ready when the opponent tries a full-court press. That readiness comes only with hours of practice in which each player knows where to go and what to do in order to break the opponent’s press. Picking it apart with precision passes and cuts often leads to easy baskets. It takes only a few such responses before the team that’s doing the pressing retreats from further embarrassment.
Another example of leadership through preparation is getting your team ready for the last-second shot. In the 1998 NCAA tournament, Valparaiso trailed the University of Mississippi by 2 and had the ball out of bounds at the opposite end of the floor. Valparaiso’s Jamie Sykes threw a long pass to teammate Bill Jenkins at the top of the key. Jenkins leaped, caught the ball in midair, and seemingly without pausing to look, flicked it to his left—to Bryce Drew, who shot behind the 3-point line and made the basket, giving Valparaiso the victory. Afterward, both coach and players made the point that the team had rehearsed that particular play all season but had never had a chance to use it until the most important game of the year.
Tactics are not everything; sometimes a coach needs to provide personal leadership. In 1982, Georgetown played the University of North Carolina for the NCAA championship. It was a matchup featuring two of the NCAA’s greatest players that year: Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing and North Carolina’s James Worthy. It was also a matchup of two great coaches: Dean Smith of North Carolina and John Thompson of Georgetown. The game was hard fought and came down to the last seconds. North Carolina went ahead by 1 with eighteen seconds to go on a jump shot by a freshman named Michael Jordan. Georgetown took possession of the ball with plenty of time to make the winning basket. Then—inexplicably, in one of those very human moments on the court—Fred Brown, a Georgetown guard, mistook James Worthy for a teammate and threw a pass directly into Worthy’s hands.
Georgetown’s dream of a championship disappeared. The team was devastated. The fans were in shock. All eyes were on Brown. He had committed a blunder that would be with him for the rest of his life. Thompson understood this, and putting aside his disappointment he wrapped the young player in a bear hug, whispering reassurance in his ear. It was one of the most moving gestures I have ever witnessed on a basketball court. It spoke volumes about Thompson’s relationship to his players, about his most fundamental values, about his excellence as a leader. Billy Packer, the great CBS basketball broadcaster and former star at Wake Forest, recalls seeing a player—Robert “Tractor” Traylor of the University of Michigan—provide similar extraordinary leadership late in the 1997–98 season, when teammate Robbie Reid, a guard who had transferred to Michigan from Brigham Young that year, missed the last-second shot against Michigan State in a Big Ten conference game. The failure seemed emblematic of Reid’s year at Michigan up to that point: He had been a disappointment. Instead of disparaging him, Traylor, all 300 pounds of him, put his arms around his dejected teammate and offered the right words of encouragement. Reid went on to play exceptionally well in the remaining games, and together with Traylor, he powered Michigan to victory in the first Big Ten postseason tournament.
Watching the NCAA Final Four games in 1998, I felt that while the country’s best players might not be on the floor, the players that “fit together best” (as Red Auerbach puts it) were there; in other words, the country’s best teams were on the floor. Time and time again, you saw the leadership rotating, like the lead goose flying in a V formation. In Stanford’s semifinal overtime game against the University of Kentucky, a different player responded at each critical moment. In the last minutes three players—Arthur Lee, Peter Sauer, and Ryan Mendez—hit 3-point shots, two others got
Another example of leadership through preparation is getting your team ready for the last-second shot. In the 1998 NCAA tournament, Valparaiso trailed the University of Mississippi by 2 and had the ball out of bounds at the opposite end of the floor. Valparaiso’s Jamie Sykes threw a long pass to teammate Bill Jenkins at the top of the key. Jenkins leaped, caught the ball in midair, and seemingly without pausing to look, flicked it to his left—to Bryce Drew, who shot behind the 3-point line and made the basket, giving Valparaiso the victory. Afterward, both coach and players made the point that the team had rehearsed that particular play all season but had never had a chance to use it until the most important game of the year.
Tactics are not everything; sometimes a coach needs to provide personal leadership. In 1982, Georgetown played the University of North Carolina for the NCAA championship. It was a matchup featuring two of the NCAA’s greatest players that year: Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing and North Carolina’s James Worthy. It was also a matchup of two great coaches: Dean Smith of North Carolina and John Thompson of Georgetown. The game was hard fought and came down to the last seconds. North Carolina went ahead by 1 with eighteen seconds to go on a jump shot by a freshman named Michael Jordan. Georgetown took possession of the ball with plenty of time to make the winning basket. Then—inexplicably, in one of those very human moments on the court—Fred Brown, a Georgetown guard, mistook James Worthy for a teammate and threw a pass directly into Worthy’s hands.
Georgetown’s dream of a championship disappeared. The team was devastated. The fans were in shock. All eyes were on Brown. He had committed a blunder that would be with him for the rest of his life. Thompson understood this, and putting aside his disappointment he wrapped the young player in a bear hug, whispering reassurance in his ear. It was one of the most moving gestures I have ever witnessed on a basketball court. It spoke volumes about Thompson’s relationship to his players, about his most fundamental values, about his excellence as a leader. Billy Packer, the great CBS basketball broadcaster and former star at Wake Forest, recalls seeing a player—Robert “Tractor” Traylor of the University of Michigan—provide similar extraordinary leadership late in the 1997–98 season, when teammate Robbie Reid, a guard who had transferred to Michigan from Brigham Young that year, missed the last-second shot against Michigan State in a Big Ten conference game. The failure seemed emblematic of Reid’s year at Michigan up to that point: He had been a disappointment. Instead of disparaging him, Traylor, all 300 pounds of him, put his arms around his dejected teammate and offered the right words of encouragement. Reid went on to play exceptionally well in the remaining games, and together with Traylor, he powered Michigan to victory in the first Big Ten postseason tournament.
Watching the NCAA Final Four games in 1998, I felt that while the country’s best players might not be on the floor, the players that “fit together best” (as Red Auerbach puts it) were there; in other words, the country’s best teams were on the floor. Time and time again, you saw the leadership rotating, like the lead goose flying in a V formation. In Stanford’s semifinal overtime game against the University of Kentucky, a different player responded at each critical moment. In the last minutes three players—Arthur Lee, Peter Sauer, and Ryan Mendez—hit 3-point shots, two others got
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