The illusion of communication is the assumption that because something has been spoken in the same language as those that receive it, it has been accomplished. So at least when my oversized puppy doesn’t follow the instructions I give him, I can rationalize that it’s because we don’t speak the same language. But, over time, as he grows from the tiny pup that fit into my hand, to a full-sized dog (even if he still thinks he’s that tiny, apricot-coloured ball of fur), despite that hindrance, our communication has improved. As I continue to use the same commands and directions, he gets used to them and associates them with particular outcomes. Some of those outcomes are positive, like getting awarded a treat, praise, or affection, while others are not. But more importantly what has been a part of the development of accurate, accomplished communication has been the tone of the communication. As most dog people can attest, he has learned to recognize tone, annunciation and volume as just as important, if not possibly more, than the actual words used with them. A loud, quickly or sharply annunciated direction, he has come to understand, means he needs to stop what he is doing. A more quiet, softly annunciated message usually means he has done something right and is now receiving praise. As a puppy he is not always going to get the latter tone. He is going to make mistakes, lose focus or control at times and have to be reigned back in. If any person did the same, we would just say “they’re only human”. He recovers quickly from those moments when he has had to be reminded why following direction is important. That’s partly because dogs only know how to love, so they assume, unless conditioned otherwise, that they are always loved and whatever brought about a less amicable tone has or will pass. But another part of how quickly dogs are able to recover is because they intrinsically have the humility to accept direction without their ego getting in the way. The fruit of that humility having been proven over time as the communication process has been developed. So when it comes to coaching developing players, who often do carry an ego with them, communicating the meaning of particular communication is vital for player and team development.
Iowa vs Uconn
If you didn’t watch Friday night’s NCAA Women’s March Madness Final Four matchup between UConn and Iowa, you really missed out. Many people will weigh in on the game, the individual play, the illegal screen at that was called at the end, and the outcome. But those that are students of the game probably couldn’t write down all the lessons it offered fast enough over this forty-minute clash of titans! And while the game was a mere forty minutes of running time, it was played out over years leading up to it. Storied UConn coach Geno Auriemma, alluded to just that in his post-game conference following UConn’s Final 8 win over upcoming superstar Juju Watkins and USC on Monday night.
Upset
On March 22, Oakland, a 14 seed in this year’s installment of March Madness, upset the storied Kentucky Wildcats, who were the third ranked team in the South region. Kentucky’s Coach Calipari has made a name for himself as one of the top coaches, probably all-time, in the NCAA. He regularly gets top recruits to play for his program, sending many of them onto the NBA and other professional leagues. But on that day, as is often the case for the favored teams during March Madness, it was not their day. On that day, it was Jack Gohlke’s day! A senior who played division 2 before transferring to Oakland, came off the bench to score 32 points on a staggering 10 three pointers. At the conclusion of such a difficult upset, many narratives surfaced. Coach Cal talked about the changing landscape of college basketball and how teams are recruiting through the transfer portal and the JUCO system to have more veteran players, saying the pure freshmen he recruits have a difficult time against them. It’s not a new concept, just ask Michigan and the Fab Five. No matter how talented they were, they lacked the experience and physicality to bring home the NCAA’s most sought-after hardware, despite reaching the finals two years in a row. Always a student of the game, as most greats are, Coach Cal humbly acknowledged that he may have to re-examine his approach in light of the changing landscape. Others were not as understanding. Some pundits went so far as to say that it may be time for Coach Cal to retire. That his time has passed. That he’s lost the narrative of success. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe it’s not Coach Cal that has lost the narrative, but those judging from the outside.
The Mayflower
Recently, Lebron has teamed up with J.J. Redick for a new podcast called the Mind The Game Podcast. It’s getting rave reviews because it takes conversations and experiences from behind the scenes of the elite, basketball world and delivers them for assessment and evaluation by the general public. Some of the positive reviews come from the basketball community who are happy to finally hear players, with firsthand knowledge and experience, talk about the ins and outs, the minutiae of high-level basketball. It contrasts the pundits, who for decades have commented on the game and its players, while having no experience to show for themselves. Their criticisms and praise have been taken by the general public as gospel for what is and isn’t true of these elite athletes, coaches and teams. But without experience or input from those with lived experience, their words should have always been taken for exactly what they are meant to be – entertainment to keep the masses engaged; fodder for discussion; a superficial understanding to bridge the gap between the typical viewer or listener, and the actual experience of those playing, coaching or developing these elite teams. Listening or watching Lebron and Redick dialogue will never fully give someone a true understanding of the experience. It’s the difference between taking a photo of a gorgeous sunset overlooking a beach, versus walking the paths that surround it, captivated by the beauty of every moment of the experience. Simply, you can never truly capture it for all that it was. That established, much can be gained for those tuning in, so long as they not only hear what is being said, but understand what the contextual meaning of the words, and figures of speech mean within the communication of basketball’s elite community.
Effort
Most of us that have played have heard our coaches at some point yell at us to get low on defense. Usually, we hear that when we’ve been beaten off the dribble. I can remember one specific instance of one of my coaches in university yelling that after just such a play. Like most instructions we receive, we know they are the right answer, and in knowing the right answer, we truly believe that’s just what we did. Offended at being called out for something I was completely confident I was doing, the next time on defense I over-exaggerated how low I was to attempt to prove a point to my coach – that I was low and that it didn’t matter how low I was. This time, when the player I was guarding tried to beat me off the dribble, I was able to keep him in front and actually ended up stripping the ball from him as he tried to bring it up to shoot. I got some emphatic clapping from my coach for the play. “Huh”, I thought! That was interesting. It couldn’t have been that I was standing up previously. I was low – to my knowledge. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t low. It was that I wasn’t low enough. I didn’t understand what my coach was saying when he told me to get low. Just telling me to get low wasn’t effective communication. There was no universal measure, other than success. In the first instance, I didn’t have success, so I wasn’t low enough. In the following one, I did have success, so I was low enough. But in a game where you don’t have to be Irish to get lucky, success can’t be the consistent measure. Now, as a coach, I make sure to communicate, specifically, what low is. Low, is making sure your shoulders are lower than the shoulders of the player whom you are guarding AND that your hips are lower that their hips. This way, when I tell my players they aren’t low, or low enough, they know, specifically, what they’re not doing, and what they need to do, regardless of whether the opponent ate their Lucky Charms that day, or not. The other, most common term we use that causes confusion and turmoil is effort.
Which One?
In the mid 1100s, a French Abbot, Bernard de Clairvaux, is famously attributed to saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Got your attention now? Of course, the idea of going to hell is a metaphor. In sports it may mean calamity, turmoil, or failure. So, when a player told me, not for the first time, that he intended to complete the jump program this offseason to add to his athleticism, to improve his game, to be a better version of himself, I felt it was my obligation to make him aware of his pattern of good intentions. Everyone wants to see themselves in the best light possible – maybe that’s why when so many are commonly asked in a job interview what their best and worst qualities are, they frequently cite being a perfectionist for both. But we are often not the image we have of ourselves. Even those that are self-deprecating, usually don’t have an accurate view of the reality of themselves. Our fragile egos won’t allow us to believe that the parts of us that are less than perfectly ideal, truly are a part of who we are. If they did, in an effort to be more than the worst parts of ourselves, our individual growth would likely be a lot more pronounced. If we are able to bring the dark parts of ourselves into the light, isn’t it logical that the darkness will disappear? So in an attempt to truly help this young athlete and illuminate things for him, I tried to find the words that would be most digestible to him to accept that his good intentions were what have actually been holding him back. Fortunately, I have his trust, and so far, based on the changes he’s made, it seems to have been effective. There may be light at the end of this tunnel yet!
Team, Mate
I love this kid! He’s full of joy, enthusiasm and positivity. He’s been coming to the fitness club for a few years now and his positive energy is palpable to everyone in there. Having been working out for years now, he’s learned a lot and developed himself to a point that he’s happy with where he’s at in his own development. Happy, not satisfied. Because he knows all he’s capable of, and all he wants for himself. Secure in himself, he cheers everyone else on, from students to staff, trying to encourage them to be the best version of themselves that they can be in the weight room. The only problem is, in his boisterous energy he doesn’t exactly see where others are at. He doesn’t understand how their passion for physical development isn’t the same as his. His tunnel vision means he can’t see how their goals might be different than what he would like for them. And so, Peter, with all of his smiling, joyous, positive energy, and despite his sincerely good intentions, isn’t for everyone. At least not yet.
Mark Us Down
Everyone has certain dates in the year that they mark down. It could be birthdays for loved ones, special days to remember because of the joy that was experienced or tragedy befallen, or even days that are outside of our normal routine, like national holidays. We mark them down because of their special significance to us, because they hold a little more space in our consciousness and a lot more space in our hearts. In sport, coaches and athletes do the same, all the time, though not for the same reasons. For coaches and players, we mark the days we are preparing for. We feel if we can keep them in the forefront of our mind, stay focused on them, and see them coming, we will be better prepared to realize success when those days finally arrive. Those days, invariably, mark certain games that hold more importance or weight than the rest. While every practice, and each game, is important for putting one foot in front of the other as you march towards the ultimate destination, certain games stand out from the rest because of the degree of preparation needed to end up on the right side of them. It’s next to impossible to be the best version of yourself day in and day out. If it were easier, we wouldn’t need to play the games and would just give the top teams their flowers each year based on who was donning their jerseys and directing from the sidelines. But we do have to play those games. And on certain days you can get away with not being your best. But not on the days that matter most. Those days that we mark down on our calendars, we do so because we understand their importance. They stand out, and are different than the rest. They’re sort of something else entirely. When those days that are marked down on your calendar finally arrive, you will need to be as close to the best version of yourself as you can be. Success stands nimbly on the edge of a knife. Ill preparation, or a couple of unfocused errors and you risk a new date on your calendar to mark as tragedy. As a program of storied success, we know both sides of that all too well.
Family
Family. Such a simple and common term. And yet, like trying to define Love, very elusive. In most cases, if you were to search up a definition of family you would get some form of interpretation of it based on a legal agreement, be it marriage or adoption, and/or some form of genetic connection. It’s unfortunately limiting, and a distant understanding from the lived reality of so many. At St. Pat’s, we often use the term “Irish Family” to refer to community we are continuously building with our students, staff, and the wider community. It’s a bit of a funny, eyebrow raising thing for a community of people that come dominatingly from the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South East Asia, along with many other parts of the world, but ironically, probably least of all, Ireland. In our basketball program, we have lived out the virtue of family as the embodiment of what that “Irish Family” is. While COVID played some serious lockdown defense on our ability to do so, the further and further we get from it, and its restrictions, the more our family returns to be what is has been cultivated to be. The past month, as a snapshot of what family means to us, illustrates that vividly.
Stay Ready
“Failure to prepare, is preparing to fail.”
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”
There are too many quotes about the value, no, the necessity, of preparation in realizing success. So many, that there must be wisdom there. The reality of that wisdom hit home for at least three of our players in the past week.