"The success of basketball teams normally
depends upon their mastery of fundamentals of
play.
While the coach associates sound fundamentals with team success, he
realizes that a sound and definite philosophy is synonymous with good
coaching. A coach's philosophy is the foundation upon which he
predicates his success."
from "Basketball Methods"
By Pete Newell and John Benington, 1962
The following Coach Newell quotes come on a variety of subjects from "A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story" by Bruce Jenkins.
On defense: "You start with the fact that there's only one way to play defense. Shuffle your feet, knees bent, hands up."
On developing habits:
"I believe you can never change a habit, or create one, with a word or a
piece of chalk. You can talk all day, put all sorts of diagrams on the
board, but a habit is not going to change. It's a conditional reflex,
created by a repetitive act."
On morale:
"Morale is something a lot of people talk about, but seldom really
address. You've got to practice it, show that you're committed."
On part-method teaching:
"Part-method teaching tells a kid why he's doing something. In
five-on-five drills you're not teaching, you're coaching. Break it down
to one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, go through every option of
the offense and defense, and the players will understand why you're
doing it. And if they make mistakes, you can point it out. The parts
make the whole. It's like your car engine; you work on the sparkplugs or
the carburetor or whatever's causing the problem. You don't have to get
rid of the whole motor."
On tempo:
"We want to make the other team play a game we think we can play
better. We do this by making them play at a speed they're not used to."
On emphasizing defense: "Everything to me is calculated toward the defense and letting the players know they can assert themsevles."
On reverse-action offense:
"A really sound offense will have that variety. With reverse action,
we'd have a screener, a cutter, and a passer, and if you have the three
minds working together at the same time, you'd get a real good shot."
On criticizing players:
"I never berated a player coming off the court or on the bench. I may
have raised hell on the practice court, or watching films the next day,
and sometimes it was my fault. But I wasn't involved in blaming people.
It was why, why, why. Because when you know the 'why' of something, you
can do something about it."
On coaching & teaching:
"Coaching and teaching are two different things. The coaching never
turned me on that much, but I always enjoyed the teaching, the practice
sessions."
On little things:
"It's little things. Like coming to a jump-stop when you catch the ball
inside in post-up position, so now either foot can be a pivot."
Probably no story summed up Pete Newell more than the one Coach Bob Knight shared in his book, "Knight: My Story" when to told of Coach Newell taking the time to visit with Coach Fred Taylor
to discuss defense. Coach Taylor was the at Ohio State, with a young
Bob Knight on the team. Coach Newell openly shared his defensive
philosophy with the Ohio State staff. In 1960 Ohio State defeated Coach
Newell's California team in the NCAA championship game and it had a
profound effect on Coach Knight:
"What
he represented to me in this case was the responsibility a teacher has
to share with others whatever he has come up with that he found to be of
some benefit. When later I was in a position to do that, I always did.
If we were doing something that people were interested in, I never held
anything back at clinics or in conversation with fellow coaches,
especially young ones."
This
has had a domino impact on many of us in the coaching profession. I
have attended Coach Knight's practices at Indiana -- they were always
open to coaches -- as well as attend his clinics. When you think of Pete
Newell, Bob Knight and Don Meyer,
you think of not just great coaches but people who care enough about
the game and those of us who coach it, to want to share their knowledge.
It is a major premise behind the creation of this blog.
