Posting #13, August 28, 2008

HOW A TEAM BECOMES A CHAMPION

Well, that’s the end of covering rebounding for now. Let’s take a short break before going on to the next basketball subject.

When you hear great and highly-accomplished people speak, you must listen very carefully because they often say profound things that you could miss. To them, what they are saying is common sense; to us it can be extremely educational and revolutionary. In an interview, immediately after his team won the gold metal, Hugh McCutcheon, head coach of the Olympic men’s volleyball team, said something that I thought was simple yet profound. When asked what the key to them winning the gold metal was, he responded by saying, “These guys worked hard and learned from their experiences.”

There’s a whole lot of good stuff in that one sentence. Let’s analyze it.

One: HIS GUYS WORKED HARD: That implies practices were highly-organized, drills were carefully devised so that they were game-like, competitive, and improved conditioning. They worked hard on the basics of volleyball. Coach McCutcheon sold them on the idea of leaving it all on the volleyball court and that the team that worked the hardest deserved to win.

Two: HIS GUYS LEARNED FROM THEIR EXPERIENCES: This is in reference to inter-squad scrimmages (either six-on-six or breakdown competition) and competition against other teams, both building up to the Olympics and during. It also implies they learned from their successes and failures.

But Coach McCutcheon said, “they” learned. A good coach knows progress will be made when he or she allows his or her players to succeed and fail. A team can learn from doing it right, but they can learn a lot more from failure. Aborting the process by stopping play before complete failure is tempting and may seem humane, but it’s robbing the team of acquiring the knowledge it needs to make adjustments the next time. Japanese mathematics teachers, when giving students a math problem, have been shown to stand back and let them continue until utter frustration. But many times, the students come up with the solution just prior to that point.

One may think Coach Wooden was a micromanager. Nothing could be further from the truth. When, during a scrimmage we made a complete mess of a play, he often said, “Try it again.” Oh how we craved some words of wisdom from him that would help us, but he refrained. He knew, if we learned it ourselves, we would have it during games.

To pull this off, the coach needs an awful lot of self-confidence and restraint. It’s so tempting to “mother” the players by protecting them from pain. It’s so tempting to let them know how smart you are. But the confident coach knows that won’t help them in the long run. Coach Hugh McCutcheon is a wise man. Follow his example.