I believe a big part of leadership is about winning the moment.
For a college basketball player or coach, to reach the Final Four is la-la land. You’ve achieved, you’ve got your stamp of approval. My first team to do that was in 1986. Then we did it in ’88, ’89 and ’90.
Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one.
There are kids don’t want to do something because they’re afraid of looking stupid to their peers. There comes a time when they start protecting themselves, instead of extending. I want to make sure that they’re always trying to extend themselves.
My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that’s still what I do: teach.
The other thing I knew I had was a high level of competitiveness.
Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.
In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.
Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation.
Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school.
Parents can really help, but they can also really hinder the development of their youngsters.
I’ve been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.
I had a really bad temper, when I was growing up. Sport helped me channel that temper into more positive acts.
When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to become a priest.
When I was growing up, there weren’t any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn’t have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.
It’s always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are.
I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.
Sometimes in a defeat, you can set the stage for future victory. I wanted them to feel good about what they had accomplished. Not to like losing, but to like the success that they had.
I’ve tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we’ll win again, but I’ve also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.
I think coaching is confused at times as being an arrow that only goes to a player. Those players send arrows back to you, and that’s where a relationship is developed. I don’t make a player, and a player doesn’t make me a coach. We make each other.
I don’t think you play for other people’s expectations, you know. You don’t go and become a lawyer because your mother or father want you to, you don’t become a coach because somebody wants you to.