Values of the Game Read Free Page A

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    By the time I was twenty-one, total involvement in shooting practice was more difficult. I had to reduce the number of consecutive shots to fifteen in a row, and by the time I was thirty-three, I couldn’t force myself to do more than ten out of thirteen. While it was true that after twenty years of practice I knew what I was doing technically, I also found my mind wandering in the midst of the routine—to the day’s headlines, to a comment a friend had made, to anything but shooting. As a result, I couldn’t hit practice shots as consistently as I had in high school and college. That realization was part of what told me it was time to quit.
    As difficult as individual discipline is, it pales next to team demands. Hitting the open man with the pass and staying with a pattern or play until its conclusion require uncommon self-control. It takes real character to derive enjoyment from the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the basket. If one player fails to make the interim pass, to block out for a rebound, or to take the open shot, it affects the whole team. Coach Jerry Sloan’s Utah Jazz and Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols epitomize seamless team offense.
    A man-to-man defense requires team discipline too. There’s no such thing as “I stopped my man” if three other opposing players scored at will. When a player goes for a steal and misses, his teammates have to pick up his man quickly. When a player covers for the teammate making the steal attempt, another teammate has to move over and cover for the one helping the stealer. A willingness to make yourself vulnerable to catcalls from the fans if your man scores while you are helping your teammates is the ultimate test of a disciplined team defense.
    Determination sits at the core of discipline, and the will to excel sits at the core of determination. You don’t have to be a pro to learn that lesson from basketball. When I failed as a rookie guard in the NBA, my desire to succeed placed a resolute grid of practice over my entire off-season. I had known in high school and college how it felt to be regarded as the best. I preferred that feeling to the sense of failure I had after my first pro year. Only later did I realize that I had worked all summer not just to hone my skills but to regain my self-respect.
    In 1973, the Knicks played the Celtics for the NBA Eastern Conference Championship. We lost the sixth game, in New York, sending the final game back to Boston, where the Celtics had never lost the seventh game of a playoff—ever. The day before the game, Ned Irish, the president of the Knicks, made one of his very rare appearances at practice. He said, partly in anger and partly out of calculation, that we should be ashamed of ourselves, that we had had a great year within our grasp but had thrown it all away the night before. He ended by saying that we didn’t have much of a chance in Boston. Some teams would have quit on themselves at this point, but Irish’s scathing commentary fired us up. The next day we played one of our best-disciplined defensive games, and we won not only the game but the NBA championship that year as well.
    Learning the discipline it takes to succeed in basketball teaches a fine appreciation for how hard you have to work. The difficulty of preparation contributes to the sense of triumph. As Lao-tzu put it, “Mastery of others is strength; mastery of yourself is true power.” When you overcome adversity with self-discipline and you win a hard-fought battle, the elation explodes. There are few things in life better than that.

“HELP SOMEONE ELSE, HELP YOURSELF”
SELFLESSNESS
    Part of the beauty and mystery of basketball rests in the variety of its team requirements. Championships are not won unless a team has forged a high degree of unity, attainable only through the selflessness of each of its players. It is in the moves that the uninitiated often don’t see that the sport has its deepest currents: the perfect