As coaches we talk about two things: offense and defense. There is a third phase we neglect, which is more important. It’s conversion from offense to defense and defense to offense.
When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was ‘It will be O.K.’ I would wonder, ‘How the hell is it going to be O.K.?’ The worst word in the English language is ‘hope.’
Superiority and success doesn’t favor good effort or self-esteem… The mentally precise and physically fit win, while the mediocre and obtuse take solace in hopeful cliches.
I’ve always had an a$$-to-the-brain theory. When a player’s a$$ gets put on the bench, a message goes straight to the brain saying, Get me off of here.
Offense at Indiana is not equal opportunity. Those players who shoot best are going to shoot most. It is important that every player know his offensive limitations. It is also important that a player know who the best shooter is on the team.
There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I’ve always been too confrontational, especially when I know I’m right.
And I would be the first to admit that probably, in a lot of press conferences over the time that I have been in coaching, indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit.
As I’ve said, basketball has been, I think, a real cooperative venture. There have been a lot of people that have been involved in it: coaches, administrators – not recently – fans and nobody, nobody any more so than students over the years.
I also believe that when something negative comes out about you in the media, that’s only one person’s opinion. These guys sometimes believe they’ve been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn’t the case.
My overall point is that ‘one and dones’ are not healthy for college basketball. I should not have made it personal to Kentucky and its players and I apologize.
I’m not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn’t have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
We don’t want defeat in life. How are we going to be beaten? All right. We have to deal with those things. What’s going to cause us to lose the game, whatever the game might be?
