Maybe impossible but definitely a challenge

Maybe impossible but definitely a challenge
The New Jersey Nets of the NBA have earned the reputation as the worst team in history. As of now, they are tied with Philadelphia who posted only 9 wins in a season a few years ago. The Nets are 4 and 48 as of this writing. My dear friend Coach Del Harris was hired by Kiki Vandeweghe, former General Manager, recently named head coach, two months ago, to help him turn this team around and avoid that negative record.
Coach Harris worked very hard with this team, worked with the coach to do whatever necessary to start winning games.
After several emails, we agreed that I would travel to New Jersey to work with the team to see if I could motivate this team so that they would win some games.
There were two fundamental problems: lack of experience on the team and not that much talent. Three of the starters have played for a year and a half, the other one is a rookie and the third, Devin Harris, the best player in the team, has played 5 games but had an injury in his shooting hand. Definitely the youngest, least experienced team in the NBA.
I love challenges, sometimes impossible assignments, and sometimes I have been successful. Not this time. There were simply too many factors against.
In four days, working with the team for a total of maybe 3 hours in the four days, I couldn’t do all the things I needed to do with the team.
A basketball team is very similar to an executive team in a company. You have to assess your team, understand their strengths and weaknesses and assign them to a position where they can better apply their strengths so that the team is more effective. You need to study who the leaders are and what style of leadership they practice.
Part of what I need to do is perform a psychological assessment on each player and coach in order to measure three main things.
1. What motivates them? What is their intent?
2. What is their reputation? In other words, how is it that they behave day to day under normal circumstances? How do others perceive them based on what they do?
3. How do they behave under pressure? In other words, what strength do they have that under pressure, becomes a weakness. We call this the “shadow”, comes up when under pressure. We also measure what they lack, what strength they simply don’t have.
I also need to meet with each player and coach to discuss the assessment, do an in depth interview and really understand them and at the same time develop a relationship of trust.
No, there wasn’t time to do that and all I could do is work with the group for these three hours.
Coach Harris, encouraged by his dear wife Ann, asked me to do the needle demonstration.
When he coached the Bayamon Cowboys, in the 70’s, he got to the finals against the Quebradillas Pirates. The Pirates had Raymond Dalmau and Neftali Rivera, probably one of the the best one two combinations in Puerto Rican history. The Cowboys were hurt, tired and they didn’t have much of a chance to win. Coach Harris saw me on T.V, on a segment I had in a program called Universidad del Aire, and hired me to work with the team in the finals.
I worked with that team for two games and won both. We got to the seventh game and I had to convince the players that they could use their minds to overcome any pain or any negative situation they were going through and win the game. I then took out three needles, went into deep meditation and stuck them on my face and throat. The players couldn’t believe it, but it motivated them enough to go out and beat the Pirates by over 20 points. Del never forgot that and now, with the Nets, it was time to try it again.
When I did it, three players almost faint. They couldn’t believe their eyes and I don’t blame them. But the message got through that mind over matter is possible and they played very hard that first game.
We played the Washington Wizards and we were winning until the last 30 seconds when one of their bench players scored a basket. We had over 25 seconds to execute one play and either tie the game or win it with a three pointer. A play had to be designed in order to accomplish this objective. The play, designed by the coach, wasn’t a good play and we lost the game. To Kiki’s credit, and I respect him for this, he admitted that the play wasn’t good enough.
This is an important lesson in this article. It doesn’t matter how motivated your troops are, if you have the wrong strategy, you will lose. You might be very motivated and you might climb a building in record time, but if you climbed the wrong building, you lose.
The second game against Philadelphia, we are ahead and at the last minute we fall behind by three points. We have the ball and one play. Again, the wrong strategy and we lose.
The next game, against the Detroit Pistons, we are behind 3 points. A few seconds left, our best guy, Devin Harris, gets the ball and because of a lack of the right strategy, he shoots an air ball. They get the ball with 7 seconds left and we have to foul and they make both shots, so we lose by 5 points. Devin declared after the game that he simply didn’t know what to do because they didn’t have a good play set up. What a sad ending to this hard effort by all of us.
So, my work is finished with the team and the assistant coach, Del Harris, also called it quits.
The Nets have been sold and the new owner will take over in March. So, right now is not the right time to change much.
These young kids are really trying and playing as hard as they can, but they simply don’t have the tools to be able to win.
After Del and I left, they have lost every game by 9 to 20 points, the last one against the Milwaukee Bucks. They are now on a break because of the All Star game. Not one single player made it to the All Star team.
I really enjoyed the time I spent with these players. They were very respectful, participated fully in my sessions and gave it all they had. Looking back, with us, they almost win the last three games we worked with the team. But more needs to be done and the circumstances right now are against them.
On a funny note, many of the newspapers and media covering the New Jersey Nets had headlines saying “Not even needles can make the New Jersey Nets win”.
They don’t seem to understand that it takes a lot more to win besides needles and motivation.