Morgan Wootten's Big 5 in Coaching

Morgan Wootten may be the most successful high school basketball coach of all time. Wootten won nearly 1,300 games, five mythical national championships, and coached dozens of Division 1 college players at DeMatha (MD) High School. Coach Wootten's ultimate accomplishment came with his 2000 enshrinement in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. In his book, Coaching Basketball Successfully, Coach Wootten outlines his "Big 5 in Coaching".

1. Our goal must be to provide a wholesome environment in which young men or women can develop themselves spiritually, socially, and academically.

2. As coaches, we should be the kind of coach we would want our sons or daughters to play for.

3. We must never lose sight of the fact that basketball is a game and it should be fun. We should never put winning ahead of the individual.

4. Because basketball is a great teaching situation...we must prepare them for the many decisions they will be making that will have long-range effects on the quality of their lives.

5. This is the bottom line: Are we doing all we can to make our players' sport experience as rewarding as possible?

Bruce Weber's Keys to Building a Program

I've heard Illinois Head Coach Bruce Weber at clinics on a couple occasions. He always refers to his keys to building and maintaining a program when he presents. Here they are:

1) Have kids play hard. Don't give them the choice to not play hard.
2) Play as a team. Play to win.
3) Have a flexible system.
4) Lift weights and condition.
5) Defend. Spend at least one hour of practice on defense.
6) Teach your players how to play.
7) Have competitive drills. Have them love to win and hate to lose. Practice game habits at game speed. Have efficiency; drills conducive to your system.

Craig Robinson on the Princeton Offense

Some may know him as the president's brother-in-law but Craig Robinson has a pretty good career, himself, as a basketball coach. Coach Robinson played at Princeton under Pete Carill and later was an assistant at Northwestern under former Princeton assistant Bill Carmody. After leading Brown as head coach for two successful seasons, Robinson is now trying to rebuild the program at Oregon State. In his book "A Game of Character," Robinson discussed the Princeton offense:

"It is as much a mind-set as it is a set of strategies designed for winning the game of basketball."

"Others will talk about the Princeton offense as being good use of fundamentals - passing, moving without the ball, and backdoor cuts. Yes, those are some of the strategies..."

"All of that obscures what the Princeton offense is. Bottom line, it comes down to playing unselfishly, passing and cutting until you get open for a shot - as a team. It is a way of thinking. You not only need very skilled players with a level of precision required for making that perfect shot, but they also need to be patient - hence what may parade as slow isn't necessarily."

Quotes on Listening

John Maxwell is one of my favorite authors. In his latest book, "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect," Maxwell discusses many ways for people to improve their communication skills by connecting with other people. He references a few people's thoughts on listening and being inquisitive in this book...

"Listening requires giving up our favorite human pastime - involvement in ourselves and our own self-interest." - Sonya Hamlin

"My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions." - Peter Drucker

Larry King's favorite question to ask is "Why?"...It's the greatest question ever asked, and it always will be.

And when asking questions, remember the word "FORM," which stands for family, occupation, recreation, and message. Ask people these questions to connect!

What Jon Gruden Learned about Practice from Indiana Basketball

I'm a huge Jon Gruden fan. I liked his passion and enthusiasm as a coach. I love that same enthusiasm in his game analysis for ESPN. I recently read his book, "Do You Love Football?!" He obviously has learned from many great football coaches, with experiences at Tennessee under Johnny Major and in the NFL with the Bill Walsh 49ers and Mike Holmgren Packers, to name a few. But here are the lessons he learned from Bob Knight and the Indiana Basketball Program when he was a ball boy, during the time his father was an assistant football coach at IU:

"Teach your players how to practice. That's even more important than teaching them what to practice, because if you don't establish the pace you want and if you aren't consistent about it, they're going to work the way they want to and it's going to change with each day. You have to let them know that you want them practicing hard, with a sense of purpose, every time."

New York Times Comments on Leadership

My lovely and talented wife is part of a "Leadership Academy" at Xavier University, her employer. This group meets monthly to discuss leadership topics relevant to the university and the world around them. I get the good fortune to read some of her materials. Their latest reading comes from several articles called "Corner Office," a series that the New York Times covers on Sundays where they ask a series of questions to CEOs of various businesses. Here are some thoughts I found to be interesting...

Gordon M. Bethune, CEO of Continental Airlines from 1994 to 2004, on hiring people:
"The really good people want autonomy - you let me do it, and I'll do it. So I told the people I recruited: 'You come in here and you've got to keep me informed, but you're the guy, and you'll make these decisions.'"

Meridee A. Moore, Founder of Watershed Asset Management ($2 billion hedge firm in San Francisco), on career advice:
"Find a mentor. It doesn't have to be a mentor who looks like you. They can be older, a different gender, in a different business, but someone you admire and respect, and attach yourself to that person and learn everything you can."

Cristobal Conde, President and CEO of SunGard, a software and I.T. services company, on time management:
"I need an hour and a half once a day to think....many topics or issues can only be dealth with in an uninterrupted format."

William D. Green, Chairman and Chief Executive of Accenture, on three things that matter:
1. Competence - being good at what you do, and focus on the job you have, not the job you want to have
2. Confidence - have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view
3. Caring - Nothing today is about one individual.

Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard, on making people happy:
"You don't make everyone happy, but I believe that if people feel they were listened to, that their views were taken into account, that they had a chance to show you the world from their point of view, they're going to be much more likely to go along with a decision."