​Until 1937 there was a jump ball at center court after every made basket in a basketball game. For the jump ball, teams would put their shorter players in the frontcourt closer to their basket so they would be ready to score, and they put their taller players in the backcourt ready to defend. When the jump ball rule was abolished, the natural extension was that teams had their taller players dribble the ball up the court and had their small players set up down the court by the basket to score and battle for offensive rebounds. It was simply the way the game was played.
 
In 1947, future hall of legend Pete Newell was starting his second season as a head coach at USF. In his first season the team had gone 13-14 and his prospects for his second year weren't a lot better. In the book A Good Man The Pete Newell Story, by Bruce Jenkins Coach Newell explains how an innovative approach and adapting to the players he had changed everything:
 
"At that time big guys were the guards; consequently, you'd have big men bringing up the ball, and little guys were the inside players and offensive rebounders down court by the basket. Now I had 6-6 John Benington playing guard, and he couldn't dribble the ball twice without kicking it. He was smart and a good rebounder, and a pretty good shooter, but I can't play him; he can't bring the ball up court. I've also got little Rene Herrerias, who's about 5-9 and quick, but he weighs about 135 pounds and can't get an offensive rebound in a month. He's not going to get too many shots off, either. That's a big reason why little guys didn't play at that time, because offensively they were at such a disadvantage.
 
So, I'm thinking, how can I get the best out of these two guys? I decide I'm going to play my big guys on both boards. I didn't have sense enough to know you weren't supposed to do it that way. I was just trying to get the best out of my team. Rene was good on defense, smart as a whip, and he was a natural quarterback on the dribble. And we had a 5-10 guy, Ross Giudice, who was also very quick. So we instituted a press defense to give our big guys a chance to get back on defense. On the West Coast it was novel and we just started killing people. They've got big guys bringing the ball up court, and they can't get past these two little gnats I got up there. That became our label at USF, the press defense. That's when we turned the whole thing around. We also did a lot better job rebounding, because I had my big men on both boards. Pretty soon, some other teams started to invert. It was the only way they could match up with us. And before long, everybody was inverted":
 
A year later Newell's "new press and inversion" took Madison Square Garden by storm as little known USF won the NIT Championship. Coach Newell innovated a new system of basketball to adapt to the players he had. Now this is how basketball is played worldwide but at the time his methodology was simply not the way the game was played. That didn't matter to Pete Newell.
 
Is there something you're doing just because that's the way it's always been done?

Hall of Fame Coach Pete Newell's intensity and focus were legendary. One reason Coach Newell was effective was because he was able to direct his intensity and the intensity of his players at what they could control: "how they were playing". In the book A Good Man The Pete Newell Story by Bruce Jenkins, Coach Newell explains how his approach to dealing with referees fit in with this philosophy:
 
"I didn't want my players getting on the officials, ever, no matter what the situation. If sports are to have educational benefits, you have to learn to handle the bad calls of the world and get on with your business. I didn't want the officials to be a crutch, a scapegoat or a reason for not playing well. If you're preparing a youngster for a life after sports, you want him to think in positive terms and not be predisposed to thinking somebody's gonna cheat him out of something. If I saw a player even close to mouthing off at an official, I'd take him out of the game.
 
"I'd have some concerns if I saw a certain ref was working the game, but I'd never let my players know," Newell said. 'That's just a very negative kind of input, where the whole team's thinking 'Oh, no, old so-and-so is working the game, we're really up against it I just can't stand this business of, 'Is he for us or against us?' And if I start yelling, pretty soon it gives my players license to yell."
 
Coach Newell also never let his or a player's intensity turn into criticism. Coach Newell put it this way:
 
"I never berated a player coming off the court or on the bench. Never in my life. I may have raised heck 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"
 
At half time of a game, his best rebounder complained he wasn't getting enough help from his teammates. Coach Newell addressed the issue with the team this way:
 
"I don't want any individual to think he's running this team! When you have bad nights, I don't want to hear anybody - and I mean anybody - comment on the performance of anybody else. I'm the coach. I know who's doing` what for who. If you're having a bad night, you go out and get twice as tough!" The message was clear: You can't point a finger at someone else, or everything falls apart. Look to yourself.
 
Not coincidentally, one of three strict practice rules fellow legend John Wooden had was: "Never criticize a teammate."
 
Coach Newell did not allow his intensity or that of his players to be become blame or criticism of others. He did not lower his intensity. He directed his intensity at his performance and that of his team. The outcome was laser focus and legendary results.
 

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. 

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on this plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A..... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all). 

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. 

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. 

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment: 

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. 
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. 
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. 
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it! 
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation. 

​Hall of Fame Coach and Master Mentor Pete Newell is regarded as a master teacher. Coach Newell had a consistent approach to his teaching methods that can benefit anybody who applies them whether it is coaching, parenting, managing or supervising others.
 
As a teacher Coach Newell thought is was essential the players understood why they did things a certain way. In his book Pete Newell's Defensive Basketball he expanded on this:
 
"In teaching basketball, the importance of describing the "why" has never changed. The "why" is a fundamental in classroom teaching, and it is certainly important in teaching the basics of defensive play of basketball. While it is important to explain the "how" of performing a particular aspect of play, it is even more important for the basketball coach to explain the "why." It has been my experience that the player who understands the "why" will consistently respond correctly to the situation."
 
In the book A Good Man The Pete Newell Story by Bruce Jenkins Coach Newell explains how he used the part whole method to teach his players the why behind the how:
 
"Part-method teaching tells a player 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. Part-method teaching is the whole basis of my coaching. You reach the point, ideally, where players come up with strategy they didn't get from me."
 
Newell was clear that the player's active repetition not the coach talking that would get results:
 
"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 conditioned reflex, created by a repetitive act. Coaches say, 'Stay down low, you gotta get low,' but that doesn't mean a thing if the player hasn't physically practiced to stay low. Habits are created through physical acts'."
 
Stanford Hall of Fame Coach Tara VanDerveer described Coach Newell's motivational approach as a teacher this way:
 
"Make no mistake, Pete is as demanding of players as the most tyrannous of his colleagues, but only in that he does not quit teaching until his players execute in the manner to which he has envisioned. Rather than punishing his players for mistakes, he teaches and re-teaches until there is success. The motivation, of course, is that his players so respect this man that they give their best effort in order to please their teacher."
 

Theodore Roosevelt said: "People won't care how much you know until they know how much you care." In his book A Good Man The Pete Newell Story Bruce Jenkins tells the inspiring story of Ricky Ayala who played for Coach Newell at Michigan State. It is a great example of how to show you care about somebody beyond what they can do for you:
 
"Reginald (Ricky) Ayala was the first African American to play basketball at Michigan State. He arrived as an underprivileged kid from the streets of Brooklyn.
 
At the beginning of spring practice for his sophomore season, the 5' 6'' Ayala had a meeting with Newell that changed his life. Nearly a half-century later, the details are vivid in his mind. "Pete told me to put the ball down and sit down for a minute. He looked at my transcript and noticed I hadn't decided on a major. 'Well, I've seen a lot of players with this dilemma,' he tells me. 'Let's try to figure out what you don't want to be. So we spent about 20 minutes ruling out all these things: doctor, lawyer, coaching, all over the map. He asked me what I was looking for in life. I told him a college degree, the chance to make some money, and a job with variety. I'd spent my whole life in Brooklyn. I wanted an interesting job that might let me travel some.
 
'All of a sudden it hits Pete He says, 'Rick, I know what it is - hotel management I can still see us sitting there on a bench, and I just started laughing. 'I'm not kidding,' Pete says. We've got one of the three best hotel-management programs in the country. From what I've heard, graduates of that school make more money per capita than any other program in the university "Now I'm interested," Ayala went on. "I've never even been in a hotel, but I get an appointment with the dean. I still remember Dean Scott telling me, 'Don't ask me for any help or any favors. We don't have any athletes in this program! 'Ricky Ayala became the first black graduate of Michigan State's hotel management program. In 1959, he made what he describes as an easy transition into hospital administration, and in 1970, he was hired as CEO and chief organizer of a four-hospital merger in the Detroit area, a lucrative job he kept until his retirement in 1991."Pete Newell picked my major," says Ayala. 'That's the kind of man he was!
 
‘But that's not all he did. Newell also insisted that Ayala enter the ROTC military program at Michigan State, "and that's the last thing I wanted to do," Ayala said. "I hated the military. That's like Boy Scouts for a kid from New York City. I went into ROTC and became an officer in the Air Force [1955 through '57]. The insights he had into a man's character were uncanny."
 
A great coach, teacher, manager or leader is aware of and concerned about the challenges and long term aspirations a team member has away from the workplace. The coach should not try to overcome these challenges for the team member but can provide a combination of empathy, guidance and encouragement. This shows you care.
 
Is there somebody you could show you care?
 
You will enjoy it. Coach Wooden often said: "Nothing can give you greater joy than doing something for another."

Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell (1915 –2008) was considered "America's Basketball Guru". Coach Newell was an excellent teacher and part of his "Positive Approach" was that he focused on telling his players what "to do" as opposed to telling them "what not to do." Newell"s communication was centered on "do this" not "don’t do that". "Take good shots as opposed to don’t take bad shots." In the Bruce Jenkins book A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story (1999) Coach Newell expanded on this idea:
 
"I always taught the value of the ball," Newell says, "and I'd teach ball possession in a positive way. I'd put my regulars on defense and play the second team on offense in practice. We'd play a 10-point game with a lot of pressing. Every time we forced a turnover, we get a point Positive rein¬forcement. Rather than say, 'Don't do this,' it was more like, 'When you force the opponent to throw the ball away, you're costing them a point:
 
This is why teams play championship games so negatively. Especially the Super Bowl, with that two-week break; it's all negatives. Don't do this, don't let 'em beat you here, don't let 'em beat you there, don't don't don't. Next thing you know, you've had just enough time to figure out what can go wrong. Later you wonder, 'Jeez, our guys sure came out flat: That's because they were coached to be flat. We all fall into this trap if we allow it. I used to tell our guys, the first time they get the ball, I want you to play a full-court press and go hard after the ball. I don't care if you get a foul. Let's make sure we're the first ones to do something."
 
Coach Newell was equally insistent that his players had a positive mind set. In the same book Bruce Jenkins tells a great story to illustrate this:
 
"Newell could not tolerate whiners or negative thinkers, and he had memorable ways of proving his point. One particular player, a sophomore starter, decided he didn't like the rims at the University of Wisconsin. It was his first game there, and he returned angrily to the bench after warmups.
 
"These are terrible backboards," he said. "Terrible rims" "Do they really bother you?" Newell asked him. "Yeah:' Newell immediately went to the scorer's table and announced a sub¬stitution. Sophomore out, somebody else in. The kid couldn't believe it.
 
"I don't want people having emotional problems when they go on the court," Newell told him. "You seem to have one with the backboards and rims here, so I'm going to take that problem away from you. You'll watch the game with me tonight."
 
Newell never did play the kid that night "I was trying to teach him ¬and all my players - that you can't have everything you want in life. If the rims aren't right so be it. If it means a longer rebound, you make that adjustment. You simply don't start throwing rocks at the other team or allow this negativism. And I never heard another word, from him or any¬body else, about negative things on the other person's court."