Buck 1

Paul Buck

Professor Fournier

Composition 2

27 February 2008

Playing As a Team

            Growing up playing sports whether it is for a city team, a travel team, or even in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the most important thing your coach pushes and pushes is teamwork.  Expressing teamwork at a young age is best for children, so children will learn how to play as a team in the future.  Learning teamwork in sports will also help people in the real world.  Susan M. Heathfield a writer who has written about teamwork says, “We have miles to go before valuing teams and teamwork, will be the norm.”  People have so much to do before they can all try to work as a team. Throughout the book The Winner Within (A Berkley Book, 1994, 271 pgs.), Pat Riley expresses how hard it is to have a team come together and plays like a team in the NBA and in our everyday lives.     

            In the book The Winner Within Riley talks about how hard it is to coach a team to the NBA finals.  Riley is known as one of the best coaches to ever coach the game.  He coached the Las Angeles Lakers to the NBA Championship multiple times. He gives viewers the inside tour of what it is like to be around these stars all the time and talks about coaching some of the greatest players ever to play the game.  He also tells viewers what he had to go through to teach these players to play as a team and not individuals.  He had players who always wanted the ball and wanted all of the attention and Riley shows how he was able to turn everything around and have them work together and win games.

            Riley’s main focus is getting the team to come together.  Riley starts off with the innocent climb.  In 1982 season Riley took over the head coaching job for the Los Angeles Lakers a team who had always finished in the middle of the pack.  That would soon change.  They can’t have a team which players have rivalries against each other.  He had drafted a young kid named Earvin “Magic” Johnson to start the innocent climb.  Magic was coming onto a team that already had a pretty big star named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Magic came on as point guard and showed how he played can make a difference on the court, but off the court players were getting sick of his ball hogging and everyone loving Magic and not the Lakers.  Riley knew he had a great team, but there was still a lot of work to do.

            Having a player with so much greed that the fans and media won’t stop talking about him, brings a whole team down.  Riley writes, “So intense was Earvin’s stardom that his absence seemed more newsworthy than their wins.”  Basketball is a team game and if only one player is getting recognition the rest of the team will have their heads down and not play like a team. The team was upset that everyone was looking past them and just at Magic.  Magic was so loved by the fans and media that even when he was hurt all that was talked about is when he is coming back.  The Lakers were winning without him, but the media still looked past that and talked about when he would return. 

            Riley knew he had to do something about his team.  Riley talks about The Core Covenant.  Riley writes “A Covenant is an agreement that binds people together.”  He needs to bring his team together.  He has to start with Earvin and Kareem the team leaders.  He has to have them be a positive example for the rest of the team.  It doesn’t matter if you’re on the basketball court or even in an office building it is up to you and

your teammates or co-workers to make a good covenant.  It’s up to the players as individual to make it work.  You have to be able to give it a chance or else you will not get anywhere.   

            Riley talks about how his team was hit with a thunderbolt and that they could do nothing about it.  Riley says, “A Thunderbolt is something beyond your control, a phenomenon that one day strikes you, your team, your business, your city, even your nation.”   In basketball players get old, they get traded, or they are hit with a season or even a career ending injury.  It is hard to avoid a thunderbolt.  The best thing people can do after a thunderbolt is come back from the disaster and become better as a team.  It focus’s on people as an individual and as a team.

            There can be a positive thunderbolt called the breakthrough.  Riley writes, “A breakthrough is a positive thunderbolt.  It enables the team and The Winner Within to grasp and to realize their mission by defining and fulfilling the most important performance goals in life.”  There has to be some kind of message to ignite the energy for a team to break through.  Fear is the main thing that will stop a breakthrough.  In the 1994 NBA finals the Chicago Bulls were down by 2 points with 14.1 seconds to go.  The bulls passed the ball around while the clock started to tick and they moved the ball around so much that each of the five players on the court touched it and John Paxson received it last in the corner for an open 3-pointer to win the game.  Paxson was later quoted saying “That was what basketball -- what teamwork and success -- are all about” (Araton 1).  People have to have the courage to breakthrough.  A team must work together so they can breakthrough as a team. 

            There may be one person who is holding the team back from potential greatness.  Riley writes, “Complacency is a success disease.”  It happens when you are feeling good about who you are and what you have done for yourself and your team.  Having one player on the team who doesn’t have complacency is a big problem.  You have to get rid of the problem before the problem gets to big and affects the team and you.  There is

always ways to improve individually and as a team.  Players on Riley’s team after they had won their 2^nd championship in a row thought there was no way to top there performance.  You can’t always be thinking about the past.  If you do, events taking place now will end up beating you up.

            Every player on a team has its own role.  It could be to score, rebound, assist, or play hard defense.  Vince Lombardi once said “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual” (Khurana).  Having players compare themselves to each other on their own team can only do bad things.  Riley talks about mastery.  Mastery is when you always want to do better.  It is emotional and mental to a player or even the coach.  The coach can spark mastery by striving to his players always work your hardest and get better each day.  It makes you reach for higher standards as a team and as an individual.  In order to master something you have to have teamwork.

            Having mastered the game as a team and winning a championship there is one thing left to do.  Riley refers to it as “Upping the Ante.”  Show everyone that you are still the championship team and leave footprints for others.  Make them challenge you and your team.  Show the others that your team is a dynasty.  Play as a team and repeat yourselves as champions.

            Every team comes to a point where the core is going to crack.  Playing together for years and then it cracks and you have to start the renewal stage over again.  It will cause you a lot of pain and effort.  One man may let it hurt him, but the other will build off of it.  Through The Winner Within, Riley includes quotes from others along in the sidelines.  Riley shows a quote from Winston Churchill which writes “Success is never final.”  You may have reached the top, but you will not always be on top. You take what you have left and use it. 

            There always comes a stage where you have to move on.  You have to have a new core covenant.  Riley writes, “The changes in your life aren’t always the ones you hoped for.  But they can usually help you grow.”   Riley moved on from the Las Angeles Lakers and started to coach for him dream job the New York Knicks.  Like he did in L.A. Riley went to his star player Patrick Ewing and started to build a new core around him.  He started the process all over again and had his players find leadership and come together as a team. 

            Riley’s final stage of teamwork is one from the heart.  There are always smaller encounters within the larger whole.  You have to win the regular season games to make it to the championship game.  Riley refers to people as true warriors.  A warrior is someone who knows how to get the job done.  A show time warrior needs to have HEART, COURAGE, and WILL.  Riley’s warrior was his player Magic Johnson.  He was the first player ever in the NBA to give money back to his team so they would be able to sign a new role player to help win a championship.  Riley says, “You have everything it takes to lift your team and yourself to great, long-lasting achievements, to fulfillment of potential.”  Go for what you want and don’t stop till you have made it to where you belong.

            Paul A. Paterson a book reviewer who reviewed Riley’s book The Winner Within and has a few things to say about it.  Paterson writes “In basketball, teamwork is the key to success.  According to Pat Riley, it’s the key to life as well.”  Paterson is saying that we use teamwork in our everyday life.  People may not realize it, but it is always going on.  He talks about how riley has coached the Lakers to a couple of

championships.  Paterson says, “He explains how a good leader knows how to change roles as the needs of the group change -- sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling.”  Leaders need to know when to get angry with his team in order for them to understand what he is saying.  Even if they don’t like it the leader is just trying to help the team out.  Paterson writes, “The lessons taught are suitable for business environments, family relationships and any atmosphere where cooperation is required for success.”  He is saying how we use the teamwork skills that we have been taught in the everyday world.  It could be at home, in the office, or on the basketball court.  Teamwork is used everywhere we go.

            Pat Riley the author of The Winner Within is a New York Times bestseller.  He is a coach in the NBA as well as the president of the Miami Heat.  Riley is married and has two children.  He has been coaching for about 23 years.  He has served as head coach for 3 NBA teams.  Riley has won a total of 7 championship rings.