No Coach will Ever Be Named MVP

If you want to win you better get some real players. 

...Players that will be able to understand and do what you teach them. You aren’t going to win championships with duds, no matter who you are. 

The best coaches keep perspective
They know that the only thing that matters in coaching is the team. It doesn’t matter how good of a player the coach was and it doesn’t matter how smart the coach is, it's the players who will be playing the game.

“It's not what you know, it's what they know that wins ball games.”
–College Coaching Legend
Eddie Robinson

Magic Johnson was a GREAT player
He won 5 NBA Championships, 3 MVPs, 12 All Star Games and a member of the Hall of Fame. But that didn’t help him as a coach. He coached the Lakers for 11 games in 1994. When they lost 5 of their last 6, he decided coaching wasn’t for him. That was a good decision. Magic always has been a smart guy.

Few great players are great coaches
They don’t have the patience. They get frustrated when they tell, show and repeatedly explain how to get things done and their team still can’t do it. It drives them insane. 

All great coaches realize that they can’t 'play God' with their team.

• The coach can coach, but the team has to play. 
• The coach can call the play, the team has to run the play.
• It doesn’t matter how bad the coach wants it, it matters how bad the team wants it

They may want success for their team more than they want it for themselves, but that isn’t going to matter once the game starts. 

If you want to win you better get players that are good enough, smart enough and driven enough to do it!

Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week: When the Game Was Ours

What are their Winner Credientials?

These men are basketball legends and hardly need introduction. Together Bird and Johnson collected eight NBA Championships and six MVP awards.

Book Description

From the moment these two legendary players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. In Celtic green was Larry Bird, the hick from French Lick, with laser-beam focus, relentless determination, and a deadly jump shot, a player who demanded excellence from everyone around him and whose caustic wit left opponents quaking in their high-tops. Magic Johnson was Mr. Showtime, a magnetic personality with all the right moves. Young, indomitable, he was a pied piper in purple and gold. And he burned with an inextinguishable desire to win.
 
Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most thrilling rivalry in the NBA—East vs. West, physical vs. finesse, old school vs. Showtime, even white vs. black. Each pushed the other to greatness, and, helping to save a floundering NBA. At the start they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.   
 
With intimate detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to an electric era and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting each other. It is a compelling portrait of two giants of the game, during professional basketball’s best times.

Read the Amazon Exclusive Q&A with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson

Have you read this book? If so, did you enjoy it and if not, do you plan to read it?

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