Joe Mazzulla has strong opinions… and an NBA Championship ring.
“What if we all walked around with like five coins, right? And at any point in time, you can just hand one out, and you just challenge a guy to like, combat,” Mazzulla said at the time. “If you do pull a coin on a guy and he beats you up, like, that’s your fault. You've got to either train harder, or pick and choose your coins better.”
Mazzulla's discussing "metaphorical" fighting.
Years ago a Middlesex League basketball opponent came up to a Melrose player pregame saying, "we're going to beat you this year." That didn't go well. Melrose won in a rout and held the double digit scorer to a bagel. She used her coin poorly.
Teams don't win with trash talk or "bulletin board material" from perceived online slights.
Planning is inferior to preparation. Skill beats strategy. Polls and power rankings provide talking material but not wins.
Mazzulla challenges players to be better. One positive coaching technique is telling a player, "I coach you hard to help you become the player I believe that you can be." As a player, you should dream about hearing that. That's a coin worth playing.
Lagniappe. Coaches share messaging across domains.
Marcus Freeman said, "You can't talk your way into winning a National Championship. You can't talk your way into being a Hall of Famer...You got to work and you got to constantly focus on improvement."
— Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness (@coachajkings) January 9, 2025
You have to show up and do the work.
Your work ethic is something that you… pic.twitter.com/GuBkrnQ1hw
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