Ted Lasso
And the power of positive coaching...
Hi Everyone,
I know I’m late to this, and everyone and their mama recommended it to me, but the first season of the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso is fantastic.
For so long we have celebrated one way to coach sports, a top-down, dictatorial approach where it’s “my way or the highway.”
In 2001 I attended a coaching clinic at Texas Tech led by the new men’s basketball coach, Bob Knight. While Knight was the most efficient coach I have ever seen in his use of practice time (there was never a wasted moment, never a time when all the players weren’t actively doing something) he was also a complete asshole, slapping players on the head, and, mic’d up for the five hundred or so coaches in attendance, ridiculing his team managers, college students with the least amount of agency in Knight’s basketball world.
A year later I attended a clinic at Duke University, led by the now all-time winningest NCAA Men’s Basketball coach, and Knight protege, Mike Krzyzewski. While Coach K was not demeaning towards his staff or managers, he yelled and cursed at the players. I think the team ended up having to come in at midnight to run sprints, after the clinic, to correct some small mistake they had made.
When I became a head coach, in my mid-twenties, at McLaurin Attendance Center in Star, Mississippi, this approach of always being “in-charge,” of yelling and cursing at my players, was the one I took. It was what I had seen and it was what was celebrated (I think back to the five hundred or so coaches at the Texas Tech clinic, the vast majority of whom were high school coaches, and wonder what lessons they took from Knight. How many of them, like me, carried forward those aggressive traits of Knight). My one season at McLaurin was a failure, on and off the court. I did nothing but transfer the destructive emotions of fear and anger to my players. I am not in touch with any of my former players from that year. Sometimes I wonder if any of them are now coaches, and what type of coaching they model based on what was modeled to them.
Being on a team should be fun. It should be about learning the game and teamwork and, hopefully, larger life lessons.
Years later, when I unexpectedly returned to coaching in Namibia, I took a different, more authentic, approach to coaching.
I focused on camaraderie. We had weekly barbecues. I bought an old Nintendo Wii and we had dance-offs and Mario Kart races.
I focused on reducing stress. We meditated before every practice and game. “Stay in the moment” became the team mantra. During a particular tough playoff game, for the first time during a game, before the fourth quarter, we stood in a circle and meditated in front of the crowd and the opposing team. With our arms around each other I literally felt the heartbeat of the player next to me slow down (and yes, we won the game on a buzzer-beater).
I focused on promoting collective leadership. Often during games I would call a timeout and then leave the team alone as they talked amongst themselves. I sometimes think of this approach as “anti-coaching.”
I focused on teaching and on helping my players get better. We practiced the fundamentals every day. Later, many of the players were offered large contracts (for Namibia) from other professional teams.
Needless to say, over my four years of coaching in Namibia, I won more than I ever had, on and off the court. Most importantly I am still in touch with almost all of the players I coached. When I left, as a surprise, one of the guys organized a number of individual video messages from former players and sent them to me. I received the videos the evening before my flight home and watched them late into the night.
Ted Lasso is a great example of a different type of coaching, a more humane type of coaching, where things are positive and fun. I didn’t coach in the same way as Lasso. For example, I didn’t have anywhere close to the emotional intelligence that Lasso has (and yes, I’m aware that I’m writing about Lasso as if he was real) but I appreciate popular culture celebrating a different type of coaching, one that is not based in intimidation, fear, and anger.
So yeah, check it out :-)
Book Update
The book I’m writing is about many these themes and my various experiences coaching basketball. It’s tentatively titled Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball although my friend/editor Annah isn’t a fan of that title :-)
I’m still plugging away in the editing phase (and still no timeline for when I’ll finish). I’ve engaged an outside editor, Glenn Stout, who has written a number of books and was the series editor for The Best American Sports Writing, a book that my Dad and I gifted each other every Christmas.
Glenn’s feedback has been invaluable in helping me understand what is and is not working and I’m currently re-writing some of the early sections of the book, my backstory essentially, trying to “show” and not “tell” how I came to change my coaching philosophy.
Lauryn Hill
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, in my opinion the greatest single disc album of all-time (although the older I get the less I appreciate the classroom interstitials), was released 23 years ago today. I’ll be listening to “Ex-Factor” and “Nothing Even Matters” and “Tell Him” this morning on my walk through Central Park.
I hope you are well.
Ben
P.S. The greatest double album of all-time is, of course, Songs in the Key of Life.