Coach Harris Basketball

“No one is bigger than the team. You’re going to be on time, you’re going play hard, you’re going to know your job and you’re going to know when to pass and shoot. If you can’t do those four things you’re not getting time here and we don’t care who you are.”

-Hubie Brown

This quote is one my all-time favourite basketball quotes, possibly my number one. It really harks back to a time of no-nonsense coaching by the likes of Brown and Bobby Knight. Very few of these coaches still around in the NBA. Jerry Sloan and Gregg Popovich are still doing their own thing in Utah and San Antonio, but mainly coaches are too afraid to upset their powerful stars. More on this later.

This kind of attitude needs to be instilled in your team from day one. We need to eliminate selfish behaviour and get everyone on (and around) the team to buy into these concepts. It only takes one guy, one dissenting voice to create tension in the team and jeopardise your chances of success.

I like this quote for two main reasons. Firstly, it immediately demands accountability from players and links that with their playing time. One of the major gripes from players is ‘I don’t get enough minutes’. Hearing this complaint is a total alarm bell for me, alerting me to a player with a negative attitude straight away. The player with the correct attitude asks, ‘Coach, I’m not getting as many minutes as I’d like, what can I do to improve my game and contribute more to the team’.

I have a lot of time for any player that comes to me with that attitude and will immediately engage that player with the things they can do to improve their game. All players have faults, and we must be honest about them. Players that genuinely want to improve do not shy away from the truths about their performance. Brown’s quote gives clear expectations about the traits he desires from his players, and makes it clear that if you aren’t willing to engage then ‘you’re not getting time here’.

The second reason I like the quote is that he makes it clear that no player is ‘above the law’. If your star player comes in late or takes a night off then they get the same treatment as everyone else. This is essential in order to maintain consistency and credibility to your leadership.

In the modern game, this style of hard-nosed coaching only really works in one place, the NCAA. In the NCAA, the coach is king. You only have to look as far as Jim Calhoun, Jim Boeheim, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Mike Krzyzewski. These coaches are all celebrities, highly paid figureheads for their institutions. Some move around and bring success to multiple programs (Calipari, Pitino) whereas others have remained at their college for many years. They are the real stars, not the players.

If a dissenting player emerges at a college, that’s the end of them. The coach’s say is final and they’re out of there. His way or the highway. That leaves us with the other two ends of the spectrum: amateur basketball (99.9% of your clubs up and down whichever country you are in) and professional basketball (NBA). In amateur basketball, most players are there for fun. They don’t want to be yelled at, dictated to or shaped. They want, for the most part, to crossover like Iverson and shoot fadeaway after ugly fadeaway like Kobe. Good luck to the coach that disapproves because they have no power to influence them otherwise. The player can just quit and find another team. They don’t care who they’re playing for, there are other teams that will give them minutes.

In the NBA, there’s a very different problem. Players are the stars and the coaches take the fall for failures (sometimes deservedly, sometimes not). Let’s imagine Lebron James turns around tomorrow and says to Danny Ferry, ‘Fire Mike Brown or I’m skipping town to hang with Jay-Z in Brooklyn next year’. Does anyone out there think he wouldn’t do it? Sure it might damage James’ reputation, but actually, would it? Wouldn’t the media, his representatives, hell even the NBA try and spin it in his favour? All those entities that have so much to lose if Lebron was to lose some of his public standing.

This isn’t just hypotheticals though. Anfernee Hardaway (my all-time favourite player) turned the knife on Brian Hill in 1996-97 and the current Los Angeles Clippers front office is holding off appointing a new head coach reportedly because they think they might be able to lure a superstar with the promise of giving them free reign over the coaching hire.

Of course, these systems aren’t going to change. But we as coaches know the gold standard. Those players who have progressed through the ranks with never a dissenting voice. John Stockton and Karl Malone with Sloan in Utah, Tim Duncan in San Antonio with Popovich. The players that represent an exemplary instance of their coaches vision on the court and in the practise gym.

It is our duty to instill these values early, so that players also recognise the gold standard. Michael Jordan was the greatest player ever to play the game. Scottie Pippen was a great all-round player with amazing defensive skills. Would those two legends have been so successful without Steve Kerr, John Paxson, Bill Cartwright, BJ Armstrong and Ron Harper. There’s a reason that guys like Derek Fisher and Michael Finley are still hanging around the league. They know how to play the game the right way.

They know that ‘no one is bigger than the team’.