5.17.2008

CLinic Notes: Bill Walton & Bill Russell

BILL WALTON AND BILL RUSSELL
8/3/2007
“BW” = WALTON
“BR” = RUSSELL
BR – Practice personal integrity so it becomes a movement, not a cause
His dad told him: “If you get paid $3/day, give him $4 worth of work. Then you become more valuable than him and you can look him straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”
Find out what you do and figure out how to mesh it into the program.
BW
McHale VS Nique – They told McHale to front him. The game started and Nique kept catching in the post. Call timeout and asked him why he wasn’t fronting. He said, “I am a shot-blocker. If I front, I can’t block shots.”
Love, trust, confidence, mostly hard work
Wooden – his only promise was: if you do well socially and academically, we will allow you to tryout
BR
Scouted my team first
**Red Auerbach had ability to listen. Always asked for input into the system so the players would become part owners.
BW
Rattles off Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” and quotes Wooden
Kareem had all the records, Shaq had all the money and Wilt had 20K girls
Not how big you are, it’s how big you play
Nash is the same player as Bill Russell…..make teammates better
Wooden: It is the things you learn after you know it all that really count
BR
Red was really strict
9:00 practice – if you came at 8:45 you were late. I cam at 9:05. Made a rule that if someone was late, nothing would be said to the player. It was just an automatic $10/minute fine
I hate practice
2ND YR in NBA – played first 10 mins, sit 2 mins, and play the rest of the game
If playing 46 mins/game, how smart is it to wear him out in practice
One day a player said: “I am tired of watching Bill sit and drink tea while I work.” Red said: “ok, I will trade you!”
When Red starting getting old and ill, Russell would call to check on him. “I would ask him how he felt. If he said he was feeling ok, I would say ‘bye’. I wanted to know how he was. I didn’t want him to have to take care of me by telling me he was ok.”
There was never a clique, it was always the whole squad.
BW
Referenced the movie the “North Dallas 40”
Wooden never walked out and asked: “what do you want to do today? It was his job to lead us.”
BR
I got in a lot of fights
I had an agenda
Get an education. Take it and learn
Find out how good a player I could become
All that gave me an immense quality of life. I worked hard so I could be content
Today, I admire intelligence (on court?)….(today’s guys) have athletic ability but they play in isolation
Playoffs = predictability
We were never worried about what we did wrong. Figure out what worked.
Preparation was always positive.
BW
If you go into Wooden’s house, you will see picture of Abe Lincoln and Mother Theresa.
A game not played for others is not a game
Magic and Russell would walk out and say, “How can I make my teammate the star!”
Wooden always upbeat and positive
Question to Walton – “How would Wooden deal with today’s egos?”
Answer: “He wouldn’t select Iverson, Artest, etc….he would select Duncan, David Robinson…”
Wooden never stopped learning