Year 3: Adversity

Adversity is a mirror. Adversity has a way of letting you know exactly who you are. It reminds you what needs to be changed, removed and retooled. You can’t hide from adversity, it will find you in all aspects of life, not just on the basketball court. Adversity in basketball is most well-recognized on the court, during gameday. Everyone gets to see the struggle each team faces to win the game. But adversity can affect the game before it even happens.

A coach has many responsibilities, and if you have read my blog before, this isn’t a new concept. But sometimes these responsibilities pop up without any ability to prepare for them.

When I first started my new job in September, we had 20 players. Division III allows 18 players on a roster once practice begins, so we knew we would have to cut two of them anyway. The very first day on my job, one of our top players was dismissed from school due to a legal issue. Soon after, another top player from the previous season decided not to return due to health issues. After that, the hits kept coming…

Knee injury to our most talented player, played in 2 games all year…

Player quits due to personal issues…

Player transfers to be closer to family/home…

Player quits due to playing time…

Another casualty due to playing time…

Player transfers for a career opportunity in another field…

3 players booted for violation of team rules…

We gained a player in December who had sat out the first semester due to academic issues, but the damage was done, we were down to 11 players. One of the players had actually quit, then came back when there was more playing time available.

So…

Adversity…

It’s easy to look from the outside at our 4-21 record and think we’re one of the worst programs in the country, but you’d be wrong. This is a team who has faced more adversity than any other I’ve ever been a part of. Those who stayed didn’t ask for this situation. They didn’t ask for their teammates, their family away from home, to quit on them. They didn’t ask for some of their peers to stop coming to the games when they didn’t like the overall result.

What they DID do was fight. Every day in practice, they gave every bit of themselves that we asked of them as coaches. And what happened because of it was they got better…WE got better. The reason it didn’t show in the win/loss column was by the time we started clicking as a unit, we ran into the toughest competition we would face all year. The last half of our season, we faced 8 (out of 12) teams who have won at least 18 games (out of 26), three of which were nationally ranked at some point in the season.

It did show, in a big way, if you were able to watch the games. We led at halftime in 6 of those 12 games, but our lack of depth usually gave way to mental and physical fatigue, and the sheer talent of the other programs were able to take advantage.

It was because of this fight, that I would not trade this year for spending time with any other program instead of Emory & Henry. I grew close to this group of guys. We were the ones taking our lumps each night, growing closer, when the easy thing to do would be to point fingers and blame others.

The most gratifying thing, to me, is seeing the light click in a player’s mind when he realizes “why” you do the things we ask you to do them, and not just “how” to do them. You get to see them grow as basketball players and learn life lessons through the game. Every one of these guys will face adversity after their careers are over. This is not the last time life will deal them a crippling blow. Chances are, it won’t even be the worst case of adversity they’ll face. What you hope for as a coach, though, is that you’ve given them the tools to stand up and deal with that adversity the same way we dealt with it together this year; to stand up and fight; to never point fingers; to never whine and complain about what is wrong, and change it to make it right.

It’s easy to be on the other side. Winning is all I’ve ever known. I made a plan when I started this whole coaching thing to never associate with a losing program. But this year has made me grow more as a coach (and as a man) than I’ve ever done with anyone else.

I needed to lose. I needed to be humbled.

We did. And I was.

You begin to find out that the only way to fight through adversity is to stop re-stating the problem. You have to come to the table with solutions. Everyone knows the problem. Fans can even recognize the problems. But they aren’t paid to come up with the solutions (thank God). That job is left for the coaches.

As a coach you have to take ownership of the losses, and reflect credit for the wins. You take the hit with the media and the fans when you lose, and when you win, you praise the efforts of the players, and the energy of the fans. It’s just how it is, and I accept that, it’s part of the job. I do find it comical how many “answers” come from people outside the program, and how sure they are their idea will work. I don’t look down on them, it’s not their job to fix our problems. They’re doctors, lawyers, accountants, customer service reps, etc. and I couldn’t do their jobs either. But I did get some funny “fixes”

“Why don’t you teach them to shoot free throws better?”

“You should spend more time on defense”

“You should play zone…no one ever scores on a zone”

“Have you tried scoring more points than the other team?”

Ok, so I made that last one up (or did I?). But sometimes I wonder what the general public thinks coaches do all day. Take naps and fart?¹ It’s my job to spend the 24 hours I have each day thinking of ways to make our program better, just as it is your job to make sure your company is more efficient/productive/better/etc. And I’ve taken the steps throughout my life to learn and study from those who have done it the right way to make certain I’m doing my job, at the very least, as good as you’re doing yours.

Coaches will always have critics though, you can’t run from it. You have to embrace it. I don’t know how many times I’ve been put in a verbal headlock by a fan or parent (or my own family) about how to make my team better, and sometimes they do bring up great points, so you can’t discount them all. I’m always reminded, however, of a quote by Teddy Roosevelt…

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Don’t be afraid to talk basketball with me (I know…fat chance now, right?). I do enjoy talking basketball at all times of the day. And if you’re particularly bold, I’ll even tell you why it is we do each thing we do and why we prefer that to other methods. Just don’t ever think we sit in the office and throw darts at a wall to come up with a plan. 

I only give you two pieces of advice if you wish to talk about my profession and why we do what we do:

Come with the knowledge that we don't make our decisions lightly. There's long hours of deliberation going into the smallest of decisions.

If you catch me after a loss, may God have mercy on your soul...

I won’t text my own mother back after some losses…ask her…I’m sure she’s reading this (Hi mom! Send $). I take my job seriously, and I treat each loss as a reflection of my abilities or inability to prepare my athletes. I’m not gonna ask anyone to prom on the bus ride home from a loss. (I’m 27…I’m not gonna ask anyone to prom…ever)²

The season is over. It is time to prepare for next year. Gotta get stronger. Gotta get faster. Gotta improve our fundamentals. But one thing we won’t have to teach during the off-season, is how to deal with adversity...

¹ _{– I’ve done both}

² _{– Except Kate Upton…but she isn’t returning my phone calls, texts or tweets… #HerLoss}