Qualities of a great leader

What makes Tamika Catchings the best...

From Twitter:

Reggie Miller ‏@ReggieMillerTNT Yes Yes Yes, Fever wins WNBA Championship!!! Tamika Catchings deserves all of this, heart n soul!!!!!

Way of WADE ‏@DwyaneWade Congrts to my fellow chicagoan @Catchin24 on her first WNBA title..well deserved and over due happy 4 you..

WNBA ‏@WNBA Tamika Catchings defines heart.

Candace Parker ‏@Candace_Parker Congrats to my sis @Catchin24 and the Indiana Fever! Ive seen your heart and passion first hand...second to none. LOVE YA dude....

LeBron James ‏@KingJames Congrats to the Fever on winning the WNBA finals! Special S/O to T. Catch on her 1st one! I know the feeling. Bout Damn Time!!

Tamika Catchings ‏@Catchin24 #SoBlessed! Am I dreaming rt now... Love my Team 

Quotes from her peers:

"Of all the players at Tennessee, Tamika was the one that I don't remember Pat ever having to get on about her effort," said Fever assistant coach Mickie DeMoss, a longtime Tennessee assistant who helped recruit Catchings. "Never once did Pat have to say to her, 'Is that all you've got?’ Of course, they are also both very stubborn and strong-willed, so they'd butt heads every once in a while, too. But it was because they were both so darn competitive and wanted so badly to win all the time."

"Everybody talks about the missing piece in Tamika Catchings' career, and our players took that personally," Indiana coach Lin Dunn said. "I really believe that was an incentive."

Catchings takes that missing line on her resume personally. "Being able to succeed on every level but this, and knowing we've had teams and I've had teammates that want the same thing, but we can't put it together when we need to, it's like, `Well, what do I need to do to motivate my teammates? What do I need to do to consistently encourage them and know that, no matter whether they make mistakes or not, we're behind them 100 percent,"' she said.

Dunn said. "I don't think anybody does all the things that Catch does. She defends, she rebounds, she's inside, she's outside, she has assists. I just don't think there's anybody more versatile than Catchings."

Maya Moore, another of the Lynx stars who was Catchings' Olympic teammate, added, "She's one of those players you want to model yourself after. She has a view of the bigger picture of the sport; she's never just thinking about herself."

Lynx guard Lindsay Whalen, an Olympic teammate of Catchings, added: “Of course, it’s hard for us, But Tamika is one of the best people you could know.”

"Tamika is one of those players that you could call any time of the day or night to talk about anything, and she'd help you, no matter who you are or who you play for," Minnesota's Seimone Augustus said. "Not all players are like that, especially great players."

As Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve put it, "There's not anybody that cannot be happy for Tamika Catchings to finally get a championship."

 

"You're gettin in the way of what I'm feeling."

Jill Scott's song "Gettin in the way" is a great way to teach coming off ball screens.  We teach to attack with anger but be smooth. Read the action but don't force the action.

One of the most important things when coming off a ball screen is reading the ball screen defender. Another important teaching point is coming off the screen aggressively looking to score.  The ball screen defender will tell you how to use the ball screen but the ball handler's job is to either get to the rim if the lane is open or pull the three if the lane is clogged. The entire time the ball screen is coming the ball handler is reading, waiting and then exploding as efficiently as possible to the rim. If you are setting the ball screen, we teach to arrive without your defense. We call it a naked ball screen. Once the screen is set, we have a couple ways of reading the ball screen defender. If the ball screen defender is:
1. Calling out an early switch- we slip the ball screen.
2. Jump switching- we attack the ball screeners outside hip and turn the corner.
3. Hard hedging- we split the ball screen.
4. Soft hedging- we attack the ball screeners outside hip and turn the corner.
5. Stunting-  we keep the ball screeners attention and bait them into staying with the ball handler.
5. Trailing the ball screen- we attack the ball screen and bait them into committing as high as possible to the ball handler and then break them down.

"Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game"

Wu-Tang Clan

What else can be said about a group of  MC's that came together to establish one of the best rap groups to ever be formed. As I was working out today, I heard "Triumph" by Wu Tang and thought how they could get all of those personalities to come together and put out some of the  greatest albums of all-time.

"No weapon in hip-hop history can rival the chaotic cohesion of the Wu-Tang Clan. The Clan had so many characters, each with his own eccentricities. They were fearless in their approach. There's a good reason no group has been able to successfully recreate their sound. The crew spawned countless loosely associated acts. Their classic albums spawned classic albums." Henry Adaso

Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
by: Dan Pink

A great thought from this lecture:

"Turns out there are three factors that the science shows lead to the better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery and purpose."

Keep Calm and Read Defenders

I am sure that you have seen the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters that have gained some popularity over the last couple years. To provide some background, these posters were designed by the British government in WWII and hung around various cities to keep their people at bay in case of a German invasion. 

With that said, one of the hardest things to teach any athlete is the ability to read the defense. Our entire offense is predicated on making the correct read. What we did was take that slogan and edit it to state "Keep Calm and Read Defenders".

Each sport has their own way of teaching this point. One of my favorite Blogs is by Caltech's Men's coach, Oliver Eslinger PHD. He found this article by George Bretherton of the NYT on Peyton Manning and how he reads the defense while in the pocket. Below are the thoughts from his quarterback coach, Frank Reich, on what is going through Peyton's mind:

Lessons from I AM BRUCE LEE

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Real living is living for others.

 

All fixed patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. the truth is outside of all fixed patterns. 

 

If I tell you I am good, you will probably think I am boasting; if I then tell you I'm no good, you will know that I am lying.

  A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Be like water. If the you put water into the glass, it BECOMES the glass. Be like water. 

 

Notice that stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

 

 -Bruce Lee

The Anthem for all Assistants

I forgot about this song and thought it might provide a little inspiration to all the assistants out there that come in early and stay late.   

"When you want me to come...Holla

 When you want me to come...Call me!

When you want me to come...I'll be around"