TAR HEELS COMPETITIVE CULTURE LEADS TO SUCCESS

On the same December evening last year when the University of North Carolina women's soccer team won a national championship, undergraduate assistant coach Brittani Bartok posted a picture on the somewhat unofficial and entirely entertaining team Twitter feed for which she is maestro. The top panel of what were two photographs stacked together showed a scene of Tar Heels strewn around a practice field in various stages of exhaustion. The bottom panel showed players sprawled amidst celebratory confetti at the conclusion of the championship game against Penn State.

There for all to see, and retweeted more than a thousand times, was cause and effect. Separating beginning and end is trickier.  One championship pursuit ends, another begins. And where one begins, another ends. On and on forever it seems.

So here we are.

"Is this going to be painful?" Tar Heels women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance asked the players assembled in front of him. It was a rhetorical question, but he supplied an answer anyway.
"Absolutely."

From a vantage point along one of the white lines that marked the edge of the practice field, even the cicadas were at intervals drowned out by a wave of labored breathing that approached and receded as more than 30 bodies sprinted from one end to the other and jogged back again. There were no soccer balls in sight. The only opponent was the clock, 18 seconds to cover 120 yards. Another 30 seconds to complete the jog back to the starting point. Rest for 30 seconds and then do it again. And again. And a few more times after that.

Kealia Ohai, the All-American forward who not only scored the goal that put North Carolina in the championship game a season ago but came up with the strike that propelled the United States to gold in the Under-20 World Cup earlier the same year, finished the final sprint at the front of the pack. Once across the line, she squatted on the balls of her feet, sank to all fours and then lay on the ground while a trainer elevated her legs. All around her players crouched, sat or stood doubled over in various stages of misery.

Play the game at a sprint. It's one of the coach's favorite adages. It doesn't happen easily.

"From the beginning, what I've always tried to do is think about the kind of team that I would hate to play against if I were a player," Dorrance said. "I would hate to play against my team. I would hate it. I would love to play against some of these other teams that give you pockets of areas to play-make and stage and slow the game down. ...

"But who would I hate to play against? Someone coming at me for 90 minutes."

It is as good an explanation as any as to why North Carolina so often celebrates amidst confetti in December. As for how it works, that is what August is about. This is where the team prepares for those 90 minutes. For part of preseason, first in Chapel Hill and then at the team's training retreat in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.

The reign of Anson Dorrance

August is Dorrance's favorite time of year. Just ask him.

"I get so excited, I can't sleep," Dorrance said. It was a Saturday and a day off for the players, but he was in his office all the same.

Or ask the person who has to put up with him.

"He gets so excited, he can't sleep," said M'Liss Dorrance a day later as she and her husband ate hamburgers amidst tables full of his players, a not-so-quiet, not-so-intimate meal before coach and team departed Chapel Hill for a week of training on the North Carolina coast. As he responded at length to a question about the relative merits of the 4-2-3-1 and 3-4-3 formations, she wandered off to chat with players.

Asked if he'll know it's time to do something else when the preseason insomnia ceases, the 62-year-old coach looked quizzical, as if someone had asked him what he would do when he grows tired of oxygen.

At least opposing coaches can take solace in knowing they aren't the only ones who lose sleep over the Tar Heels.

North Carolina has won 21 of the 31 NCAA championships awarded in women's soccer, in addition to an AIAW title before that, all under Dorrance. The NCAA titles are more than the combined totals of Connecticut and Tennessee in women's basketball, more than the combined totals of Arizona and UCLA in softball. Excluding intrinsically individual sports that award team titles like wrestling and track and field, no men's or women's Division I program is in possession of more national titles.

North Carolina has more NCAA championships than Manchester United has league titles in England.

The résumé reads like an empire. Even in a sport like women's soccer that falls well short of football or men's basketball in the athletic department hierarchy, it might be reasonable to expect any such program to have adopted some of the vanities of royalty over the years. As if in answer, four white vans sat outside the burger joint near campus. Assistant coaches Bill Palladino and Chris Ducar and director of operations Tom Sander had the keys to three of them (entering his 18th season with the team, Ducar is the junior member of the trio). Dorrance had the fourth set of keys. The sport's version of John Wooden, Bear Bryant or Pat Summitt still drives his players around, like thousands of high school and youth league coaches throughout the country.

That isn't true for just this trip. Vans are the team's main method of transportation. On the road trips that require flights, the Tar Heels rent vans at the other end. Some of it is idiosyncratic. The vans offer more flexibility than charter buses, more control that the man in charge need not cede. Most of it, though, is simply practical. After all these years it's what makes the budget work.

For all but one of the past 10 years, the vans headed to Ocean Isle Beach, a town about three hours southeast of Chapel Hill and not far from the South Carolina border. After a preseason trip to England in advance of the 2003 season, the Tar Heels rolled to a 27-0-0 record and their 17th NCAA championship. Coaches and players liked the time together away from campus before the season. Instead of scattering after practice, the players spent time together. This year together means 36 of them in one house, along with Bartok, fellow undergraduate assistant Indi Cowie and athletic trainer Nicole Fava.

"We can't get away from each other if we tried, really, unless you wanted to swim pretty far out in the ocean," Bartok said. "There's 37-or-something girls in pretty much the same house, so we're kind of forced to spend a lot of time with each other. And we enjoy it. We're not jumping into the ocean to get away from each other."

No 'I' in this team

Two traits define North Carolina. The words ring hollow until you look again at the trophy case.

No players compete harder against each other. None play harder for each other. The time in Ocean Isle Beach reveals how they have come to coexist.

It was the week's first practice on a ragged high school field several miles from the ocean house, and senior Kelly McFarlane exuded something less than beach mellowness. Coaches had split the roster into four teams for a seven-on-seven possession drill, two games going on simultaneously in a round-robin format until the teams with the best record met in what was dubbed the "gold-medal" game. That the winning side didn't actually receive anything, other than the satisfaction of victory, didn't seem to matter to anyone. It certainly didn't matter to McFarlane.

Even as play continued around her in one game, McFarlane argued with Dorrance over his application of one of the drill's rules that cost her team the ball. When the time came for the top two teams in round-robin play to meet in the final, McFarlane's team was initially dispatched to the consolation game. A couple players started to walk toward that part of the field, but McFarlane made a beeline for Sander, North Carolina's keeper of the stats, to protest. There had to be a mistake. Her team should be in the final. The decision was reversed. McFarlane's team then won the final game.

Glory was fleeting. After a water break, a new drill began.

Maybe nobody likes a sore loser, but they turn a blind eye to sore winners here.

"A lot of what we do, because they're keeping score and because they're recording everything, it kind of brings that competitiveness out of people," McFarlane said. "I think I always have been competitive, but I think in this environment, it definitely kind of fosters that."

A health and human policy major who plans to go to medical school, McFarlane is downright genial away from the field, an agreeable, affable Californian who at one point sheepishly details the nutritionist-influenced grocery list she and the other seniors filled for the house at the expense of the junk food they wanted to buy. On the field, not so much.

Dorrance once tried to recruit McFarlane's mother to play soccer in college. She ran cross country for the Tar Heels instead. But years later, she sent her soccer-playing daughter across the country to the soccer camps the Tar Heels run in Chapel Hill. McFarlane wasn't a star recruit in those camps or part of any youth national team pools. She didn't really believe she was good enough to play at North Carolina. The coach concurred on first inspection. She was too slow, ungainly, not enough of an athlete to be of much recruiting interest. Except she played so damn hard.

She played at least 1,000 minutes in each of her first three seasons for the Tar Heels and seems ticketed for a starting role this season. She turned out to be such a quintessentially North Carolina player that Dorrance went out and got another McFarlane for this year's freshman class, Kelly's younger sister, Darcy.

North Carolina wouldn't be what it is without current and future national team talents like Crystal Dunn, Summer Green and Ohai. The list of current and former national team veterans in the soccer office goes on and on like the list of all-conference honorees at most schools. The program also wouldn't be what it is without players like McFarlane who may not play a minute beyond college.

Perhaps surprisingly for a program that doesn't have down years, only years in which it didn't win the championship, quite a bit has changed about the way North Carolina trains. Led by former assistant coach Cindy Parlow Cone, now the coach of NWSL's Portland Thorns FC, the Tar Heels last season overhauled their training philosophy to align with that of Dutch coach Raymond Verheijen. It's a name you hear a lot talking to Dorrance. Even the players, few of whom are avid soccer watchers and wouldn't know Marco van Basten from Johan Cruyff, comfortably drop his name. In grossly oversimplified terms, Verheijen dissents from what he feels is a culture of overtraining in soccer. His model suggests it is better to do more with less, utilizing short intervals of intense training.

To the consternation of some soccer alumni, and even the seniors who lobbied throughout this particular week for more practice and more running, preseason is not as brutal as it once was.

What will never change is that culture of competition. Practices are intense. Elbows and expletives fly, forearms lodge against lower backs, and players go into tackles with gusto. At one point Dorrance reminded the players before a drill began, "We are not injuring each other; we are teammates."

Battered bodies are one product of the intensity. No more than 10 minutes after the coach's warning, highly touted freshman Emily Bruder went down with an injury, although one she appeared to suffer without contact from a teammate. She sat out subsequent practices and a scrimmage against Wofford. Bruised egos would seem a more common concern, but either the players hide those wounds well or what happens on the field really does stay there. Within an hour of slamming into each other on the practice field and listening to McFarlane, Ohai and others gripe about every point in drills, the same players took to the beach together with an inflatable killer whale and other ocean-going flotation devices.

"Sometimes it's tricky," McFarlane said. "Sometimes people may be pissed about something a little bit after practice. But it's just the way our culture is set up. Everybody is going hard to make each other better. At the end of the day, we want our practices to be hard, and we want to put pressure on each other in practice so we're ready for games. Everybody respects that."

That the entire system is set up as a meritocracy, brutal and unforgiving though it may be, must play some role. Perhaps it is harder to nurse a grudge when you know you ultimately control your own fate. Every player is on equal footing just before she gets knocked on her rear end.

Dorrance describes his lineup as forever fluid. That's a kind way to describe it, as the back line learned this preseason. Over the course of a few days, defenders Satara Murray and Hanna Gardner both drew less than rave reviews from their coach. Shortly before leaving for the beach he suggested Gardner, a walk-on who was a breakout performer in the postseason a year ago and subsequently earned time in the under-20 national team player pool, was competing for her job against "any defender who looks good when Hanna Gardner screws up."

Murray, a starter in each of her first two seasons and the Most Outstanding Defensive Player in the College Cup, so infuriated Dorrance with a lackluster practice later in the week that he pondered dropping her from the starting lineup on the eve of the scrimmage against Wofford just to send a message.

Katie Bowen, an immensely talented sophomore defender and midfielder who went to the 2012 Olympics with New Zealand's senior national team, did lose a place with the first unit, at least temporarily.

Let coaches draft from the entire college soccer player pool and they wouldn't get through too many lineups before all three of those players heard their names called. But here they aren't immune. No one is.

Just about the only veteran defender who escaped rebuke was junior Caitlin Ball, a walk-on from Chapel Hill who was so under the radar that Dorrance once told her not to bother coming out for the team.

Palladino, the architect of the defense and one of the most trusted and influential assistants in the college game, went to see Ball play in high school and came away underwhelmed. Dorrance went to a different game, but left with a similar takeaway. Ball recalled a phone conversation that followed in which Dorrance told her it probably wasn't worth her time to try to walk on. The news was disappointing but not exactly earth-shattering. She hadn't really planned on playing college soccer and was going to North Carolina anyway. But she had already signed up to play for a club team the summer after high school graduation and her mom wouldn't let her back out of her first practice after the conversation with Dorrance.

By the end of that summer, her club team won a major tournament and her coach begged Dorrance and Palladino to take another look at the local kid. A week before the preseason, she went to Dorrance's house for an interview. He asked her if she was a psycho. She said she wasn't. He invited her to walk on. By the end of September she was a starter. But for injury, she has been ever since.

She earned her security, even if doing so meant coaches admitting their own recruiting miscalculation.

These were the lessons all 12 of the freshmen were expected to learn as the preseason progressed.

Like several classmates, newcomer Joanna Boyles is a fixture in the youth national system. She played for the United States in last year's Under-17 World Cup in Azerbaijan. She graduated from high school early and won't turn 18 until November, so she could conceivably play in the next two Under-20 World Cups. She is technically skilled beyond her years and scored plenty of goals in club soccer. That isn't what will get her on the field in Chapel Hill this season. Another of Dorrance's favorite sayings is that if you can defend, you will play. If you can defend for five minutes, you will play five minutes.

Through the first few days of preseason, Dorrance said he wasn't sure Boyles would see the field as a freshman. It was hard to tell if he was exaggerating.

By the time the scrimmage against Wofford rolled around midway through beach week, Boyles played more minutes than anyone on the roster. She threw her body into challenges -- too willingly at one point, drawing a rebuke from Dorrance for a reckless slide tackle. She didn't back down from a few post-whistle wrestling matches when her arms and legs got entangled with an opponent. It was still something closer to raw defensive energy than polished defensive awareness, but it would do.

She'll play, if she keeps it up. Perhaps a lot. A week before classes started, she had passed her first test.

"Honestly it doesn't matter, it does not matter how great you are technically or goal-scoring-wise, you have to lay your body on the line," Boyles said. "And if you don't, you won't play. And I think it's all about finding that within yourself and you have to kind of dig that out of you. It's something inside of you that you have to find in order to play.

"I think the past couple of days, I think I've really found that. I'm excited about it."

The winning standard

Alabama football. Connecticut women's basketball. Kentucky men's basketball. A lot of programs face championship expectations every season. Only at North Carolina does the historical record suggest it's not an unreasonable standard, even as the list of championship programs doubled since 2000. No longer can the Tar Heels realistically win every year, but all that history makes it feel like they should.

"You have to understand the expectations here -- it sometimes feels, especially on us, there's a lot of pressure," Bartok said. "It's like if you don't win, you're a failure.

"We feel that. As much as Anson doesn't want us to feel that, it's inevitable."

Playing for the Tar Heels requires thick skin. And perhaps the ability to stretch a metaphor to its breaking point.

One evening on the deck of the beach house, Gardner and freshman Sarah Ashley Firstenberg stood opposite each other and took turns slapping each other in the face. The sound of a hand connecting with cheek elicited either approving cheers or critical jeers from teammates, at least those not doubled over in laughter. It wasn't a simmering feud from the field that boiled over. Gardner and Firstenberg grinned and egged each other on. It wasn't a fight -- it was a contest.

Everything was a contest in Ocean Isle. Tanning became a contest. Board games and puzzles became contests far more heated than the designers probably ever intended.

College students find curious ways to amuse themselves. Competitive college students in a confined space for an extended period all the more.

"I think even our games we play off the field are super competitive," Dunn said of the slap spectacle. "I think that's what drives our program, but we do it in a friendly way. We're not killing each other. We're just bringing that competitive atmosphere in everything. I think it's important, not just on the field."

There are surely times when it isn't fun, when the competitiveness gets to be a bit much or when a morning arrives when you just don't feel like being graded on every minor technical detail against 30-plus other people. Or when you would like to play more than 10 minutes a game. And if it was only about soccer, only about winning drills, winning games -- winning everything -- it might all fall apart.

If that were all it was about, there wouldn't have been a van full of players singing the Celine Dion song from "Titanic" as they waited for one of the other vans to arrive at a destination.

They wouldn't like each other as much as they clearly do if soccer were all there was. Dorrance could get them to compete against each other. Only they can choose to play for each other.

When Bartok was being recruited, people at other schools gave her as many reasons why she shouldn't choose North Carolina as why she should choose their school. It was a military atmosphere. She wouldn't play. She wouldn't have any fun. They recruited people so they wouldn't have to play against them. It was part of the reason she took it upon herself to start the behind-the-scenes Twitter feed when she was a sophomore in Chapel Hill (there is also now an official feed for the more mundane matters). What people saw of the Tar Heels on the field was part of the program's identity but not all of it. She wanted people to understand why when she went home for the holidays and listened to friends who played for other schools gripe about who had it worst with coaches, teammates or some other irritant, she sat in awkward silence. She wasn't a star. She didn't start. She just didn't have any complaints.

"The culture of the team is everyone is here because they love the game, they love to play," sophomore Caroline Lindquist said. "But once you get to know every individual, everyone has their story. I would never say anyone on this team is a soccer robot. There are definitely people who love the game, but I think that makes them more interesting than mechanical."

Late in the week, Dorrance came back of his own volition to the subject of when he might call it quits. Give him enough of a stake to put him in the game -- give him a couple of players like Dunn, Green and Ohai are and Boyles, Bruder and Amber Munerlyn could be -- and he'll keep doing it. The culture of competition will find the rest. It is what he waits to see each summer.

"There are moments that define you," Dorrance said. "We're all looking for those moments in the preseason. Ideally, you're also looking for those moments in the recruiting process, but there's no game that we can see at younger levels that can replicate one of my practices. My practices are the cauldron where we've got to sort out what this alloy is going to become.

"It's tremendous. That's why I can't sleep right now because I am so excited about every single practice."

Everything begins again in August. Same as it always was.

JIM SHAW ON RECRUITING

“Recruiting has a certain art form to it. I think you have to in my opinion recruit guys that you can win with that you have a chance to get. If you recruit guys you can’t win with, then that doesn’t make any sense. And if you recruit guys that you have no chance of getting, then that doesn’t make any sense. So if you answer the question, ‘OK, Percy Allen. Can we win with Percy Allen? Yes. Do we have a chance to get him? Yes. Then you only have to answer one more question and that’s is he going to screw up our program? If the answer to that is no, then you’re off in running. 

I believe in simplifying it. If you simplify things, then you’re able to target more accurately and the process works a lot easier. If you recruit guys you can’t win with or guys you can’t get, then you end up wasting too much time. Or if you recruit guys that screw up the program, you end up wasting too much time.”

FOR USA, EVEN ALL-STARS PLAY ROLES

 The greatest trick USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo has pulled is convincing NBA players they don't need to be stars at the Olympics.

Guard-forward Andre Iguodala is the stalwart of the Philadelphia 76ers and played in the NBA All-Star Game.  His minutes and role with Team USA might be limited at the London Olympics but Iguodala will have a defined yet necessary role for them: Be a defensive stopper and use his athleticism in the transition game.

"That's why they selected me and why they like my game," Iguodala said after Colangelo named the 12-man roster Saturday. "I'm able to do whatever is needed."

Colangelo makes sure the message is heard, received and reciprocated. From Miami Heat forward and Olympic champion LeBron James to Oklahoma City Thunder guard James Harden, the last to make the U.S. team, the phrase of choice is, "Whatever is needed."

"We're all here for one goal, and it's whatever it takes to win the gold medal," said James, the NBA's regular-season and Finals MVP. "It's that simple."

Even James knows he will play less and score fewer points than last season's NBA averages of 38 minutes and 27 points. It's a role he embraces.

"It's a luxury for me to come in here and know I don't have to do as much as I do for my respective team," James said.

Colangelo has long maintained he doesn't want to replicate an All-Star team. He loves to describe a team member as someone who "has built equity with USA Basketball," who can set aside ego for two-plus weeks at the Olympics or world championships.

Of the 12 players on the London team, five won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — James, Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul and Deron Williams— and five won gold at the 2010 world championships in Turkey — Iguodala, Tyson Chandler, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook.

All roles are necessary, right down to the 12th man, who might not play much but must practice hard and do what is asked.

"Philosophically, we've always had that position," Colangelo told USA TODAY Sports. " With the versatility and athleticism we have overall … the coaching staff now has the opportunity to go to a specialist when that's required or necessary."

That is especially important with injuries keeping Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh off the team and helps explain the selections of Iguodala and Harden, the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year.

Iguodala might not have made the team. Harden certainly wouldn't be here. He was a late addition in May after injuries to potential candidates reduced the preliminary roster to 16 from 20. Both now fill vital roles.

"They bring a different dimension. They're kind of 'tweeners,'" Colangelo said. "Iguodala is a defender who can guard all the positions he can, and Harden is a flat-out scorer and a good defender, very actively defensively with loose balls and steals. He's wide. We opted for that."

Iguodala, the prototypical player Colangelo wants, is recognized as an elite defender but he also can make shots at the rim, especially on fastbreaks. He played on the Under-18 U.S. team, the 2007 and 2008 U.S. select teams that scrimmaged against the national team and the 2010 gold-medal world championship team.

"As they move from junior basketball to the select team … to eventually the national team, there is a much easier transition because they understand the rules, the style of play and the level of competition," international basketball expert and former college coach Fran Fraschilla said.

Iguodala made a commitment and earned that "equity," a strong reason why he is on the Olympic team beyond his skills.

"I know the DNA of the guys they want to use," Iguodala said.

Harden, easily recognizable by his long, natty beard, is the welcome interloper. Not an All-Star and without international experience, he has supporters in Colangelo, U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski and teammates.

"Each and every one of those guys makes me feel welcome," Harden said.

Harden comes off the bench for the Thunder and provides scoring, playmaking and defense. He will be asked to do the same in London, in a reduced role.

"Being a sixth man and already coming off the bench definitely helped a lot," Harden said of his inclusion. "Being versatile, even defensively, to guard (positions) 1, 2,, 3 and maybe even 4, helped. Offensively, I will be in a position to catch and shoot, make plays for my teammates and get to the foul line, do everything."

The youngest player, at 22, Harden has bought into Colangelo's message.

"It's a dream come true to represent the United States of America," Harden said. "If I don't get in the game, I'm going to do whatever it takes to help my teammates win the game. That's all that matters."

For all the anxiety about a depleted U.S. team, Colangelo has created a program that can withstand injury after injury to the world's best players and still be the strong favorite to win gold.

The USA could still start James, Bryant, Durant, Paul and Chandler, with six All-Stars off the bench: Anthony, Iguodala, Love, Westbrook, Williams and Blake Griffin.

"Let's give Jerry Colangelo and Coach K some credit," Fraschilla said. "This is the most continuity we've ever seen out of a United States national team. It's at the point now where young stars are coming in like Westbrook, Durant and Love, and they're actually using international experience as a springboard to great NBA careers."

Considered the USA's fiercest competition for gold, Spain heads into the Olympics without point guard Ricky Rubio (recovering from knee surgery) and with guards Juan Carlos Navarro (plantar fasciitis) and Rudy Fernandez (back) not 100%. If Tony Parker (eye) isn't 100% for France, its chances to win a medal decrease.

"Continuity always plays a significant role," Colangelo said. "We've built a program and not just put a team on the floor. We have standards. We have expectations.

"The players have come to understand that and they have bought into it. There's no specific textbook on this. It's because we've been around a while and know what we want in the way of team and know how important attitude is, and we've got that."

As much as the rest of the world closes the gap, the USA is still the dominant basketball nation.

In a gym in Lithuania at the under-17 world championships Sunday, the USA defeated Australia for gold.

"We're very aware of what our youth teams are doing," Colangelo said. "They are our future Olympians."

SPURS - HOW TO BECOME A SPUR

"Well, between our management staff and our coaching staff, we do spend a lot of time together trying to figure out who we're bringing in before we do it. It's not just basketball. We want to know about, uh, what kind of sense of humor people might have, silly as that might sound to some. But I think humor's really important in any job. We want to find out an intelligence level, commitment level, if a player might understand a role or be willing to accept a role. And let him know ahead of time a lot of things about what's expected, so that if he's not going to buy it we don't have to waste time bringing him in and getting rid of him." 

"You can just tell. I don't do any kind of standup routine or anything like that. I don't do any of that. But you can tell. You can bring things up in somebody's life, or in your life, that have happened in the world, mostly. How aware is a person. It tells you if he can fit in with other people. I already know about Timmy and Manu and Tony. I want them to be able to enjoy whoever gets brought in that's going to support them." 

SPURS - SCOUTING AND PLAYER DEVELOPMENT

The Spurs have long been the NBA's gold standard when it comes to drafting and development, preferring to roll up their sleeves and scour the globe to find the right players to slot into well-defined roles in San Antonio.

They have more international players on their roster than any other team in the NBA, and even their American players don't come straight from America to the league.

It's the hard way to build a roster, requiring patience, discipline and investment that few teams are able to muster these days. And it's paying off in a big way for them in the NBA Finals.

There is Danny Green, who was cut three times and spent a summer in Slovenia, drilling every 3-pointer in sight and running away with the finals MVP award.

There is Gary Neal, who was undrafted out of Towson University and spent three years kicking around Turkey, Spain and Italy before being discovered by the Spurs, scoring 24 points in a Game 3 victory that put them back in control.

There is Boris Diaw, the once-promising Frenchman who was on his way out of the league before the Spurs brought him in, playing surprisingly stingy defense on LeBron James and finding Manu Ginobili cutting to the basket for easy buckets in a Game 5 win that moved the Spurs one victory away from the franchise's fifth title.

How do they find these guys?

General manager RC Buford has assembled an unparalleled scouting staff and worked with Gregg Popovich to establish a system and culture over the last 15-plus seasons that allows them to identify the exact attributes that will allow a player to succeed in San Antonio.

''Our management staff, RC does a great job with his scouts showing us who is out there, who is available,'' Popovich said earlier this season. ''And we all sit down and decide who we want to bring in. Once we bring them in, we do take a lot of time trying to develop them.''

It takes communication. It takes trust. It takes commitment to do what the Spurs do. It also takes a willingness to think outside the normal parameters of team building, to consider players that don't fit the prototypical mold.

''When you look at a basketball player and you're trying to evaluate someone, in my opinion you've got to look past the typical biases and preconceived notions on what an NBA player is and should look like or should be; what their pedigree or path should be and really get down to the guy's talent and character and work ethic,'' said forward Matt Bonner, who played in Italy and was acquired in a trade from Toronto. ''Is this person going to make our team better and can he play? I think when you do that you can get a more accurate portrayal of a player and what their value potentially could be.''

The commitment to drafting and developing came early for Buford and Popovich. Situated in small-market San Antonio, they knew they couldn't afford to throw millions at the free agent market every summer to fill holes in their roster. They certainly got lucky getting the No. 1 pick in 1997 when Tim Duncan was available, but their moves to surround him with a championship-caliber supporting cast all came the hard way.

Game 6 is Tuesday night in Miami, where Duncan will have a chance to win his fifth title 14 years after his first. Along the way he has gone from the focal point to a supporting role, all thanks to the system the Spurs have in place.

''I think development is a big part of that,'' Buford said. ''The better prepared you can be to fill in the holes behind that success of an aging group, the smoother the transition might be.''

Tony Parker was the 28th pick out of France in 2001. And despite being well known and coveted thanks to his stellar international play for Argentina, Ginobili fell to the second round in 1999 and didn't come to the NBA for another three seasons.

''Ginobili that was a pick that a lot of people knew was going to be good,'' Timberwolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders said. ''It's just at the time a lot of people didn't want to wait for him.''

The Spurs were willing to wait, and it's paid off handsomely with the left-hander helping them win three titles and then registering 24 points and 10 assists in their Game 5 victory over Miami. He has also helped other foreign players like Tiago Splitter and Nando De Colo make the transition to the United States.

''The first years I started to feel like a guide to the new guys, it felt great, because I needed that at the beginning,'' Ginobili said. ''Being sort of an icon or staple player on this team feels really good. I'm very lucky. And at the same time, it's great to have so many international players that went through some of the things you went through.''

Assistant coach Chad Forcier also deserves plenty of credit. He worked hard with Green to smooth out his jumper and has spent countless hours with many of the projects the Spurs have taken on over the years. The long and winding road that many of these players have taken to get here comes through in the hunger they show on the court.

''Just dealing with the reality that I wasn't going to get drafted, that's like a crossroad for a lot of guys coming out of college,'' Neal said. ''You realize you're not going to get drafted and there's a great chance that you might not become an NBA player. You kind of have to make your mind up that you want to continue on professionally and take the European route and take it seriously.''

When they arrive in San Antonio, they see a lot of other players just like them. A bond is formed and a support system is fostered.

''I think there's a lot of guys with the Spurs who didn't have the easy way, one-and-done in college and then bam, you have a career,'' Bonner said. ''A lot of guys on our team have had to go through the journey of maybe all four years of college, maybe the D-league, maybe overseas. I think that builds character and it makes you appreciate playing in the NBA and playing for an organization like the Spurs that much more.''

SPURS - MADE NOT IN AMERICA

AT&T Center, San Antonio, 2013

"Stone cold" is a distinctly American term. So you could forgive Tiago Splitter's question. The San Antonio Spurs are in a scouting meeting, moments before tip-off against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Assistant coach Brett Brown is explaining a defensive alignment -- a "red," where two Spurs defenders switch off a pick. To emphasize his point, Brown declares it a stone-cold certainty the Spurs will face that situation in tonight's game.

Nine of the Spurs' 15 players this year were raised and trained outside of the United States -- an NBA record. Cultural and linguistic confusion happens often on this team. Enter Splitter, a 6'11", 28-year-old center from Brazil by way of Spain, who this season was the latest to consummate the transition from overseas superstar to selfless Spur. Splitter raises his hand, narrows his brow sharp as a rooftop and says, "What is stone cold?"

The team laughs. Head coach Gregg Popovich laughs. Splitter laughs too -- but he still needs an answer. So Brown explains what he meant. Then Splitter turns to Patty Mills, a guard from Australia, and whispers, "Stone cold isn't in Rosetta Stone."

Cologne, West Germany, 1988

As coaches go, Popovich is a pretty worldly guy. He majored in Soviet studies at the Air Force Academy. He speaks Russian and Serbian. He played on military basketball teams during his stint in the armed forces, traveling Eastern Europe in the '70s. Even then, he knew that the foreign guys were a mostly untapped wealth of talent. So in the late '80s, as an assistant coach with the Spurs, Pop traveled to see the European championships in Cologne. The only other NBA coach there was Don Nelson. Pop knew the stigmas against foreign players: They wouldn't play defense, they wouldn't socialize, they wouldn't learn English, they weren't strong dribblers, they couldn't handle a reduced role, they were soft. "I thought that was really ignorant," Pop says now. "I couldn't believe that it was a pool that wasn't being used."

Decades later, with Pop's mentality and some luck, the core of the Spurs -- Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, international players all -- have helped produce the most consistent winner in the four major sports over the past 15 years, victorious 70.3 percent of the time during that stretch. They've reached the NBA Finals five times and, as of June 10, were three wins away from a fifth championship. And through it all, as Pop's international strategy has become the strategy in the NBA -- seven GMs and five head coaches this past season grew from the Spurs' tree -- it's always been framed in Moneyball terms: Go somewhere other teams aren't, find talent nobody else finds. But to spend time inside the Spurs organization today is to uncover another interpretation of the Spurs dynasty: that as America's youth basketball pipeline has produced a type of player that Pop has no interest in coaching, he has found an advantage not only in targeting international players but in avoiding domestic ones.

South Jamaica, N.Y., 2013

The anti-Spurs are playing in a stuffy gym in Queens. New Jersey's Playaz Basketball Club and the New York City Jayhawks -- two AAU teams, the former among the nation's premiere squads and the latter a relative upstart -- are facing off in the IS8 Tournament. It's a small showcase, during the down months when college coaches aren't allowed to attend games, so missing is the usual swirling circus of middlemen and power brokers and recruiters and other fishy sycophants who are as ubiquitous at tournaments as the Swoosh. The larger summer events are, as one college coach says, "sick. You see coaches, street agents, pedophiles, guys who want to hang around the players because of money or ego."

Youth basketball's beauties and alarms, depending how you look at it, are evident from the opening tip. On an early possession, one of the Jayhawks spins, dribbles, loses and regains balance -- holding the ball for what seems like an eternity -- before drawing contact and hitting a layup. "And one!" he yells. A few possessions later, one of the Playaz dribbles up the floor, barreling through every Jayhawk like a fullback as his teammates stand alone, and throws up a wild layup, nowhere close.

1 Spurs Lane, San Antonio, 2013

Near a mural in his office, Spurs general manager R.C. Buford has just finished reading an article. The mural is an action shot of a Spurs game, but it's really of an era and a mentality frozen in time. Parker's arms are extended, following through after a pass to Ginobili, who's shooting a layup. Duncan is under the glass, not leaping to dunk a potential Ginobili miss but boxing out. Three future Hall of Famers, including one whom many fans -- and not just in San Antonio -- consider the premier player of his era, all playing hero-agnostic basketball.

The article that Buford has finished, printed from ESPN.com, sits on his desk. Its headline: "The Entitlement Culture of Elite HS Hoops." In it, recruiting analyst Dave Telep writes about not only witnessing AAU players complain about the food at a Ritz in California during a tournament but also what he calls the slow and steady crumble of American grassroots basketball: loafing, lousy fundamentals, a pervasive disinterest from players in showcasing anything but themselves.

Buford had lived much of what he read. With two sons who recently played college basketball and rose through the AAU scene, Buford has had a floor seat to the yawning divide in how the game is taught in America and overseas. In AAU, anyone who pays a $16 fee and finishes a background check and an online clinic can coach. In the FIBA club system in Europe, although requirements vary from country to country, coaches must earn various licenses, which often require them to complete intensive training, covering everything from X's and O's to nutrition. The U.S. has the NCAA serving as a conflicted arbiter of both the players' time and money; there is no pretense of amateurism overseas, and for better or worse, practices often last hours longer than our regulated college ones. The Spurs, of course, are not in the business of worrying about the demands on a student-athlete's time and saw it as a plus that guys like Ginobili and Parker had been playing club basketball since they were teenagers, schooled by accredited coaches, the 10,000-hour rule brought to the hardwood. Consider Pop's brutal assessment that foreign players are "fundamentally harder working than most American kids," and it's no wonder the Spurs want to avoid the fate of so many NBA teams, which are, as Buford says, "the end of the road for the developmental habits that are built in the less-structured environment in the U.S."

The way the Spurs see it, though, the biggest divide isn't structural but cultural. Something has happened to basketball in the country that invented it, as well-documented as it as irrevocable, driven by money and fame and a generation of players who've learned from watching sharks succeed by imposing their will upon the game rather than by allowing it to come to them. It used to be that a team needed a transcendent talent to execute a star system; now, it needs a transcendent talent -- LeBron James or Duncan -- to show that it's permissible to be unselfish. Consider that the U.S. has won only two of the major world junior championships in the past 26 years -- not even in 2007, with Stephen Curry and Michael Beasley on the roster -- and the root rot of the U.S. system is all the more clear. "That's a statement about where we are," Buford says. "When we put our best players together, we aren't playing well."

Most of the foreign players not only have more experience playing basketball but more experience playing an unselfish style, with lots of passing and motion and screens, as messy as it is pure. As Spurs director of basketball operations Sean Marks, a New Zealander who played for San Antonio for two seasons, puts it, "The ball doesn't stick." For better or worse, the ball often sticks in America. A few months ago, Pop was scouting an opponent. He won't say which one. On video, Pop saw an international player wide open for a shot, with a confused look on his face. That's because his point guard, an American, was dribbling in circles. "It has to be a really different experience for him," Pop says, laughing. " 'Where am I? Is this is a different game? Is it a different sport?' "

Of course, Pop's coaching style, as prescient as it is curmudgeonly, isn't for everyone. He's demanding and ruthless; his playbook is pick-and-roll heavy, more structured and complicated than European ball but a blood relative. The traits he scouts for -- players with "character," who've "gotten over themselves, who understand team play, who can cheer for a teammate," who "don't make excuses" -- hold true regardless of nationality. The NBA draft, more than the draft in any other sport, is based on potential. With only two rounds, GMs can't miss, and when Pop looks at American talent he sees many players who "have been coddled since eighth, ninth, 10th grade by various factions or groups of people. But the foreign kids don't live with that. So they don't feel entitled," he says, noting how many clubs work on fundamentals in two-a-day practices, each lasting up to three hours. "Now, you can't paint it with too wide of a brush, but in general, that's a fact."

And so it's no surprise that Pop would rather teach unentitled foreign players to be selfless than try to teach entitled domestic players to suppress their egos. The international kids, he says, "have less. They appreciate things more. And they're very coachable." Of course, it's much easier when his best player, Duncan, who was raised in the Virgin Islands and learned the game by playing point guard in pickup games on a rugged outdoor court, is best known for putting team first; when Parker, raised in France, is okay trading stats for wins; when Ginobili, raised in Argentina, is fine coming off the bench. And the Spurs have whiffed on imports (Luis Scola) and scored with Americans (Kawhi Leonard). Still, there's a different vibe in the Spurs facility, as if deplaning in a foreign airport. Argentine reporters stand next to American ones. In practice, Ginobili calls for a screen by saying, "Tienes que poner el bloqueo aca!" The diversity -- San Antonio's roster has players from seven countries and territories -- is a binding force. When Pop talks about his players, a coach who's best known for frowning one-word answers turns not only expansive and animated, waving his arms and laughing, but proud. As he sits on a bench near the team's practice courts, watching Duncan shoot free throws on his day off, he smiles as he sees one of his foreign-born players and foreign-born front office guys hug in the hallway. "It's a family here," Pop says. "It's just geometric, and it creates a mixed culture that we've all enjoyed tremendously."

Of course, Pop enjoys it most because they win. None of the Spurs rank high in points per game, the quintessential American stat. But not only were three Spurs among the top 12 players in Win Shares per 48 minutes for the 2012-13 season, they also join with Marc Gasol, the Memphis Grizzlies center from Spain, as the only non-Americans on the list. Parker, at .206, ranked fifth. Duncan's .191 was 12th. Ginobili, with a lifetime average of .211, would have easily qualified if he had been healthy. And ranking eighth was Splitter, the former international superstar who has had to train both his game and mind to relish the thankless tasks Pop demands of him.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 2000

How many NBA players have a LinkedIn profile? Splitter does. His profession: "Basketball Player at San Antonio Spurs (2010-present)". From 2000 to 2010, the Brazilian native's profile reads, he was a "jugador" at Baskonia, a Spanish club; he signed on at age 15, and there he won 24 awards, championships or gold medals in overseas tournaments, including Spanish League MVP and finals MVP. He was, as Ginobili says, "one of the best centers in the world." And should he ever need proof of that (or require emotional support after being posterized by LeBron James), four LinkedIn members have "endorsed" his "skills and expertise."

Splitter was practically born into basketball. His father, Cassio, played in college, and his sister, Michelle, was a dominating 6'6" player until she died of leukemia in 2009. Splitter first played when he was 7, and within a decade -- as a nimble center as fluent in pick-and-rolls as he is in Portuguese, Spanish, German and English -- American coaches recruited him to attend high school in the States. He was intrigued, until the coaches told him that his parents would have to pay for everything. So he stayed in Europe, and at 15 signed a 10-year contract to play with Baskonia. Buford first scouted him a year later, and two seasons after that, considered 18-year-old Splitter "the best player in the junior world tournament."

Splitter's experience in the club system was not different from most, but it was still more structured and demanding than the traditional American hoops upbringing. He would attend school all day, and in the evening rotated between practice -- sometimes three hours of nothing but fundamentals -- and video, studying Shaq, Kevin Garnett and, most of all, Duncan, his idol, the reason he wore No. 21. Splitter's coach, Dusko Ivanovic, was sort of a Spanish Popovich, minus the charm and the legacy. "He was tough," Splitter says. "Everything was about work and sacrifice and about the team. No excuses. So I grew up fast."

The Spurs drafted Splitter in 2007, but due to contractual buyout issues -- a peril of relying on international players -- Splitter didn't join the team. Three years later, though, Splitter opted out of his contract and arrived in San Antonio at age 25 with the most local hype of any big man since Duncan. Splitter was amazed at how much Americans could do in drive-thrus (go to the bank, get coffee, eat). It was far from the only thing he would have to learn. He soon discovered that for as much as the Spurs' scheme seems European, with its emphasis on pick-and-rolls rather than isolation plays, they're still the Spurs, and it's still the NBA. With a new playbook, new country, new court dimensions and a new role, Splitter "had to learn to play again, basically," Duncan says.

If a benefit of drafting foreign players is that they arrive with more experience than one-and-done kids, a risk is that they're also too set in their ways. Splitter's shot -- a jerky thing capped with an odd finger flick in his follow-through -- had to be retooled by Spurs shooting coach Chip Engelland, renowned for his quiet magic. Limited by injuries and expectations and adjustments, Splitter started only eight games his first two years. Just as every AAU player isn't selfish, every foreign player isn't egoless, and Splitter now says that midway through his first year he was angry that he wasn't seeing more minutes. At one point, Pop told him: "Tiago, I know you're having a hard time. But your time will come. Just keep working. Keep coming to the gym willing to practice." Most of the Spurs' imports have heard a version of that conversation. Parker heard it. Ginobili heard it. The only one who hasn't is Duncan, the unspoken focal point. It's a conversation that Pop doesn't like to have twice, the moment when the characteristics that he scouts for either prove true or don't. And if they don't, the Spurs will ruthlessly cut their losses and move on, as they did with Hedo Turkoglu, George Hill and Stephen Jackson. Splitter, though, worked after practice on his shooting, worked during the lockout with Duncan, and his free throw percentage rose from 54.3 percent as a rookie to 73 percent this season, when he led the team in games played with 81. His job is to execute the invisible stuff: set screens, bang under the boards, find the open man, alter shots. And with seconds left in regulation of Game 3 in the Western Conference finals against the Grizzlies, score tied, Splitter forced guard Mike Conley to put up a shot so high and wild off the glass that it didn't touch the rim. That didn't show up on the stat sheet, but it helped the Spurs to win in overtime.

"He realizes that I might call his number zero times, and he's okay with that," Pop says. "He can do it because of the character he has, because of the way he grew up, because his method of operation is to be a coachable, hard-working individual who wants to help his team win. That's how he's built. That's why we love him."

And that's why the Spurs consider Splitter so flexible as to be invaluable. A restricted free agent this summer whom Buford expects to "go forward with for a long time," he averaged 10.3 points this season by exploiting scraps and leftovers, a "subterfuge type of offense," as Pop says. Break down Hoopdata's shot locations tracker by the two smartest types of looks -- close range and threes -- and you find that Splitter was the fifth-most-efficient regular center in the league, at 73.1 percent of his attempts, ahead of Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh and Kevin Garnett. It's a very Spurs stat. "I'm not going to win games shooting outside," Splitter says.

Sometimes, though, he seems to pine to break out of his role. After practice, Splitter and the guards often compete to see who can drain more threes. In the first round against the Lakers, Pop subbed Matt Bonner for Splitter, who needed a breather after his smothering defense had erased Howard. Bonner is the rare big man capable of draining shots from beyond the arc. After Bonner hit one, Pop walked down the bench and hunched over Splitter. "Don't shoot threes," Pop said. Splitter looked confused. Then Pop smiled.

South Jamaica, N.Y., 2013

Back in Queens, as the Jayhawks break out to a 23-10 lead, the basketball alternates between beautiful and sloppy. One college coach estimates that a handful of players on the court could end up playing for Division I schools. Not surprising, considering that few AAU circuits produce so many stars. Kobe was once a Playa, and Spurs forward Danny Green, who has proved to be both the norm and the exception to Pop's scouting rule, played for a rival New York AAU team.

As a free agent in 2010, Green was signed by the Spurs and released a week later after showing little desire to conform to their team-first style. But shortly after he was cut, Green left Popovich a voice mail begging for another chance, offering to execute any role, no matter how small. Pop re-signed Green in March of that season, and now he's not only "grown within the system," as Green recently told ESPN.com, but often featured: He hit six of nine shots in San Antonio's Game 1 victory over the Grizzlies in the Western Conference finals.

Still, playing on the same courts as NBA legends can produce the burden of unrealistic expectations. One of the biggest headaches for college coaches is that many players have been told since a young age that they possess NBA talent. "Every player expects to be in the league," says one college coach. "And worse, every kid's parent expects them to be in the NBA." Only marquee names -- Coack K, Bill Self -- have the juice and the job stability to convince McDonald's All Americans of the glory in passing and defense. Most coaches are forced by their lack of security, and the one-and-done rule, to compromise their playbooks, if not their ethics, to land top talent. And some of those players aren't raised to handle criticism, which is as amplified on the biggest stage as it is unalterable. "My belief," Pop says, "is that people am who they am."

Ultimately, the Playaz rally. As New Jersey draws closer, the Jayhawks, with no shot clock, turn to a four-corners offense. (Hey, it's passing.) Each time a Playa is at the free throw line, the Jayhawks coach shouts "Touch the shooter!" the instant he releases -- adding classlessness onto slop. But the Playaz's comeback falls short, 72-66. After the game, the guys shake hands, then they're off to their next tournament. It's only one game, only two teams, with players that, who knows, might reach the NBA someday. Just not San Antonio.

Oracle Arena, Oakland, Calif.

Game 6, Western Conference semifinals, Spurs vs. Warriors, 2013

Splitter looks tired. He jogs down the floor after playing defense and stops at the top of the free throw line. It's the fourth quarter. His hands are on his knees; he will play more minutes in this game than any other of the series. Spurs guard Cory Joseph, from the right side of the three-point line, passes to Ginobili. Splitter sets an off-ball screen for Joseph. Then Splitter rolls off that screen to set another, for Ginobili, who dribbles right, stops and cuts left. Splitter pivots and sets him another pick, his body absorbing blows at every turn, jerking back and forth as if standing on a turbulent plane. Ginobili then passes to Boris Diaw, a French big man. Splitter drifts toward the basket, ready to rebound. But Diaw, like a shortstop, catches and fires to Splitter in one fluid motion.

Splitter finishes with a righthanded layup, and on the way up the court, he raises his arm to Diaw, a toast from one foreigner to another, and returns to his thankless banging.