Love & Basketball (& Teaching)
I’ve been reading Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball and these parts really stand out on “the secret” of winning basketball (which is the same as the secret of winning teaching) –
“I read Pat Riley’s book Show Time and he talks about “the disease of more.” A team wins it one year and the next year every player wants more minutes, more money, more shots. And it kills them. Our team has been up at the Championship level four years now. We could have easily self-destructed. So I read what Riley was saying, and I learned. I didn’t want what happened to Seattle and Houston to happen to us. But it’s hard not to be selfish. The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money. Well, you gotta fight that, find a way around it. And I think we have. If we win this, we’ll be the first team in history to win it without a single player averaging 20 points. First team. Ever. We got 12 guys who are totally committed to winning. Every night we found a different person to win it for us.” (Isiah Lord Thomas)
“Lot of times, on our team, you can’t tell who the best player in the game was. ’Cause everybody did something good. That’s what makes us so good. The other team has to worry about stopping eight or nine people instead of two or three. It’s the only way to win. The only way to win. That’s the way the game was invented. But there’s more to that. You also got to create an environment that won’t accept losing.” (More from Isiah.)
“Those teams were loaded with talented players, yes, but that’s not the only reason they won. They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and valued winning over everything else. They won because their best players sacrificed to make everyone else happy. They won as long as everyone remained on the same page. By that same token, they lost if any of those three factors weren’t in place.” (Simmons)
“I always thought that the most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.” (Bill Russell)
Some highlights from an article Simmons wrote about the Spurs in 2012 with the same themes –
“But that’s the thing — if you love basketball and (more important) love watching basketball played correctly, the 2012 San Antonio Spurs have a way of grabbing your attention. They play beautifully together. They pull for each other. They make each other better.”
& –
“… it’s the chemistry of the 2012 Spurs that leaves you breathless. I know, that’s a weird thing to write. How can chemistry leave you breathless? But in person, the little things stand out — you know, teammates feeding off each other, bench guys reacting to big plays, players always making the extra pass, guys constantly talking to each other, even simple moments like Duncan gleefully congratulating Danny Green after Green stopped Chris Paul at the end of Game 4. Duncan wasn’t happy that Green came through for the Spurs; he was happy for Green as a friend. Big difference.”
& –
“And once you build a foundation that strong — when guys aren’t just teammates but friends, when nobody looks at their numbers, when everything revolves around the question, ‘What’s the best way to win today’s game?’ — everything else is cake.”
