A Coach's Diary

In his book, Driven From Within , Michael Jordan wrote, "I look at these kids today, and they don't know how to trick themselves. They don't even understand the need to find a way to get yourself ready to play at the highest level every night." Michael Jordan was the ultimate competitor, and I am always interested in how the best motivate themselves and keep themselves motivated. I WOULD WAKE UP IN THE MORNING THINKING, "OK, HOW AM I GOING TO ATTACK TODAY?" Michael Jordan wrote, "It was so easy for me to find ways to motivate myself. My driving force, my passion, was to impress people with what I could do. They got me through those dog days. The most important thing I learned from my father was the passion to prove what I was capable of doing. It was just that simple. I thought about that person who had never experienced the excitement or entertainment I could provide." WHEN I DID GET ATTENTION, I WANTED TO SHOW PEOPLE THAT I DESERVED IT. This quot...

Every year on every team that I coach, I have three types of athletes: I have a group that will listen, try, and do almost everything I say just because I am the coach. I have a 2nd group that don’t want to try anything hard and new. I have a 3rd group can go either way depending on a lot of different factors, including the influencers on the team and my ability to connect with, engage, inspire, teach, and motivate them. Psychologist Carol Dweck has studied mindsets for years. In a talk with Google, she said, “Some people believe that their talents and abilities are just these fixed traits where you have a certain amount and that's it, but other people believe that talents and abilities can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and good mentoring from others.” She also said that some people wilt in the face of failure and shy away from challenges while others who are no more talented and capable embrace challenges and thrive in the face of failure.” The best athletes on ...

We live in a microwave society where we want and expect success to happen overnight. We see the success of those around us being shared on social media, but we don't see the work that they put in behind the scenes to get to where they are. That is why I like this quote by Michael Jordan. Success, greatness, and championships are born in the journey and they are only celebrated at the end. Michael Jordan didn't win his first NBA championship until he was 28 and in his 7th year in the NBA. He had to go through a lot of adversity to climb the mountain, including Larry Bird's Celtics, Isaiah Thomas's Pistons, and Magic and t he Lakers. The media said that he didn't have what it takes to win a championship. They said his stats were empty stats because he couldn't get the Bulls over the hump. Many people thought he would never be a champion because of the way he played. But Michael Jordan just kept working hard, believed in himself, and helped grow his teammates. Jord...

This is one of my favorite quotes by Michael Jordan because it shows that no one is perfect, and to be the best you can be, you have to go through adversity and come out on the other side. I saw an elite guard high school guard playing in a big game this weekend. She is the type of player that fans and parents of other kids stay around and watch. She is the type of player that other coaches and other parents want to beat. The energy in the gym was electric, and every time she got the ball, you could hear a buzz in the gym. Half of the gym was cheering for her and motivating her. The other half of the gym was yelling at her and telling her opponents to get her, stop her, and take the ball away from her. With about 30 seconds left and her team up by one point, the other team stole the ball from her went down, and scored a go-ahead layup. Most athletes at that moment would put their head down, feel defeated, and wouldn't want to be in that situation again, but what she did next is wha...

Knowing what we know about Michael Jordan's competitiveness and work ethic, it is hard to believe that when he was growing up, his father said that Michael was mischievous and the laziest kid he had. Michael grew up the 4th out of 5 kids in Wilmington, North Carolina. Jordan's mother said, "You had to discipline him. He would test you to the limit. Michael was always getting into things." In The Last Dance, Michael said that when he was in the 9th grade, he got suspended three times in one year. He said that his father pulled him aside that summer and said, "You don't look like you are heading in the right direction. If you want to do all of this mischievous stuff, you can forget sports." Michael said that was all he needed to hear, and from then on he had tunnel vision and never got in trouble in school again, and that his father was a friend and a voice of reason who always drove and challenged him. We all need people in our lives like that. People who...

Every player that Michael Jordan has ever played with talks about his competitiveness and his drive to be great, and they talk about how he pushes his teammates to be great as well. In his book, Driven From Within , he said: "A leader has to be willing to sacrifice to help everyone else get to where a team needs to go. No one could take days off with the Bulls because I never took a day off. The leader sets the standard, and everyone has to live up to that standard." Michael Jordan said that he has taken that same approach at Brand Jordan. He said, "It all goes back to me, Tinker and Mark Smith. If we all agree to the standard, who is going to try to change that? We've built the standards. We're leading, not following. Whoever comes in has to live up to the same standard. They have to be as dedicated as I am. They have to put in the same effort. They have to have the same understanding of what we are about. If you don't have the same vision, then you're ...

I can't count the number of conversations that I have had with players and their parents about their roles and playing time. Understandably, most people want more opportunities to play and contribute to their team's success. One of the first things you have to learn as a coach is you can't make everyone happy, and it is important to learn the same as a player and as a parent. In an activity used to address playing time, my coach in college once asked us all to write on a notecard how many minutes we felt like we should play in a game. He then collected all of the notecards and added up the minutes. A college basketball game is only 40 minutes long. This means that there are 200 minutes to share on each team because you can only have 5 people on the court at a time. When he added the numbers that we all wrote down, it was well over 200 minutes. This was an eye-opening experience about how many minutes there are in a game, and how important it is to earn the trust of the coac...

Growing up, I would hear stories about how hard Michael Jordan practiced. Teammates and coaches all talked about how competitive he was in practice and how much he pushed everybody on his team. They talked about how he hated to lose in everything, even in card games, and when he would lose, he would make you keep playing until he would not only beat you but destroy you. The inspiring thing about Jordan to me was that he would challenge the best, people better at certain things than him, so that they could push him. He would challenge the best shooters to shooting competitions, card players to card games, and ping-pong players to ping-pong games. He wasn't afraid to lose. He knew that he had to lose to win. One of his coaches said that when they would do shooting drills, Jordan would never want to be on the team with the best shooters. This forced him to shoot under pressure. His coach said that if his team lost, Jordan would yell, "Run it back, run it back." He never wan...

One of the teams that I was coaching this year had one a few tournaments in a row, and they started feeling good about themselves. They work hard and they are talented. But I feared that they would let their ego get in the way of getting better. When I was re-watching (again) The Last Dance, I heard  Coach Phil Jackson say, "You are only a success at the moment you perform a successful act. You have to do it again." I thought that this might be a great message for my team. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy and celebrate success, but understand that you can't live in that moment forever.  In 1992, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became only the 4th NBA franchise to win back-to-back championships. Prior to the 1992 season, the team talked about the difficulties of repeating, but the 1992 team was even better than the championship team in 1991.  BJ Armstrong said,  "Starting with that season, I felt Michael Jordan never played basketball anymore. He just figured out how to w...

When Michael Jordan came into the NBA, the Bulls were not a very good team or organization. They didn't know how to win, and they did not have a winning attitude, a winning work ethic, or winning habits. It took a lot of hard work and determination for them to climb to the top of the NBA mountain. They needed leadership, and Michael Jordan had to grow into his role as a leader. IF YOU WANT TO WIN, YOU HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE--IT'S NOT THAT COMPLICATED Before Jordan was comfortable being a vocal leader, he first had to prove himself and earn the respect of his older teammates. Jordan said that he led by example when he was younger, but he found his voice when he became one of the older and more experienced players on the team. Jordan said,  "I guess you could say I became a tyrant, or at least that's how some people chose to interpret those actions. That is not how I viewed it. I knew what it took to come from where we were in 1984. I had put in the time, and I had earned...

Michael Jordan and the Bulls used to get bullied and beaten up by the bigger, stronger, and tougher Detroit Pistons. What did MJ and the Bulls do to overcome them to become champions? They hit the weight room. Before his battles with the Pistons, MJ didn’t take lifting weights seriously, but he learned that if he wanted to become a champion, he was going to have to get in the weight room and get stronger. Michael said that he was tired of getting brutally beaten up, and he wanted to start fighting back and give some pain himself. He needed to get physically strong enough to go against Detroit, and he got to the point where he said. “Instead of them dishing it to me, I am going to dish it back to them.” He did that by hitting the weight room. His trainer Tim Grover had a plan for adding size and strength to MJ’s body. MJ started weight training at 200 pounds, and they added 5 pounds at a time until he hit 215. Tim said, “I would give him a certain amount of reps to do, and he would neve...

Michael Jordan wanted to be the best. He competed to win, and he hated to lose. Because he wanted to be the best, he was the hardest worker in the gym. By his 5th year in the NBA, he had become the Rookie of the Year, regular-season MVP, All-Star game MVP, and Defensive Player of the Year. MJ was leading the NBA in scoring every year, and he was on his way to becoming the best individual player in the game. But Jordan wasn't having team success. He was criticized because he wasn't winning at the level of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Isiah Thomas. The Chicago Bulls hired Phil Jackson as the coach, and Phil's goal was to emphasize team play and to take the pressure off of Michael by teaching him how to get his teammates more involved. Michael Jordan said that he wasn't always a fan of Phil Jackson. He said, "[Phil] was coming in to take the ball out of my hands. Doug put the ball in my hands." Phil had a philosophy to get them away from 1-on-1 basketball and m...

Success isn’t promised or given to anybody; especially not sustainable success. If you see somebody on top for an extended period of time, believe that they have put in the work to get to the top, and they have continued the work to stay on top. They have overcome challenges and adversity that we will never see or know about on their journey. They just never quit. That is what Michael Jordan’s former teammate B.J. Armstrong said about him. B.J. said that nothing was going to keep Michael from achieving what he wanted to achieve. He was too focused, competitive, and driven to let anything stop him. Early in his career, guys like Larry Bird and Isaiah Thomas, and teams like the Celtics and the Pistons did a good job of stopping him. But he took his losses, learned his lessons, and came back stronger and better each year until he was at the top of the mountain. There are a lot of 6’6 athletes in the NBA, but there aren’t nearly as many 6’6 athletes who were willing to put in the work that...

Do you love it? Do you love practicing? Do you love playing? Do you love dribbling the ball while you are watching TV? Having grit and a growth mindset are very important, but passion and love has to come first. Being successful in sports is hard. You have to push yourself beyond your limits, and you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone. It takes grit to do that, but it also takes love and passion. It is hard to go through hard things if you don’t love what you do. Fall in love with the game. Fall in love with practicing. Fall in love with working on your game on your own. When you are in the gym, at the court, on the field by yourself, pause and say to yourself, “This is my favorite thing to do.” Michael Jordan had a ‘Love in the Game’ clause put in his first contract. He loved playing the game so much, he put in his contract that he had the ability anytime, anytime. He said, “It’s about playing with your heart and with passion. You play the game for the love of the game...

To be great at anything, you need to be willing to learn and willing to receive feedback. You have to allow yourself to be coached and corrected so that you can learn and grow. And you have to allow yourself to be pushed. Michael Jordan told his college coach, Roy Williams, that he was going to be the best player to ever play at North Carolina. Michael Jordan said, "I'm going to show you. Nobody will ever work as hard as I'll work." Coach Williams said that Michael Jordan was the only play that could ever turn it on and off, and he never turned it off. He said, "When I think of Michael Jordan, I think of 3 years of watching that youngster get BETTER and BETTER and Better." While scrimmaging in practice, I heard that Michael's coaches would have him play on the team with the guys coming off the bench to make it tougher on him. If his team was winning, his coaches would have him switch to the losing team and he would have to lead them back. This is an exam...

When I was playing basketball in high school and college, I would get nervous before my games. Some gamedays, I would wake up nervous, and that nervousness wouldn't go away until the game started. One thing that helped me was visualization. I would go to a quite place, close my eyes, and visualize myself playing in the game. I would start with hearing the announcer call out my name during the player introductions. I would follow myself as I went from the introductions, to the huddle, to the opening tip, and through the first few possessions of the game. This made me feel more confident because I could see and dictate what was going to happen. When the game came, I felt more comfortable because I felt like I had already been there before. It made me feel better when I found out that even Michael Jordan got nervous before games. When he was asked if he got scared before games, Michael said that he is never scared to do things on the basketball court, but he gets nervous because of th...

One of my favorite Michael Jordan commercials is his, "Maybe It's My Fault" commercial. Michael says,  "Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn't. Maybe I made you think that my highlights started at the free-throw line and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think that every shot that I took was a game-winner, that my game was built on flash and not fire. Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God-given gift and not something that I worked for every single day of my life." This is my favorite commercial because it made Jordan real. MJ was such a super-hero to so many of us, but this commercial made me realize that Jordan was not born the great basketball player who ever lived - he worked hard to become the greatest basketball player who ever lived. He tried, he failed, and he tried again. His failure fuel...

Great opponents bring the best out of us. They push us harder and farther than we can push ourselves. They force us to rise to the occasion. It is important to appreciate and respect our opponents because they push us to be the best that we can be. COMPETITION REVEALS THE GREATNESS THAT IS ALREADY WITHIN YOU. When Michael Jordan came into the NBA, there was a lot of competition and several great rivalries. Magic Johnson and the Lakers were going at Larry Bird and the Celtics. Dr. J and Philadelphia were competing for championships against the Lakers and Celtics, and Isaiah Thomas and the Pistons were just getting started. Michael Jordan and the Bulls had to claw and fight t heir way to the top of the league just like all of the other greats before them and like all of the greats they were competing against. The competition that Jordan faced beat him and beat him up early, but they made him stronger and better. Michael said that the mentality of the leaders of the Chicago Bulls when the...

Sometimes I wish that we could win every game that we play. It would be fun if we could control the leagues and tournaments that we play in so that we face just enough competition to push us, but that we always win and take home the top medal or trophy. But the reality is we can't win them all. We don't make every shot, We don't hit every pitch, we don't catch every pass, and we don't put every kick in the back of the net. We learn valuable lessons from losses, and learning how to deal with adversity is important. Michael Jordan said, "My innate personality is to win at all costs. If I have to do it myself, I'm going to do it. Every time I step on that basketball court, my focus is to win the game, and it drives me insane when I can't. I wouldn't be here without the lessons that I learned at a very young age. The competitiveness within me started when I was a kid." Michael Jordan said that his parents provided him and his siblings with all of t...

One thing that people mention when they talk about Michael Jordan was his work ethic. He didn't take a lot of days off, and when he was in the gym (or the golf course, in a card game, ping pong table, etc.) he was competing to be the best he could be.  In the Last Dance documentary, studio analyst and reporter Ahmad Rashad said, "Michael played every game as if it was his last. Every single game. It was never a day off. He knew that it was going to be somebody in the crowd who never saw him play before. That is what kept him going." Staying in the competitive mindset and always competing is a skill that can be a real difference-maker. Today, Ja Morant is an NBA star and viral sensation, but Ja was once an unknown and un-recruited high school basketball player trying to earn a college scholarship. Murray State assistant coach James Kane peaked his head into an aux gym at a small AAU combine where Ja Morant was playing three-on-three when Ja was in high school. Many high sc...