Fact less and Feckless...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVMP0LqFzTk

While not being a fan of sports talk, finding it self serving and rarely steeped in truth and fact based opinion, the above clip made it's way to my e mail from a coaching friend.

The argument that started this was that the last 7 NBA Most Valuable Players have been NON Americans. This began the vapid diatribe you can watch in its entirety at the link above.

Normally, this blog would stay away from the self exploitive bloviations that is seen above, but it's important to know a few FACTS before people begin to think the United States sports system is collapsing like these four panelists fragile credibility.

First, yes, it's the last seven years but we are only talking about four players, two of whom have won the MVP multiple times: Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. 

Another FACT to know is that none of the four panelists have ever coached, but it's nice to see they delight in defiling those in the profession. They suggest without any thought or foresight that it's because sports have become monetized, that personal brands rule the sports landscape and that even 'cancel culture' has crept in and kept Americans from winning the NBA's top individual prize.

The number of international players in the NBA has tripled in the last 30 years. The FACTS are there are now more great International players which might suggest that they have a better chance at the MVP now that there are more of them. (Why would an NBA team bring a mediocre International player overseas to play?)

Trends in sports are always pored over by pundits who claim to have reasons for them all, usually making their arguments, like you can see above, with little to no FACTS and marinated in personal opinion and a small sample size of experiences they muster into their hustle.

Let's try this on for size. Currently the network that produces this bastion for personal narrative and, yes, branding, is complicit in the following:

Middle schoolers in the Little League World Series are made into media fodder as is their coaches. Please read the first two words again in the above sentence: MIDDLE SCHOOLERS.

This network shows high school basketball games and again makes and breaks these athletes AND coaches with each win and loss, with each good and not so good performance. Again, just to reiterate, HIGH SCHOOLERS!

Sacrificing and spit roasting coaches is a daily habit for shows like these and not so shockingly, several coaching legends in many sports have decided not to wake up to Monday morning calls for their dismissal and the abuse and doubt that surrounds their job security daily and resigned. Children are affected, families are affected, and these panelists sit in their air conditioned studio making a shade under $30m a year for the four of them passing judgement on something they know little to nothing about.

College coaches have had to redefine their entire job description in the past few years with the advent of the NIL and the infusion of mega money into collegiate AND high school sports. They are learning on the fly as the rules change faster than the hourly wardrobes by these four hypocrites.

Molly, Michael, Jay and Stephen, shame on you. For a fact less, feckless insult to coaches working to do their jobs. It would be interesting to see ESPN put a coaching show on the docket that criticized the talking shrunken heads who find self satisfaction in taking down hard working coaches and athletes. 

Like the bloviation nation whose noise invades our consciousness by the minute, Coaches want to be the best they can be. Athletes want to be the best they can be. We all make mistakes, we all (hopefully) learn from our mistakes. You calling them out on every downturn might be spirited fodder for your morning ego-thon, but it's not all us.

Look in the mirror!

A Day in the Life....

 May 21st.

The Indiana Pacers erase a 14 point deficit in the NBA's Eastern Conference Championship and tie the game at the buzzer on this Tyrese Haliburton jump shot...

Hard to imagine that at practice the day before, Haliburton worked on this shot- running into the lane and then running back out, turning on one foot and firing up a toe-on-the-line 3 pointer. 

While this event happened earlier in the year, social media snared this video and ran with it. What you see is Grand Sumo wrestler Ura fighting a much bigger Takayasu...

The move Ura performs at the end of the match, according to sources,  has been implemented just 6 times in the last 25 years AND has a .02% effectiveness rate. Is it conceivable that Ura was practicing this move, knowing the slim chance it had of success or did it maybe just "come to him in the moment?"

Four climbers from the United Kingdom made history  yesterday. Climbing Mount Everest is usually a multi week process requiring climbers to move from one elevation to a higher one, acclimating to the thin air with each higher camp until they summit and descend. This group left London on May 16th, was at base camp on May 17th and summited yesterday, May 21st.

Five total days! It is the fastest ascent of Everest in history.

Using science of xenon gas breathing treatments and hypoxic chambers, they defeated tradition and have now put the Everest expeditionary world on it's heels. 

In one day, three examples of thinking outside the box, of looking away from text book solutions and using the solutions allotted them, created successful solutions to overcoming problems.

It's what we ask of our athletes but sometimes, as coaches, we don't give them the tools.

Let them learn to adapt, to solve problems, to explore and refine.

Let them overcome obstacles.

"A Very Special Place"

 The very first think you notice is the painted logo on the side of the wall on the cement courts  outside.

In a poor section of Casablanca, the main city of 7 million in Morocco, a hand painted logo proudly calls out Association Moustakbal Deb Sultan,  (AMDS), the volleyball club for the area. 

 It is run by a gentleman named Saad Mifdal, a lawyer during the day and at 4p every day, comes to open his gym. He has always had an interest in youth sports being a soccer player in his youth. In the early 2000's, he started a soccer club, then tennis, then back to soccer before he settled on and fell in love with volleyball. He gives time, money and the energy to making AMDS, despite its humble surroundings and facilities, one of the premiere training sites in all of Morocco.

 

Much like the Outrigger club in Hawaii who has accounted for 15 Olympians,  AMDS accounts for roughly half the Moroccan National Teams, both men's and women's and several of the Junior National Teams. This despite working with athletes in the Derb Sultan area which is very poor, crime riddled and a place where cell phones are hidden even on the shortest of walks.

 

During a tour of the club, it was obvious why there was a HUGE difference between this club and the others that continue to be coached and trained by Moroccan coaches like it's still 1967.

 

First, the practices see the balls coming from over the net.

 

Second, even the players that are off to the side, not involved in practice, are playing pepper but with a setter and they are taking full controlled swings, not roll shots. 

 

Third and most important, they have a "short court," roughly 15' by 30', 450 sq. ft. v. the normal 900 sq ft of a full volleyball half court.

 

During the tour, a bunch of the boys from the practice that just ended sprinted outside, grabbed the net and set up the short court. (The club is under some renovation and while it is normally up all the time, it has to be put up and taken down for the next month or so).

 

The small court rules are as follows: 2 v. 2. If there are players waiting, games are to 6. The third contact can NOT be a set over or a push over, full swings or cut shots are encouraged. If not, you lose the point. If your team doesn't get three touches, you lose the point.

 

As I was there, a men's National team player that played at AMDS strolled in and began to pepper with some of the younger players. About 20 minutes later, another libero playing on a professional team at the moment, grabbed a ball and began to work and pepper with a couple of other young players. A third Men's National team player came in a little after that. All are from around the area, all coming back "home" for a couple of hours.

 

The kids weren't being lectured, they weren't bored and they were all working with a ball, attacking, setting, digging. 

 

Outdoor cement courts, one beach court, an indoor gym with a floor that should have been refinished 10 years ago, and yet National Team level players are flowing out of AMDS. 

One such player, middle blocker Kabira Najim, begin her volleyball career at AMDS. "I joined this team at the late age of 16. It is a very wonderful experience and the head of the team is very wonderful and takes care of the children. I took training from him for two years after which I went to the Royal Army (club)." Kabira is now a professional player and is a regular on the Moroccan women's National Teams during competitions.

"What I like about the club is the team spirit and the way the President treats the children," Kabira adds. "It was not a team but it was a school that taught us how to play and the spirit of brotherhood."  

"It was a successful start for me, with this team, and the confidence that I got. The culture of the team was that I could be better." She adds.

The day after the tour, the U14 team travelled 90 minutes  to south to El Jadida for the Moroccan Girl's Club Championships. The U14 team, made up of 12 and 13 year olds, looked 16, taking big swings, big serves and playing solid defense. 

AMDS won the Country wide Club Championship in straight sets against the home team, El Jadida.

It's not a secret. The 2 v 2 games that the young athletes start with gives them more and valuable touches in the training sessions, instilling habits they will use their entire careers. The drills are game like and link perception and action. Even off the court, the pepper includes a setter and big swings and digs.

Most of all, in this neighborhood, it is an escape, a release. It's an oasis of fun, adventure, exploration and competition for young boys and girls who must learn the ideas of team, brotherhood, culture and competitiveness in a less than optimal environment.

Kabira puts it succinctly. "It is a very special place."