Monday, September 30, 2013

BRAD STEVENS: PROCESS OVER RESULTS

Here are excerpts from a nice article on Boston's Brad Stevens and how he handles success and failure, victory and defeat.  It was written by Jay King of MassLive.com.   You can read the entire article here -- there's some good examples of how Coach Stevens has handled both sides of the ledger.      

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of losses in general,” he said with a smile. After a brief pause, he continued, “Probably the same (as wins). I think you have to. The college season’s long, this is double. You have to have an even keel-ness about you. I think the NBA coaches do a great job of it generally. And I think – you know, one of my idols in coaching would have been Tony Dungy, the way he acted and the way that he moved on one way or the other. Losses and wins never affected who he was as a person, and I think that if you have that mindset, it’s easier to just do your job. That’s what I try to have.”

“I think one of the things that I’ve always tried to do is evaluate the game based on what happened in the game, not necessarily on the result,” Stevens added. “One of my favorite books was written by Bill Walsh: The Score Takes Care of Itself. And we try to do everything we can to help put our team in position to have the score take care of itself. And sometimes it goes your way, and sometimes it doesn’t. And regardless, you have to respond the next day. Whether you have success or whether you failed, both of them are challenges to respond to.”