important rebounds, and everyone on coach Mike Montgomery’s team played great defense. Stanford lost, but each player had truly done his best. Kentucky played Utah in the final, and it was the same story: Different players on both teams sparked their team’s momentum at different times in the game. At one point, Kentucky’s Heshimu Evans entered as a substitute and went straight to the point of the V, contributing significantly to Kentucky’s eventual victory. Once you’ve seen such broad-based leadership in basketball, you can better appreciate the value of giving a cross-section of people in any organization the opportunity to assume responsibility. You learn that within each of us is the ability to excel, even, or perhaps especially, in times of crisis.
There are also players who lead during a game simply by virtue of their self-confidence. Dean Smith has remarked that often the player who provides the emotional leadership is not necessarily the team’s best player but the one who is held in the greatest respect by the team. When the best player is also the most respected, such as Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird, or the incomparable Michael Jordan, a different dynamic takes over. The best player can then lead by example, contributing more than anyone else to the effort and at the same time spurring teammates to outdo themselves. Oscar Robertson, one of the all-time great NBA stars, once told me that the mark of a truly excellent player is that he makes the worst player on his team into a good one.
Sports are an important part of many people’s lives, both as pursuit and as pastime. They can influence people in subtle ways, helping shape their ideas about how life works and about what is acceptable behavior. When professional baseball and basketball decided on racial desegregation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it had a far-reaching impact on society. Once the taboo of separateness was challenged on the fields of millions of Americans’ dreams, children began to ask their parents questions and adults increasingly found the old ways indefensible. What had seemed impossible began to change. If desegregation worked in sports, why shouldn’t it work in the rest of American life? The heroes in this racial drama are well known: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bill Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, Ned Irish of the New York Knicks—all of them executives who saw the future; Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton—black players who lived the experience and in so doing exposed the hollowness and falseness of racial stereotypes.
What is not so well known are the conflicts that had to be resolved among the players. When Rickey announced that Jackie Robinson was joining the Dodgers, tension quickly rose in the clubhouse, a place that cherishes conformity and rarely rewards dissent. A wholesale defection from Rickey’s dream seemed to be in the making: Several players drew up a petition stating their refusal to play with Robinson. Many of the players signed it; a significant exception was Pee Wee Reese, the team’s shortstop and captain. Reese, a white Kentuckian, would later make a point of putting his arm around Robinson’s shoulder when fans heckled him for being who he was. Reese’s splendid act of leadership made a powerful statement, with repercussions across the nation as well as within his team.
A much subtler revolution began in 1972 with the passage of Title IX, which required high schools and colleges to provide women with access to athletic facilities equal to those for men. By 1997–98, women’s basketball reached a new level of public acceptance. The NCAA champion Tennessee Lady Vols averaged attendance of over 14,000 at all their home games. At Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, a town of fewer than 150,000 people, the average game attendance was nearly 8,000. Through the 1980s, women players such as Carol Blazejowski, Nancy Lieberman, Cheryl Miller, Teresa
There are also players who lead during a game simply by virtue of their self-confidence. Dean Smith has remarked that often the player who provides the emotional leadership is not necessarily the team’s best player but the one who is held in the greatest respect by the team. When the best player is also the most respected, such as Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird, or the incomparable Michael Jordan, a different dynamic takes over. The best player can then lead by example, contributing more than anyone else to the effort and at the same time spurring teammates to outdo themselves. Oscar Robertson, one of the all-time great NBA stars, once told me that the mark of a truly excellent player is that he makes the worst player on his team into a good one.
Sports are an important part of many people’s lives, both as pursuit and as pastime. They can influence people in subtle ways, helping shape their ideas about how life works and about what is acceptable behavior. When professional baseball and basketball decided on racial desegregation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it had a far-reaching impact on society. Once the taboo of separateness was challenged on the fields of millions of Americans’ dreams, children began to ask their parents questions and adults increasingly found the old ways indefensible. What had seemed impossible began to change. If desegregation worked in sports, why shouldn’t it work in the rest of American life? The heroes in this racial drama are well known: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bill Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, Ned Irish of the New York Knicks—all of them executives who saw the future; Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton—black players who lived the experience and in so doing exposed the hollowness and falseness of racial stereotypes.
What is not so well known are the conflicts that had to be resolved among the players. When Rickey announced that Jackie Robinson was joining the Dodgers, tension quickly rose in the clubhouse, a place that cherishes conformity and rarely rewards dissent. A wholesale defection from Rickey’s dream seemed to be in the making: Several players drew up a petition stating their refusal to play with Robinson. Many of the players signed it; a significant exception was Pee Wee Reese, the team’s shortstop and captain. Reese, a white Kentuckian, would later make a point of putting his arm around Robinson’s shoulder when fans heckled him for being who he was. Reese’s splendid act of leadership made a powerful statement, with repercussions across the nation as well as within his team.
A much subtler revolution began in 1972 with the passage of Title IX, which required high schools and colleges to provide women with access to athletic facilities equal to those for men. By 1997–98, women’s basketball reached a new level of public acceptance. The NCAA champion Tennessee Lady Vols averaged attendance of over 14,000 at all their home games. At Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, a town of fewer than 150,000 people, the average game attendance was nearly 8,000. Through the 1980s, women players such as Carol Blazejowski, Nancy Lieberman, Cheryl Miller, Teresa
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