Playing on Pluto

Sometimes the game can eat you up, tear up your insides, making your intestines jelly and your stomach cement. It can make you go crazy as you watch perfectly good players become aliens from another planet, substituting spaghetti for brains and tombstones for hands. When you look into the eyes of your players and they are glazed over, a sheen covering their pupils, making them appear glassy and reflective, then you know they have left planet earth and are taking a trip far, far away in a different galaxy. This is the time coaches appear insane, doing things fans believe should qualify them for the loony bin. We cajole, make jokes, plead, jump up and down, yell, and scream encouragement all while attempting to bring our players back to the court.

Last week was one such game as I watched helplessly from the sideline as the Golden Eagles forgot who they were. Every offensive principle we had taught was thrown into space somewhere orbiting Pluto. We build our offense on ball reversals and the inside-outside principle, spreading the defense, making them shift side to side until we find the hole, the split, the opening to take advantage. When we play in this fashion, we are strong, utilizing the strengths of each of our players. When we forget and start to pretend only 1/4 of the floor exists and the paint is toxic to our touch, then we don't perform as well.

Defensively was perhaps worse, if possible, than our offense, as we allowed our opponents every opportunity to do exactly as they pleased. Our defensive principles rest on the concept of taking something away the offense wants to achieve. We study their game, their individual players and come up with a plan which will limit or disrupt what they do well. When we give them what they desire, our defense falls apart.

This happens once or twice a year when perfectly good players are lost in their own bodies. It is a phenomena every team experiences; it is not limited to the Golden Eagles. A coach only hopes it occurs on a night when the opponent is weak enough her players can fight through it and still claim a victory.

The danger in playing such a game is players tend to start believing the bad game is who they are--not all the other games when they played as somebody else who inhabits their body on a daily basis. What does a team do to recover? How do they go back and ask their bodies and brains to operate on normal?

This is the million dollar question--the one if I answered correctly would net me a book deal, a new house in Montana and early retirement. While I do have an answer, it is not easy to provide because it requires players to manage their thoughts--to listen intimately to their daily inner conversations, and to change the negative thoughts which swirl around their brains telling them such nonsense as they are not fast enough, smart enough, quick enough, etc. The mind is a powerful tool and we rarely spend time cultivating it, tending to it as if it were a beautiful garden providing us with all the nutrition we would ever need.

The power is always in the thought. Those players who are great BELIEVED they were great long before any coach or parent or sibling told them so. They knew it to be true. I tell my players all the time how good they are, what talents they possess, how they can become better, feeding them positive words for their garden, but if they can't hear me and always answer with a but then I can't help them. For example, if I tell them they are a great three point shooter but when they hear me, they add "but only when I am wide open and get three seconds to shoot the ball" then they have limited their belief system.

Since I couldn't get into their brains to rewire them, I did the second best thing and asked to write down 10 positive things they gained from the loss, 10 ways they played better when they were enthusiastic and motivated, and to list each of their teammates and a great thing about them and then the one thing which if they changed would make them better. I then had them share their thoughts with one another, hoping the words on paper would filter through into their brains.

We have not played a game since departing planet earth, but we have practiced and the team appears normal . . . at least as normal as they can appear with a crazed coach pushing them to get past their self-imposed limits.