 123 – tied for second most for a single season in NFL history.
People stopped doubting Welker, at least until his left knee crumpled as he tried to make a cut in the season finale in Houston. The critics had always wondered how long he could hold up in the NFL. And while the injury didn’t come on a hit, the result was the same. When he returned, they wondered if he would still have the water-bug speed so essential to his game.
Welker cared only about getting back on the field by Sept. 12. He told his doctors as much.
“They were kind of like, ‘Well, let’s wait and see where we’re at when we get there,’ ” Welker said. “So I tried to put it in their heads early. … I think when they saw my quad and how all the muscles were the same size as the other side, they were a little bit shocked but at the same time very cautious.”
Welker flew much of his family in for the game Sunday, acknowledging this was a bit of a rebirth. He’s vowed not to take a moment of being a NFL player for granted. When he caught the first pass of the season, the Gillette Stadium crowd roared with admiration. So, too, did his teammates. Then he brought home the first Patriots TD. And then another.
Other than having to wear “a stupid knee brace that I hate and can’t wait to burn,” the day was better than he dreamt.
“It’s kind of a special deal,” Welker said. “It was definitely a cool thing.”
Welker isn’t the most feared receiver in the league; he’s just the most frustrating to attempt to cover. He’s found a way to make his size an advantage. His low center of gravity allows him to push away from stronger defenders and create space. He’s a master at avoiding hits and is consistently among the league leaders in yards after the catch.
And, of course, he catches just about everything thrown in his direction.
He’s the perfect complement to Randy Moss, the Patriots’ fast deep threat who “takes the top off the defense” and allows room for Welker to work underneath. Conversely, Welker prevents defensive backs from focusing solely on Moss. The combo will be a handful for the Jets in next Sunday’s early-season divisional clash.
Welker’s loss was crushing to the Patriots last season – the team was listless and ineffective in a playoff loss to Baltimore. Sunday, it looked like the powerhouse of old, with the return of the NFL’s unlikely star raising everyone’s emotions.
Welker would just shrug at all the fanfare. His play was a surprise only to those foolish enough to still doubt him.
9.13.2010
KEVIN DURANT - TOO UNSELFISH
Kevin Durant is too unselfish.
That's the one criticism U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski has of the Oklahoma City Thunder forward so far in the Americans' preparations for the world championships. He's watched Durant pass up too many shots.
A team's best player can't do that. Krzyzewski freely bestows that distinction on the 21-year-old Durant and is confident the other players on this young squad agree. It's hard to argue, considering Durant last season became the youngest to win the NBA scoring crown.
"They look to him all the time," Krzyzewski said. "They're OK with Kevin shooting. If he misses, they want him to shoot again. They know. They've seen it."
He needs to keep shooting even in games like Thursday's intrasquad scrimmage at Radio City Music Hall, when Durant was 4 of 12 and missed all five 3-point attempts.
"He's our guy," elder statesman Chauncey Billups said. "He's the go-to guy. He's the guy who for us is going to be the scorer and do all the things that Kobe, LeBron did on the Olympic team."
Durant sounded a bit conflicted upon being told his coach wanted him to be less unselfish.
"I thought I was doing a better job of finding the open man, but I guess he wants me to be more aggressive," he said.
"I don't want to be a guy that comes out here and tries to take all the shots," Durant added. "We have a lot of scorers here, so I just want to be a complement on the floor."
But he's noticed his point guards, Billups and Rajon Rondo, reminding him when he's not assertive enough.
"Certain situations during the game, I'm just letting him know we have to go through him down the stretch," Rondo said. "There's going to be some games where he has to take us home and not be so passive and be aggressive. The coaches obviously are drawing up plays to put him in situations to score the ball."
Durant averaged 30.1 points in his third NBA season to earn All-NBA first team honors. He led the Thunder to the playoffs, where they pushed the eventual champion Lakers to six games in the opening round.
"Be yourself," Lakers veteran Lamar Odom said of his advice for Durant. "He led the league in scoring. If he could lead this league in scoring, too, that would help."
No pressure.
But that's the prominent position Durant finds himself in even though this is his first stint on the national team. The U.S. heads into the world championships in Turkey later this month looking to win to clinch a berth at the 2012 Olympics.
"Everyone says Kevin Durant's the leader. He may be our best player; that doesn't mean you're the leader," Krzyzewski said. "Let him just be the best player. Let Chauncey and Lamar, those guys be the leaders."
The Americans play an exhibition Sunday against France at Madison Square Garden, the next chance for Durant to show he's not passing up on the shots a team's best player needs to take.
"Kevin wants to be an outstanding player," Krzyzewski said. "He wants to be the best. So being in this environment with this caliber of player, how he asserts himself here in a different environment will help him even more when he goes back to his current environment."
That's the one criticism U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski has of the Oklahoma City Thunder forward so far in the Americans' preparations for the world championships. He's watched Durant pass up too many shots.
A team's best player can't do that. Krzyzewski freely bestows that distinction on the 21-year-old Durant and is confident the other players on this young squad agree. It's hard to argue, considering Durant last season became the youngest to win the NBA scoring crown.
"They look to him all the time," Krzyzewski said. "They're OK with Kevin shooting. If he misses, they want him to shoot again. They know. They've seen it."
He needs to keep shooting even in games like Thursday's intrasquad scrimmage at Radio City Music Hall, when Durant was 4 of 12 and missed all five 3-point attempts.
"He's our guy," elder statesman Chauncey Billups said. "He's the go-to guy. He's the guy who for us is going to be the scorer and do all the things that Kobe, LeBron did on the Olympic team."
Durant sounded a bit conflicted upon being told his coach wanted him to be less unselfish.
"I thought I was doing a better job of finding the open man, but I guess he wants me to be more aggressive," he said.
"I don't want to be a guy that comes out here and tries to take all the shots," Durant added. "We have a lot of scorers here, so I just want to be a complement on the floor."
But he's noticed his point guards, Billups and Rajon Rondo, reminding him when he's not assertive enough.
"Certain situations during the game, I'm just letting him know we have to go through him down the stretch," Rondo said. "There's going to be some games where he has to take us home and not be so passive and be aggressive. The coaches obviously are drawing up plays to put him in situations to score the ball."
Durant averaged 30.1 points in his third NBA season to earn All-NBA first team honors. He led the Thunder to the playoffs, where they pushed the eventual champion Lakers to six games in the opening round.
"Be yourself," Lakers veteran Lamar Odom said of his advice for Durant. "He led the league in scoring. If he could lead this league in scoring, too, that would help."
No pressure.
But that's the prominent position Durant finds himself in even though this is his first stint on the national team. The U.S. heads into the world championships in Turkey later this month looking to win to clinch a berth at the 2012 Olympics.
"Everyone says Kevin Durant's the leader. He may be our best player; that doesn't mean you're the leader," Krzyzewski said. "Let him just be the best player. Let Chauncey and Lamar, those guys be the leaders."
The Americans play an exhibition Sunday against France at Madison Square Garden, the next chance for Durant to show he's not passing up on the shots a team's best player needs to take.
"Kevin wants to be an outstanding player," Krzyzewski said. "He wants to be the best. So being in this environment with this caliber of player, how he asserts himself here in a different environment will help him even more when he goes back to his current environment."
Team USA's Leader
Chauncey Billups assumes the role of leader for Team USA
A time will come during the world championships in Turkey — a close game, possibly with a medal at stake — when Team USA, from players to coaches, will rely on Chauncey Billups.
For his experience
For his knowledge
For his leadership.
Billups, 33, is the elder statesman of a team with an average age of nearly 25. He is to this U.S. team what Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Kidd was to the 2008 gold medal-winning Olympic team.
When the USA opens play Saturday against Croatia, Billups will be "as important as anybody on our team because he's the leader of the team," coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
"He's been through every experience as a player, and he's been successful," Krzyzewski said. "He and I have a very close relationship, and we talk about the team all the time."
That relationship began in earnest in 2007, when Billups worked out with Team USA in preparation for the 2008 Games.
"We have a mutual respect for one another," Billups said. "We can always be honest and frank with each other."
A family matter forced Billups to withdraw from Olympic consideration, but he maintained an interest in international basketball.
When USA Basketball Chairman Jerry Colangelo began compiling names for the 2010 worlds, Billups was at the top of the list.
Colangelo needed him, knowing that Kidd, Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and Miami Heat forward LeBron James and Heat guard Dwyane Wade, among other big stars, would not be playing in Turkey.
"Even though these guys are really good players on their NBA teams, this is just a different situation," Krzyzewski said. "And having Chauncey there to settle everyone down, give confidence, know game situations, it's invaluable."
Billups started in each of the team's four exhibition victories in the past two weeks, averaging 10.3 points. But scoring isn't his only job. The USA has plenty of scorers.
Coaches love having players on the court who are an extension of them. That is Billups. Sometimes it's easier for players to hear criticism or instruction from a peer than from a coach.
Billups said if four guys are playing hard defensively and one is not, he has no problem calling out the player. Or if the physical international play that is not allowed in the NBA bothers Durant, Billups can use his calming influence.
"Knowing how I lead and how I go about it makes it a little better for the coach," Billups said.
A time will come during the world championships in Turkey — a close game, possibly with a medal at stake — when Team USA, from players to coaches, will rely on Chauncey Billups.
For his experience
For his knowledge
For his leadership.
Billups, 33, is the elder statesman of a team with an average age of nearly 25. He is to this U.S. team what Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Kidd was to the 2008 gold medal-winning Olympic team.
When the USA opens play Saturday against Croatia, Billups will be "as important as anybody on our team because he's the leader of the team," coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
"He's been through every experience as a player, and he's been successful," Krzyzewski said. "He and I have a very close relationship, and we talk about the team all the time."
That relationship began in earnest in 2007, when Billups worked out with Team USA in preparation for the 2008 Games.
"We have a mutual respect for one another," Billups said. "We can always be honest and frank with each other."
A family matter forced Billups to withdraw from Olympic consideration, but he maintained an interest in international basketball.
When USA Basketball Chairman Jerry Colangelo began compiling names for the 2010 worlds, Billups was at the top of the list.
Colangelo needed him, knowing that Kidd, Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant and Miami Heat forward LeBron James and Heat guard Dwyane Wade, among other big stars, would not be playing in Turkey.
"Even though these guys are really good players on their NBA teams, this is just a different situation," Krzyzewski said. "And having Chauncey there to settle everyone down, give confidence, know game situations, it's invaluable."
Billups started in each of the team's four exhibition victories in the past two weeks, averaging 10.3 points. But scoring isn't his only job. The USA has plenty of scorers.
Coaches love having players on the court who are an extension of them. That is Billups. Sometimes it's easier for players to hear criticism or instruction from a peer than from a coach.
Billups said if four guys are playing hard defensively and one is not, he has no problem calling out the player. Or if the physical international play that is not allowed in the NBA bothers Durant, Billups can use his calming influence.
"Knowing how I lead and how I go about it makes it a little better for the coach," Billups said.
9.12.2010
TYLER HANSBROUGH
For a North Carolina men's player to have his jersey retired, he must win at least one of six national player of the year awards: The Associated Press, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, the National Association of Basketball Coaches, Sporting News, the Wooden Award and the Naismith Award.
Tyler Hansbrough: Warrior
We have a lot of warriors in college sports. On some nights in March, some achieve their status for clutch shots in pressure-filled moments, others for big rebounding numbers, and still others for defensive prowess.
"There's really no word to describe him,” Tyler Zeller said, still awestruck after a season of watching Hansbrough each day. “It’s amazing playing out there and knowing you’ve got the guy who is going to outwork every other person on the court. He never takes a day or a play off.”
“He's our leader,” Ty Lawson added. “Everything he does on the court, everybody should follow. He's been our best player—he scores, he's our toughness, we follow him. If he wasn't our leader on the court, I don't know what we would do."
“I guess I’d say tenacity,” Wayne Ellington suggested. “The way he just keeps going and going and going, it’s like he always plays with a chip on his shoulder. I’ve never been around a guy who goes that hard on every single play.”
Indeed, Hansbrough’s place in Carolina basketball lore is secure not just because of the wins he and his teammates amassed, the records he broke, the accolades he earned. Hansbrough is beloved by Tar Heel fans and despised by so many others because every time he stepped on the court, he played as though his life depended on it. Never the most athletic, or the flashiest, he earned everything he received from the game of college basketball because he battled relentlessly.
It’s in his blood and his genes, an instinct nurtured in him since childhood. He took inspiration from the different battles of his elder brother Greg, who survived a childhood fight with cancer and then prevailed through diminished mobility on his body’s left side to compete as an athlete himself.
If you want to see a fighter, Hansbrough regularly reminded people, look at his brother who had the baseball-sized tumor cut out of his brain and went on to run marathons. Hansbrough’s now-iconic No. 50 is a tribute to his brother, who wore the number first at Missouri’s Poplar Bluff High School. When Carolina honors its greatest battler by raising Tyler’s jersey to the rafters next year, Greg will go up there as well.
Wherever Hansbrough’s drive originates, we’ll be struggling for years to adequately describe a work ethic so intense that Hansbrough’s teammates and trainers called him Psycho T.
By the time all was said and done, even Mike Krzyzewski acknowledged the specialness of what Hansbrough had accomplished, not just against his teams but against the entire college basketball world.
“He's one of the best that has played, not just here, but in the ACC,” Krzyzewski said. “When you think of Tyler, you're going to think of a warrior. You would never say that there was a possession that he did not play…. It puts him in a really elite class in the history of this conference. So he deserves all that he gets. He's earned it.”
“I’ve never coached anybody who’s had to face as much on the court as he’s had to face,” Roy Williams recalled as Hansbrough’s senior season drew to a close. “To do the things he’s done with two and three guys hanging off him, and as physical as he’s played…. I find it hard to believe.”
“Somebody asked me if he’s the hardest worker I’ve ever been around,” Williams reflected. “No, Michael Jordan worked as hard. Kirk Hinrich on the court worked as hard but Tyler is the most focused. Michael was the most driven to win. Tyler is the most focused to do everything he can to have his body in the best shape it can be and make himself the best player he can possibly be…. He’s unique in his discipline.”
“Absolutely,” Bobby Frasor says, asked if reality lives up to the myth when it comes to Hansbrough’s steely concentration and will. It started from the first week of freshman practice. “We were running sprints, and everyone was going as hard as we could,” Frasor remembered. “We all start falling out. Danny Green fell first, then Marcus Ginyard and me. Tyler’s still going. And then he just starts yelling and is still going. He wouldn’t quit.”
It’s the very definition of a legend: something or someone so improbable that you’re excused for wondering what’s fact and what’s fiction. While another athlete might surpass Hansbrough’s records one day, the legend will remain, because night-in and night-out, Hansbrough gave us reason to believe that the impossible isn’t.
You say he can’t get that ridiculous leaning push shot of his or the ungainly half-hook to drop against ACC-caliber teams? Wrong.
Say he can’t possibly become the first four-time All-American in college basketball history? Wrong again.
Say he can’t live in the paint and survive the physical abuse to top a three-point gunner’s record as the all-time scorer in the ACC?
Wrong again.
Tyler Hansbrough: Human
Shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, for once the legend looked uneasy on the floor where he’d so often dominated. You could just see it in his eyes—he knew he wasn’t going to win this one. With head slightly bowed, he sucked in a shallow breath, swallowed hard, looked into the stands. And then the tears flowed.
Voice trembling, Hansbrough’s normally deep baritone could hardly manage the words. But with his gaze locked a few feet away at the second row of seats, he finally gave in. “Thank you,” he breathed, as his brothers, father, and mother stood to receive the words that ever-so-briefly made Psycho T vanish. In his place stood the student, the son, the sibling, the friend. And as his words were swallowed in the grateful cheers of thousands, with a final wave, he lowered the microphone and gave up the stage.
It took almost four years and 118 wins. But on March 8, 2009, standing near center court at the Smith Center, Tyler Hansbrough finally proved he was human.
Tyler Hansbrough: Winner
The media swarmed as usual. Hansbrough and his teammates had just dispatched North Carolina State in the kind of late-February contest that routinely gives fans heartburn on the way to conference titles and top seeds in the NCAA tournament. Though Carolina had prevailed, the 89-80 final score reflected the challenge—a trap game against a lesser but still proud opponent hell-bent on slowing the Tar Heels’ seemingly inevitable march to an ACC crown.
But Hansbrough had dominated again, refusing to be denied, pouring in 20 of his 27 points in the second half. On the way he’d scooted past the legendary “Pistol” Pete Maravich for second on the NCAA all-time list for career free throws made. (It would be two more games before he passed Wake Forest’s Dickie Hemric to become first on the list, grabbing hold of a record that had stood for nearly six decades.) Hansbrough had scored inside, outside, over, around, and yes, through. It was pure All-American, the stuff that leads your fans to call you a legend.
Having satisfied the reporters with the second or third round of quotes about the significance of showing his best against an in-state foe, Hansbrough looked relieved, ready to hit the ice bath, grab a protein shake, and head for some well-deserved rest.
From his first game against an upset-minded Gardner-Webb team to his last against Michigan State, earning the National Championship he had made his grail. In between, he and his classmates won 124 games, more than any other Tar Heel class in history.
Hansbrough wasn’t alone in winning, of course. But with a shifting supporting cast that at various times featured older upperclassmen, younger protégés, injured teammates, and one of the best backcourts in America, Hansbrough was the anchor. With his senior classmates, he won more games than any other class in UNC basketball history. During Dean Smith’s heyday, his teams were legendary for their 20-win seasons. But under Roy Williams, Hansbrough’s class set a new plateau, part of a group that was the first to notch three consecutive 30-win seasons. Along the way, Hansbrough helped lead Carolina to three straight ACC regular-season titles and back-to-back conference tournament titles in 2007 and 2008.
Among the defeated, few were more humbled than Carolina’s in-state ACC rivals. Hansbrough went 4-1 against Wake Forest, 8-1 against State, and, for the ultimate badge of honor, 6-2 against Duke. College basketball’s greatest rivalry has brought out the best in Tar Heel greats for generations, but few have embraced its passion and owned the opponent like Hansbrough, whose six wins included four at Cameron Indoor Stadium. His remarkable run against the Blue Devils started with taking down J.J. Redick on his senior night in 2006, and it finished in 2009 with a home win that left Hansbrough just shy of Redick’s ACC career scoring mark.
Two weeks after Hansbrough’s final win against Duke, he finally topped Redick’s scoring record.
But it wasn’t just the teams against which Hansbrough won. It was the way he won. Though he showed emotion only rarely on the court, in victory there were those glorious times he just couldn’t contain himself. Remember the full throated victory roar after he willed Carolina to that double-overtime thriller against Clemson, stealing the ball and then diving headlong to secure it, ensuring the Tar Heels’ improbable home undefeated streak against the Tigers would endure? Or when he was so pumped he ran down the wrong tunnel after knocking off Virginia Tech for the second straight year in the ACC tournament, waving his arms in victory like a school kid?
“I was just so glad to be playing another day, I didn’t care,” he said afterward with a grin.
Hansbrough earned respect by regularly refusing to let others make a big deal of his accomplishments. He always credited his teammates and coaches first, and his graceful acceptance of the honors that came his way were all genuinely humble. “He doesn’t realize how good he is, and that is a good characteristic to have,” said Roy Williams. “If we win and he scores eight, he’s going to be the happiest person in the gym. That’s the way he is. He’s interested in his team winning.”
Fortunately, his head coach isn’t afraid to sing his praises. What Williams sees—and what fans will remember for generations—is a team-first player of the utmost character, the kind of winner who will be remembered not only for the NCAA title or the individual accolades but for the way he played the game.
“He’s a unique young man. That is the best word that I can use to describe him,” Williams said. “I've said before, and I'll say many times, I've been awfully lucky. He is the most focused individual I have ever seen. The most driven to be the best player he can be, to try to get the most out of his potential, to listen to what his coaches say, and to try to work on those things. He's just been an unbelievable joy to be with.”
How perfect, then, for player and coach to earn the storybook ending they’d both strived to achieve. As the closing moments ticked away in Hansbrough’s final and most memorable victory, he thrust both hands into the air, then enveloped Williams in an embrace that might have crushed the air from a less robust recipient. Together, they’d done it. And in that final, rapturous moment, there could be no mistake.
Tyler Hansbrough is a winner for the ages.
Tyler Hansbrough: Champion
Tyler Hansbrough was adamant that he didn’t need a national title to legitimize his career, but seemingly everyone outside of the UNC program thought he did. And so as he’d done for four years, the sometimes awkward, always indomitable middle child from Poplar Bluff, Mo. delivered in the only way he knows how—by winning.
There are plenty of people that confront a challenge head-on, but very few that wrestle it to the ground for a quick three-count pin. Hansbrough rose to the occasion various times throughout his career. That’s what champions do—they raise the level of their game and they find a way to win.
And so when it was time for Hansbrough to do what he had to do for this program to cut down the nets in Detroit, he accomplished that mission by stepping out of the spotlight ever so slightly and letting Lawson beep-beep his way to the national title.
“Everybody put their individual goals to the side, and got something accomplished for the team, and that’s what it’s all about,” he said after scoring 18 points and grabbing seven rebounds in the championship game.
Nearly four years later, those long hours in the gym, those late nights shooting free throws and the vicious physicality that followed him around during his career were met with a loud buzzer with 1:03 remaining in a national championship game that North Carolina would win 89-72. Hansbrough walked off the court in a Tar Heel uniform for the very last time—in victory as a champion.
“The sheer joy that I saw on his face as he came walking towards me to hug me is just indescribable,” Williams would say the morning after.
When he strolled into UNC’s Ford Field locker room with a freshly-cut net hanging around his neck, pure elation shone through his eyes.
Hansbrough may not have needed a national championship to validate his career, but he’s definitely not going to give it back. After a career of thanking his teammates while accepting individual awards, he finally got the opportunity to share his most-prized possession of all with his fellow Tar Heels.
"Who can say they're a national champion?” he asked. “I can."
Tyler Hansbrough: Warrior
We have a lot of warriors in college sports. On some nights in March, some achieve their status for clutch shots in pressure-filled moments, others for big rebounding numbers, and still others for defensive prowess.
"There's really no word to describe him,” Tyler Zeller said, still awestruck after a season of watching Hansbrough each day. “It’s amazing playing out there and knowing you’ve got the guy who is going to outwork every other person on the court. He never takes a day or a play off.”
“He's our leader,” Ty Lawson added. “Everything he does on the court, everybody should follow. He's been our best player—he scores, he's our toughness, we follow him. If he wasn't our leader on the court, I don't know what we would do."
“I guess I’d say tenacity,” Wayne Ellington suggested. “The way he just keeps going and going and going, it’s like he always plays with a chip on his shoulder. I’ve never been around a guy who goes that hard on every single play.”
Indeed, Hansbrough’s place in Carolina basketball lore is secure not just because of the wins he and his teammates amassed, the records he broke, the accolades he earned. Hansbrough is beloved by Tar Heel fans and despised by so many others because every time he stepped on the court, he played as though his life depended on it. Never the most athletic, or the flashiest, he earned everything he received from the game of college basketball because he battled relentlessly.
It’s in his blood and his genes, an instinct nurtured in him since childhood. He took inspiration from the different battles of his elder brother Greg, who survived a childhood fight with cancer and then prevailed through diminished mobility on his body’s left side to compete as an athlete himself.
If you want to see a fighter, Hansbrough regularly reminded people, look at his brother who had the baseball-sized tumor cut out of his brain and went on to run marathons. Hansbrough’s now-iconic No. 50 is a tribute to his brother, who wore the number first at Missouri’s Poplar Bluff High School. When Carolina honors its greatest battler by raising Tyler’s jersey to the rafters next year, Greg will go up there as well.
Wherever Hansbrough’s drive originates, we’ll be struggling for years to adequately describe a work ethic so intense that Hansbrough’s teammates and trainers called him Psycho T.
By the time all was said and done, even Mike Krzyzewski acknowledged the specialness of what Hansbrough had accomplished, not just against his teams but against the entire college basketball world.
“He's one of the best that has played, not just here, but in the ACC,” Krzyzewski said. “When you think of Tyler, you're going to think of a warrior. You would never say that there was a possession that he did not play…. It puts him in a really elite class in the history of this conference. So he deserves all that he gets. He's earned it.”
“I’ve never coached anybody who’s had to face as much on the court as he’s had to face,” Roy Williams recalled as Hansbrough’s senior season drew to a close. “To do the things he’s done with two and three guys hanging off him, and as physical as he’s played…. I find it hard to believe.”
“Somebody asked me if he’s the hardest worker I’ve ever been around,” Williams reflected. “No, Michael Jordan worked as hard. Kirk Hinrich on the court worked as hard but Tyler is the most focused. Michael was the most driven to win. Tyler is the most focused to do everything he can to have his body in the best shape it can be and make himself the best player he can possibly be…. He’s unique in his discipline.”
“Absolutely,” Bobby Frasor says, asked if reality lives up to the myth when it comes to Hansbrough’s steely concentration and will. It started from the first week of freshman practice. “We were running sprints, and everyone was going as hard as we could,” Frasor remembered. “We all start falling out. Danny Green fell first, then Marcus Ginyard and me. Tyler’s still going. And then he just starts yelling and is still going. He wouldn’t quit.”
It’s the very definition of a legend: something or someone so improbable that you’re excused for wondering what’s fact and what’s fiction. While another athlete might surpass Hansbrough’s records one day, the legend will remain, because night-in and night-out, Hansbrough gave us reason to believe that the impossible isn’t.
You say he can’t get that ridiculous leaning push shot of his or the ungainly half-hook to drop against ACC-caliber teams? Wrong.
Say he can’t possibly become the first four-time All-American in college basketball history? Wrong again.
Say he can’t live in the paint and survive the physical abuse to top a three-point gunner’s record as the all-time scorer in the ACC?
Wrong again.
Tyler Hansbrough: Human
Shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, for once the legend looked uneasy on the floor where he’d so often dominated. You could just see it in his eyes—he knew he wasn’t going to win this one. With head slightly bowed, he sucked in a shallow breath, swallowed hard, looked into the stands. And then the tears flowed.
Voice trembling, Hansbrough’s normally deep baritone could hardly manage the words. But with his gaze locked a few feet away at the second row of seats, he finally gave in. “Thank you,” he breathed, as his brothers, father, and mother stood to receive the words that ever-so-briefly made Psycho T vanish. In his place stood the student, the son, the sibling, the friend. And as his words were swallowed in the grateful cheers of thousands, with a final wave, he lowered the microphone and gave up the stage.
It took almost four years and 118 wins. But on March 8, 2009, standing near center court at the Smith Center, Tyler Hansbrough finally proved he was human.
Tyler Hansbrough: Winner
The media swarmed as usual. Hansbrough and his teammates had just dispatched North Carolina State in the kind of late-February contest that routinely gives fans heartburn on the way to conference titles and top seeds in the NCAA tournament. Though Carolina had prevailed, the 89-80 final score reflected the challenge—a trap game against a lesser but still proud opponent hell-bent on slowing the Tar Heels’ seemingly inevitable march to an ACC crown.
But Hansbrough had dominated again, refusing to be denied, pouring in 20 of his 27 points in the second half. On the way he’d scooted past the legendary “Pistol” Pete Maravich for second on the NCAA all-time list for career free throws made. (It would be two more games before he passed Wake Forest’s Dickie Hemric to become first on the list, grabbing hold of a record that had stood for nearly six decades.) Hansbrough had scored inside, outside, over, around, and yes, through. It was pure All-American, the stuff that leads your fans to call you a legend.
Having satisfied the reporters with the second or third round of quotes about the significance of showing his best against an in-state foe, Hansbrough looked relieved, ready to hit the ice bath, grab a protein shake, and head for some well-deserved rest.
From his first game against an upset-minded Gardner-Webb team to his last against Michigan State, earning the National Championship he had made his grail. In between, he and his classmates won 124 games, more than any other Tar Heel class in history.
Hansbrough wasn’t alone in winning, of course. But with a shifting supporting cast that at various times featured older upperclassmen, younger protégés, injured teammates, and one of the best backcourts in America, Hansbrough was the anchor. With his senior classmates, he won more games than any other class in UNC basketball history. During Dean Smith’s heyday, his teams were legendary for their 20-win seasons. But under Roy Williams, Hansbrough’s class set a new plateau, part of a group that was the first to notch three consecutive 30-win seasons. Along the way, Hansbrough helped lead Carolina to three straight ACC regular-season titles and back-to-back conference tournament titles in 2007 and 2008.
Among the defeated, few were more humbled than Carolina’s in-state ACC rivals. Hansbrough went 4-1 against Wake Forest, 8-1 against State, and, for the ultimate badge of honor, 6-2 against Duke. College basketball’s greatest rivalry has brought out the best in Tar Heel greats for generations, but few have embraced its passion and owned the opponent like Hansbrough, whose six wins included four at Cameron Indoor Stadium. His remarkable run against the Blue Devils started with taking down J.J. Redick on his senior night in 2006, and it finished in 2009 with a home win that left Hansbrough just shy of Redick’s ACC career scoring mark.
Two weeks after Hansbrough’s final win against Duke, he finally topped Redick’s scoring record.
But it wasn’t just the teams against which Hansbrough won. It was the way he won. Though he showed emotion only rarely on the court, in victory there were those glorious times he just couldn’t contain himself. Remember the full throated victory roar after he willed Carolina to that double-overtime thriller against Clemson, stealing the ball and then diving headlong to secure it, ensuring the Tar Heels’ improbable home undefeated streak against the Tigers would endure? Or when he was so pumped he ran down the wrong tunnel after knocking off Virginia Tech for the second straight year in the ACC tournament, waving his arms in victory like a school kid?
“I was just so glad to be playing another day, I didn’t care,” he said afterward with a grin.
Hansbrough earned respect by regularly refusing to let others make a big deal of his accomplishments. He always credited his teammates and coaches first, and his graceful acceptance of the honors that came his way were all genuinely humble. “He doesn’t realize how good he is, and that is a good characteristic to have,” said Roy Williams. “If we win and he scores eight, he’s going to be the happiest person in the gym. That’s the way he is. He’s interested in his team winning.”
Fortunately, his head coach isn’t afraid to sing his praises. What Williams sees—and what fans will remember for generations—is a team-first player of the utmost character, the kind of winner who will be remembered not only for the NCAA title or the individual accolades but for the way he played the game.
“He’s a unique young man. That is the best word that I can use to describe him,” Williams said. “I've said before, and I'll say many times, I've been awfully lucky. He is the most focused individual I have ever seen. The most driven to be the best player he can be, to try to get the most out of his potential, to listen to what his coaches say, and to try to work on those things. He's just been an unbelievable joy to be with.”
How perfect, then, for player and coach to earn the storybook ending they’d both strived to achieve. As the closing moments ticked away in Hansbrough’s final and most memorable victory, he thrust both hands into the air, then enveloped Williams in an embrace that might have crushed the air from a less robust recipient. Together, they’d done it. And in that final, rapturous moment, there could be no mistake.
Tyler Hansbrough is a winner for the ages.
Tyler Hansbrough: Champion
Tyler Hansbrough was adamant that he didn’t need a national title to legitimize his career, but seemingly everyone outside of the UNC program thought he did. And so as he’d done for four years, the sometimes awkward, always indomitable middle child from Poplar Bluff, Mo. delivered in the only way he knows how—by winning.
There are plenty of people that confront a challenge head-on, but very few that wrestle it to the ground for a quick three-count pin. Hansbrough rose to the occasion various times throughout his career. That’s what champions do—they raise the level of their game and they find a way to win.
And so when it was time for Hansbrough to do what he had to do for this program to cut down the nets in Detroit, he accomplished that mission by stepping out of the spotlight ever so slightly and letting Lawson beep-beep his way to the national title.
“Everybody put their individual goals to the side, and got something accomplished for the team, and that’s what it’s all about,” he said after scoring 18 points and grabbing seven rebounds in the championship game.
Nearly four years later, those long hours in the gym, those late nights shooting free throws and the vicious physicality that followed him around during his career were met with a loud buzzer with 1:03 remaining in a national championship game that North Carolina would win 89-72. Hansbrough walked off the court in a Tar Heel uniform for the very last time—in victory as a champion.
“The sheer joy that I saw on his face as he came walking towards me to hug me is just indescribable,” Williams would say the morning after.
When he strolled into UNC’s Ford Field locker room with a freshly-cut net hanging around his neck, pure elation shone through his eyes.
Hansbrough may not have needed a national championship to validate his career, but he’s definitely not going to give it back. After a career of thanking his teammates while accepting individual awards, he finally got the opportunity to share his most-prized possession of all with his fellow Tar Heels.
"Who can say they're a national champion?” he asked. “I can."
7.16.2010
Leadership – For Team Captains And Leaders
(Six critical ways that effective team captains can help the team to win more games this season)
1. Ensure High Standards And A Strong Work Ethic
Without effective team leaders, mediocrity can become the goal of the team. The team motto can become “Do just enough to get by” and “That’s good enough.” No one steps up and sets the tone for the rest of the team to follow. Further, when some athletes inevitably slack off and cut corners, no one is willing to constructively confront them on it and let them know that their laziness is unacceptable and detrimental to the team.
Great team leaders lead by example and set the standards for everyone else to follow. They consistently give it they’re all and demand that their teammates do the same.
“The second I let down, particularly if I’m perceived as the leader of my team, I give others an opening to let down as well. Why not? If the person out front takes a day off or doesn’t play hard, why should anyone else?”
--Michael Jordan
2. Keep Your Team From Crumbling Under Pressure And Adversity
Without a team leader, teams often crumble under pressure and adversity. Players quickly get frustrated with opponents, officials, teammates, and themselves and lose their composure. They get distracted by their past mistakes and worry about making future errors. Further, when teams fall apart they tend to blame each other, which distract, divides, and destroy your team. Without a team leader, your players isolate themselves from the team instead of pulling together and staying tough. This lack of leadership and mental toughness during adversity often forces you to burn precious time-outs and make unwanted substitutions during the game. Worse, your team ends up beating itself because they self-destruct rather than staying tough and forcing your opponents to beat you.You can likely trace many of your losses back to the lack of ineffective team leaders stepping up and refocusing the team during critical stretches.
Effective team leaders help their teammates weather the inevitable storms of adversity that occur during games and throughout the season. When adversity strikes, great leaders maintain their own composure, which keeps their teammates under control. They can refocus the team back on the task at hand. Good team leaders are a calming force who are able to help their teammates adjust and refocus.
“Young players are leaders only when they are playing well…that’s not leadership. Anyone can lead the league in high fives when things are going well. But during adversity is when you need leaders in your group.”
3. Build Better Team Chemistry
Effective team leaders promote a positive sense of team chemistry. They welcome and take the new members of the team under their wing so the new players feel accepted and have someone to turn to should something go wrong.
Effective team leaders prevent cliques from developing as they look to break down barriers, unify their teammates, and rally them around a common goal.
“If you want to build an atmosphere in which everybody pulls together to win, then you, as a leader have to recognize that it all starts with you. It starts with your attitude, your commitment, your caring, your passion for excellence, and your dedication to winning. It starts with the example you set.”
--Pat Williams – Orlando Magic General Manager
4. Help The Coach To Take The Pulse Of The Team
If the coach does not have a good leader he can trust the coach might miss some important things happening with the players and team. The coach might not know why a certain player all of a sudden isn’t playing well or why another might not be communicating with the coach any more. Further, the players may lose enthusiasm and the coaches may not be sure why.
Effective team leaders help keep the coaches connected to the team. They keep the coaches informed about how players might be doing, who is struggling, and if there is any dissension brewing amongst the team.
5. Minimize And Manage Conflict
Additionally, good team leaders will help the coaches to manage the inevitable conflict that occurs on every team between players, coaches, parents, and others. They can often handle and solve a lot of problems before the coaches even have to get involved. This frees up time to focus on what the coaches do best – Coaching!
6. Are The Best Insurance Against Stupidity
Good leaders are the best insurance policy against athletes making stupid decisions at school and in the community that could tarnish the team and club.
Great team leaders tend to be around their teammates more and can be a positive influence on them. This is especially true on weekend evenings when athletes can be tempted to do things that could potentially have negative effects on themselves and the team, not to mention your program’s reputation. Great team leaders look out for their teammates and are willing to constructively confront them when necessary.
1. Ensure High Standards And A Strong Work Ethic
Without effective team leaders, mediocrity can become the goal of the team. The team motto can become “Do just enough to get by” and “That’s good enough.” No one steps up and sets the tone for the rest of the team to follow. Further, when some athletes inevitably slack off and cut corners, no one is willing to constructively confront them on it and let them know that their laziness is unacceptable and detrimental to the team.
Great team leaders lead by example and set the standards for everyone else to follow. They consistently give it they’re all and demand that their teammates do the same.
“The second I let down, particularly if I’m perceived as the leader of my team, I give others an opening to let down as well. Why not? If the person out front takes a day off or doesn’t play hard, why should anyone else?”
--Michael Jordan
2. Keep Your Team From Crumbling Under Pressure And Adversity
Without a team leader, teams often crumble under pressure and adversity. Players quickly get frustrated with opponents, officials, teammates, and themselves and lose their composure. They get distracted by their past mistakes and worry about making future errors. Further, when teams fall apart they tend to blame each other, which distract, divides, and destroy your team. Without a team leader, your players isolate themselves from the team instead of pulling together and staying tough. This lack of leadership and mental toughness during adversity often forces you to burn precious time-outs and make unwanted substitutions during the game. Worse, your team ends up beating itself because they self-destruct rather than staying tough and forcing your opponents to beat you.You can likely trace many of your losses back to the lack of ineffective team leaders stepping up and refocusing the team during critical stretches.
Effective team leaders help their teammates weather the inevitable storms of adversity that occur during games and throughout the season. When adversity strikes, great leaders maintain their own composure, which keeps their teammates under control. They can refocus the team back on the task at hand. Good team leaders are a calming force who are able to help their teammates adjust and refocus.
“Young players are leaders only when they are playing well…that’s not leadership. Anyone can lead the league in high fives when things are going well. But during adversity is when you need leaders in your group.”
3. Build Better Team Chemistry
Effective team leaders promote a positive sense of team chemistry. They welcome and take the new members of the team under their wing so the new players feel accepted and have someone to turn to should something go wrong.
Effective team leaders prevent cliques from developing as they look to break down barriers, unify their teammates, and rally them around a common goal.
“If you want to build an atmosphere in which everybody pulls together to win, then you, as a leader have to recognize that it all starts with you. It starts with your attitude, your commitment, your caring, your passion for excellence, and your dedication to winning. It starts with the example you set.”
--Pat Williams – Orlando Magic General Manager
4. Help The Coach To Take The Pulse Of The Team
If the coach does not have a good leader he can trust the coach might miss some important things happening with the players and team. The coach might not know why a certain player all of a sudden isn’t playing well or why another might not be communicating with the coach any more. Further, the players may lose enthusiasm and the coaches may not be sure why.
Effective team leaders help keep the coaches connected to the team. They keep the coaches informed about how players might be doing, who is struggling, and if there is any dissension brewing amongst the team.
5. Minimize And Manage Conflict
Additionally, good team leaders will help the coaches to manage the inevitable conflict that occurs on every team between players, coaches, parents, and others. They can often handle and solve a lot of problems before the coaches even have to get involved. This frees up time to focus on what the coaches do best – Coaching!
6. Are The Best Insurance Against Stupidity
Good leaders are the best insurance policy against athletes making stupid decisions at school and in the community that could tarnish the team and club.
Great team leaders tend to be around their teammates more and can be a positive influence on them. This is especially true on weekend evenings when athletes can be tempted to do things that could potentially have negative effects on themselves and the team, not to mention your program’s reputation. Great team leaders look out for their teammates and are willing to constructively confront them when necessary.
6.15.2010
KOBE WANTING TO BE COACHED
When Chuck Person arrived in Los Angeles for training camp, he had never before said a word to Bryant. Person, a former Pacers and Kings assistant, was hired by the Lakers as a special assistant because of his close relationship with the newly acquired Ron Artest. The Lakers wanted somebody to help Artest with his transition. They did not need anybody to help Bryant with his shooting. But Person, who spent 13 years stretching NBA defenses, had studied Bryant's stroke from afar, marveling at his footwork, his vertical leap, his power of separation. "There was just one thing," Person says, "that I felt I could enhance."
A young player is taught, from the time he can lift the ball overhead, to finish the shot with his index finger pointed at the ground. "Kobe was following through with so much of the index that the ball was turning ever so slightly off that finger and he was getting a little sidespin," Person says. "When he wasn't right on, the ball would roll off the rim." Person believed he could help Bryant, but he had to be tactful about it. He could not just walk up to one of the best scorers ever and tinker with his shot. He needed an opening.
On Dec. 11 Los Angeles played the Timberwolves, and point guard Jordan Farmar made a lazy pass to Bryant at the three-point line. Timberwolves forward Corey Brewer lunged for it, deflecting the ball off Bryant's right index finger. Told he had an avulsion fracture, Bryant refused to sit out, and the next night in Utah he missed 17 of 24 shots, including eight of nine three-pointers. The time was right for Person. He approached Bryant and explained that he too had suffered an avulsion fracture in his index finger, with Indiana in 1991. He also told Bryant that the injury presented an opportunity.
"I asked him for his trust," Person says, "and I told him that we should start working together. He didn't argue with me. He bought in right away." Person wanted Bryant to put more pressure on the middle and ring fingers in his release, creating more backspin and friendlier rolls off the rim. The pad Bryant had to wear on the index finger would force him to concentrate on the other two.
The day after the Utah game, Bryant and Person convened early at the Lakers' training facility and shot for one hour before practice. The next day they did the same. Then they flew to Chicago and worked out that night at the United Center. During a break Bryant asked Person, "Did you ever score 40 points with your finger this way?" Person said he did. For Bryant it was a rare moment of self-doubt, and then it was gone. "I'm going to get 50," he said. They arrived at the United Center early the next morning for a shootaround, stayed late, and that night Bryant lit up the Bulls for 42 points on 15-of-26 shooting. A day later he scored 39 in Milwaukee, with a game-winner at the buzzer.
Penetrating Bryant's circle is not easy, but Person had a way in. As a freshman at Brantley (Ala.) High School 31 years ago, Person attended a summer basketball camp at Auburn University. The guest counselor was Jerry West, who as the Lakers executive vice president would bring Bryant from high school to Los Angeles 17 years later. "All the things I told Kobe," Person says, "are things Jerry West told me at that camp." Person persuaded Bryant to raise the ball straight into his shot instead of holding it for a moment at his hip, which has quickened his release; lift his right elbow from nose level to forehead level, which has heightened his arc; and keep that elbow pointed at the basket no matter how his body is contorted. "If you saw a tape of him shooting six months ago," Person says, "it would look completely different."
Many in the organization did not understand why Bryant insisted on playing with the broken finger. He could afford to take time off in December; they needed him healthy in June. As it turned out, playing in December is exactly what prepared Bryant for June. He spent the regular season refashioning his shot in time for the playoffs. The transition was not always easy—his field goal percentage, free throw percentage and three-point percentage all dipped as Person's tinkering intensified—but it was necessary. Although the fracture has healed, Bryant was left with an arthritic knuckle on his index finger that is swollen and painful but appears to affect him not at all. "It's almost helped to some degree," says Lakers shooting coach Craig Hodges. "at the net when Kobe shoots now. The ball sinks to the bottom, and 'Pow!' It pops up. That's the backspin he's getting from the middle finger." The index finger is just supposed to hold the ball. The middle finger is supposed to do the work.
Bryant's longevity is a by-product of the many subtle adjustments he has made over the years, starting in 1999, when he broke his right hand and spent all of training camp developing his left. Back then, defenders would dare Bryant to shoot from outside, an unfathomable strategy today. They also tried to lock him up in the post, equally unthinkable. "I don't know any better post player in the game now," West says. Next up for Bryant, says Lakers assistant Jim Cleamons, "he will learn to come off screens so the ball will work for him and he won't have to beat everybody." Bryant's endless improvements require a kind of humility, the best player in the game forever open to the idea that he can get better.
A young player is taught, from the time he can lift the ball overhead, to finish the shot with his index finger pointed at the ground. "Kobe was following through with so much of the index that the ball was turning ever so slightly off that finger and he was getting a little sidespin," Person says. "When he wasn't right on, the ball would roll off the rim." Person believed he could help Bryant, but he had to be tactful about it. He could not just walk up to one of the best scorers ever and tinker with his shot. He needed an opening.
On Dec. 11 Los Angeles played the Timberwolves, and point guard Jordan Farmar made a lazy pass to Bryant at the three-point line. Timberwolves forward Corey Brewer lunged for it, deflecting the ball off Bryant's right index finger. Told he had an avulsion fracture, Bryant refused to sit out, and the next night in Utah he missed 17 of 24 shots, including eight of nine three-pointers. The time was right for Person. He approached Bryant and explained that he too had suffered an avulsion fracture in his index finger, with Indiana in 1991. He also told Bryant that the injury presented an opportunity.
"I asked him for his trust," Person says, "and I told him that we should start working together. He didn't argue with me. He bought in right away." Person wanted Bryant to put more pressure on the middle and ring fingers in his release, creating more backspin and friendlier rolls off the rim. The pad Bryant had to wear on the index finger would force him to concentrate on the other two.
The day after the Utah game, Bryant and Person convened early at the Lakers' training facility and shot for one hour before practice. The next day they did the same. Then they flew to Chicago and worked out that night at the United Center. During a break Bryant asked Person, "Did you ever score 40 points with your finger this way?" Person said he did. For Bryant it was a rare moment of self-doubt, and then it was gone. "I'm going to get 50," he said. They arrived at the United Center early the next morning for a shootaround, stayed late, and that night Bryant lit up the Bulls for 42 points on 15-of-26 shooting. A day later he scored 39 in Milwaukee, with a game-winner at the buzzer.
Penetrating Bryant's circle is not easy, but Person had a way in. As a freshman at Brantley (Ala.) High School 31 years ago, Person attended a summer basketball camp at Auburn University. The guest counselor was Jerry West, who as the Lakers executive vice president would bring Bryant from high school to Los Angeles 17 years later. "All the things I told Kobe," Person says, "are things Jerry West told me at that camp." Person persuaded Bryant to raise the ball straight into his shot instead of holding it for a moment at his hip, which has quickened his release; lift his right elbow from nose level to forehead level, which has heightened his arc; and keep that elbow pointed at the basket no matter how his body is contorted. "If you saw a tape of him shooting six months ago," Person says, "it would look completely different."
Many in the organization did not understand why Bryant insisted on playing with the broken finger. He could afford to take time off in December; they needed him healthy in June. As it turned out, playing in December is exactly what prepared Bryant for June. He spent the regular season refashioning his shot in time for the playoffs. The transition was not always easy—his field goal percentage, free throw percentage and three-point percentage all dipped as Person's tinkering intensified—but it was necessary. Although the fracture has healed, Bryant was left with an arthritic knuckle on his index finger that is swollen and painful but appears to affect him not at all. "It's almost helped to some degree," says Lakers shooting coach Craig Hodges. "at the net when Kobe shoots now. The ball sinks to the bottom, and 'Pow!' It pops up. That's the backspin he's getting from the middle finger." The index finger is just supposed to hold the ball. The middle finger is supposed to do the work.
Bryant's longevity is a by-product of the many subtle adjustments he has made over the years, starting in 1999, when he broke his right hand and spent all of training camp developing his left. Back then, defenders would dare Bryant to shoot from outside, an unfathomable strategy today. They also tried to lock him up in the post, equally unthinkable. "I don't know any better post player in the game now," West says. Next up for Bryant, says Lakers assistant Jim Cleamons, "he will learn to come off screens so the ball will work for him and he won't have to beat everybody." Bryant's endless improvements require a kind of humility, the best player in the game forever open to the idea that he can get better.
6.06.2010
Wooden's Greatest Quotes
The life lessons taught by John Wooden have become legend. Here's a collection of some of the greatest "Woodenisms."
"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."
"Never mistake activity for achievement."
"Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
"Be prepared and be honest."
"Be quick, but don't hurry."
"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
"What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player."
"Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character."
"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."
"I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent."
"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."
"It isn't what you do, but how you do it."
"Ability is a poor man's wealth."
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."
"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights."
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
"It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it."
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."
"Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful."
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."
"Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."
"Never mistake activity for achievement."
"Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
"Be prepared and be honest."
"Be quick, but don't hurry."
"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
"What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player."
"Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character."
"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."
"I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent."
"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."
"It isn't what you do, but how you do it."
"Ability is a poor man's wealth."
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."
"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights."
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
"It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it."
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."
"Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful."
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."
"Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
6.04.2010
Phil Jackson: Immersion
Phil Jackson had this to say on Wednesday, when asked whether playing NBA basketball is fun:
"I think joy is in the competition, and if you are a player that relishes competition, I think this is what you consider to be fun, even though it may not be ha ha fun, it’s engagement. It’s immersion. It’s focus. All those things that draw the best out of your attention and your capabilities energy wise."
This idea of “immersion” really grabs me. We’ve probably all experienced this at some point: we lose ourselves in the task at hand; time evaporates; the world pleasantly falls away. And we’ve also, in the past twenty years of watching Phil Jackson-coached teams, gotten pretty used to seeing this phenomenon at play on the basketball court. We know what it looks like. The ball flows freely. The players’ faces take on a cool intensity. Their movements become both calmer and more dynamic and the game suddenly looks easy. As far as I’m concerned, these things–engagement, immersion, focus, joy–come pretty close to defining the best sense of both “work” and “play,” which, as anybody whose ever seriously practiced art or sports or music can tell you, aren’t all that far apart.
I’m reticent a little bit to use this analysis, but you talk to guys that come back from the war and they miss being in the war, and they go back and reenlist because they miss that total immersion of life that they have at that particular time. That’s some of what an athlete gets, that adrenaline, that immersion of total use of their facilities and all their faculties that make it hard to leave the game.
"I think joy is in the competition, and if you are a player that relishes competition, I think this is what you consider to be fun, even though it may not be ha ha fun, it’s engagement. It’s immersion. It’s focus. All those things that draw the best out of your attention and your capabilities energy wise."
This idea of “immersion” really grabs me. We’ve probably all experienced this at some point: we lose ourselves in the task at hand; time evaporates; the world pleasantly falls away. And we’ve also, in the past twenty years of watching Phil Jackson-coached teams, gotten pretty used to seeing this phenomenon at play on the basketball court. We know what it looks like. The ball flows freely. The players’ faces take on a cool intensity. Their movements become both calmer and more dynamic and the game suddenly looks easy. As far as I’m concerned, these things–engagement, immersion, focus, joy–come pretty close to defining the best sense of both “work” and “play,” which, as anybody whose ever seriously practiced art or sports or music can tell you, aren’t all that far apart.
I’m reticent a little bit to use this analysis, but you talk to guys that come back from the war and they miss being in the war, and they go back and reenlist because they miss that total immersion of life that they have at that particular time. That’s some of what an athlete gets, that adrenaline, that immersion of total use of their facilities and all their faculties that make it hard to leave the game.
6.02.2010
Psychology of the Free Throw
When it comes to understanding why players make or miss big free throws, scientific researchers agree with athletes: The clutch-shot challenge is mostly mental, not mechanical.
…brings us to two theories that get to the heart of crunch-time failures. One, called the Explicit Monitoring Hypothesis, suggests we choke because pressure makes us focus too much on actions that should be routine essentially, we over think a situation. Te other is called Regulatory Focus Theory, which proposes that most people pursue life goals in one of two ways: by trying to accomplish something positive or by trying to avoid something negative.
(Troy, this is what I was thinking about for you. This article is about big free throw attempts, but I think it has good thoughts about free throw shooting in general. If you can convince yourself that every free throw you take is an opportunity of some sort, whether it is thought of as a chance for easy points (like you said, highest percentage shot in basketball other than an open layin), to showcase your practice, or maybe more simply you could think of it as fun. If you could make some sort of positive association with free throws rather than trying to avoid something negative I believe it could go a long way.)
What does this have to do with free throws?
Free throw shooting, like putting and infield throws, is exactly the kind of task athletes perform best when it’s just a procedure, that is, when the brain isn’t overly monitoring the actions of the body (find middle of rim to bring focus away from anything mechanical or any other distractions). In fact, in one study, basketball players who got specific direction on how to improve their free throw mechanics went on to shoot worse under stress than players who were simply told to do their best. That’s Explicit Monitoring in action.
But, it turns out, game situations affect free throws, too. Researchers at the university of Texas looked at every free throw attempted by NBA players in the final mute of close games for three seasons, from 2003 to 2006. They found players shot 78.2%, slightly better than their career average of 76%, when games were tied, but worse (69%) when the shooter’s team was behind by one point.
The researchers think Regulatory Focus Theory helps describe what’s going on there. When a player’s team is down a point, all of the pressure on him points in one direction: He doesn’t want to choke, and he doesn’t want to lose. But in a tied game, although he still doesn’t want to choke, he can’t lose. In fact, he has a chance to win. And holding those two competing ideas at the same time – instead of keying in on one unified dread - offers just enough of a distraction. The brain has less time or energy to screw up what the body is doing.
A lot is going on in the brain when players take free throws. And the players who do best are probably those who can push not only mechanics out of their minds but also any thought of winning and losing – and heroes and goats, too.
…brings us to two theories that get to the heart of crunch-time failures. One, called the Explicit Monitoring Hypothesis, suggests we choke because pressure makes us focus too much on actions that should be routine essentially, we over think a situation. Te other is called Regulatory Focus Theory, which proposes that most people pursue life goals in one of two ways: by trying to accomplish something positive or by trying to avoid something negative.
(Troy, this is what I was thinking about for you. This article is about big free throw attempts, but I think it has good thoughts about free throw shooting in general. If you can convince yourself that every free throw you take is an opportunity of some sort, whether it is thought of as a chance for easy points (like you said, highest percentage shot in basketball other than an open layin), to showcase your practice, or maybe more simply you could think of it as fun. If you could make some sort of positive association with free throws rather than trying to avoid something negative I believe it could go a long way.)
What does this have to do with free throws?
Free throw shooting, like putting and infield throws, is exactly the kind of task athletes perform best when it’s just a procedure, that is, when the brain isn’t overly monitoring the actions of the body (find middle of rim to bring focus away from anything mechanical or any other distractions). In fact, in one study, basketball players who got specific direction on how to improve their free throw mechanics went on to shoot worse under stress than players who were simply told to do their best. That’s Explicit Monitoring in action.
But, it turns out, game situations affect free throws, too. Researchers at the university of Texas looked at every free throw attempted by NBA players in the final mute of close games for three seasons, from 2003 to 2006. They found players shot 78.2%, slightly better than their career average of 76%, when games were tied, but worse (69%) when the shooter’s team was behind by one point.
The researchers think Regulatory Focus Theory helps describe what’s going on there. When a player’s team is down a point, all of the pressure on him points in one direction: He doesn’t want to choke, and he doesn’t want to lose. But in a tied game, although he still doesn’t want to choke, he can’t lose. In fact, he has a chance to win. And holding those two competing ideas at the same time – instead of keying in on one unified dread - offers just enough of a distraction. The brain has less time or energy to screw up what the body is doing.
A lot is going on in the brain when players take free throws. And the players who do best are probably those who can push not only mechanics out of their minds but also any thought of winning and losing – and heroes and goats, too.
5.09.2010
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS - COMPETING
Florida head coach Urban Meyer visited Patriots minicamp last year and came away with a strong liking of how the Patriots go about their business:
"The last practice- this is before they go on vacation- they did a two-minute drill and it was Tom Brady against the first-team defense," Meyer said. "And they scored right at the end. It was in shorts, and it was like they won the Super Bowl. They're all jumping around, and I'm thinking, 'Now I know why. Everything they do, they compete!' If someone comes to watch our practice and says that about Florida I will know we're in good shape."
"The last practice- this is before they go on vacation- they did a two-minute drill and it was Tom Brady against the first-team defense," Meyer said. "And they scored right at the end. It was in shorts, and it was like they won the Super Bowl. They're all jumping around, and I'm thinking, 'Now I know why. Everything they do, they compete!' If someone comes to watch our practice and says that about Florida I will know we're in good shape."
MANU GINOBILI
Spurs guard Manu Ginobili is the heart and soul of the Spurs drive for another championship. Ginobili displayed his toughness in Game 3 against Dallas when he suffered a broken nose and returned to action five minutes later. Says Coach Popovich:
"Those are the players who you know are really special. Every team has to have some of those. We're fortunate Manu's on our team."
Popovich called him a great competitor after he scored 11 of his 15 points in the fourth quarter of Game 3 with a broken nose. What makes his competitiveness different from other players?
"That's hard to articulate," Popovich says. "It's just something that shows in a variety of situations. They do things in certain moments of the game. Their understanding of what's going on and their drive to do what most players wouldn't even dream of makes them different.”
"He combines some incredible ball skills with great desire, great passion and an unbelievable will to win, and that's what makes him special."
"Those are the players who you know are really special. Every team has to have some of those. We're fortunate Manu's on our team."
Popovich called him a great competitor after he scored 11 of his 15 points in the fourth quarter of Game 3 with a broken nose. What makes his competitiveness different from other players?
"That's hard to articulate," Popovich says. "It's just something that shows in a variety of situations. They do things in certain moments of the game. Their understanding of what's going on and their drive to do what most players wouldn't even dream of makes them different.”
"He combines some incredible ball skills with great desire, great passion and an unbelievable will to win, and that's what makes him special."
4.30.2010
JAMAL CRAWFORD - PRESSURE
His 4-for-18, 11-point night in Wednesday's Game 5 loss at home, seriously ratcheted up the pressure on Crawford to come through in Vinnie Johnson fashion in Game 6 on Friday night in Milwaukee and keep Atlanta playing into May. It's the type of pressure, as Floyd Mayweather likes to say, "that separates those who are talented from those who are God-gifted."
4.27.2010
HI - FIVE
Players patting each other on the butt may be funny. But what's not funny is winning games, and the evidence suggests that teammates who touch each other liberally on the court -- high-fives, fist-bumps, hugs, pats and the like -- tend to do that better than players who don't.
Benedict Carey reports in The New York Times:
Michael W. Kraus led a research team that coded every bump, hug and high five in a single game played by each team in the National Basketball Association early last season.
In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats.
The same was true, more or less, for players. The touchiest player was Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ star big man, followed by star forwards Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors and Carlos Boozer of the Utah Jazz. “Within 600 milliseconds of shooting a free throw, Garnett has reached out and touched four guys,” Dr. Keltner said.
To correct for the possibility that the better teams touch more often simply because they are winning, the researchers rated performance based not on points or victories but on a sophisticated measure of how efficiently players and teams managed the ball -- their ratio of assists to giveaways, for example. And even after the high expectations surrounding the more talented teams were taken into account, the correlation persisted. Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent.
It's a dynamic that I feel I see playing out in many parts of society. Some people are apparently scared to touch others. Scared of seeming inappropriate. Scared of being uncool. In same-gender settings like the NBA, maybe scared of appearing to be gay. (The exact thing that gives the headline of this post comedy value in some circles.)
But guess what! Being timid is no way to lead. NBA players face a lot of challenges. Intense defenses. Injuries. Grueling schedules. The playoffs. Younger players gunning for their jobs. Careers that could end with the twist of a knee. Pressures off the court to make this much money or support this many people.
Some dude mocking you for hugging a teammate? Forget him. It's just small potatoes. You just can't get hung up on that. Life's too short. It's extremely liberating and powerful to just entirely skip worrying about that kind of eighth-grade insult.
The researchers say they have not yet been able to prove any kind of cause-and-effect -- does the hugging and touching cause the wins?
It's a powerful form of communication that may do a lot to uplift and inspire teammates.
There are many great examples of this, including LeBron James, who clearly lives in the land of 10,000 physical greetings. TrueHoop reader Christopher, who first made me aware of this study, remembers another all-timer: "Think of Magic Johnson's first pro game. Kareem hits the game winner, and the irrepressible rookie won't stop hugging him. ... Kareem's entire shell started to crack a bit that day, but more importantly the nation started to see Magic's HUGE spirit and love of the game."
As a supportive teammate, one of my favorite players has always been Tim Duncan. He's always putting an arm around teammates' shoulders and the like. I once asked him about an episode at Wake Forest. Duncan's teammate Randolph Childress was feeling down. Coach Dave Odom was talking to Childress and Duncan. Childress stared at the floor. As they both listened to Odom, Duncan reached out a hand and lifted Childress' chin, steering Childress' face towards his coach's.
Not just anyone can do that. It's rude and bold, done poorly. But Duncan is exploding with love and support for his teammates. It was intended, Duncan insisted to me later, not to correct Childress for disrespecting the coach in some way (he couldn't even imagine that anyone would think that) but to uplift Childress. To inspire him. To increase his self-confidence. It's not hard for me to believe having a player behaving like that could make a team perform better, over time, by keeping everyone as motivated and connected as could be.
So maybe the researchers will find that the hugs cause the wins. But I'd guess it would also be worth investigating the idea that players who touch each other are just the kind of fearless players who make inspiring leaders. Maybe identifying players who touch each other is a crude way to identify those who aren't sweating the small stuff -- and everyone likes being around people like that.
BELOW IS A LINK TO STEVE NASH AND HOW MANY HI-FIVES HE GIVES DURING A GAME...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koR2efE2alQ&feature=player_embedded
Benedict Carey reports in The New York Times:
Michael W. Kraus led a research team that coded every bump, hug and high five in a single game played by each team in the National Basketball Association early last season.
In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats.
The same was true, more or less, for players. The touchiest player was Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ star big man, followed by star forwards Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors and Carlos Boozer of the Utah Jazz. “Within 600 milliseconds of shooting a free throw, Garnett has reached out and touched four guys,” Dr. Keltner said.
To correct for the possibility that the better teams touch more often simply because they are winning, the researchers rated performance based not on points or victories but on a sophisticated measure of how efficiently players and teams managed the ball -- their ratio of assists to giveaways, for example. And even after the high expectations surrounding the more talented teams were taken into account, the correlation persisted. Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent.
It's a dynamic that I feel I see playing out in many parts of society. Some people are apparently scared to touch others. Scared of seeming inappropriate. Scared of being uncool. In same-gender settings like the NBA, maybe scared of appearing to be gay. (The exact thing that gives the headline of this post comedy value in some circles.)
But guess what! Being timid is no way to lead. NBA players face a lot of challenges. Intense defenses. Injuries. Grueling schedules. The playoffs. Younger players gunning for their jobs. Careers that could end with the twist of a knee. Pressures off the court to make this much money or support this many people.
Some dude mocking you for hugging a teammate? Forget him. It's just small potatoes. You just can't get hung up on that. Life's too short. It's extremely liberating and powerful to just entirely skip worrying about that kind of eighth-grade insult.
The researchers say they have not yet been able to prove any kind of cause-and-effect -- does the hugging and touching cause the wins?
It's a powerful form of communication that may do a lot to uplift and inspire teammates.
There are many great examples of this, including LeBron James, who clearly lives in the land of 10,000 physical greetings. TrueHoop reader Christopher, who first made me aware of this study, remembers another all-timer: "Think of Magic Johnson's first pro game. Kareem hits the game winner, and the irrepressible rookie won't stop hugging him. ... Kareem's entire shell started to crack a bit that day, but more importantly the nation started to see Magic's HUGE spirit and love of the game."
As a supportive teammate, one of my favorite players has always been Tim Duncan. He's always putting an arm around teammates' shoulders and the like. I once asked him about an episode at Wake Forest. Duncan's teammate Randolph Childress was feeling down. Coach Dave Odom was talking to Childress and Duncan. Childress stared at the floor. As they both listened to Odom, Duncan reached out a hand and lifted Childress' chin, steering Childress' face towards his coach's.
Not just anyone can do that. It's rude and bold, done poorly. But Duncan is exploding with love and support for his teammates. It was intended, Duncan insisted to me later, not to correct Childress for disrespecting the coach in some way (he couldn't even imagine that anyone would think that) but to uplift Childress. To inspire him. To increase his self-confidence. It's not hard for me to believe having a player behaving like that could make a team perform better, over time, by keeping everyone as motivated and connected as could be.
So maybe the researchers will find that the hugs cause the wins. But I'd guess it would also be worth investigating the idea that players who touch each other are just the kind of fearless players who make inspiring leaders. Maybe identifying players who touch each other is a crude way to identify those who aren't sweating the small stuff -- and everyone likes being around people like that.
BELOW IS A LINK TO STEVE NASH AND HOW MANY HI-FIVES HE GIVES DURING A GAME...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koR2efE2alQ&feature=player_embedded
4.25.2010
BRANDON ROY - THE LEGEND GROWS
For his next trick, Brandon Roy will make it snow in Phoenix. After that, he’s going to part the Willamette River. Then, who knows?
Roy is legend.
First, I stood in the Trail Blazers locker room while Roy unwrapped both taped ankles after Portland’ 96-87 victory over Phoenix in Game 4 on Saturday. He also had a giant bag of ice wrapped around each knee. And when the Blazers guard walked across a small pool of water on the wet tile floor beyond his locker, I looked down at his feet.
You know, just to be sure they were actually touching the tiles.
Roy’s gritty and inspired performance eight days after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee is the stuff of legend.
Let’s see. The promise that he would try to play. The series of text-message pleas Roy made to his coach, and team trainer Jay Jensen. The "Rocky" theme music that blared from the public address system when he checked into the game. The clutch shots. The critical victory.
Every bit of it.
Legend.
Roy played 27 minutes, scored 10 points, and gave a city a collective case of the chills. He made the Suns account for him, and they paid dearly for it. Best of all, while it was obvious to anyone watching that he was not quite himself, Roy showed rare restraint for an NBA star and didn’t attempt to do a single thing that he wasn’t capable of pulling off.
Blazers assistant Dean Demopoulos said after the game, “He’s the best I’ve ever been around.” And owner Paul Allen, who was consulted pre-game on the decision, walked down the hallway and out of the arena with a delighted and wonderous look in his eye. And teammate Jerryd Bayless, whose locker is beside Roy’s, leaned in to me after the game so his star neighbor couldn’t hear him and said, “I told him before tipoff, ‘Brandon, I don’t know if you should do this.’
“Then, he went and ended up being huge for us.”
That fine moment when Roy checked into the game on Saturday undeniably lifted the Blazers. It raised a city to its feet. In fact, as Roy sauntered onto the scene, I scanned press row at the line of sourpuss media who have covered decades of basketball and think they’ve seen it all (myself included) and I saw something I’ve not ever seen before.
Smiles.
This was theater at its finest, baby.
In the recovery room, post-surgery, Roy shocked everyone when he held his leg up for all to see, bent it at the knee, and said, “Look, I have full range of motion already.” That evening, he walked up a flight of stairs at his house, pain-free. And within a couple of days, Roy was on the treadmill, had no swelling, and passed every strength test the team threw at him.
Then, he started begging to play.
You may already know Roy is tough. You may even know that Roy shocked everyone by coming back prematurely from a far more serious knee surgery his junior year at the University of Washington. That time, Roy popped into the second half of an upset of then-No. 12 North Carolina State just three weeks post-surgery and scored 10 points. But what you probably don’t know is that Roy refused all pain medication post-surgery.
Trainer Jensen said: “He took no medication.”
I know. I know.
We’re used to professional athletes playing it safe with their bodies. The world of athletics is filled with men who wouldn’t dare come back a day before anyone expected them to be present.
Roy isn’t afraid.
So maybe the Suns should be.
Roy is legend.
First, I stood in the Trail Blazers locker room while Roy unwrapped both taped ankles after Portland’ 96-87 victory over Phoenix in Game 4 on Saturday. He also had a giant bag of ice wrapped around each knee. And when the Blazers guard walked across a small pool of water on the wet tile floor beyond his locker, I looked down at his feet.
You know, just to be sure they were actually touching the tiles.
Roy’s gritty and inspired performance eight days after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee is the stuff of legend.
Let’s see. The promise that he would try to play. The series of text-message pleas Roy made to his coach, and team trainer Jay Jensen. The "Rocky" theme music that blared from the public address system when he checked into the game. The clutch shots. The critical victory.
Every bit of it.
Legend.
Roy played 27 minutes, scored 10 points, and gave a city a collective case of the chills. He made the Suns account for him, and they paid dearly for it. Best of all, while it was obvious to anyone watching that he was not quite himself, Roy showed rare restraint for an NBA star and didn’t attempt to do a single thing that he wasn’t capable of pulling off.
Blazers assistant Dean Demopoulos said after the game, “He’s the best I’ve ever been around.” And owner Paul Allen, who was consulted pre-game on the decision, walked down the hallway and out of the arena with a delighted and wonderous look in his eye. And teammate Jerryd Bayless, whose locker is beside Roy’s, leaned in to me after the game so his star neighbor couldn’t hear him and said, “I told him before tipoff, ‘Brandon, I don’t know if you should do this.’
“Then, he went and ended up being huge for us.”
That fine moment when Roy checked into the game on Saturday undeniably lifted the Blazers. It raised a city to its feet. In fact, as Roy sauntered onto the scene, I scanned press row at the line of sourpuss media who have covered decades of basketball and think they’ve seen it all (myself included) and I saw something I’ve not ever seen before.
Smiles.
This was theater at its finest, baby.
In the recovery room, post-surgery, Roy shocked everyone when he held his leg up for all to see, bent it at the knee, and said, “Look, I have full range of motion already.” That evening, he walked up a flight of stairs at his house, pain-free. And within a couple of days, Roy was on the treadmill, had no swelling, and passed every strength test the team threw at him.
Then, he started begging to play.
You may already know Roy is tough. You may even know that Roy shocked everyone by coming back prematurely from a far more serious knee surgery his junior year at the University of Washington. That time, Roy popped into the second half of an upset of then-No. 12 North Carolina State just three weeks post-surgery and scored 10 points. But what you probably don’t know is that Roy refused all pain medication post-surgery.
Trainer Jensen said: “He took no medication.”
I know. I know.
We’re used to professional athletes playing it safe with their bodies. The world of athletics is filled with men who wouldn’t dare come back a day before anyone expected them to be present.
Roy isn’t afraid.
So maybe the Suns should be.
4.17.2010
ROY JONES JR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDWnMXzgeZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWcY0tt0xQo - Longer version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWcY0tt0xQo - Longer version
4.05.2010
A 'Melo Season - Maya Moore
The UConn women think Maya Moore can duplicate the feat of another fab freshman (Carmelo Anthony) and lead them to a title.
CONNECTICUT WOMEN'S basketball coach Geno Auriemma is one of the sport's great needlers, an unapologetic wise guy who plays all sorts of mind games to motivate his best players. Before the season he called Maya Moore into his office to test the mettle of his prized freshman. "I really don't know if we are going to be able to win a championship this year with you," he told Moore. "You would have to have a Carmelo Anthony--like freshman year for us, and I really don't know if you have that in you." Moore just stared at her coach with steely eyes. "She gave me a look that said, O.K., that's my next project," Auriemma says. "Obviously, I think she is capable of that. She can't do it by herself, but if we are fortunate enough to be in the championship game, she will be the leading scorer in that game. I guarantee that."
Through Sunday, Moore was averaging a team-high 17.5 points a game and 7.0 rebounds and was shooting 55.7% from the field—including 44.0% from behind the arc—for the top-ranked Huskies (24--1). The 6-foot forward has scored in double figures in all 25 games, with nine games of at least 20 points. "I don't think there is a player in America who has had an impact on her team greater than the impact Maya has had on ours," Auriemma says. That has been by necessity. Auriemma put Moore into the starting lineup nine games into the season after junior guard Kalana Greene was lost with a season-ending right ACL tear in December. Four weeks later senior guard Mel Thomas suffered the same injury. "[Maya] has had to be counted on even more," Auriemma says. "I've told her, 'You have to impact the game right from the first possession.'"
Auriemma says the 18-year-old Moore is the most-prepared freshman he has ever coached, two-time Naismith Award winner Diana Taurasi included. When she arrived in Storrs last May, Moore asked for game tapes of UConn's 10 toughest Big East opponents. ("Just to get that mental edge," Moore says.) Moore was the national player of the year last season at Collins Hill High ( Suwanee, Ga.), where she won three state titles as the Eagles went 125--3 in four seasons. Still, she takes nothing for granted. She is the last player to leave the floor at every practice, shooting extra free throws and three-pointers. Her goals are at once simple and ambitious. "Hopefully after each year and after my four years in college, I'll have given something that people have never seen before," she says.
A devout Christian, Moore is as serious about academics as she is about basketball, finishing her first semester with a 3.85 GPA (four A's and one B—"World Regional Geography," she says, laughing, of the course that was her kryptonite).
Her only weak performance on the court came against Rutgers, which held her scoreless in the first half of UConn's lone defeat, a 73--71 loss on Feb. 5—though Moore did score 15 second-half points. Scarlet Knights coach C. Vivian Stringer nevertheless was impressed. "Best player in the next decade," says Stringer. "Strong, powerful, poised. Can dribble, shoot, rebound. She can do it all, and she's only a freshman. I mean, a freshman! Three more years of that?" Stringer simply shakes her head.
CONNECTICUT WOMEN'S basketball coach Geno Auriemma is one of the sport's great needlers, an unapologetic wise guy who plays all sorts of mind games to motivate his best players. Before the season he called Maya Moore into his office to test the mettle of his prized freshman. "I really don't know if we are going to be able to win a championship this year with you," he told Moore. "You would have to have a Carmelo Anthony--like freshman year for us, and I really don't know if you have that in you." Moore just stared at her coach with steely eyes. "She gave me a look that said, O.K., that's my next project," Auriemma says. "Obviously, I think she is capable of that. She can't do it by herself, but if we are fortunate enough to be in the championship game, she will be the leading scorer in that game. I guarantee that."
Through Sunday, Moore was averaging a team-high 17.5 points a game and 7.0 rebounds and was shooting 55.7% from the field—including 44.0% from behind the arc—for the top-ranked Huskies (24--1). The 6-foot forward has scored in double figures in all 25 games, with nine games of at least 20 points. "I don't think there is a player in America who has had an impact on her team greater than the impact Maya has had on ours," Auriemma says. That has been by necessity. Auriemma put Moore into the starting lineup nine games into the season after junior guard Kalana Greene was lost with a season-ending right ACL tear in December. Four weeks later senior guard Mel Thomas suffered the same injury. "[Maya] has had to be counted on even more," Auriemma says. "I've told her, 'You have to impact the game right from the first possession.'"
Auriemma says the 18-year-old Moore is the most-prepared freshman he has ever coached, two-time Naismith Award winner Diana Taurasi included. When she arrived in Storrs last May, Moore asked for game tapes of UConn's 10 toughest Big East opponents. ("Just to get that mental edge," Moore says.) Moore was the national player of the year last season at Collins Hill High ( Suwanee, Ga.), where she won three state titles as the Eagles went 125--3 in four seasons. Still, she takes nothing for granted. She is the last player to leave the floor at every practice, shooting extra free throws and three-pointers. Her goals are at once simple and ambitious. "Hopefully after each year and after my four years in college, I'll have given something that people have never seen before," she says.
A devout Christian, Moore is as serious about academics as she is about basketball, finishing her first semester with a 3.85 GPA (four A's and one B—"World Regional Geography," she says, laughing, of the course that was her kryptonite).
Her only weak performance on the court came against Rutgers, which held her scoreless in the first half of UConn's lone defeat, a 73--71 loss on Feb. 5—though Moore did score 15 second-half points. Scarlet Knights coach C. Vivian Stringer nevertheless was impressed. "Best player in the next decade," says Stringer. "Strong, powerful, poised. Can dribble, shoot, rebound. She can do it all, and she's only a freshman. I mean, a freshman! Three more years of that?" Stringer simply shakes her head.
4.04.2010
Ready For Moore
Last season Connecticut forward Maya Moore put together the most magnificent freshman campaign in women's hoops history. Now the hypercompetitive Husky has set her sights on a national title
November 17, 2008
WHEN CONNECTICUT forward Maya Moore saw the Thanksgiving turkey—or rather, the decorated outline of freshman guard Caroline Doty's left hand—drawn on assistant coach Shea Ralph's office whiteboard last month, she couldn't resist. Moore picked up a marker, outlined her own left hand, added colorful gobbler flourishes and wrote beside both birds, whose turkey is best? If the results of the polling were unreliable ("Maya got more votes, but she was standing right there, so the count could be skewed," says Ralph), the contest itself, which wasn't a contest at all until Moore got involved, is instructive. "Maya wants to be the best at everything, and I mean everything," says junior center Tina Charles. "Video games, grades, who's first in the mile—you name it. She takes every opportunity to show what she can do."
What the college basketball world saw Moore do last year was turn in arguably the most spectacular freshman season in the history of women's hoops. Made a starter after junior guard Kalana Greene tore her ACL in the eighth game, the 6-foot Moore led the Huskies to a 36--2 record and their first Final Four appearance since 2004, averaging a team-high 17.8 points and hitting 42.0% of her three-pointers. She was second in rebounding (7.6 per game) and blocked shots (1.6) and third in assists (3.0). She became the first freshman, male or female, to be named Big East Player of the Year and was runner-up to Tennessee forward Candace Parker in AP Player of the Year voting.
And Moore did all that while maintaining a 3.85 grade point average. "I believe Maya will be the torchbearer who carries the game to another level," says DePaul coach Doug Bruno, for whom Moore played on two USA Basketball squads. "She's taken the torch from Parker, who took it from Diana Taurasi."
Ask the cognoscenti what sets Moore apart, and there is surprising consensus. It's not her deadly shooting, her nose for rebounds, her on-court savvy, her absurd athleticism—she dunks for fun but has yet to attempt one in a game—or even her competitive drive, which Bruno compares with Michael Jordan's. It's her ceaseless effort. "We talk about shooters being in the zone, but her work ethic is in the zone," says TV analyst Debbie Antonelli. "I've never said that about another player except Tamika Catchings. [About] how many kids can you say: They never take a play off?"
For UConn coach Geno Auriemma, however, Moore's distinguishing trait is a blazing confidence that reminds him of Taurasi, the force behind the Huskies' last two titles, in 2003 and '04. "Like Diana, Maya has this incredible self-belief: As long as I'm on the court, we can win. As long as there is time left on the clock, we can win. If there's a play that has to be made, I'm going to make it," he says. "She might make eight threes in a row or get seven offensive rebounds in a row, and the other players will just look at her [in awe]. Yet there is just enough dorkiness in her that you can't put her on that pedestal. She'll do an impromptu cheer and everyone will look at her like she's a [goofball]. She's a normal 19-year-old kid, which is a good thing. Otherwise you'd start to think she's a 29-year-old who snuck into college."
IT'S NOT just Moore's game that suggests she's well beyond her teens. It's her distaste for "going crazy" in college, her refusal to take anything for granted, her attention to detail. In the preseason Ralph assigned each guard a certain number of shots to take each week. At the end of the first week she received a text from Moore breaking down her shots taken and percentages made from seven feet, 15 feet, the three-point line and off the dribble. "It said, My goal, without defense, is this percentage, and for threes it's this percentage," says Ralph. "I only asked her to take shots. But that's the kind of kid she is; she wants to see improvement."
After her senior year at Collins Hill High in Suwanee, Ga., Moore asked Connecticut assistant Jamelle Elliott if she could audition for the 2008 Olympic team. "If there was an opportunity, she wanted to take advantage," says Elliott. "This kid is always thinking about what's next."
Moore's sense of purpose was evident early. When she was eight, she set aside the other sports she was playing to focus on basketball. That same year the WNBA was launched. "That's where I got my passion for the game, watching the WNBA on TV," says Moore. " Cynthia Cooper, Raise the Roof, We Got Next, I was into all of it."
At 10 she established Maya's Mobile Car Wash to earn money for the drum set that she still plays in her mom's basement. At 12 Maya was born again. She credits her deep Christian faith for that quality others call confidence and she calls inner peace. "Everything you see me involved in flows from my faith," she says.
Moore's father is Mike Dabney, a star guard on Rutgers' 1976 Final Four team, but he wasn't a part of her life growing up, and she prefers not to discuss the connection that she only began to develop with him recently. "We have a growing relationship right now, so it's good," she says. Kathryn raised Maya, her only child, as a single mom, moving from Jefferson City, Mo., to Charlotte when Maya was 11 to take a job promotion at a phone company and "get better basketball opportunities for Maya," she says. When the company downsized, Kathryn found work at a bank and transferred a year later to suburban Atlanta. "My mom showed me how important it is to surround yourself with opportunities and make the most of them," Maya says.
Three years before she finished her career at Collins Hill High, with three state titles, back-to-back Naismith National Player of the Year awards and a 125--3 record, Moore had narrowed her choices to UConn, Tennessee, Duke and Georgia. She chose the Huskies after her junior season in part because she knew her weaknesses would be exposed every day under Auriemma's watch. "I came to the right place for that," she says with a chuckle, adding that she has agreed with 99% of the things Auriemma has yelled at her about. "All your mistakes are on tape. The coaches will say, 'And here you turned the ball over. Let's watch it again!'"
NOT ALL the tape from that historic freshman season is game footage. Moore, who for all her poise and maturity harbors a well of endearing wide-eyed enthusiasm, brought a video camera on road trips. "I heard we had a charter to almost all our away games, and I was like, I've never been on a chartered flight! I'm going to record it!" she says.
Jaded she's not. At the McDonald's All-American game, in which she played as a junior and senior, Moore was the first player to leap off the bench and hand other players water. Her Connecticut teammates have found her refreshing too. "Maya puts everybody at ease," says Dixon. "If you're upset, Maya will make you laugh it off."
A self-taught drummer, Moore pounded out rhythms on lockers and walls to get her Collins Hill and Georgia Metros AAU teammates chanting before games. At UConn she hums and beats on the walls of the cold tub she sits in after practices. "She's always making up cheers and songs," says teammate Kaili McLaren. "And the crazy thing is, when she sings, it actually sounds good."
Greene predicts that Moore will sing the national anthem on senior night a few years hence, but that's a long way off, and Moore has a lot of work to do in the meantime. There are national titles to chase, good grades to keep up—she's interested in either broadcast journalism or sports marketing—and teammates to serve. (Auriemma has named her a captain, making her just the second sophomore so honored, after senior guard Renee Montgomery, in his tenure at Connecticut.) And there is the continuing refinement of her game. "I want to be one of those players who you watch on film and say, 'Where's the weakness?'" says Moore. "I want to be one of those players like Jason Kidd, who is always in tune with the game and sees several plays ahead. I want people to know something good is going to happen when the ball is in my hand."
Last year, when Moore played primarily on the perimeter, people already had that expectation. This year she'll be asked to spend more time in the paint. Moore has been working hard on her post moves. "Now that she has another task in front of her, it's not a question of whether she'll be great at it," says Elliott, "it's only a question of when."
November 17, 2008
WHEN CONNECTICUT forward Maya Moore saw the Thanksgiving turkey—or rather, the decorated outline of freshman guard Caroline Doty's left hand—drawn on assistant coach Shea Ralph's office whiteboard last month, she couldn't resist. Moore picked up a marker, outlined her own left hand, added colorful gobbler flourishes and wrote beside both birds, whose turkey is best? If the results of the polling were unreliable ("Maya got more votes, but she was standing right there, so the count could be skewed," says Ralph), the contest itself, which wasn't a contest at all until Moore got involved, is instructive. "Maya wants to be the best at everything, and I mean everything," says junior center Tina Charles. "Video games, grades, who's first in the mile—you name it. She takes every opportunity to show what she can do."
What the college basketball world saw Moore do last year was turn in arguably the most spectacular freshman season in the history of women's hoops. Made a starter after junior guard Kalana Greene tore her ACL in the eighth game, the 6-foot Moore led the Huskies to a 36--2 record and their first Final Four appearance since 2004, averaging a team-high 17.8 points and hitting 42.0% of her three-pointers. She was second in rebounding (7.6 per game) and blocked shots (1.6) and third in assists (3.0). She became the first freshman, male or female, to be named Big East Player of the Year and was runner-up to Tennessee forward Candace Parker in AP Player of the Year voting.
And Moore did all that while maintaining a 3.85 grade point average. "I believe Maya will be the torchbearer who carries the game to another level," says DePaul coach Doug Bruno, for whom Moore played on two USA Basketball squads. "She's taken the torch from Parker, who took it from Diana Taurasi."
Ask the cognoscenti what sets Moore apart, and there is surprising consensus. It's not her deadly shooting, her nose for rebounds, her on-court savvy, her absurd athleticism—she dunks for fun but has yet to attempt one in a game—or even her competitive drive, which Bruno compares with Michael Jordan's. It's her ceaseless effort. "We talk about shooters being in the zone, but her work ethic is in the zone," says TV analyst Debbie Antonelli. "I've never said that about another player except Tamika Catchings. [About] how many kids can you say: They never take a play off?"
For UConn coach Geno Auriemma, however, Moore's distinguishing trait is a blazing confidence that reminds him of Taurasi, the force behind the Huskies' last two titles, in 2003 and '04. "Like Diana, Maya has this incredible self-belief: As long as I'm on the court, we can win. As long as there is time left on the clock, we can win. If there's a play that has to be made, I'm going to make it," he says. "She might make eight threes in a row or get seven offensive rebounds in a row, and the other players will just look at her [in awe]. Yet there is just enough dorkiness in her that you can't put her on that pedestal. She'll do an impromptu cheer and everyone will look at her like she's a [goofball]. She's a normal 19-year-old kid, which is a good thing. Otherwise you'd start to think she's a 29-year-old who snuck into college."
IT'S NOT just Moore's game that suggests she's well beyond her teens. It's her distaste for "going crazy" in college, her refusal to take anything for granted, her attention to detail. In the preseason Ralph assigned each guard a certain number of shots to take each week. At the end of the first week she received a text from Moore breaking down her shots taken and percentages made from seven feet, 15 feet, the three-point line and off the dribble. "It said, My goal, without defense, is this percentage, and for threes it's this percentage," says Ralph. "I only asked her to take shots. But that's the kind of kid she is; she wants to see improvement."
After her senior year at Collins Hill High in Suwanee, Ga., Moore asked Connecticut assistant Jamelle Elliott if she could audition for the 2008 Olympic team. "If there was an opportunity, she wanted to take advantage," says Elliott. "This kid is always thinking about what's next."
Moore's sense of purpose was evident early. When she was eight, she set aside the other sports she was playing to focus on basketball. That same year the WNBA was launched. "That's where I got my passion for the game, watching the WNBA on TV," says Moore. " Cynthia Cooper, Raise the Roof, We Got Next, I was into all of it."
At 10 she established Maya's Mobile Car Wash to earn money for the drum set that she still plays in her mom's basement. At 12 Maya was born again. She credits her deep Christian faith for that quality others call confidence and she calls inner peace. "Everything you see me involved in flows from my faith," she says.
Moore's father is Mike Dabney, a star guard on Rutgers' 1976 Final Four team, but he wasn't a part of her life growing up, and she prefers not to discuss the connection that she only began to develop with him recently. "We have a growing relationship right now, so it's good," she says. Kathryn raised Maya, her only child, as a single mom, moving from Jefferson City, Mo., to Charlotte when Maya was 11 to take a job promotion at a phone company and "get better basketball opportunities for Maya," she says. When the company downsized, Kathryn found work at a bank and transferred a year later to suburban Atlanta. "My mom showed me how important it is to surround yourself with opportunities and make the most of them," Maya says.
Three years before she finished her career at Collins Hill High, with three state titles, back-to-back Naismith National Player of the Year awards and a 125--3 record, Moore had narrowed her choices to UConn, Tennessee, Duke and Georgia. She chose the Huskies after her junior season in part because she knew her weaknesses would be exposed every day under Auriemma's watch. "I came to the right place for that," she says with a chuckle, adding that she has agreed with 99% of the things Auriemma has yelled at her about. "All your mistakes are on tape. The coaches will say, 'And here you turned the ball over. Let's watch it again!'"
NOT ALL the tape from that historic freshman season is game footage. Moore, who for all her poise and maturity harbors a well of endearing wide-eyed enthusiasm, brought a video camera on road trips. "I heard we had a charter to almost all our away games, and I was like, I've never been on a chartered flight! I'm going to record it!" she says.
Jaded she's not. At the McDonald's All-American game, in which she played as a junior and senior, Moore was the first player to leap off the bench and hand other players water. Her Connecticut teammates have found her refreshing too. "Maya puts everybody at ease," says Dixon. "If you're upset, Maya will make you laugh it off."
A self-taught drummer, Moore pounded out rhythms on lockers and walls to get her Collins Hill and Georgia Metros AAU teammates chanting before games. At UConn she hums and beats on the walls of the cold tub she sits in after practices. "She's always making up cheers and songs," says teammate Kaili McLaren. "And the crazy thing is, when she sings, it actually sounds good."
Greene predicts that Moore will sing the national anthem on senior night a few years hence, but that's a long way off, and Moore has a lot of work to do in the meantime. There are national titles to chase, good grades to keep up—she's interested in either broadcast journalism or sports marketing—and teammates to serve. (Auriemma has named her a captain, making her just the second sophomore so honored, after senior guard Renee Montgomery, in his tenure at Connecticut.) And there is the continuing refinement of her game. "I want to be one of those players who you watch on film and say, 'Where's the weakness?'" says Moore. "I want to be one of those players like Jason Kidd, who is always in tune with the game and sees several plays ahead. I want people to know something good is going to happen when the ball is in my hand."
Last year, when Moore played primarily on the perimeter, people already had that expectation. This year she'll be asked to spend more time in the paint. Moore has been working hard on her post moves. "Now that she has another task in front of her, it's not a question of whether she'll be great at it," says Elliott, "it's only a question of when."
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