This possible first-team all-american finished his high school career with 53 straight wins and two state championships. A first-team all-state selection as a senior, he was the sixth man on his high school team as a junior. As a senior, he averaged 20.1 points and had 25 and 12 in an ESPNU showcase game. Despite the accolades, this player wasn’t the best player on his own high school team.
Meet Doug McDermott, sophomore forward for the Creighton Blue Jays. He’s the first freshman named to the Missouri Valley first-team all-league in nearly 60 years. Prior to his arrival at Creighton (more on that later), he was most famous for being the high school teammate of No. 1 player Harrison Barnes at Ames High. Today, he’s his own man.
Most red-blooded college hoop fans have asked themselves the same question: why is this guy not at a high-major program? “To be honest, I thought I was a mid-major player in high school,” McDermott said. “I couldn’t really see myself as a high-major.” And there you have it. From the man himself, Doug McDermott was a mid-major player … sort of. “I didn’t think I was good enough to play in the Big 12.”
Each time I saw McDermott in high school or AAU, I graded him out as a mid-major plus; the highest rating you can give a kid without proclaiming him a high-major. There was little question he could play for Iowa State, the school at which his father Greg served as head coach. The question was, how much?
At the time, Greg McDermott’s job with Iowa State wasn’t on solid ground. The decision was made that Doug would not play for his father and he signed with Northern Iowa. A lot of schools assumed Doug would play for his dad and didn’t bother recruiting him. One of those schools was Northwestern whose interest faded. Since then, Doug’s played the Wildcats twice averaging 20.5 points against Bill Carmody’s team. “Dang, I knew I should have recruited you,” Carmody said to McDermott following one of the games. Coach, join the club.
What happened with Doug McDermott happens every year. Jimmer Fredette, Steph Curry, Eric Maynor and the list goes on and on. In a business where you’re evaluating high school kids, often times ones who own bodies that haven’t matured yet, mistakes happen. You never accept them, but they occur every year.
Count McDermott amongst the most surprised people at his success. As a high school senior he viewed himself as a mid-major player. Since then he’s been all-league, worn a USA jersey and is on track to be one of the best the Valley’s seen in recent memory. One day he may be good enough to play in the NBA. All of this is news to McDermott who didn’t see it coming. “No, not at all,” he said. “My goal was to play in college.” Mission accomplished and then some.
Over the next few months, tons of kids are going to face a similar decision to McDermott. The lure to play at the highest level is often times too tempting to resist. According to McDermott, he’s not the player he is today unless he goes mid-major.
“I got a chance to put on 25 pounds before my freshman year,” McDermott said. “I was thinking of redshirting because of the guys at my position. I didn’t want to redshirt and I was forced to play.”
Had he gone to Iowa State out of high school, McDermott’s convinced he would have redshirted, settled into a role and never ever would have sported the same level of confidence. Now, at Creighton, McDermott finds confidence in his match ups. “My situation is a lot of fun. The four men I face are a lot like me.”
Like Curry and Fredette before him, McDermott drew tremendous confidence as a result of early playing time he earned as a freshman at the mid-major level. You don’t gain confidence watching others play in front of you. Confidence comes from trial and error and then success. McDermott believes the level he picked afforded him the confidence to grow into the player he is.
Plenty of kids are going to listen to McDermott’s story and do the exact opposite. For what it’s worth, McDermott has a piece of advice. “I’d tell them to go to the mid-major school. You see guys on the (high-major) border that might redshirt or become a role player. Come to a mid-major and have success early.”
McDermott likes mid-majors so much he committed to a pair of them. Once he decided to not follow his dad to Iowa State, he signed with Northern Iowa. He’d had a relationship with Ben Jacobsen for as long as he could remember. A few months later, he would ask for his release to attend Creighton and play for it’s new coach, Greg McDermott.
At least twice a year Jacobsen gets to bump into his old recruit. He probably wished Northwestern had offered him or Iowa State made him a priority because it can’t be fun watching the guy you signed torch you in league play.
1.20.2012
11.09.2011
BUTLER = STATISTICS/DATA
If money were no object, there is one element Brad Stevens would add to Butler's basketball program. Not an opulent practice facility. Nor a university jet to transport the Bulldogs to road games.
"I'd probably create a statistics division," the coach said.
Analytics have gained widespread acceptance in many areas of business, and Stevens, a self-described stats geek, has been at the forefront of the movement in college basketball. Stevens, who graduated from DePauw University with an economics degree, uses numbers as a tool to prepare the Bulldogs for games and evaluate their development.
That data analysis is one reason Stevens, 35, led Butler to back-to-back NCAA championship games.
"Almost everyone uses some of this," said Sam Hinkie, an executive vice president of the NBA's Houston Rockets. "He does embrace this in a way that differs from most."
Butler, which opens its fifth season under Stevens on Saturday at Evansville, has drawn comparisons to the Oakland A's of "Moneyball," and Stevens has been likened to A's general manager Billy Beane. Bobby Fong, the former Butler president and a longtime baseball fan, made such an analogy nearly three years ago -- before it was trendy and Brad Pitt starred in the movie.
"What struck me even three years ago, in college basketball, defense was undervalued," said Fong, now the president at Ursinus College (Pa.). "There was an emphasis on defense first in the Butler system."
The A's of Moneyball used unconventional data to locate players who were undervalued and thus lower-priced during a four-year playoff run from 2000-03.
The Butler parallel is not precise because it uses statistics largely to prepare for opponents, not for player transactions. Indeed, Stevens suggested Butler might be the anti-Moneyball in recruiting because it does not rely on high school statistics. The only high school numbers that merit attention, he said, are 3-point and free throw percentage.
The Moneyball analogy is applicable in that the Bulldogs search for undervalued skills or prospects. While some programs recruit athletes as if they're trying to win track and field medals, Butler identifies those who fit its system.
But if there is a way to quantify anything in basketball, Stevens uses the data.
"You're so competitive that you just want to find any little thing that might give your guys an advantage out on the floor," he said. "And it's the way I'm built and driven. I really did enjoy the book 'Moneyball' when it first came out. I read it right away."
kenpom.com
Stevens is guarded about some details of Butler's analytics, not wanting to forewarn future opponents or disadvantage any active players. But there is no secret about where he starts opponent evaluation -- kenpom.com.
Ken Pomeroy, a meteorologist living in Salt Lake City, started a website in 2004 that introduced unconventional data to college basketball. Pomeroy assembles stats such as points per possession, percentage of offensive rebounds and ratio of 3-pointers to total shot attempts. Stevens examines kenpom for a snapshot of tendencies.
"He's obviously made my site more famous," said Pomeroy, who has never spoken to Stevens.
Kenpom is complemented by Synergy Sports Technology, a video scouting system that can isolate player tendencies. Stevens said he wants film to validate what stats are indicating. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he said, they coincide.
"Data can bridge that gap between the scout and the dozens and dozens of games he didn't get to see," the Rockets' Hinkie said.
Statistics are misleading if the wrong ones are studied. Stevens said season stats won't reveal the right information if one player, for instance, has been hot in recent games or if the team has changed the way it plays.
Stevens also charts what he calls "typical scoring." In other words, he might not change defense against a hot-shooting opponent, thinking, "The law of averages may just kick in here."
A scouting report also can't prevent the inevitable. During Stevens' first season on staff, 2000-01, Butler determined what the preferences were for 6-8 power forward Michael Wright of Arizona. But Wright still overpowered the Bulldogs inside and shot 10-of-12 in two games.
"He buried us so deep, it didn't matter what his preference was," Stevens said. "He was just going to lay it over the rim."
Moreover, a detailed scouting report is meaningless if it is too complex to absorb. More than anything, Stevens said, players must be able to carry out a game plan.
"It's not what we know. It's what they know," he said.
Details
One of the reasons Butler players have approached NCAA Tournament games with such confidence is trust in the game plan. Stevens has often told them what would happen in a game . . . and players have watched action unfold exactly as he described.
"There's no one in the country who pays closer attention to the details than him," senior guard Ronald Nored said.
Stevens has motivated the Bulldogs by producing statistics showing they're not as bad as critics might claim. Or the coach has demonstrated how a small statistical improvement -- like two fewer field goals per game by an opponent -- would result in a big difference.
Sophomore forward Khyle Marshall said "too much at once" is hard to process but that "bits and pieces" are not.
"As it just expands and expands, it's something we have in our minds," he said.
Stevens focuses on details because Butler rarely wins via blowout. His favorite example is from the 2008-09 season: If Butler's 13 victories by three or fewer possessions had been defeats, the record would have been 13-19 instead of 26-6.
The Bulldogs sputtered in each of the past two seasons before putting together 25- and 14-game winning streaks. To Stevens, a team is constantly evolving. The Bulldogs won't be as good in November as in February or March, he said.
"I like that. I like getting better," he said.
At Butler, it has all added up.
Butler basketball coach Brad Stevens studies advanced statistics to give his team an edge, similar to the Oakland Athletics and general manager Bill Beane as chronicled in the book and movie "Moneyball." Here are some examples:
-Old Dominion, the Bulldogs' March 17 opponent in the NCAA Tournament, led the nation by rebounding 45 percent of its own missed shots. Stevens called it as "staggering a number" as he had ever seen. Keeping Old Dominion off the boards became an emphasis for Butler, which led 32-29 in rebounding and won 60-58. "Butler cares about defensive rebounding," Houston Rockets executive Sam Hinkie said.
-Old Dominion guard Kent Bazemore drove to the right 75 percent of the time (even though he is left-handed), according to Synergy statistics. "If you say that somebody likes to go right, well, document that he likes to go right," Stevens said.
-In the 2010 NCAA Tournament, Butler players watched film of Syracuse guard Andy Rautins shoot open 3-pointers and vowed that he would not do so against them. Butler calculated that Rautins shot 80 percent of his attempts behind the arc and moved in one direction -- Stevens wouldn't say whether it was left or right -- 70 percent of the time. "That simple fact is hard to forget," Stevens said. After scoring 24 points in his previous game, Rautins had 14 as Butler upset the top-seeded Orange 63-59.
-For a poor offensive rebounding forward, Stevens said, "You're beating a dead horse if you say, 'Go to the glass, go to the glass.' " Instead, the coach said, show that he went to the boards three times out of 50. Either the forward is not in shape or not trying. "One more possession might mean winning the game," Stevens said.
-When players do conditioning drills in the fall, they are timed in four sprints. Stevens cares more about the difference between the first and fourth than in the average "because that shows how in shape you are," he said. Those who need more conditioning get that, and others concentrate on developing skills.
-Butler has 11 years' worth of data on what a typical All-Horizon League guard would score in conditioning tests. "So you try to motivate with those numbers," Stevens said.
-Matthew Graves, the Bulldogs' associate head coach, oversaw three years of workouts in which Matt Howard shot 25 to 50 3-pointers per session. It was all charted. "For two years, in individual workouts, we had the confidence and he had the confidence because we had the data to back that up," Graves said. Howard, who made five 3s in his first three years, sank 53 last season and shot 40 percent from the arc.
"I'd probably create a statistics division," the coach said.
Analytics have gained widespread acceptance in many areas of business, and Stevens, a self-described stats geek, has been at the forefront of the movement in college basketball. Stevens, who graduated from DePauw University with an economics degree, uses numbers as a tool to prepare the Bulldogs for games and evaluate their development.
That data analysis is one reason Stevens, 35, led Butler to back-to-back NCAA championship games.
"Almost everyone uses some of this," said Sam Hinkie, an executive vice president of the NBA's Houston Rockets. "He does embrace this in a way that differs from most."
Butler, which opens its fifth season under Stevens on Saturday at Evansville, has drawn comparisons to the Oakland A's of "Moneyball," and Stevens has been likened to A's general manager Billy Beane. Bobby Fong, the former Butler president and a longtime baseball fan, made such an analogy nearly three years ago -- before it was trendy and Brad Pitt starred in the movie.
"What struck me even three years ago, in college basketball, defense was undervalued," said Fong, now the president at Ursinus College (Pa.). "There was an emphasis on defense first in the Butler system."
The A's of Moneyball used unconventional data to locate players who were undervalued and thus lower-priced during a four-year playoff run from 2000-03.
The Butler parallel is not precise because it uses statistics largely to prepare for opponents, not for player transactions. Indeed, Stevens suggested Butler might be the anti-Moneyball in recruiting because it does not rely on high school statistics. The only high school numbers that merit attention, he said, are 3-point and free throw percentage.
The Moneyball analogy is applicable in that the Bulldogs search for undervalued skills or prospects. While some programs recruit athletes as if they're trying to win track and field medals, Butler identifies those who fit its system.
But if there is a way to quantify anything in basketball, Stevens uses the data.
"You're so competitive that you just want to find any little thing that might give your guys an advantage out on the floor," he said. "And it's the way I'm built and driven. I really did enjoy the book 'Moneyball' when it first came out. I read it right away."
kenpom.com
Stevens is guarded about some details of Butler's analytics, not wanting to forewarn future opponents or disadvantage any active players. But there is no secret about where he starts opponent evaluation -- kenpom.com.
Ken Pomeroy, a meteorologist living in Salt Lake City, started a website in 2004 that introduced unconventional data to college basketball. Pomeroy assembles stats such as points per possession, percentage of offensive rebounds and ratio of 3-pointers to total shot attempts. Stevens examines kenpom for a snapshot of tendencies.
"He's obviously made my site more famous," said Pomeroy, who has never spoken to Stevens.
Kenpom is complemented by Synergy Sports Technology, a video scouting system that can isolate player tendencies. Stevens said he wants film to validate what stats are indicating. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he said, they coincide.
"Data can bridge that gap between the scout and the dozens and dozens of games he didn't get to see," the Rockets' Hinkie said.
Statistics are misleading if the wrong ones are studied. Stevens said season stats won't reveal the right information if one player, for instance, has been hot in recent games or if the team has changed the way it plays.
Stevens also charts what he calls "typical scoring." In other words, he might not change defense against a hot-shooting opponent, thinking, "The law of averages may just kick in here."
A scouting report also can't prevent the inevitable. During Stevens' first season on staff, 2000-01, Butler determined what the preferences were for 6-8 power forward Michael Wright of Arizona. But Wright still overpowered the Bulldogs inside and shot 10-of-12 in two games.
"He buried us so deep, it didn't matter what his preference was," Stevens said. "He was just going to lay it over the rim."
Moreover, a detailed scouting report is meaningless if it is too complex to absorb. More than anything, Stevens said, players must be able to carry out a game plan.
"It's not what we know. It's what they know," he said.
Details
One of the reasons Butler players have approached NCAA Tournament games with such confidence is trust in the game plan. Stevens has often told them what would happen in a game . . . and players have watched action unfold exactly as he described.
"There's no one in the country who pays closer attention to the details than him," senior guard Ronald Nored said.
Stevens has motivated the Bulldogs by producing statistics showing they're not as bad as critics might claim. Or the coach has demonstrated how a small statistical improvement -- like two fewer field goals per game by an opponent -- would result in a big difference.
Sophomore forward Khyle Marshall said "too much at once" is hard to process but that "bits and pieces" are not.
"As it just expands and expands, it's something we have in our minds," he said.
Stevens focuses on details because Butler rarely wins via blowout. His favorite example is from the 2008-09 season: If Butler's 13 victories by three or fewer possessions had been defeats, the record would have been 13-19 instead of 26-6.
The Bulldogs sputtered in each of the past two seasons before putting together 25- and 14-game winning streaks. To Stevens, a team is constantly evolving. The Bulldogs won't be as good in November as in February or March, he said.
"I like that. I like getting better," he said.
At Butler, it has all added up.
Butler basketball coach Brad Stevens studies advanced statistics to give his team an edge, similar to the Oakland Athletics and general manager Bill Beane as chronicled in the book and movie "Moneyball." Here are some examples:
-Old Dominion, the Bulldogs' March 17 opponent in the NCAA Tournament, led the nation by rebounding 45 percent of its own missed shots. Stevens called it as "staggering a number" as he had ever seen. Keeping Old Dominion off the boards became an emphasis for Butler, which led 32-29 in rebounding and won 60-58. "Butler cares about defensive rebounding," Houston Rockets executive Sam Hinkie said.
-Old Dominion guard Kent Bazemore drove to the right 75 percent of the time (even though he is left-handed), according to Synergy statistics. "If you say that somebody likes to go right, well, document that he likes to go right," Stevens said.
-In the 2010 NCAA Tournament, Butler players watched film of Syracuse guard Andy Rautins shoot open 3-pointers and vowed that he would not do so against them. Butler calculated that Rautins shot 80 percent of his attempts behind the arc and moved in one direction -- Stevens wouldn't say whether it was left or right -- 70 percent of the time. "That simple fact is hard to forget," Stevens said. After scoring 24 points in his previous game, Rautins had 14 as Butler upset the top-seeded Orange 63-59.
-For a poor offensive rebounding forward, Stevens said, "You're beating a dead horse if you say, 'Go to the glass, go to the glass.' " Instead, the coach said, show that he went to the boards three times out of 50. Either the forward is not in shape or not trying. "One more possession might mean winning the game," Stevens said.
-When players do conditioning drills in the fall, they are timed in four sprints. Stevens cares more about the difference between the first and fourth than in the average "because that shows how in shape you are," he said. Those who need more conditioning get that, and others concentrate on developing skills.
-Butler has 11 years' worth of data on what a typical All-Horizon League guard would score in conditioning tests. "So you try to motivate with those numbers," Stevens said.
-Matthew Graves, the Bulldogs' associate head coach, oversaw three years of workouts in which Matt Howard shot 25 to 50 3-pointers per session. It was all charted. "For two years, in individual workouts, we had the confidence and he had the confidence because we had the data to back that up," Graves said. Howard, who made five 3s in his first three years, sank 53 last season and shot 40 percent from the arc.
10.28.2011
KELLEN MOORE
Let's get to the bottom of this. Kellen Moore has an ideal physique for a quarterback—if that quarterback competed in an adult flag football league. He's listed at a generous 6 feet. He's not very fast. "He runs a sub-five-second 40," says a teammate. "Let's leave it at that." Critics question his arm strength.
Yet this seemingly unremarkable 23-year-old, this laconic, shaggy-haired lefty from Prosser, Wash., is about to become the winningest quarterback in the history of major college football. If the fifth-ranked Broncos get past Air Force on Saturday, Moore will move into a tie with Colt McCoy, who led Texas to 45 victories from 2006 through '09. After a bye week, Moore will likely break the record at UNLV on Nov. 5.
Even by the prolific standard he has set in four seasons as a starter, Moore had a monster day in the Broncos' 63--13 dismantling of Colorado State last Saturday. In 2½ quarters of work, he completed 26 of 30 passes—including his first 18—for 338 yards and four touchdowns. Boise's 742 total yards set a school record and left the hosts sounding a bit stunned.
"What did he hit—18 in a row?" asked Steve Fairchild, the Rams' coach and former quarterback. "When I played, I couldn't have done that against air."
Moore's been doing it for four years. He's the nation's active career leader in pass efficiency (168.6) and completion percentage (69.3) and is second in passing yards (12,596) and touchdowns (120).
What's his special sauce?
"He's just a normal dude who happens to be a football guru," says senior tight end Kyle Efaw.
"It's crazy how smart he is about the game," says Logan Harrell, a defensive tackle at Fresno State. "It seems like he can get himself out of any situation and get the ball where it needs to be."
"He feels the game very well," says coach Chris Petersen, now 67--5 in his six seasons at Boise. "He anticipates better than any of the college guys I've been around. And there's nobody in college football who works the pocket like he does. He slides, he glides, he moves up. He just has a phenomenal feel for avoiding sacks." A tiny silver lining for the Rams: They put Moore down once—just the third sack he has taken in his last 283 passing attempts, going back to Boise's last defeat, a 34--31 overtime loss at Nevada last November.
The Wolf Pack's defensive coordinator, Andy Buh, learned a lesson in the first half of that game. "We tried to fool Kellen with some disguises, and none of 'em worked," he recalls. "It took us a half to realize we were trying to confuse the wrong guy, so we quit and started picking on some other people."
"He'll look right at a defender, and go elsewhere with the ball," marvels Broncos nickelback Hunter White. "He's throwing to another receiver while he's staring at you. Try reading that."
"Rare accuracy. Rare pocket presence. Rare production," says one NFL scout. "Unbelievable kid. He slows the game down. He has the it factor—whatever you want to call it—that everybody's looking for."
Note that, while no one uses the word, everyone is talking about Moore's brain.
"He's a cerebral guy with an amazing football intellect who's been doing this forever," says Broncos senior wideout Tyler Shoemaker. "He ran a similar offense for his dad in high school. So when he got here, he had an easy transition."
Tom Moore won 21 league championships and four state titles in 23 seasons at Prosser High before resigning in March 2009 so that he could watch his sons play. Kirby Moore is a 6'2" Broncos sophomore receiver whose 95 touchdown catches at Prosser set a national high school record.
"My dad always wanted to talk about the big picture when he taught players," says Kellen. "It was never just, 'You run a hitch route.' It was more like, 'You run a hitch, and here's why you're running it and how it complements this other route. Here's how this coverage works, and what are its strengths and weaknesses.' He didn't just want to teach you your assignment. He wanted to teach you football."
His eldest son was eager to learn.
He still looks boyish, with the easy grin and mop-top 'do, but Kellen Moore has taken some adult steps this year. In July he married Julie Wilson, a former Prosser High three-sport athlete and valedictorian. The two had been dating since she was a senior and Moore was a sophomore at Prosser.
Moore is also working on his master's in kinesiology. And this fall he's immersed in an independent study project with left tackle Nate Potter. They're steeping themselves in the subject of "what highly successful people do to become successful," says Moore.
Among the books he's read on this topic: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. Moore's preliminary conclusion: "There's no magic. A lot of times there's this misconception that people are just given this talent, that they never had to work hard to get where they are." Their common denominator, he says, is the willingness to submit to "that grueling, grinding, not-fun task, and to do it over and over. That's what successful people do."
He cites the 10,000-Hour Rule from Outliers, which holds that greatness requires the investment of massive amounts of time. Moore, it turns out, has been investing since at least the second grade. For show-and-tell, recalls Kris, he would draw a play on the whiteboard: "He'd tell the class, 'This is what the Prosser Mustangs are going to be running this week.'"
"He'd answer questions," adds Tom. "And he knew what he was talking about."
They recount a childhood that was custom-designed, it seems in retrospect, to turn him into a savant at reading defenses. Every day during football season he and Kirby would go from the elementary school to their dad's football practice, where they served as ball boys and mascots. By the time he was in sixth grade Kellen was doing drills with the varsity quarterbacks.
After games the coaches would gather at someone's house to watch film. Kellen tagged along. "He'd always have a little notepad with him," says Tom. "He was always drawing plays."
Kellen was a good-sized high school sophomore: 5'11", 155 pounds. "He grew fast," says Kris, with a wry smile, "and then he didn't grow again." That year he beat out a senior for the starting job. There was some muttering about nepotism, Tom recalls, until the season opener, when Kellen threw three touchdowns in a win over Mercer Island High, a much bigger school. "And that took care of that," says Tom.
In his final two seasons Kellen called his own plays. His father's only request was that he shout the audibles, "so I would know what was going on."
Kellen's junior year, the Mustangs took on nationally ranked Bellevue High. In Prosser's victory, Kellen threw six TDs—three of them to Kirby. A DVD of that game found its way into the hands of Justin Wilcox, who at the time was Boise's defensive coordinator. Wilcox became a lonely voice in the Broncos' football offices, advocating for Moore. I'm tellin' ya, this kid can PLAY!
Most college coaches who'd fallen in love with the quarterback they saw on film became strangely mute upon meeting him in person. "They'd stand up and shake his hand, and you could see it register," says Tom. While no one flat out told the Moores, "He's too short," they didn't have to. "They just never called back," Tom says.
Still, Moore had offers from Eastern Washington and Idaho, and things were looking up with Oregon State. Beavers coaches had invited him to work out for them to Corvallis. But when he got there, coach Mike Riley and quarterbacks coach Danny Langsdorf "took the 10 quarterbacks who were 6'3"," according to Tom.
Kellen and the other quarterbacks were instructed to go to another field, where "a couple of graduate assistants basically told them, 'You guys just sort of play catch,'" says Tom.
"That was a long drive home."
Not long after, they drove to Boise for another workout. Petersen remembers seeing Moore across the practice field and telling an assistant, "He's not that short."
"You're looking at his brother," the coach was told. "Kellen's the other guy."
The other guy, it turned out, fit in very well at Boise, a collection of overlooked, overachieving players. After redshirting his freshman season, Moore won the job coming out of fall camp in 2008. In his third start, his first on the road, he threw for 386 yards and three touchdowns in a 37--32 upset of No. 17 Oregon. The Broncos lost to TCU in that season's Poinsettia Bowl. They didn't lose again until that Nevada game last November, a string of 24 consecutive wins.
Taking their cue from Petersen, the Broncos are declining to answer questions about their chances of moving to the Big East or their chances of returning to a BCS bowl for the third time in six seasons. Moore, meanwhile, is withholding comment on what is shaping up as one of the most fascinating subplots of the 2012 NFL draft: Will he be picked, and if so, when?
ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. says Moore is "at best, a late-round pick." The scout quoted earlier, a Moore fan, ticked off his two most commonly cited shortcomings: size and arm strength. On the subject of size, it wasn't so much Moore's height that concerned him as his lack of bulk. The scout wonders if the quarterback, at 191 pounds, can handle the pummeling he'd take in the league.
Moore's arm strength ("average to above-average") is ameliorated by his excellent, lightning-fast release, says the scout. "It comes out so quick, and he has such anticipation, instincts... . He'll get bigger and stronger, too."
And wiser. Asked if it annoyed him that some experts are already predicting that he'll flop in the NFL, Moore replied, "I really don't concern myself one bit. I think you learn quick enough you're not gonna make everyone happy. So there's no sense in trying."
All he needs is for one team to believe in him.
"We've heard that before," says Tom, who has memorized the sign in the Boise quarterbacks' meeting room, which is his son's second home. It says:
1) TOUGHNESS
2) PREPARATION
3) DECISION MAKING
4) ACCURACY
"Nothing in there about being 6'4."
Yet this seemingly unremarkable 23-year-old, this laconic, shaggy-haired lefty from Prosser, Wash., is about to become the winningest quarterback in the history of major college football. If the fifth-ranked Broncos get past Air Force on Saturday, Moore will move into a tie with Colt McCoy, who led Texas to 45 victories from 2006 through '09. After a bye week, Moore will likely break the record at UNLV on Nov. 5.
Even by the prolific standard he has set in four seasons as a starter, Moore had a monster day in the Broncos' 63--13 dismantling of Colorado State last Saturday. In 2½ quarters of work, he completed 26 of 30 passes—including his first 18—for 338 yards and four touchdowns. Boise's 742 total yards set a school record and left the hosts sounding a bit stunned.
"What did he hit—18 in a row?" asked Steve Fairchild, the Rams' coach and former quarterback. "When I played, I couldn't have done that against air."
Moore's been doing it for four years. He's the nation's active career leader in pass efficiency (168.6) and completion percentage (69.3) and is second in passing yards (12,596) and touchdowns (120).
What's his special sauce?
"He's just a normal dude who happens to be a football guru," says senior tight end Kyle Efaw.
"It's crazy how smart he is about the game," says Logan Harrell, a defensive tackle at Fresno State. "It seems like he can get himself out of any situation and get the ball where it needs to be."
"He feels the game very well," says coach Chris Petersen, now 67--5 in his six seasons at Boise. "He anticipates better than any of the college guys I've been around. And there's nobody in college football who works the pocket like he does. He slides, he glides, he moves up. He just has a phenomenal feel for avoiding sacks." A tiny silver lining for the Rams: They put Moore down once—just the third sack he has taken in his last 283 passing attempts, going back to Boise's last defeat, a 34--31 overtime loss at Nevada last November.
The Wolf Pack's defensive coordinator, Andy Buh, learned a lesson in the first half of that game. "We tried to fool Kellen with some disguises, and none of 'em worked," he recalls. "It took us a half to realize we were trying to confuse the wrong guy, so we quit and started picking on some other people."
"He'll look right at a defender, and go elsewhere with the ball," marvels Broncos nickelback Hunter White. "He's throwing to another receiver while he's staring at you. Try reading that."
"Rare accuracy. Rare pocket presence. Rare production," says one NFL scout. "Unbelievable kid. He slows the game down. He has the it factor—whatever you want to call it—that everybody's looking for."
Note that, while no one uses the word, everyone is talking about Moore's brain.
"He's a cerebral guy with an amazing football intellect who's been doing this forever," says Broncos senior wideout Tyler Shoemaker. "He ran a similar offense for his dad in high school. So when he got here, he had an easy transition."
Tom Moore won 21 league championships and four state titles in 23 seasons at Prosser High before resigning in March 2009 so that he could watch his sons play. Kirby Moore is a 6'2" Broncos sophomore receiver whose 95 touchdown catches at Prosser set a national high school record.
"My dad always wanted to talk about the big picture when he taught players," says Kellen. "It was never just, 'You run a hitch route.' It was more like, 'You run a hitch, and here's why you're running it and how it complements this other route. Here's how this coverage works, and what are its strengths and weaknesses.' He didn't just want to teach you your assignment. He wanted to teach you football."
His eldest son was eager to learn.
He still looks boyish, with the easy grin and mop-top 'do, but Kellen Moore has taken some adult steps this year. In July he married Julie Wilson, a former Prosser High three-sport athlete and valedictorian. The two had been dating since she was a senior and Moore was a sophomore at Prosser.
Moore is also working on his master's in kinesiology. And this fall he's immersed in an independent study project with left tackle Nate Potter. They're steeping themselves in the subject of "what highly successful people do to become successful," says Moore.
Among the books he's read on this topic: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. Moore's preliminary conclusion: "There's no magic. A lot of times there's this misconception that people are just given this talent, that they never had to work hard to get where they are." Their common denominator, he says, is the willingness to submit to "that grueling, grinding, not-fun task, and to do it over and over. That's what successful people do."
He cites the 10,000-Hour Rule from Outliers, which holds that greatness requires the investment of massive amounts of time. Moore, it turns out, has been investing since at least the second grade. For show-and-tell, recalls Kris, he would draw a play on the whiteboard: "He'd tell the class, 'This is what the Prosser Mustangs are going to be running this week.'"
"He'd answer questions," adds Tom. "And he knew what he was talking about."
They recount a childhood that was custom-designed, it seems in retrospect, to turn him into a savant at reading defenses. Every day during football season he and Kirby would go from the elementary school to their dad's football practice, where they served as ball boys and mascots. By the time he was in sixth grade Kellen was doing drills with the varsity quarterbacks.
After games the coaches would gather at someone's house to watch film. Kellen tagged along. "He'd always have a little notepad with him," says Tom. "He was always drawing plays."
Kellen was a good-sized high school sophomore: 5'11", 155 pounds. "He grew fast," says Kris, with a wry smile, "and then he didn't grow again." That year he beat out a senior for the starting job. There was some muttering about nepotism, Tom recalls, until the season opener, when Kellen threw three touchdowns in a win over Mercer Island High, a much bigger school. "And that took care of that," says Tom.
In his final two seasons Kellen called his own plays. His father's only request was that he shout the audibles, "so I would know what was going on."
Kellen's junior year, the Mustangs took on nationally ranked Bellevue High. In Prosser's victory, Kellen threw six TDs—three of them to Kirby. A DVD of that game found its way into the hands of Justin Wilcox, who at the time was Boise's defensive coordinator. Wilcox became a lonely voice in the Broncos' football offices, advocating for Moore. I'm tellin' ya, this kid can PLAY!
Most college coaches who'd fallen in love with the quarterback they saw on film became strangely mute upon meeting him in person. "They'd stand up and shake his hand, and you could see it register," says Tom. While no one flat out told the Moores, "He's too short," they didn't have to. "They just never called back," Tom says.
Still, Moore had offers from Eastern Washington and Idaho, and things were looking up with Oregon State. Beavers coaches had invited him to work out for them to Corvallis. But when he got there, coach Mike Riley and quarterbacks coach Danny Langsdorf "took the 10 quarterbacks who were 6'3"," according to Tom.
Kellen and the other quarterbacks were instructed to go to another field, where "a couple of graduate assistants basically told them, 'You guys just sort of play catch,'" says Tom.
"That was a long drive home."
Not long after, they drove to Boise for another workout. Petersen remembers seeing Moore across the practice field and telling an assistant, "He's not that short."
"You're looking at his brother," the coach was told. "Kellen's the other guy."
The other guy, it turned out, fit in very well at Boise, a collection of overlooked, overachieving players. After redshirting his freshman season, Moore won the job coming out of fall camp in 2008. In his third start, his first on the road, he threw for 386 yards and three touchdowns in a 37--32 upset of No. 17 Oregon. The Broncos lost to TCU in that season's Poinsettia Bowl. They didn't lose again until that Nevada game last November, a string of 24 consecutive wins.
Taking their cue from Petersen, the Broncos are declining to answer questions about their chances of moving to the Big East or their chances of returning to a BCS bowl for the third time in six seasons. Moore, meanwhile, is withholding comment on what is shaping up as one of the most fascinating subplots of the 2012 NFL draft: Will he be picked, and if so, when?
ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. says Moore is "at best, a late-round pick." The scout quoted earlier, a Moore fan, ticked off his two most commonly cited shortcomings: size and arm strength. On the subject of size, it wasn't so much Moore's height that concerned him as his lack of bulk. The scout wonders if the quarterback, at 191 pounds, can handle the pummeling he'd take in the league.
Moore's arm strength ("average to above-average") is ameliorated by his excellent, lightning-fast release, says the scout. "It comes out so quick, and he has such anticipation, instincts... . He'll get bigger and stronger, too."
And wiser. Asked if it annoyed him that some experts are already predicting that he'll flop in the NFL, Moore replied, "I really don't concern myself one bit. I think you learn quick enough you're not gonna make everyone happy. So there's no sense in trying."
All he needs is for one team to believe in him.
"We've heard that before," says Tom, who has memorized the sign in the Boise quarterbacks' meeting room, which is his son's second home. It says:
1) TOUGHNESS
2) PREPARATION
3) DECISION MAKING
4) ACCURACY
"Nothing in there about being 6'4."
8.11.2011
NOTHING TO LOSE AND EVERYTHING TO GAIN
I recently caught up with Ryan Blair, who is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain."
Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went "all in" betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.
Q & A:
How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?
I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they'd find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn't talk much about what I'd been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.
In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I'd say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.
What's your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?
As a product of Los Angeles's public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.
I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn't have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I'd be working with my hands.
The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?
As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won't hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it's ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.
What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?
I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you're tough.
And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren't as tough as they looked. Soon you'd be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It's the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.
Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn't always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he's the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company's strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.
The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don't know who to trust. It's the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn't. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.
Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?
No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn't even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I'm literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.
To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don't think so, but you 'inherit' them from your upbringing. Now, if you're smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes "richest celebrity list" than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.
Is there a need for business plans these days?
When you've really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It's the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don't know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you'll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.
In my book "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain," I actually included a chapter called "I Hate Business Plans" where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business's actual results.
The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can't sleep at night because that's all you can think about. And that's your ultimate "business plan."
Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went "all in" betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.
Q & A:
How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?
I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they'd find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn't talk much about what I'd been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.
In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I'd say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.
What's your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?
As a product of Los Angeles's public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.
I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn't have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I'd be working with my hands.
The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?
As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won't hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it's ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.
What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?
I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you're tough.
And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren't as tough as they looked. Soon you'd be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It's the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.
Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn't always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he's the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company's strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.
The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don't know who to trust. It's the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn't. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.
Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?
No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn't even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I'm literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.
To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don't think so, but you 'inherit' them from your upbringing. Now, if you're smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes "richest celebrity list" than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.
Is there a need for business plans these days?
When you've really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It's the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don't know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you'll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.
In my book "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain," I actually included a chapter called "I Hate Business Plans" where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business's actual results.
The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can't sleep at night because that's all you can think about. And that's your ultimate "business plan."
6.16.2011
RAY ALLENS ROUTINE
The routine
The routine is paramount. People don't understand that. They see Ray Allen, his head meticulously shaved, his jersey tucked carefully into his shorts, his socks pulled up to precisely the same length, and they are drawn to his silky jumper. Can you blame them? It is so smooth, so fluid, so seemingly effortless.
Everyone wishes they could shoot like Ray. They tell him that all the time. They are envious, they say, of his God-given talent.
"An insult," says Allen. "God could care less whether I can shoot a jump shot."
As the Celtics kick off their campaign for an NBA championship tonight in the opening round of the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, Allen will leave nothing to chance. He will line up for the tip exactly as he has for his other 73 games. His pregame ritual does not waver: a nap from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., a meal of chicken and white rice at 2:30, an arrival time at the gym at precisely 3:45 to stretch. Allen will shave his head, then walk out to the court at exactly 4:30. He will methodically take shots from both baselines, both elbows, and the top of the key.
Allen is second all-time in 3-pointers, 460 shy of Reggie Miller. He has a chance of surpassing Miller, provided he stays healthy, but if he does, it will not be by divine intervention. It will be the result of years of painstaking preparation.
It will also be the byproduct of learning to strike a delicate balance between routine and superstition.
"I had a borderline case of OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Allen explains. "I was never diagnosed, but it was something I was aware of."
This is how Ray Allen's mind works. If there is a speck of paper on the floor in his house, he cannot walk by without picking it up. He has tried. He has purposely marched up the stairs without correcting the glaring imperfection, but he's unable to eliminate the image from his mind until he goes back down, throws the scrap in the wastebasket, and restores order in his home.
He requires the same symmetry in his basketball universe.
Communicate, compromise
There was considerable discussion before the season on how Pierce, Allen, and Kevin Garnett would share shots.
It didn't occur to anyone, except their coach, to consider how they would share their personal space.
The wildly divergent rituals of the three superstars was a surprise - and, initially, a problem.
"As a team," Allen concedes, "we're all inside a bubble. Each of us only has so much room to operate. You have to carve out your space and recognize that because of someone else's needs, you might have to compromise a bit."
There's the free-wheeling Pierce, who never does anything quite the same from game to game. There is Allen, who needs to complete a specific checklist of chores before tipoff. And then there is Garnett, a brooding pregame figure who requires an intense period of introspection to prepare himself.
It was inevitable that their approaches would collide. In early December, Garnett was at his locker, alone, silently visualizing his responsibilities for the game. Allen, who had long ago completed his pregame tasks, was joking with Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo. The noise interrupted Garnett's concentration. He barked his objections; his veteran teammate barked back.
"They got into it with each other," reports Rondo. "Me and Perk were sitting there going, 'Whoa, what's this about?' "
Pierce observed the verbal skirmish with amusement.
"Stuff like that happens on teams all the time," Pierce insists. "Different personalities. But Ray's to blame. He's crazy. One night he gets on the plane and says, 'Paul, you're in the wrong seat.' I told him, 'Man, there's a hundred seats open. Leave me alone.' "
Ray's obsession with routine has struck a chord with Rondo, who confesses, "I probably have OCD myself." The point guard must wash his hands twice at the nine-minute mark of every game. When teammates and fans high-five him, he offers a closed fist to ward off germs.
Allen has become his role model, and Rondo has started showing up at the arena three hours before the game to mimic Ray's routine.
"I want to be consistent," explains Rondo, "and Ray is all about that."
Allen's mantra is that you must walk, talk, eat, and dress as though you are the best.
"Ray is very strong-minded," Garnett says. "When you have other guys who are as strong, obviously you are going to have debates. But I think the young guys can see we can challenge one another without being destructive.
"I'm not going to say it was easy, but it was simple. Communicating is the best thing we do. A lot of people talk to hear themselves talk. Here, guys talk with their soul."
But coach Doc Rivers needed his trio to listen with the same fervor. His three stars were used to going about things in their own way, with teammates who deferred to them. That was no longer possible, and Rivers knew who would suffer the most.
"Earlier in the year, Ray would come to me and say, 'This is the way I used to do it,' " Rivers says. "I'd tell him, 'That's in the past.' Ray is a military guy. It was hard for him.
"But I told him if we were going to win this thing, he had to change."
'Hollywood' to Seattle
When Ray Allen was 8, he had to drop in five lefty layups and five righty layups before he could leave the gym. Sometimes another team needed the floor and he'd run out of time before he could complete his ritual.
"I cried," Allen says. "It messed up my day."
He did not discuss his compulsion with his teammates, his coaches, his siblings, or even his mother.
"I was almost embarrassed by it," Allen says. "It was just always beating inside my brain when I was young and trying to make sense of who I was."
They nicknamed him "Hollywood" when he arrived at the University of Connecticut because he was always color-coordinated, always meticulously groomed. He looked like someone important.
"I got that from Michael Jordan," Allen says. "When I was a kid, every time he did an interview on television, he was wearing a suit. He looked professional. I told myself, 'That's the way to go.' "
Ray plotted his workouts as if he were one of the coaches. Calhoun would show the team game film and Allen would ask to see it again, not because he needed to, but because he knew his teammates hadn't paid proper attention.
"It's internal," says Calhoun, "but it's there 24 hours a day. Ray does things the right way, and expects others to do them, too. People are sloppy - in their preparation, in the way they present themselves.
"Not Ray. Never."
So Allen harangues Garnett about his sweater-and-tie combos, and the omnipresent Adidas logo on everything he wears. He chastises Eddie House for shooting halfcourt shots at intermission at the opposing team's basket.
He talks to Perkins and Glen Davis about their social life. Allen doesn't drink alcohol. He reminds the young big men, "You have all summer to go out. Do it then. Not now. Not with so much at stake."
"Ray says he always packs light," Perkins says, "because he leaves his nightclub clothes at home."
Allen is certain his philosophy works. When he played in Seattle, a veteran leader among a mass of young, floundering talent, he would complete his pregame pattern, then retreat to the locker room where he'd read, often for more than an hour, before anyone else showed up.
Rashard Lewis, a young forward who jumped to the NBA from high school, began quizzing Allen about his routine. Soon he started showing up early, too. Before long, Damien Wilkins, Chris Wilcox, and Luke Ridnour joined them. Ray was the pied piper of preparation.
"It got to the point," says former Seattle coach Nate McMillan, "where the first bus was more crowded than the second bus. And that never happens."
Allen started a ritual of a halfcourt huddle at the end of games. He didn't just talk to the Sonics about being professional, he showed them how to be professional.
"Ray had a really big influence on me," says Lewis, who now plays for the Orlando Magic. "He knew I had the potential to be a great player, but, as he told me, it's the little things that can hold you back.
"So much of who I am today is from Ray. He helped me become an All-Star."
Not everybody in Seattle bought into Allen's plan. One day, when he arrived at the arena, Allen's regular parking spot was occupied. The owner of the car was Antonio Daniels, who had recently latched on to the early-bird shooting.
"I walk in and say, 'Why are you parking in my spot?' " Allen says. "He is acting like he doesn't know what I am talking about.
"We are playing the Knicks that night. I think I had about 40 points, but I'm still mad. I'm at the free throw line and Daniels comes up to me and says, 'You need me to take that spot more often.' I hit the free throw, then turn to him and shout, 'You stay out of my spot!' "
McMillan was worried after so many losses that his young players might abandon the Allen plan. But even after a double-digit loss, there was Allen, his head shaved, his shirt tucked in, reading a book, prepared to fight again.
"He made my job easy," McMillan says. "No matter what happened the night before, I could always say, 'Ray's here. He's ready. How about you?' "
Buying into concessions
The Celtics have asked Ray Allen to reinvent himself this season. He plays fewer minutes, takes fewer shots, is no longer the focal point of the offense.
"You see him sacrifice," says Perkins, "and you think, 'If he can do it, then I can do it, too.' "
Those changes were palatable for Ray. But he got frustrated when Rivers changed the team shootaround from the morning of the game to three hours before the game. And when Davis's minutes dwindled, and the coaches asked him to put in workouts before and after games, that cut into Allen's alone time on the floor.
"The last time I talked to Ray, he was ticked at Big Baby for not playing better, because he was messing up his pregame," Calhoun says. "I said to Ray, 'You've been in this league 12 years. Don't you have this down by now?' "
Allen is pleased that Rondo has become his pregame partner. He noted that Pierce, who ribs him the most about his eccentricities, has showed up early himself from time to time. In the meantime, Allen has worked to respect KG's ritual from afar.
"I've watched Ray," Garnett says. "I've watched Paul, and we all have our own way of preparing. All of us are excessive in how we go about it. It makes sense to me. Everybody is a little over the top in what they do, because it means so much."
When the Celtics played in Orlando earlier this season, Allen was at the arena at his customary time. He was surprised to see a lone Magic player working down at the other end of the floor - until he realized it was Rashard Lewis.
The word in Seattle is that Ridnour, Wilkins, and Wilcox have continued their pregame routine. McMillan, now the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, reports that he imparted Allen's pregame wisdom to young All-Star Brandon Roy, who is so pleased with the results that he doesn't even wait for the first bus anymore. He goes a half-hour earlier by cab with an assistant coach.
The Celtics have benefited most from Allen, who admits he's made more concessions this season than all the others combined.
"Our young guys are lucky to be around him. Too often these kids make it to the NBA and they settle. Ray won't let them."
Pierce says he plans to adopt some of Allen's eating habits and offseason workouts.
The bubble he calls the Boston Celtics can get cluttered. Very cluttered. But, according to Ray's careful calculations, there is still plenty of space inside for a championship trophy.
The routine is paramount. People don't understand that. They see Ray Allen, his head meticulously shaved, his jersey tucked carefully into his shorts, his socks pulled up to precisely the same length, and they are drawn to his silky jumper. Can you blame them? It is so smooth, so fluid, so seemingly effortless.
Everyone wishes they could shoot like Ray. They tell him that all the time. They are envious, they say, of his God-given talent.
"An insult," says Allen. "God could care less whether I can shoot a jump shot."
As the Celtics kick off their campaign for an NBA championship tonight in the opening round of the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, Allen will leave nothing to chance. He will line up for the tip exactly as he has for his other 73 games. His pregame ritual does not waver: a nap from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., a meal of chicken and white rice at 2:30, an arrival time at the gym at precisely 3:45 to stretch. Allen will shave his head, then walk out to the court at exactly 4:30. He will methodically take shots from both baselines, both elbows, and the top of the key.
Allen is second all-time in 3-pointers, 460 shy of Reggie Miller. He has a chance of surpassing Miller, provided he stays healthy, but if he does, it will not be by divine intervention. It will be the result of years of painstaking preparation.
It will also be the byproduct of learning to strike a delicate balance between routine and superstition.
"I had a borderline case of OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Allen explains. "I was never diagnosed, but it was something I was aware of."
This is how Ray Allen's mind works. If there is a speck of paper on the floor in his house, he cannot walk by without picking it up. He has tried. He has purposely marched up the stairs without correcting the glaring imperfection, but he's unable to eliminate the image from his mind until he goes back down, throws the scrap in the wastebasket, and restores order in his home.
He requires the same symmetry in his basketball universe.
Communicate, compromise
There was considerable discussion before the season on how Pierce, Allen, and Kevin Garnett would share shots.
It didn't occur to anyone, except their coach, to consider how they would share their personal space.
The wildly divergent rituals of the three superstars was a surprise - and, initially, a problem.
"As a team," Allen concedes, "we're all inside a bubble. Each of us only has so much room to operate. You have to carve out your space and recognize that because of someone else's needs, you might have to compromise a bit."
There's the free-wheeling Pierce, who never does anything quite the same from game to game. There is Allen, who needs to complete a specific checklist of chores before tipoff. And then there is Garnett, a brooding pregame figure who requires an intense period of introspection to prepare himself.
It was inevitable that their approaches would collide. In early December, Garnett was at his locker, alone, silently visualizing his responsibilities for the game. Allen, who had long ago completed his pregame tasks, was joking with Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo. The noise interrupted Garnett's concentration. He barked his objections; his veteran teammate barked back.
"They got into it with each other," reports Rondo. "Me and Perk were sitting there going, 'Whoa, what's this about?' "
Pierce observed the verbal skirmish with amusement.
"Stuff like that happens on teams all the time," Pierce insists. "Different personalities. But Ray's to blame. He's crazy. One night he gets on the plane and says, 'Paul, you're in the wrong seat.' I told him, 'Man, there's a hundred seats open. Leave me alone.' "
Ray's obsession with routine has struck a chord with Rondo, who confesses, "I probably have OCD myself." The point guard must wash his hands twice at the nine-minute mark of every game. When teammates and fans high-five him, he offers a closed fist to ward off germs.
Allen has become his role model, and Rondo has started showing up at the arena three hours before the game to mimic Ray's routine.
"I want to be consistent," explains Rondo, "and Ray is all about that."
Allen's mantra is that you must walk, talk, eat, and dress as though you are the best.
"Ray is very strong-minded," Garnett says. "When you have other guys who are as strong, obviously you are going to have debates. But I think the young guys can see we can challenge one another without being destructive.
"I'm not going to say it was easy, but it was simple. Communicating is the best thing we do. A lot of people talk to hear themselves talk. Here, guys talk with their soul."
But coach Doc Rivers needed his trio to listen with the same fervor. His three stars were used to going about things in their own way, with teammates who deferred to them. That was no longer possible, and Rivers knew who would suffer the most.
"Earlier in the year, Ray would come to me and say, 'This is the way I used to do it,' " Rivers says. "I'd tell him, 'That's in the past.' Ray is a military guy. It was hard for him.
"But I told him if we were going to win this thing, he had to change."
'Hollywood' to Seattle
When Ray Allen was 8, he had to drop in five lefty layups and five righty layups before he could leave the gym. Sometimes another team needed the floor and he'd run out of time before he could complete his ritual.
"I cried," Allen says. "It messed up my day."
He did not discuss his compulsion with his teammates, his coaches, his siblings, or even his mother.
"I was almost embarrassed by it," Allen says. "It was just always beating inside my brain when I was young and trying to make sense of who I was."
They nicknamed him "Hollywood" when he arrived at the University of Connecticut because he was always color-coordinated, always meticulously groomed. He looked like someone important.
"I got that from Michael Jordan," Allen says. "When I was a kid, every time he did an interview on television, he was wearing a suit. He looked professional. I told myself, 'That's the way to go.' "
Ray plotted his workouts as if he were one of the coaches. Calhoun would show the team game film and Allen would ask to see it again, not because he needed to, but because he knew his teammates hadn't paid proper attention.
"It's internal," says Calhoun, "but it's there 24 hours a day. Ray does things the right way, and expects others to do them, too. People are sloppy - in their preparation, in the way they present themselves.
"Not Ray. Never."
So Allen harangues Garnett about his sweater-and-tie combos, and the omnipresent Adidas logo on everything he wears. He chastises Eddie House for shooting halfcourt shots at intermission at the opposing team's basket.
He talks to Perkins and Glen Davis about their social life. Allen doesn't drink alcohol. He reminds the young big men, "You have all summer to go out. Do it then. Not now. Not with so much at stake."
"Ray says he always packs light," Perkins says, "because he leaves his nightclub clothes at home."
Allen is certain his philosophy works. When he played in Seattle, a veteran leader among a mass of young, floundering talent, he would complete his pregame pattern, then retreat to the locker room where he'd read, often for more than an hour, before anyone else showed up.
Rashard Lewis, a young forward who jumped to the NBA from high school, began quizzing Allen about his routine. Soon he started showing up early, too. Before long, Damien Wilkins, Chris Wilcox, and Luke Ridnour joined them. Ray was the pied piper of preparation.
"It got to the point," says former Seattle coach Nate McMillan, "where the first bus was more crowded than the second bus. And that never happens."
Allen started a ritual of a halfcourt huddle at the end of games. He didn't just talk to the Sonics about being professional, he showed them how to be professional.
"Ray had a really big influence on me," says Lewis, who now plays for the Orlando Magic. "He knew I had the potential to be a great player, but, as he told me, it's the little things that can hold you back.
"So much of who I am today is from Ray. He helped me become an All-Star."
Not everybody in Seattle bought into Allen's plan. One day, when he arrived at the arena, Allen's regular parking spot was occupied. The owner of the car was Antonio Daniels, who had recently latched on to the early-bird shooting.
"I walk in and say, 'Why are you parking in my spot?' " Allen says. "He is acting like he doesn't know what I am talking about.
"We are playing the Knicks that night. I think I had about 40 points, but I'm still mad. I'm at the free throw line and Daniels comes up to me and says, 'You need me to take that spot more often.' I hit the free throw, then turn to him and shout, 'You stay out of my spot!' "
McMillan was worried after so many losses that his young players might abandon the Allen plan. But even after a double-digit loss, there was Allen, his head shaved, his shirt tucked in, reading a book, prepared to fight again.
"He made my job easy," McMillan says. "No matter what happened the night before, I could always say, 'Ray's here. He's ready. How about you?' "
Buying into concessions
The Celtics have asked Ray Allen to reinvent himself this season. He plays fewer minutes, takes fewer shots, is no longer the focal point of the offense.
"You see him sacrifice," says Perkins, "and you think, 'If he can do it, then I can do it, too.' "
Those changes were palatable for Ray. But he got frustrated when Rivers changed the team shootaround from the morning of the game to three hours before the game. And when Davis's minutes dwindled, and the coaches asked him to put in workouts before and after games, that cut into Allen's alone time on the floor.
"The last time I talked to Ray, he was ticked at Big Baby for not playing better, because he was messing up his pregame," Calhoun says. "I said to Ray, 'You've been in this league 12 years. Don't you have this down by now?' "
Allen is pleased that Rondo has become his pregame partner. He noted that Pierce, who ribs him the most about his eccentricities, has showed up early himself from time to time. In the meantime, Allen has worked to respect KG's ritual from afar.
"I've watched Ray," Garnett says. "I've watched Paul, and we all have our own way of preparing. All of us are excessive in how we go about it. It makes sense to me. Everybody is a little over the top in what they do, because it means so much."
When the Celtics played in Orlando earlier this season, Allen was at the arena at his customary time. He was surprised to see a lone Magic player working down at the other end of the floor - until he realized it was Rashard Lewis.
The word in Seattle is that Ridnour, Wilkins, and Wilcox have continued their pregame routine. McMillan, now the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, reports that he imparted Allen's pregame wisdom to young All-Star Brandon Roy, who is so pleased with the results that he doesn't even wait for the first bus anymore. He goes a half-hour earlier by cab with an assistant coach.
The Celtics have benefited most from Allen, who admits he's made more concessions this season than all the others combined.
"Our young guys are lucky to be around him. Too often these kids make it to the NBA and they settle. Ray won't let them."
Pierce says he plans to adopt some of Allen's eating habits and offseason workouts.
The bubble he calls the Boston Celtics can get cluttered. Very cluttered. But, according to Ray's careful calculations, there is still plenty of space inside for a championship trophy.
6.15.2011
TYSON CHANDLER
Chandler, the fiery defensive anchor and emotional leader in his first season with the Mavs, is a top priority for Dallas to resign. The 7-foot-1 center provided Dallas with an athletic, defensive-minded big man for the first time in Dirk Nowitzki's 13 seasons.
He will be a highly sought-after free agent and will command a hefty salary.
"Tyson Chandler changed our season on a lot of levels," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said. "It wasn't just his play. It was his enthusiasm, his energy. He just brought a certain exuberance to our locker room and he was always a guy who was talking about accountability. He was talking about it, preaching it and it got other guys in the locker room on board with keeping each other accountable.
"Because, if you don't have a team that polices itself, you can't win an NBA championship."
Chandler averaged a near-double-double with 10.1 points and 9.4 rebounds, while earning NBA All-Defensive second team honors and finishing third in voting for the league's Defensive Player of the Year.
He will be a highly sought-after free agent and will command a hefty salary.
"Tyson Chandler changed our season on a lot of levels," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said. "It wasn't just his play. It was his enthusiasm, his energy. He just brought a certain exuberance to our locker room and he was always a guy who was talking about accountability. He was talking about it, preaching it and it got other guys in the locker room on board with keeping each other accountable.
"Because, if you don't have a team that polices itself, you can't win an NBA championship."
Chandler averaged a near-double-double with 10.1 points and 9.4 rebounds, while earning NBA All-Defensive second team honors and finishing third in voting for the league's Defensive Player of the Year.
DIRK'S ENCORE
Dirk Nowitzki's borderline insane work ethic has always been driven by two dreams.
He lived one in 2008, when he led Germany to the Olympics, carrying his country's flag during opening ceremony. He accomplished the other days ago, when his Dallas Mavericks put the finishing touches on the franchise's first championship.
Now what for Nowitzki?
"You think he's going to work less?" teammate Peja Stojakovic asked, laughing at such a silly notion. "No way."
Teammates don't expect Dirk Nowitzki's passion to change just because he got his title.
That's the consensus opinion in the Mavericks' organization. Never mind that Nowitzki, with his Finals MVP trophy within arm's reach, openly wondered whether he would have worked as hard if he won a title earlier in his career.
Maybe that was the champagne talking. After all, this is a guy who abstains from alcohol all season. Heck, it was news that he celebrated the Western Conference semifinals sweep of the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers by eating a couple of slices of pizza, cheating on his strict diet.
As far as Mavericks concerns go, Dirk's ability to maintain his maniacal motivation ranks somewhere below whether billionaire owner Mark Cuban can afford the giant $90,000 bottle of Aces of Spades champagne the German guzzled from while celebrating at a Miami Beach club in the wee hours of Monday morning.
"I don't think you're going to see any less of a competitive Dirk with the hunger to win a championship next year," said Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson, the man most responsible for bringing Nowitzki to Dallas 13 years ago. "That's not part of this guy's DNA."
Added coach Rick Carlisle: "Guys like Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan -- these guys are wired a certain way. And they're uncompromising with how they approach their preparation to play."
If anything, the Mavericks brass hopes Nowitzki relaxes a little. He turns 33 on Sunday, and while Dallas' decision-makers are confident Nowitzki has at least a few more prime seasons left in his ground-bound game, rest becomes more important as he ages.
Nowitzki has relaxed more than ever the past couple of summers, when he finally granted Cuban's requests to not compete in international tournaments. Instead, Nowitzki makes a daily drive from his boyhood home in Wurzburg, Germany to go through strenuous, unconventional morning workouts with longtime mentor Holger Geschwindner, then does a couple hours of cardio each afternoon.
Nowitzki's late-night shooting sessions during the season, often with Holger in attendance, are approaching legendary status. Teammates are surprised if they show up to the gym to work on their game during a non-game night and don't see Nowitzki.
Guys such as Stojakovic, who competed against Nowitzki for years, went from respecting Nowitzki's commitment to being in awe of it once they see his passion up close and personal on a consistent basis.
"His drive is just unique," said Brian Cardinal, who became one of Nowitzki's close buddies during their first season as teammates. "His motivation is like no other. To come in here and see him grind and put in the effort he does, it's inspiring. It's contagious."
Nobody expects that to change after a championship, no matter what Nowitzki says while soaking up the moment he's worked half of his life to achieve.
"Maybe a couple of nights next year I'm going to tell Holger to go somewhere else and leave me alone," Nowitzki said, quickly seeming to realize how unlikely that is to happen. "No, I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.
"I play this sport because I'm a competitor. That's what drove me to be the best I could be. I don't think it's going to be a huge motivation drop-off. I think I'll be OK once I get a little rest here."
He'll have to set new goals. The challenge of defending a championship should certainly fuel the 7-footer's competitive fire.
Maybe he'll start giving his legacy a little thought, something he claims he's never done before. Nowitzki, who ranks 23rd in NBA history with 22,792 points, acknowledged Tuesday that 30,000 would be a worthy target.
He'll find plenty of motivational fodder. Nowitzki knows nothing else.
Workers work. Winners win. For Nowitzki, the former leads to the latter, a trend that won't end just because he finally had one fully satisfying season.
He lived one in 2008, when he led Germany to the Olympics, carrying his country's flag during opening ceremony. He accomplished the other days ago, when his Dallas Mavericks put the finishing touches on the franchise's first championship.
Now what for Nowitzki?
"You think he's going to work less?" teammate Peja Stojakovic asked, laughing at such a silly notion. "No way."
Teammates don't expect Dirk Nowitzki's passion to change just because he got his title.
That's the consensus opinion in the Mavericks' organization. Never mind that Nowitzki, with his Finals MVP trophy within arm's reach, openly wondered whether he would have worked as hard if he won a title earlier in his career.
Maybe that was the champagne talking. After all, this is a guy who abstains from alcohol all season. Heck, it was news that he celebrated the Western Conference semifinals sweep of the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers by eating a couple of slices of pizza, cheating on his strict diet.
As far as Mavericks concerns go, Dirk's ability to maintain his maniacal motivation ranks somewhere below whether billionaire owner Mark Cuban can afford the giant $90,000 bottle of Aces of Spades champagne the German guzzled from while celebrating at a Miami Beach club in the wee hours of Monday morning.
"I don't think you're going to see any less of a competitive Dirk with the hunger to win a championship next year," said Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson, the man most responsible for bringing Nowitzki to Dallas 13 years ago. "That's not part of this guy's DNA."
Added coach Rick Carlisle: "Guys like Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan -- these guys are wired a certain way. And they're uncompromising with how they approach their preparation to play."
If anything, the Mavericks brass hopes Nowitzki relaxes a little. He turns 33 on Sunday, and while Dallas' decision-makers are confident Nowitzki has at least a few more prime seasons left in his ground-bound game, rest becomes more important as he ages.
Nowitzki has relaxed more than ever the past couple of summers, when he finally granted Cuban's requests to not compete in international tournaments. Instead, Nowitzki makes a daily drive from his boyhood home in Wurzburg, Germany to go through strenuous, unconventional morning workouts with longtime mentor Holger Geschwindner, then does a couple hours of cardio each afternoon.
Nowitzki's late-night shooting sessions during the season, often with Holger in attendance, are approaching legendary status. Teammates are surprised if they show up to the gym to work on their game during a non-game night and don't see Nowitzki.
Guys such as Stojakovic, who competed against Nowitzki for years, went from respecting Nowitzki's commitment to being in awe of it once they see his passion up close and personal on a consistent basis.
"His drive is just unique," said Brian Cardinal, who became one of Nowitzki's close buddies during their first season as teammates. "His motivation is like no other. To come in here and see him grind and put in the effort he does, it's inspiring. It's contagious."
Nobody expects that to change after a championship, no matter what Nowitzki says while soaking up the moment he's worked half of his life to achieve.
"Maybe a couple of nights next year I'm going to tell Holger to go somewhere else and leave me alone," Nowitzki said, quickly seeming to realize how unlikely that is to happen. "No, I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.
"I play this sport because I'm a competitor. That's what drove me to be the best I could be. I don't think it's going to be a huge motivation drop-off. I think I'll be OK once I get a little rest here."
He'll have to set new goals. The challenge of defending a championship should certainly fuel the 7-footer's competitive fire.
Maybe he'll start giving his legacy a little thought, something he claims he's never done before. Nowitzki, who ranks 23rd in NBA history with 22,792 points, acknowledged Tuesday that 30,000 would be a worthy target.
He'll find plenty of motivational fodder. Nowitzki knows nothing else.
Workers work. Winners win. For Nowitzki, the former leads to the latter, a trend that won't end just because he finally had one fully satisfying season.
6.10.2011
DIRK AND HOLGER
Article Written: Aug. 27, 2006
Dirk: Born June 19, 1978
SAITAMA (FIBA World Championship) - One of the most important figures at the FIBA World Championship is not on the court.
Instead, Holger Geschwindner sits in the stands and watches his famous pupil Dirk Nowitzki wreak havoc on opponents as Germany takes aim at another medal in this prestigious tournament.
Nowitzki had 23 points to fire the Germans to a narrow victory over Nigeria on Sunday and into the quarter finals in Saitama.
He spoke to Cindy Garcia-Bennett about Nowitzki and Germany.
FIBA: How difficult is it for Nowitzki to deal with all the expectation surrounding him and Germany?
Geschwindner: "He feels pressure. He is the key figure in Germany right now, since he is playing in the NBA and everyone is watching him. It's a big load but he is handling it really well so far."
FIBA: Do you think Nowitzki is at the high point of his career?
Geschwindner: "I guess everyone can see that he is playing his role, I hope that he can improve his tools. He needs more physical exercise. But I think in two years time he will be on top of his game. He improves year after year and we have a pretty good plan to keep him focused. He is 28 yrs old right now and has two more years to reach the peak of his abilities."
FIBA: You have known Nowitzki for a long time. How has he changed?
Geschwindner: "I first met Dirk when he was a schoolboy, he was 16 years old. "He really hasn't changed much in terms of character. He is very down to earth, he has only one car and a little house. He is not playing to be a big shot. He knows he has great talent but other guys have talents in other fields. He doesn't feel superior, for Dirk everybody is the same, equal."
Dirk: Born June 19, 1978
SAITAMA (FIBA World Championship) - One of the most important figures at the FIBA World Championship is not on the court.
Instead, Holger Geschwindner sits in the stands and watches his famous pupil Dirk Nowitzki wreak havoc on opponents as Germany takes aim at another medal in this prestigious tournament.
Nowitzki had 23 points to fire the Germans to a narrow victory over Nigeria on Sunday and into the quarter finals in Saitama.
He spoke to Cindy Garcia-Bennett about Nowitzki and Germany.
FIBA: How difficult is it for Nowitzki to deal with all the expectation surrounding him and Germany?
Geschwindner: "He feels pressure. He is the key figure in Germany right now, since he is playing in the NBA and everyone is watching him. It's a big load but he is handling it really well so far."
FIBA: Do you think Nowitzki is at the high point of his career?
Geschwindner: "I guess everyone can see that he is playing his role, I hope that he can improve his tools. He needs more physical exercise. But I think in two years time he will be on top of his game. He improves year after year and we have a pretty good plan to keep him focused. He is 28 yrs old right now and has two more years to reach the peak of his abilities."
FIBA: You have known Nowitzki for a long time. How has he changed?
Geschwindner: "I first met Dirk when he was a schoolboy, he was 16 years old. "He really hasn't changed much in terms of character. He is very down to earth, he has only one car and a little house. He is not playing to be a big shot. He knows he has great talent but other guys have talents in other fields. He doesn't feel superior, for Dirk everybody is the same, equal."
4.21.2011
RAY ALLEN: THE NBA ALL-TIME 3PT SHOOTER
There are a handful of excellent shooters in the NBA. And then there’s Ray Allen. Excellent shooters can make shots even when lanky defenders with slinky arms obstruct their view of the basket. Ray Allen will make shots regardless of the condition. Excellent shooters are Matt Bonner, Anthony Morrow, Kyle Korver, and their role-playing brethren. Ray Allen is a future Hall of Famer.
Ray Allen’s jump shot is sweeter than high fructose corn syrup, and just as deadly. The question is, Why? Why is his shot greater than all other shots? And, what’s the secret behind his success?
“That’s an excellent question,” says Karl Hobbs, George Washington University’s current head coach and the man Ray Allen credits for helping him polish his stroke while at UConn.
While Allen certainly doesn’t disagree with the man who had him study Hersey Hawkins game tape throughout his time at Connecticut, he thinks his career shooting percentage of 45 (40 from behind the three-point line) has more to do with his legs. “The lower body is the most important,” says the 10-time All-Star. “The upper body is kind of like non-existent if your lower body is doing what it’s supposed to do. If you’ve got great legs on your shot, it’s always going to have a shot to go in.”
While there may be a slight difference of opinion when it comes to dissecting the physical reasons behind his shooting prowess, the leg on which Ray Allen’s greatness stands is simple: It’s his work ethic.
Everyone knows about Ray Allen’s extremely regimented game day routine. They know about his nap in the early afternoon; they know about his post-nap meal of chicken and rice; they know about his early arrival to the gym; they know about his exhaustive shooting routine. What everyone may not know about is Allen’s equally outrageous practice habits.
According to Boston coach Doc Rivers, even on the day after a game where he played 40-plus minutes, Allen will hit the Celtics’ facility, hours prior to the start of practice. After carefully changing into his ball gear—if Allen had a hair on his head, it would never be out of place; his nature is that meticulous—he begins his workout by running on the treadmill for 60 minutes. He then makes his way down to the court, where he matriculates from location to location, taking 300 or more shots. Then his teammates arrive and practice begins.
“It’s just his warm-up, and for most people that’s their practice,” says Rivers. “That is why he is who he is.”
Who is Ray Allen exactly? He’s 15 seasons of 20 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 threes a game. He is, according to many NBA players past and present, one of the greatest shooters to ever lay hands on a Spalding. He is, according to the stats, the greatest three-point shooter of all time. He is the perfect citizen, the epitome of cool and the very definition of consistent greatness.
Yet, at 35 years of age, he still practices like the scrawny freshman at UConn he was half a lifetime ago. And that is the not-so-secret ingredient behind his jumper’s serenity and his career’s longevity.
“I don’t take credit or praise for being able to shoot the basketball, because I do it so much,” says Allen. “Pat me on the back. Tell me I’m great. But get in the gym with me and you’ll be like, ‘I’ve watched him work out, so I really expect that to go in.’”
Coach Hobbs, observer of almost two decades of Ray Allen hoops, says that you can never tell what kind of game Allen is having based on his ever-neutral facial expression.
Consider February 10, 2011 the exception.
Backpedaling down the court after draining his 2561 three of his NBA career over Derek Fisher, Allen pumped his fists—seemingly still trying to keep his emotions in check. He followed that by clapping emphatically. With the crowd noise rising to an NBA Finals-esque crescendo, Allen gave the masses a thumbs-up. Then, he exhaled and Allen went over to Reggie Miller, who was on the sidelines calling the game for TNT, and gave him a handshake and a heartfelt hug.
Moments later, after re-adjusting his headset, Miller would note on national TV: “I’m so happy for him, because this is one of the best guys. He is so humble. He’s so giving. He’s a great family man.”
What Reggie Miller was trying to say, and what Ray Allen’s hug attests to, is that Allen is nothing if not gracious. Coach Hobbs knows this from his days working him out on the practice floor at UConn, where a young Allen would always make sure to say, “Thanks, Coach,” before heading to the locker room.
Not satiated with the title he won in 2008, after re-upping for two more years with the Celtics this past summer, Allen spent copious amounts of time in the gym, preparing for another run at the championship.
“A lot of guys in the NBA talk about wanting to win, but they don’t want to win on the team’s terms—they want to win on their own terms,” says Allen. “People talk about it, but they don’t really know what it means to really go about winning. It’s just talk. I’ve been fortunate to meet up with some players and an organization that really wants to win.”
The work paid off. The 35-year-old had one of his finest season since coming over to Boston in ’07. He’s averaging 16.5 points, shot career-bests of 49 percent from the field and 44 percent from downtown. More importantly, the Celtics finished third in the Eastern Conference.
“He’s gotten better with age,” says Hobbs, who watches the Celtics on TV frequently. “That’s a tribute to how he keeps his body and mind in great condition.”
There are excellent shooters. And then there’s Ray Allen.
Ray Allen’s jump shot is sweeter than high fructose corn syrup, and just as deadly. The question is, Why? Why is his shot greater than all other shots? And, what’s the secret behind his success?
“That’s an excellent question,” says Karl Hobbs, George Washington University’s current head coach and the man Ray Allen credits for helping him polish his stroke while at UConn.
While Allen certainly doesn’t disagree with the man who had him study Hersey Hawkins game tape throughout his time at Connecticut, he thinks his career shooting percentage of 45 (40 from behind the three-point line) has more to do with his legs. “The lower body is the most important,” says the 10-time All-Star. “The upper body is kind of like non-existent if your lower body is doing what it’s supposed to do. If you’ve got great legs on your shot, it’s always going to have a shot to go in.”
While there may be a slight difference of opinion when it comes to dissecting the physical reasons behind his shooting prowess, the leg on which Ray Allen’s greatness stands is simple: It’s his work ethic.
Everyone knows about Ray Allen’s extremely regimented game day routine. They know about his nap in the early afternoon; they know about his post-nap meal of chicken and rice; they know about his early arrival to the gym; they know about his exhaustive shooting routine. What everyone may not know about is Allen’s equally outrageous practice habits.
According to Boston coach Doc Rivers, even on the day after a game where he played 40-plus minutes, Allen will hit the Celtics’ facility, hours prior to the start of practice. After carefully changing into his ball gear—if Allen had a hair on his head, it would never be out of place; his nature is that meticulous—he begins his workout by running on the treadmill for 60 minutes. He then makes his way down to the court, where he matriculates from location to location, taking 300 or more shots. Then his teammates arrive and practice begins.
“It’s just his warm-up, and for most people that’s their practice,” says Rivers. “That is why he is who he is.”
Who is Ray Allen exactly? He’s 15 seasons of 20 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 threes a game. He is, according to many NBA players past and present, one of the greatest shooters to ever lay hands on a Spalding. He is, according to the stats, the greatest three-point shooter of all time. He is the perfect citizen, the epitome of cool and the very definition of consistent greatness.
Yet, at 35 years of age, he still practices like the scrawny freshman at UConn he was half a lifetime ago. And that is the not-so-secret ingredient behind his jumper’s serenity and his career’s longevity.
“I don’t take credit or praise for being able to shoot the basketball, because I do it so much,” says Allen. “Pat me on the back. Tell me I’m great. But get in the gym with me and you’ll be like, ‘I’ve watched him work out, so I really expect that to go in.’”
Coach Hobbs, observer of almost two decades of Ray Allen hoops, says that you can never tell what kind of game Allen is having based on his ever-neutral facial expression.
Consider February 10, 2011 the exception.
Backpedaling down the court after draining his 2561 three of his NBA career over Derek Fisher, Allen pumped his fists—seemingly still trying to keep his emotions in check. He followed that by clapping emphatically. With the crowd noise rising to an NBA Finals-esque crescendo, Allen gave the masses a thumbs-up. Then, he exhaled and Allen went over to Reggie Miller, who was on the sidelines calling the game for TNT, and gave him a handshake and a heartfelt hug.
Moments later, after re-adjusting his headset, Miller would note on national TV: “I’m so happy for him, because this is one of the best guys. He is so humble. He’s so giving. He’s a great family man.”
What Reggie Miller was trying to say, and what Ray Allen’s hug attests to, is that Allen is nothing if not gracious. Coach Hobbs knows this from his days working him out on the practice floor at UConn, where a young Allen would always make sure to say, “Thanks, Coach,” before heading to the locker room.
Not satiated with the title he won in 2008, after re-upping for two more years with the Celtics this past summer, Allen spent copious amounts of time in the gym, preparing for another run at the championship.
“A lot of guys in the NBA talk about wanting to win, but they don’t want to win on the team’s terms—they want to win on their own terms,” says Allen. “People talk about it, but they don’t really know what it means to really go about winning. It’s just talk. I’ve been fortunate to meet up with some players and an organization that really wants to win.”
The work paid off. The 35-year-old had one of his finest season since coming over to Boston in ’07. He’s averaging 16.5 points, shot career-bests of 49 percent from the field and 44 percent from downtown. More importantly, the Celtics finished third in the Eastern Conference.
“He’s gotten better with age,” says Hobbs, who watches the Celtics on TV frequently. “That’s a tribute to how he keeps his body and mind in great condition.”
There are excellent shooters. And then there’s Ray Allen.
4.12.2011
EVALUATING QB's
Every pass play is a pure demonstration of human feeling. Scientists have in recent years discovered that emotions, which are often dismissed as primitive and unreliable, can in fact reflect a vast amount of information processing. In many instances, our feelings are capable of responding to things we're not even aware of, noticing details we don't register on a conscious level.
This exercise captures why it's so important for quarterbacks to rely on their feelings and not their analytical intelligence. "QBs are tested on every single pass play," Hasselbeck says. "To be good at the position, you've got to know the answer before you even understand the question. You've got to be able to glance at a defense and recognize what's going on. And you've got to be able to do that when the left tackle gets beat and you're running away from a big lineman. That ability might not depend on real IQ, but it sure takes a lot of football IQ."
How QBs develop a more effective emotional brain is the question teams should be asking. The simple answer: work. Expertise requires lots of effort and repetition. K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State, studies expertise. Ericsson acknowledges the role of genetic gifts (physical and mental skills are not distributed equally at birth), but he believes that the overwhelming majority of expertise is earned. "There is virtually no evidence that expertise is due to genetic or innate factors," Ericsson says. "Rather, it strongly suggests that expertise requires huge amounts of effort and practice." This is because it takes time to train our feelings, to embed those useful patterns into the brain. Before a quarterback can find the open man, parsing the defense in a glance, he must spend years studying cornerbacks and crossing routes. It looks easy only because he's worked so hard.
"I think the willingness to put in the hours is the most important thing for succeeding in the NFL," says Gil Brandt, former Cowboys vice president of player personnel and current draft analyst for NFL.com. "When you look at the best QBs -- guys like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees -- what you see is that they work harder than anyone else. Their work ethic is what makes them great."
In recent years, Ericsson has become known for his calculation that true expertise in various fields, from QBs to cello players, requires about 10,000 hours of what he calls "deliberate practice." And deliberate practice is not fun.
It's not casual scrimmages or a game of catch in the backyard. Instead, it's a disciplined attempt to improve specific skills. For a quarterback, this might involve spending the weekend throwing hundreds of footballs through an old car tire while moving to the left or working for months on a few steps of footwork. Consider Peyton and Eli Manning. It would be easy to conclude that the brothers have some yet-to-be-discovered quarterback gene, a snippet of DNA that makes them suited for the pocket. In reality, according to Ericsson's model of expertise, the Mannings have excelled in the pros because they began throwing the football as toddlers, racking up hours of deliberate practice at an age when most kids haven't even touched a pigskin. It also didn't hurt that their father, Archie Manning, was a former NFL passer who provided them with invaluable instruction. Peyton and Eli weren't born with the ability to read defenses and throw a perfect spiral. Those "instincts" come only from a lifetime of training.
So, if talent comes from intuition, and reliable intuition comes from practice, then the trait that teams should really be measuring is how recruits practice. And the question they should be asking is, Why are some quarterbacks so much better at getting better? This notion of practice led Ericsson to collaborate with Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Duckworth is best known for her work on grit, a character trait that allows people to persist in the face of difficulty. A few years ago, she was commissioned by the Army to measure the grittiness of cadets at West Point. Although the academy is highly selective, about 5 percent of cadets drop out after the first summer of training, known as Beast Barracks. The Army has long searched for the variables that predict which cadets will graduate, but it wasn't until Duckworth tested them using a short questionnaire -- consisting of statements such as "Setbacks don't discourage me" or "I am diligent" -- that the Army found a measurement that actually worked. Duckworth has since repeated the survey with subsequent West Point classes, and the results are always the same: The cadets who graduate are the ones with grit.
In a new paper, Duckworth and Ericsson demonstrate that grit doesn't only keep people from dropping out, but it's also what allows them to become experts, to put in the hours of deliberate practice. The researchers tracked 190 participants at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The first thing they discovered is that deliberate practice works. Student spellers who spent more time studying alone and memorizing words with the help of note cards performed much better than kids who were quizzed by friends or engaged in leisure reading. Duckworth and Ericsson also found that levels of grit determined how much the spellers were willing to practice. Grittier kids were able to engage in the most useful kinds of self-improvement, which is why they performed at a higher level. Woody Allen famously declared, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." And grit is what allows you to show up, again and again and again.
"I'd bet that there isn't a single highly successful person who hasn't depended on grit," says Duckworth. "Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do. It lets you take advantage of your potential." For successful quarterbacks, grit is what allows them to watch hours of game tape on Monday mornings. It lets them remain in the weight room after everyone else has gone home. It's why they can practice the right way, not just the easy way. "In order to become a professional athlete, you need a certain kind of obsessiveness," Duckworth says. "You've got to devote your life to the development of this very narrow expertise. It shouldn't be surprising that this takes lots of grit."
The problem for the NFL is that instead of measuring grit, teams still subscribe to an antiquated model of talent and expertise in which innate gifts are presumed to matter the most. The scouting combine requires players entering the draft to perform a number of short physical and mental tasks (40-yard dash, Wonderlic, three-cone drill, bench-press reps, vertical jump) referred to by psychologists as "maximal measurements," since they measure people who are highly motivated to perform for short bursts of time. But to understand why those maximal tests at the combine don't predict performance in the pros, we must return to the nature of expertise. As Ericsson and Duckworth demonstrate, the most important kind of talent, emotional IQ, depends on measurements of sustained performance, on being able to engage in endless amounts of deliberate practice.
"Maybe they say he's too short or too slow or has a weak arm," Brandt says, "but the reality is that if a quarterback has the right work ethic, then he can probably make up for those problems." He points again to Brees, who wasn't drafted until the second round, and Brady, who was ignored until the sixth. "That's because teams have been looking at all the wrong things," Brandt says. "Just because you can measure it doesn't mean it matters."
Measuring grit does matter, but it's not easy. Grit can't be evaluated in a single afternoon; by definition, it's a metric of personality that involves performance over long periods of time. People don't reveal grit at the combine; they show it when no one else is around. "What coaches need is a way to test how players will perform over the entire season," Duckworth says. "Do they have what it takes to make themselves better? Will they benefit from criticism and feedback? If I were a coach, those are the questions I would care about."
This exercise captures why it's so important for quarterbacks to rely on their feelings and not their analytical intelligence. "QBs are tested on every single pass play," Hasselbeck says. "To be good at the position, you've got to know the answer before you even understand the question. You've got to be able to glance at a defense and recognize what's going on. And you've got to be able to do that when the left tackle gets beat and you're running away from a big lineman. That ability might not depend on real IQ, but it sure takes a lot of football IQ."
How QBs develop a more effective emotional brain is the question teams should be asking. The simple answer: work. Expertise requires lots of effort and repetition. K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State, studies expertise. Ericsson acknowledges the role of genetic gifts (physical and mental skills are not distributed equally at birth), but he believes that the overwhelming majority of expertise is earned. "There is virtually no evidence that expertise is due to genetic or innate factors," Ericsson says. "Rather, it strongly suggests that expertise requires huge amounts of effort and practice." This is because it takes time to train our feelings, to embed those useful patterns into the brain. Before a quarterback can find the open man, parsing the defense in a glance, he must spend years studying cornerbacks and crossing routes. It looks easy only because he's worked so hard.
"I think the willingness to put in the hours is the most important thing for succeeding in the NFL," says Gil Brandt, former Cowboys vice president of player personnel and current draft analyst for NFL.com. "When you look at the best QBs -- guys like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees -- what you see is that they work harder than anyone else. Their work ethic is what makes them great."
In recent years, Ericsson has become known for his calculation that true expertise in various fields, from QBs to cello players, requires about 10,000 hours of what he calls "deliberate practice." And deliberate practice is not fun.
It's not casual scrimmages or a game of catch in the backyard. Instead, it's a disciplined attempt to improve specific skills. For a quarterback, this might involve spending the weekend throwing hundreds of footballs through an old car tire while moving to the left or working for months on a few steps of footwork. Consider Peyton and Eli Manning. It would be easy to conclude that the brothers have some yet-to-be-discovered quarterback gene, a snippet of DNA that makes them suited for the pocket. In reality, according to Ericsson's model of expertise, the Mannings have excelled in the pros because they began throwing the football as toddlers, racking up hours of deliberate practice at an age when most kids haven't even touched a pigskin. It also didn't hurt that their father, Archie Manning, was a former NFL passer who provided them with invaluable instruction. Peyton and Eli weren't born with the ability to read defenses and throw a perfect spiral. Those "instincts" come only from a lifetime of training.
So, if talent comes from intuition, and reliable intuition comes from practice, then the trait that teams should really be measuring is how recruits practice. And the question they should be asking is, Why are some quarterbacks so much better at getting better? This notion of practice led Ericsson to collaborate with Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Duckworth is best known for her work on grit, a character trait that allows people to persist in the face of difficulty. A few years ago, she was commissioned by the Army to measure the grittiness of cadets at West Point. Although the academy is highly selective, about 5 percent of cadets drop out after the first summer of training, known as Beast Barracks. The Army has long searched for the variables that predict which cadets will graduate, but it wasn't until Duckworth tested them using a short questionnaire -- consisting of statements such as "Setbacks don't discourage me" or "I am diligent" -- that the Army found a measurement that actually worked. Duckworth has since repeated the survey with subsequent West Point classes, and the results are always the same: The cadets who graduate are the ones with grit.
In a new paper, Duckworth and Ericsson demonstrate that grit doesn't only keep people from dropping out, but it's also what allows them to become experts, to put in the hours of deliberate practice. The researchers tracked 190 participants at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The first thing they discovered is that deliberate practice works. Student spellers who spent more time studying alone and memorizing words with the help of note cards performed much better than kids who were quizzed by friends or engaged in leisure reading. Duckworth and Ericsson also found that levels of grit determined how much the spellers were willing to practice. Grittier kids were able to engage in the most useful kinds of self-improvement, which is why they performed at a higher level. Woody Allen famously declared, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." And grit is what allows you to show up, again and again and again.
"I'd bet that there isn't a single highly successful person who hasn't depended on grit," says Duckworth. "Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do. It lets you take advantage of your potential." For successful quarterbacks, grit is what allows them to watch hours of game tape on Monday mornings. It lets them remain in the weight room after everyone else has gone home. It's why they can practice the right way, not just the easy way. "In order to become a professional athlete, you need a certain kind of obsessiveness," Duckworth says. "You've got to devote your life to the development of this very narrow expertise. It shouldn't be surprising that this takes lots of grit."
The problem for the NFL is that instead of measuring grit, teams still subscribe to an antiquated model of talent and expertise in which innate gifts are presumed to matter the most. The scouting combine requires players entering the draft to perform a number of short physical and mental tasks (40-yard dash, Wonderlic, three-cone drill, bench-press reps, vertical jump) referred to by psychologists as "maximal measurements," since they measure people who are highly motivated to perform for short bursts of time. But to understand why those maximal tests at the combine don't predict performance in the pros, we must return to the nature of expertise. As Ericsson and Duckworth demonstrate, the most important kind of talent, emotional IQ, depends on measurements of sustained performance, on being able to engage in endless amounts of deliberate practice.
"Maybe they say he's too short or too slow or has a weak arm," Brandt says, "but the reality is that if a quarterback has the right work ethic, then he can probably make up for those problems." He points again to Brees, who wasn't drafted until the second round, and Brady, who was ignored until the sixth. "That's because teams have been looking at all the wrong things," Brandt says. "Just because you can measure it doesn't mean it matters."
Measuring grit does matter, but it's not easy. Grit can't be evaluated in a single afternoon; by definition, it's a metric of personality that involves performance over long periods of time. People don't reveal grit at the combine; they show it when no one else is around. "What coaches need is a way to test how players will perform over the entire season," Duckworth says. "Do they have what it takes to make themselves better? Will they benefit from criticism and feedback? If I were a coach, those are the questions I would care about."
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