Coaching a 12U girls basketball team was a total choke
Trailing early in the third quarter, we needed a break, and suddenly there was heaven when one of the opposing players drilled a 6-foot jumper at the wrong basket.
“Oh, that counts for us!” I said to the official.
Celebrating 15 feet from this poor girl who accidentally scored for the other team in my daughter’s 12U basketball game was not my finest hour.
Don’t care. We needed the points. Let God sort it out.
That episode was an improvement over my indoor soccer coaching career, when my daughter reminds me she could hear me once say during a game, “You girls are playing horrible.”
They were 7. I wasn’t wrong. When I bribe my way into heaven, the second question I’m asking the receptionist is how those kids heard me.
Back to the game. After the other team scored for us, we trailed only 8-4 with more than 12 minutes remaining. The whole playbook was back open.
As the break-glass-in-case-no-one-else-on-earth-is-available coach, I was living my dream to be Bobby Knight, Norman Dale or Pat Riley.
I was ready to throw a chair, or at least get kicked out of the game so my assistant coach could turn their life around.
Sadly, it turns out as a coach I am not Pop, but more like Quinn Buckner (Buck was 13-69 in his one season as Mavs coach in 1993-94).
When I got this plum job to coach my daughter’s basketball team for a single game, I immediately drew up plays, starting with “the picket fence.”
I also planned to use Pete Carril’s famed “Princeton offense,” Paul Westhead’s “transition” attack that he used with Loyola Marymount, and wanted to use a “Hack a Shaq” on every other possession.
Post-game snacks are Big Gulps of cherry-flavored steroids.
Before the game, I solicited strategy with a veteran Division I college basketball coach. “Make it fun for them,” was the response.
That coach knows more than I do, so I scrapped all of my pregame scouting preparations, other than one piece of vital information from the team’s actual head coach. Our opponent lost the previous game, like 14-2, so we were in good shape.
My optimism waned when 60 seconds before tip-off we had only four players. Thirty seconds later, our fifth player ran into the gym.
While the other team had nine players, midway through the first quarter it struck me that first-time coaches are just as stupid as first-time parents.
Those coaching seminars at $75 a pop are as effective as parenting classes. Trying to get five girls to play basketball in sync is akin to asking cats to sing the Star-Bangled Banner in key, without taking a knee.
More girls fell down in the game than bowling pins do in 10 frames.
Midway through the second quarter my John Calipari approach was failing. The “here is the ball — go win” strategy was just not the right fit with my roster.
We had 2 points and 272 turnovers.
Clapping and yelling, “Pass it! Pass it! Give her someone to pass it to!” was simply not working. Neither was, “Set a screen and roll!”
It hit me: I didn’t know what I was doing. Watching, playing and covering basketball since I was 4 had not adequately prepared me to coach these five girls how to run a single play.
And I didn’t have one of those cool coaching boards with the little pieces that would at least give me the appearance of being a coach. That would have changed everything.
Down 12-6 in the fourth quarter, our situation was bleak. Again, we had six points because the other team hit a jumper for us.
Since we had only five players, I could not clear the bench and play those who are on the roster to boost the team’s GPA.
But, there I was amid this blowout, sure we could go on a run.
With one minute remaining, we cut it to 14-11.
At this point, the sports journalist in me was in a cage match with the head coach.
The coach wants to win the game. The journalist wants the game to end on time with a good narrative.
This game was compelling, had good story lines, and some special sequences. During our comeback, we missed five shots on one possession, each miss more painful than the last.
My own kid drew a foul, but missed both free throws. That’s a Netflix movie right there.
With 15 seconds remaining, we cut it to 14-13.
Do I call a timeout? Do we foul intentionally?
Yes and yes.
We did neither, and lost by that score.
Now, I’m not going to pull some Rick Carlisle and say, “That question isn’t relevant and I’m not going to get into that stuff” when I’m asked by the media about my performance.
Because late at night, when it’s dark and quiet, and I’m alone with that devil known as inner thoughts, I know the truth. I choked. Gagged.
My team put us in a position to win the game, and their coach took that away from them. This is how Doug Pederson must have felt when he coached his final game with the Philadelphia Eagles.
At least I didn’t put in Nate Sudfeld, and although we lost I had a headline.
“Fire the Coach”
