KTB TV: Playing The Right Way
Explaining what playing the right way means
What sticks out from the tape are three things: the corner three, the three at the top of the key, and the hand check. What does it mean to play the right way?
Playing The Right Way
I played for a great high school coach — never allowed us to play zone, never ran plays, he wanted to teach us how to play. You had to play man-to-man, pass and cut, sacrifice for your teammates. Then I go to Carolina, play for Frank McGuire, maybe the greatest game coach of all time. Won a national championship, beat Wilt, then I end up with Dean Smith, who maybe is the greatest team coach of any sport.
Played for John McLendon on the Olympic team, [he] offered me my first coaching job, at Kentucky State, nobody knows about him but 99 percent of the great black coaches who didn’t have the opportunity to coach in Division I played under him. He actually taught under Naismith… and Naismith taught at Kansas so there’s some connections between me and the beginning of basketball, believe it or not.
Played for Alex Hannum [in the ABA], who won two world championships [in the NBA], played for Pete Newell, played for Mr. [Hank] Iba on the Olympic team, and every one of those guys had the same values: play unselfishly, play hard, play smart and have fun.
I wrote that on the board every single day I coached, and then they always would put in parenthesis that it would be nice if we defended and rebounded a little bit. So that is playing the right way. Every time you step out on the floor, make your teammates better, do it as hard as you can to the best of your ability, and respect the game.
I think that’s probably saying it as well as I can.
– Baskeball Hall of Famer Larry Brown
