Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Paint

Hardwood Dojos

HARDWOOD DOJOS Gregory Bassham and Mark Hamilton A coach should be a philosopher of hoops. —Digger Phelps LIKE MOST OTHER sports, basketball as such doesn’t teach anything about values or character. If your daughter learns to play soccer from the win-at-all-costs coach played by Will Ferrell in the 2005 film Kicking and Screaming, she’ll learn that the rule is “play dirty, but don’t get caught.” Likewise, if your son learns basketball from watching ESPN’s Streetball, he’s not going to learn a great deal about discipline, respect, fair play, or teamwork. Clearly, basketball can teach rotten values if a player has bad coaches and role models. But is the reverse also true? Can basketball teach good values if a player has good coaches and good role models? In the language of Eastern philosophy, can a basketball court be a dojo, a “place of enlightenment” in which disciplined athletes train their hearts and minds through the pursuit of physical excellence? To help us think about this question we looked at the coaching philosophies of four highly successful college basketball coaches: Dean Smith, Rick Pitino, Pat Summitt, and Mike Krzyzewski. All of these coaches are widely respected for their high ethical and professional standards , and all have written books explaining their values-based coaching philosophy. Studying these coaches’ philosophies, we came to see that basketball can teach fundamental lessons about character and success, both on the court and in the greater game of life. What’s more, these are What Basketball Can Teach Us about Character and Success 45 Hardwood Dojos precisely the same lessons that great philosophers have been teaching for thousands of years. Four Famous Coaches, Six Key Principles The four coaches we’ve selected will need no introduction to most readers of this book. Dean Smith coached the North Carolina Tar Heels for thirty-six years, winning 77.6 percent of his games and two national championships, and graduating more than 96 percent of his players. His 879 career victories are the most by any coach in college basketball history . He is the coauthor (with Gerald D. Bell and John Kilgo) of The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (Penguin Press, 2004). Mike Krzyzewski has coached the Duke Blue Devils for more than a quarter century. A five-time ACC Coach of the Year, he has won three national championships. He is the author (with Donald T. Phillips) of Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life (Warner Business Books, rev. ed., 2004). Pat Summitt is the legendary coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols. In her thirty-three years at Tennessee, she has won six national championships, led her teams to fifteen Final Four appearances, and graduated 100 percent of her players. Her 1998 book Reach for the Summit: The Definite Dozen System for Succeeding at Whatever You Do (cowritten with Sally Jenkins) was a New York Times Business Bestseller. Rick Pitino has coached the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics, and four college teams, including the 1996 national champion Kentucky Wildcats. Now head basketball coach at the University of Louisville, he is the author (with Bill Reynolds) of Success Is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life (Broadway Books, 1997). Though differing greatly in their personalities and coaching styles, these four coaches have remarkably similar philosophies of success. Each sees basketball as a microcosm of life, a Bally’s gym of the heart in which the fundamentals of success on the court are also the cornerstones of success in life. Although there are minor differences of emphasis, six key principles stand out in these coaches’ philosophies of success: 46 Gregory Bassham and Mark Hamilton Set demanding goals. Make hard work your passion. Establish good habits. Be persistent. Learn from adversity. Put the team before yourself. Let’s examine these six principles to see why these famous coaches—as well as some of history’s greatest thinkers—view them as critical to success in sports, business, leadership, or virtually any other worthwhile endeavor. Set Demanding Goals “The quest for success,” says philosopher Tom Morris, “always begins with a target. We need something to aim at, something to shoot for.”1 To achieve success in basketball, or any challenging task, Morris says, “we need a clear conception of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal...