Hey Doc: My team’s on the floor

Borrowing a line from Gene Hackman in the movie Hoosiers, “My team’s on the floor” when Hackman played with just four players, our 5th grade AAU team played with just four players yesterday. It was Mother’s Day, and many players had conflicts with other sports.

The pre-game speech was brief. “Play to win, expect to win, play as a team.” The boys won the tip, made the first bucket, and never gave up the lead. What we preach and teach our players is that it’s not the time of day, who our opponent is, or where we are playing, we play the same way with the Next Play Mentality. The 5th grade team played with the Next Play Mentality yesterday and it was a joy to watch.

The Next Play Mentality is more than just shaking off a miss or not getting too high after a great play. The Next Play Mentality is to attack the entire game. We want to be the aggressors, to play with confidence, and to win or lose the game by playing the right way. You can imagine that we needed to play great team basketball being down a player on both ends of the floor. “Help defense” was a must on every play. All players needed to box out in order to give us the best chance of securing rebounds. Many times our defense looked like a 5v4 defensive drill that included “Gap defense and help and recover.” While the boys made mistakes, they battled and willed themselves to victory. As we add up all the games of a spring AAU season, this game will go down as a highlight for sure. As I told the boys, Next Play is undefeated when we only have four players available.

After the game, I bet these boys and others sat through a lackluster performance by the Philadelphia 76ers in a win or go home Game 7 game vs the Boston Celtics. For whatever their reasons, it sure didn’t look like Joel and James were huffing and puffing, clawing their way to victory. I thought of those four boys who finished the game red faced and gassed after a seemingly meaningless Sunday afternoon consolation game. As coaches, to see your players who are being paid handsomely to play a game not give full effort must have been tough to watch. Unfortunately, those players get paid whether they win or lose, and whether they try hard or not.

I’d rather watch 5th grader Next Players overcome obstacles and find a way to win. Vince Lombardi’s famous quote reads, “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” Maybe a few of the remaining rostered Sixers players need to enroll in Next Play Summer Camps to develop the Next Play Mentality.