MONTA ELLIS

Monta Ellis is a walking contradiction, an oxymoron in the flesh.

His game is explosive and captivating, yet his demeanor is tranquil and reserved. His build is slight and fragile looking. Yet he's proved tough and durable.

But there is something more curious yet about Ellis, who faces his biggest challenge this coming season in replacing Baron Davis as the Warriors' starting point guard. He has natural abilities most basketball players dream about, but he also has an incredible work ethic few can relate to.

"Monta is quietly confident, and it comes from getting his work done and not talking about it," said Warriors executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin, who drafted Ellis No. 40 overall in 2005.

"He shows up in the best shape every year. You don't keep improving as he has just because. He works at it."

There are plenty of athletes who overcame a lack of talent by working harder than everyone else. But not many combine special talent with a persistent grind to get better, as does Ellis. As a result, his three-year career has already produced a spectacular ascension from high-school hopeful and second round draft pick to franchise figure. That's why he was given a six-year, $66 million contract and the reins to the Warriors franchise.

Members of the organization are showing no concern about putting so much responsibility on Ellis' 22-year-old shoulders. Instead of spending the summer swimming in his newly acquired wealth, Ellis is already preparing to meet expectations. He is doggedly working on his ball handling this offseason and has plans to improve his endurance and strength by working out with trainer Virgil Hunter, boxing coach of undefeated super middleweight Andre Ward of Oakland.

“The scary part about him is he's going to get better. When hard work and talent come together, great things happen,” said Virgil Hunter.

He has a natural feel for the game you can't teach — he knows how and when to change gears and how to anticipate the help defense.

Still, it's his work ethic that has set Ellis apart. His hard work helped him improve his strength. "When he came to us, he was 160-165 pounds soaking wet," Warriors director of athletic development Mark Grabow said. "Now he's about 185 pounds and still about 5 or 6 percent body fat. He was able to put the right kind of weight on and increase his strength."

Credit Ellis' work ethic for his ability to dribble left and nail a midrange jumper with consistency. During his second and third seasons, he worked on both daily, with the results showing last season, when he averaged 20.2 points on 53 percent shooting.

"The way Monta practices," assistant coach Keith Smart said, "Monta goes at guys like he's playing for the world championships."

Of course, his new contract and increased responsibility certainly ups the expectations. Doubts persist about his ability to be as prolific a scorer as he was playing alongside point guard Baron Davis. There are worries about his ability to defend, especially against the pick-and-roll and bigger point guards.

But Mullin doesn't blink when confronted with these concerns.

"Anytime he's faced with any type of adversity or someone questioning his ability, he uses that as a motivating factor and turns it into a positive," Mullin said. "From where he was drafted to not playing much his rookie year, he's been faced with things already and has taken them head on. He's one of those motivated, mentally tough kind of guys. I have a lot of confidence in him."

THE PICKERS

There is a myth that setting a great screen is only a post players job. Setting a great screen doesn’t take any freak athletic ability. So why aren’t more players better at it? The logical answer is because setting a great screen will never show up on SportsCenter or be talked about in the newspaper.

However, setting a great screen takes, basketball IQ, toughness, and unselfishness. To be a great picker you need to care about your teammates because if you set a great pick they are usually the one that will get an open shot while you will get nothing but a forearm or elbow to the chest from the defender. If your lucky your teammate who scored might point at you as they run down the court.

A fact that has long been known in the NBA: Pound for pound, the best picker in the league is a scrawny 6’1 175lb guard named John Stockton. He has three NBA records; assists, steals, and the best picks.

Ask NBA players and coaches which players set the most effective picks, and you will wind up with a laundry list of tough, physical, big men. Power forwards such as the Jazz's Karl Malone, the Knicks' Charles Oakley, the Pistons Dennis Rodman and the Grizzlies' Otis Thorpe were mentioned often. Those players are 6'8" or taller and 225 pounds or heavier. But somehow John Stockton (6'1", 175) was mentioned more often than any other player. "I wish my fours and fives would set picks as effectively as Stockton," says a Western Conference coach. “He won't flatten you like Malone or Oakley, but he won't ever set a lazy screen.”



OTHER UTAH JAZZ TIDBITS

On the court Stockton 's style is as simple as his wardrobe. "He's as steady as the ticktock of a clock," says Malone . "Other point guards come into the league, and they've got the flashy moves and the endorsements. Then they come play against John, and he teaches them that you can play this game without putting the ball between your legs 20 times before you do something with it. He just keeps making the plays, game after game, and year after year."

One of Stockton 's off-the-court interests is flying, which he indulged in last summer when he briefly took the controls of an F-16 jet under the supervision of a pilot with the elite Air Force Thunderbirds. In his description of the pilots, he came close to describing himself. "They're normal guys outside the plane, but inside they're pretty special," he said. "When you watch them, you realize it takes only the slightest touch to do some amazing things. It's like everything else, I guess. When you get guys who are the best in the world at what they do, they make it look easy."

Go to a Jazz practice, and you will find that every player has his shirt tucked in his shorts at all times. "That's the rule in games, so why not do it in practice?" Layden says.

Businesslike and unpretentious, Sloan demands an honest day's work from his players. Longtime followers of the Jazz knew better than to ask him if he would reduce Malone 's and Stockton 's playing time after Utah clinched the best record in the West. "Players get paid to play, not to rest," he says. "If someone's driven 200 miles to watch us play and paid a bunch of money for tickets, we're not giving him his money's worth if Karl and John are sitting on the bench."

Malone acknowledges that Utah 's run of success will be in danger within a few years. "I think after John ,Hornacek, and myself leave, they're going to have a hard time getting players to come here," he says. "I like to tease our owner by pointing to some of these young guys with shorts down to their ankles and 12 tattoos and telling him, 'You're going to be paying someone like that $100 million someday.' Larry just shakes his head and says, 'I'll sell the team first.' When we go, it's going to be the end of an era."

IT'S ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

Dave Campo, the former Cowboys head coach is now back on the staff once again, six years after he was fired.

"There were things that happened and it didn't work out (as a head coach) a few years ago. But I'll always be a Cowboy and I'm just appreciative to have another chance to be back."

Campo admits he didn't exactly expect to return to the Cowboys, especially after he was fired as head after the 2002 season when his team finished 5-11 for the third consecutive year.

Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones replaced Campo and his 15-33 head coaching record with Bill Parcells, who quickly turned things around, reaching the playoffs the following season.

"There were never any hard feelings," Campo said. "Jerry gave me an opportunity back in 1989. And I'll always be grateful for that. There were some circumstances that would be tough for any coach when I was here. But the bottom line, we didn't get the job done. I didn't get the job done. And that's the name of the game in this business."

"That's the way it works out in this business," Campo said. "To me, coaching is all about relationships. And you build relationships with different people throughout your life and your career. And you never know when you're going to go back to a place or coach with someone again. But you can't really do that if you don't form that trust with the guys you go to work with."

It's that very philosophy that likely has landed Campo back in Dallas once again.

Despite the fact he was fired as head coach, his relationship with Jones made it a no-brainer to bring Campo back in the fold as a defensive backs coach when the position became available after the season.

"We viewed (our staff) openings as an opportunity to bring in the very best coaches available with a strong emphasis on NFL coaching experience," Jones said. "Dave Campo certainly fits those qualifications. He has been a defensive coordinator for a Super Bowl champion and has been the secondary coach for some of the best defenses in Dallas Cowboys history. He had an interest in coming back to Dallas, and it is a perfect fit for everyone."

Although it was Jones who made the decision to let Campo go six years ago, Campo said his biggest concern was meshing with the new staff, particularly head coach Wade Phillips.

"I know Jerry. Jerry knows me," Campo said. "But before we even talked about me coming back, I wanted Wade to know that I was his guy. I think the most important thing for a head coach to do is to be able to pick his own staff. So when we talked about this, I wanted Wade to know that I could work into his staff, under his philosophies. And once he knew what I was about, then I think it was fine."

For Phillips, he said the decision was even simpler than that.

"If you can get great football coaches on your staff, then you're going to do it," Phillips said.

Two interesting points in this article that I really liked:

First, even though things didn't go as planned while he was head coach in Dallas, he makes it clear that he appreciated the opportunity.

Second, in coaching, as in other professions, the relationships you form earlier in your career often play a role in opportunities later in life.

"The only thing that’s going to change you from where you are now to where you’ll be five years from now are the people you meet, the books you read, and the dreams you dream." --Lou Holtz

STEVE ALFORD

To anyone who has spent time in a gym shooting a basketball, there is nothing quite like hanging the net. It isn't easy to hang the net. It can be done only from a certain part of the floor, with a shot arched just so, garnished with precisely the right backspin. When a jump shooter has traced that transcendental trajectory from the deep corner and caused the bottom of the net to lap up over the far side of the rim and tangle there, he has found the game's sweet spot. (Nets now are made so they dont get stuck)

Steve Alford never let one of his countless private workouts end without hanging the net, and that is one of the reasons he found himself cutting down the net in the Louisiana Superdome after his Indiana Hoosiers beat Syracuse 74-73 for the NCAA title.

Steve had surrendered his adolescence to the game. He wore out net after net—"I'd go through six or seven every summer," he says. "Dad, can I have the keys to the gym tonight," might of been the first words he spoke. "A lot of kids told me I was missing out on a lot of fun, but how was Jaws II going to help me become a better basketball player," said Alford.

The boy has a point. It wasn't going to help him pump-fake Tark the Shark's souped-up guards and bury jumpers and leaners that would beat UNLV in the semifinals. Nor was it going to help him bottom out seven three-pointers in the national championship game, four in the first half.

If Steve had squandered his Saturday nights at the movies, Alford wouldn't have been stuffing strands of net into his own little box with a championship ring.

Alford is an utterly imperfect athlete. Small for a major-college guard, slow without any compensatory quickness and strong only because he ate and flexed himself up to 185 pounds from 150 as a freshman, he owes his success to repetition and work. In his workouts Alford will pick a spot on the floor and take 10 shots. If he doesn't make eight, he'll punish himself with fingertip push-ups or wind sprints.

Bob Knight has often said, "I coach against the game." One of Alford 's great accomplishments this season has been to learn to play against the game. A win over Illinois in late January was the final lesson. "I prepared all week to go against Steve Bardo," he says. "Then Doug Altenberger took me, and I only scored 10 points. From that point on, it wasn't worth preparing for individuals. If you do things the way you can, if you're able to read the screens, it shouldn't matter who's guarding you."

Alford follows one of Knight's mottos, "be hard to guard," as he slaloms through and around teammates' picks. "He's gotten more out of his abilities offensively than anybody I've seen play college basketball," says Knight. "He's about as good a scorer for being strictly a jump shooter as I've ever seen. He's scored more than 2,400 points that way, and that's incredible, considering he doesn't get any tip-ins, drives, or dunks."

Alford 's two straight missed free throws against UNLV were so rare that he can tell you when he last committed the sin. (Six years ago. At Anderson. Down one. Five seconds to go.) His form at the foul line is workmanlike and routine.

Even without a state championship, Alford 's other crowns—"Mr. Basketball” in Indiana, the gold medal, and the NCAA title-have secured his status as an Indiana legend, the high prince of Hoosier Hysteria. Work is woven into the state's 10-foot culture. Half-court pickup games in most states are played "Make it, take it"—you score, and you keep possession. Not so in Hoosierland, where it's understood that every scorer will turn around and play defense.

Alford once passed up watching the Super Bowl with his college buddies, because he had missed a few free throws the night before and felt the Sunday evening would be best spent at Assembly Hall getting up jumpers.

Alford 's greatest act of self-flagellation was deciding in the first place to play for Knight. No player has experienced more of the man's black moods and manipulations. Alford has actually spent six seasons under him, if you include the 17 games with the '84 Olympic team and the Hoosiers ' 18-game trip overseas two summers ago. "Steve was incredibly mature as a freshman," Dakich remembers. "He was getting thrown out of practice then. If Coach respects you and knows you can handle it, he'll do that. When I was a freshman, only Randy Wittman and Ted Kitchel, the seniors, were thrown out."

"Dad threw me out of practice a lot of times to prove a point to his players," Steve says. "That may be the hardest thing, taking punishment for something somebody else did. But I'm a leader, and my teammates are supposed to learn from that.”

"Many times in the last four years when I've been kicked out, I'd get emotional. But every time I think I'm right and he's wrong, I look at the film, and it's amazing. He's right and I'm wrong."

For his part, Alford will always appreciate Knight. "There's nothing in the way of pressure or intensity the world can throw at me now that I haven't already seen," he says.

RICKY RUBIO

Hailed as a child prodigy, Rubio is a 17-year-old Spanish point guard whom some NBA types consider a possible No. 1 overall pick someday. The 17-year-old Spanish point guard is playing in his first Olympics and senior international tournament . He's a perfect storm of looks, style, generation and internationalism.

The story thus far...

At 14, Rubio played in Spain's ACB, the top pro league outside of the NBA, for DKV Joventut Badalona near his hometown of El Masnou. The lanky, 6-foot-3 floor general is the youngest player to ever appear in the Spanish League.

At 15, he led Spain to FIBA's Under 16 European title, along the way registering a quadruple-double and, in a double-overtime win over Russia in the final, 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists, seven steals and one half-court buzzer-beater to force the first OT.

At 16, he led the Euroleague (a man's league) in steals (a man's stat).

Last year, he averaged 10.5 points and 4.0 assists in 23 minutes per game as the starting point guard for DKV Joventut.

"He's the real deal," said one Eastern Conference general manager. "He could be the No. 1 player picked next year if he were to declare for the draft. He's going to be a top five pick for sure."

But you can already see the benefits of exposure to older players -- the even emotional keel, fearlessness, and willingness to give and take contact. At the offensive end, there's the Mediterranean expressiveness, once exemplified by the late Drazen Petrovic. During Saturday night's 119-82 U.S. defeat of Spain, Rubio showcased off-the-dribble lob passes for alley-oop dunks and intuitive wrap-around passes to bigs in the lane.

"He's a real point guard, he defends, he plays hard and he's got some pizzazz to his game," the GM said. "The kid just knows how to play. He's been playing with men the past three or four years, for one of the better teams in Spain."

One thing you don't usually find in young guards with show in their games is the defensive intangibles.

He saved Spain in pool play against China, helping lead his team from 15 points down and somehow stealing the ball on a crucial possession from China guard Liu Wei at the end of regulation.

Then, in the middle of the second quarter Saturday night against Team USA, he flat-out stole the ball from LeBron James in the halfcourt.

Flashy but disciplined, the dark-haired Rubio has been compared to Pete Maravich for his looks and Magic Johnson for his passing ability. He needs to add bulk and improve his jumper a bit, but scouts say he's got a feel for the game that can't be taught. They also say he's an aggressive, Manu Ginobili-like defender and highly competitive, but cool under pressure.

COMPETING IN PRACTICE

The crowd rustled near the fence next to the practice field. Standing six deep, most fans had to crane their necks to see what was about to happen.

Adam Jones knew. Terrell Owens knew, planting his right lead foot into the ground before looking to the quarterback. Tony Romo knew. It wasn't a simple one-on-one drill during training camp.

At the snap, Owens and Jones had little separation, but Owens subtly moved toward the sideline before breaking back to open up space. Romo's pass settled nicely into Owens' hands for what would have been a touchdown.

"It's football," Jones said. "You're not going to win every play, but you've got to come back the next play and forget about it, and that's what I do."

Through the first four practices of training camp, Jones is attempting to seek out Owens or Patrick Crayton during one-on-one drills. "I'm here to compete. I'm not here to prove anything. I'm here to compete, said Jones."

Owens likes the personal matchups, too. "Every day is going to be different depending on the feelings of each individual," Owens said. "Sometimes, he'll feel a little better than me, and the majority of days, I'll feel better than him. It's all in competition. That's part of it for the both of us to get each other better."

During his coaching career Wade Phillips has seen players match up against lesser competitors to make themselves look better, but he liked the intrasquad competition.

"The reason they're good is they're competitors," Phillips said. "And so if they think someone is the best or someone is good, they're going to try to meet the challenge rather than dodge the challenge."

NO KIDD-ING AROUND

His name resides on the bottom line of Team USA's statistical sheet for the FIBA Americas basketball tournament. Then again, Jason Kidd attempted just 10 shots in 10 games at the recently completed Olympic qualifying event at Las Vegas.

"I got my quota - a shot a game,'' Kidd said after Team USA routed Argentina 118-81 Sunday in the gold-medal game.

Kidd also helped guide his young U.S. teammates into the 2008 Beijing Olympics, providing just what the club needed - floor leadership, experience and a tangible example of the selfless way the game should be played.

Asked who should have been chosen MVP of the two-week tournament, teammate Carmelo Anthony suggested, "Probably J-Kidd.''

Yeah, the 34-year-old from Oakland, who averaged a mere 1.8 points for a U.S. team that scored 116.7 per game.

"Jason was terrific, man,'' said sharpshooter Michael Redd. "He just played awesome basketball. He was the true engine to our team, the maestro. He got after people and led our team defensively. He was wonderful to have as a teammate.''

The point guard who could dominate play without even taking a shot.

"As much as people could say, 'He doesn't score, he doesn't shoot,' my opponent knows that, too,'' Kidd noted. "That makes it a little bit harder, but that's the challenge. That's the fun part.''

Winning is the fun part for Kidd, now 38-0 in international games with Team USA. His contribution in Las Vegas was more than his 4.6 assists per game in just 16 minutes on the floor, more than his 9.20 assist-to-turnover ratio, twice what anyone else in the tournament assembled.

He imposed his will on teammates, persuading them to focus on just one goal. After arriving at training camp last month, Kidd immediately announced, "I didn't come here to lose.''

The owner of a gold medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Kidd was not part of the team in 2004 at Athens, where Team USA failed to win the gold medal for the first time since NBA players became eligible in 1992.

"Being at home, watching it on TV, knowing we were a lot better than we played, I thought maybe I could help,'' Kidd said. "It wasn't going to be me scoring a lot of points, just getting guys to compete every minute of every game.''

The U.S. squad won by an average margin of nearly 40 points, and addressed myriad issues along the way.

"Hopefully, we have changed some things,'' Kidd said. "There were a lot of question marks when you talked about Team USA ... the inconsistent outside shot ... the defense. Would they be able to guard the pick and roll? Would they be able to talk?

"You had some of the great scoring leaders - Kobe (Bryant), LeBron (James), 'Melo (Carmelo Anthony) - and these guys all passed the ball as much as they scored. Everybody was cheering for one another.''

Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski said Bryant, James, Anthony and Kidd form the core group of the team that will compete in Beijing. Beyond that, it's likely the roster will be tweaked a bit, starting with the addition of Dwyane Wade, who sat out the FIBA Americas event becaue of an injury.

But the basic formula was a good fit for international ball. Team USA shot 47 percent from the international 3-point line, which is closer to the basket than the one used by the NBA.

"Our goal is to take the model of what we just accomplished in these 10 games and duplicate it,'' Kidd said. "It's about us, about continually playing the right way. When we come off the bench, keep that wave of pressure coming.''

Still, Kidd quickly acknowledged the world has learned how to play the game since the first "Dream Team'' prompted awe-struck opponents at the 1992 Barcelona Games to seek autographs and photos with the famous NBA stars.

"We'll never have that '92 fear factor again, but I think this is pretty close to that team in talent,'' Kidd said. "I'm excited. Like I told Carmelo, there's nothing better than to hear that national anthem played.

JASON KIDD - A Pure PG

What makes point guard Jason Kidd so unique is a bit mystical, or musical, depending on your perspective.

"I can't explain it to you," forward LeBron James says. "I don't know what Jason does, I don't know how he does it."

"He sees things," guard Dwyane Wade says of Kidd's sixth sense. "When you're on the court and you see him do some of the things he does it just doesn't make sense."

Last month at a practice in Las Vegas, U.S. Olympic men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski compared Kidd to a jazz pianist who makes the rhythm section around him better. "It's his mind, his instincts, and his feel," Krzyzewski says.

It may surprise some NBA fans that Kidd, at 35 is the oldest member of the 12-man Olympic team, but being the best isn't necessarily about stats, quickness, age or outside perception. What makes Kidd so important to success in Beijing is "crazy, deeper stuff," Krzyzewski says.

"Being the best means that you have the ability to have the biggest impact in the creation of an environment to win, and Jason has that," Krzyzewski says. "With the experience of that many years in the NBA and internationally, coupled with the passion to continue to do it, teamed up with talent around him, I don't think anyone on our team has a better equation."

HIGH BASKETBALL IQ

Inside Kidd's head, there must be algorithms of passing angles and variables of equations burned into his synapses. "His mind is his best talent," Krzyzewski says. "And his ability to instinctively react to situations on the court is at the highest level, as high as anyone who has ever played the game."

Kidd defines instinct as "being able to be creative in a spilt second." When an opponent takes a shot and Kidd's team gets the rebound, he already has analyzed the situation and processed where his teammates will be as well as the defenders before they even know where they will be.

"When somebody shoots, I take a picture of where everyone is out on the court and then go from there with my whole thought process," Kidd says. "There's maybe 100 things I'm going through, a checklist that all happens in two seconds. First is to get the ball, second is, where is the defender? Where are my teammates? Is my teammate tired? If I throw it too far will he quit on me? What type of pass is called for? Is it a bounce pass? Is it a chest pass? If all that isn't there, then what play are we going to run?

"That answer comes where you're probing and trying to find something and that's where your creativity and daring come in because maybe you're going to do something that most people would never think about doing. It becomes a chess match, not with the opponent but with yourself because you're trying to figure out what's the right thing to do in that split second."

Playing with Kidd has been an adjustment, in a good way, for the U.S. stars. "We don't play with point guards like him," Wade says. "I've never played with point guards like him."

"He just sees the game differently," Bryant says. "He grew up being a passer, understanding the angles. He makes very quick reads, very quick decisions. It's a different role for me and makes the game easier. Some of the shots you get you tend to be uncomfortable with because they're so damn easy. You're used to having guys on your arm all the time. With Jason, you get wide-open looks. He puts the ball right on the money."

During shooting drills last summer, Kidd turned to Carmelo Anthony and asked, "Where do you want the ball?"

Anthony, not quite sure what Kidd meant, gave him a puzzled look. "What do you mean?"
Kidd smiled and answered, "when I pass it to, so you can shoot it in rythm." Kidd thinks about things and sees things that other players don't.

THE TEAM LEADER

Though the "crazy, deeper stuff" defines Kidd's game, so too does this: 44-0, his record competing at the senior international level. At the 2000 Olympics, he helped the USA win gold.

During Olympic qualifying last summer, he took only 10 shots in 10 games but was named USA Basketball's Male Athlete of the Year, leading the team to a 39.5 average margin of victory.

"What's fabulous for our team is if you put Kobe, Carmelo and LeBron in the game, you need a point guard who's really just looking to facilitate and that's what Jason does," says assistant coach Jim Boeheim. "Other great point guards have a scoring portion of their game, some of them have it as a large portion of their game, whereas Jason never needs to take a shot to dominate a game."

This approach fits the team-oriented aspect of the international game, with the emphasis on passing and selfless play. "The next level is for them to get on me to shoot the ball because they've become passers and it becomes contagious and that's the fun part," Kidd says.

Because of the respect that teammates have for Kidd, he is accepted as their leader. "Players today as good as they are and as much publicity as they get and the egos they obviously have because they're LeBron, Kobe, Carmelo, it's important that they have someone they can look up to. Those guys don't look up to too many people, but they look up to Jason" Boeheim says.

TOM BRADY

Brady's Success A Testament To Dedication & Hard Work

Kevin Krystofiak was the starting quarterback of the freshman football team at Junipero Serra High in Calif., in 1991. The team went 0-8 that season. "I was a really bad quarterback," Krystofiak said.

That does not say very much for Brady, who spent the year as Krystofiak's backup.
"The thing about Tom," Krystofiak said, "is that he was never given anything."

When someone is as accomplished as Brady -- it only makes sense that he got every break along the way. But Brady is actually distinguished by all the breaks that went against him, starting in '91, and how he responded to each one. The setbacks are what separate him.

As a sophomore, Brady started at quarterback for the JV.

After the season Brady promptly went home and convinced his parents to find him a personal trainer, as well as an off-season quarterback coach.

In two seasons on the varsity team, Brady's record was a modest 11-9. He signed with Michigan. He was beaten out first by Scott Dreisbach, then by Brian Griese. Brady charged into the Michigan football office, looking for head coach Lloyd Carr, intent on transferring to Cal.

Instead of transferring, he sought out a sports psychologist. From the psychologist, he learned to worry less about the other quarterbacks on the roster and more about himself.

"That was the low point," said Scot Loeffler, who played with Brady at Michigan. "But those hard times paid off.”

As a junior at Michigan, Brady finally won the starting quarterback job.

During his Senior season Brady was the starter, but Coach Carr made him share the position with Drew Henson during his senior year. Brady played the first quarter, Henson the second, and then Carr decided who would start the third.

Brady ended up proving the rotation ridiculous. Halfway through the season Carr decided that Brady should be taking all the snaps.

The fact that Brady was not the full-time starter during his senior season, that he weighed only 190 pounds and that his delivery was a little bit unorthodox, scared some NFL scouts away.

New England picked him in the sixth round, 199th overall, behind quarterbacks such as Giovanni Carmazzi and Spergon Wynn. Not long after the draft, Brady ran into Patriots' owner Robert Kraft for the first time, Brady extended his hand, introduced himself, and said in all seriousness: "Mr. Kraft, I'm the best decision your organization has ever made."

It was cocky, but he believed in himself. Heading into his first training camp, Brady was listed as New England's fourth-string quarterback. By the end of his first season, he was not much better.

Desperate to learn the offense and improve his delivery, Brady worked tirelessly with New England quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein. But in August '01, during training camp at Bryant College, Rehbein died of a heart attack.

On the eve of the '01 season, Coach Belichick announced that Brady, would back up Bledsoe. In the second game of the season, Bledsoe was injured, and Belichick announced that Brady would start against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Patriots thumped the Colts, 44-13, but it was not all happily ever after. They lost the next week at Miami. Three weeks after that, Brady threw four interceptions in the fourth quarter of a loss to Denver. But just as Brady responded at Serra High School and at the University of Michigan, he reset himself and won 11 of the next 12 games, including his first Super Bowl.

Since then, he has become the definition of success. It's hard to remember a time that Brady was not the face of football. But Brady remembers his lean years vividly. They are what still drives him.

Before his last Super Bowl, three years ago in Jacksonville, Brady was asked if he had any flaws, and his response was surprisingly candid. "There are plenty of things I'm deficient at," he said. "I'm not very fast, never had the best arm, and never been very strong.”

"He went from being a backup in high school, to almost transferring from Michigan, to splitting time with a freshman quarterback during his senior year, to being a sixth-round draft pick to going to the Super Bowl," Krystofiak said. "He never quit and he never made excuses, he just kept working and believing in himself."

TIGER - The Most Coachable

Renowned golf instructor Hank Haney got a surprising wake-up call at 6am. The voice on the other end belonged to his most renowned pupil, Tiger Woods, who is recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. Tiger wanted to know what the game plan was.

Woods underwent surgery on April 15, two days after he finished second in the Masters. It's the third time the knee has been scoped. The only thing Haney knows for sure is, Tiger won't compete again until he believes he's ready.

Haney explained. "He's kind of pointing toward playing in the open. Just so long as he can prepare like he normally prepares. That's all he cares about. The guy works so hard, it's incredible.”

"Rehab takes a lot of work. But that's not something that's difficult for him. He'll go above and beyond anything anyone else could possibly do to get ready.”

Tiger has won 13 majors, second on the all-time list, five behind Jack Nicklaus, the man he's been chasing since he was a kid growing up in Southern California. He has won nine of the last 12 times he's played. To go with two seconds and a fifth.

"He's the most coachable student I've ever had," Haney stressed. "I've never seen anyone who wants to learn more. He could care less about anything that he's already done. All he knows is, what are we doing today to get better than yesterday. And what are we going to work on tomorrow. That's the way he is, every single day. It's an absolute challenge. My job is to just try and point him in the right direction. He'll figure it out from there."

"That's what great ones do. With Michael Jordan, if a guy would say he was going to shut him down, he'd go for 60 points. If nobody said anything, he'd just go for 30. So whenever anyone says something I make sure Tiger knows about it.”

"For Tiger, this is just another hill to climb. He likes to climb hills, heck he likes to climb mountains. That's what he does. That's why he's Tiger Woods."