Seth Davis

This sports book portraits coaches Urban Meyer, Tom Izzo, Jim Boeheim, Gino Auriemma, Jim Harbaugh, and others. Davis attempts to put a favorable face on the personalities and tactics of the various coaches. However, he tends to skip the not so nice sides. These guys are not saints. This book also tends to avoid the real factors on how these coaches make great teams:

1. They recruit superior players. Some of these coaches do not always follow the rules on recruiting.
2. They make promises to recruits that they may not be able to keep.
3. They work the hell out of their players who do not collect paychecks for all the time they put in practice or preparation.
4. They have huge budgets for their programs. They are able to hire quality assistants who help them with recruiting and coaching. They have huge taxpayer paid stadiums and arenas.
5. They are able to blunt criticism of their programs and to mitigate or cover up the poor behavior of many of their athletes.… (lisätietoja)

Audiobook. Enjoyed hearing the stories of some great coaches, and learned some interesting trivia (Mike Krzyzewski isn't a reader...who knew?). The story of Dabo Swinney made me appreciate the man, his journey, energy, and leadership style. Book is dragged down by several factors. The author overlooks, or glosses over, some very nasty character defects and controversial events (sometimes stemming from those character defects. The authors repetition of "getting to us", insistence on portraying these coaches as "empathetic", and reliance on the word "genuine" as a descriptor is annoying and condescending.… (lisätietoja)

I am not sure where to put this book. Seth Davis is a nationally known sports reporter and he is a very good sports writer. The prose that he commits to paper reflects his sports reporting background, and to be clear, he is a very good sportswriter. He tells his stories well and he has a fine sense of the internal stories of his subject. The stories are taut and always gives perspective on the person being featured.
But there is a problem with this book, many problems actually.
It is a collection of nine profiles of successful coaches; almost all of them have succeeded in their profession and are recognized as the leader of athletes. Some have well defined personalities and known reputations, others are relatively new to the limelight and benefits from not being ubiquitous in the media spotlight. One problem is that the chapters are relatively short, which makes for easy reading but it also make the profiles seem rushed and incomplete. Davis is seemingly trying to make his points and then rushing to demonstrate the challenges and obstacles they have faced in their inner life through anecdotes and personal histories without really examining how those headwinds affected their coaching philosophies and execution of their philosophies. What we get is a laundry list of what they do and examples. Davis lays out the facts as a reporter and then he links the professional practices of these coaches with the facts, but he never drills in deeply into the why’s of the relationship between the fact and practices. It isn’t a fatal flaw but it left me wondering. To be fair, he states in the introduction that this was not the intent of the book, it still leaves a void, a road not taken which could potentially be productive.
Another problem is that Davis uses a unifying theme to tie the coaches’ profiles. The theme is the title of the book: Getting To Us. He explains the theme thus: “A team begins as a collection of me’s, him’s and you’s. It is the job of the coach to figure out a way to get to Us.” A noble yet unoriginal theme, as our sports culture has always revolved around teams and teamwork. Davis uses the acronym PEAK to describe the desired characteristics of a coach to enable this ability to see the big picture and get the team to Us. PEAK is: Perseverance, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge. Davis tries to apply these four characteristics to the story of each of the nine men and tries mightily to squeeze details about their experience and make up into these four niches. The effort seems forced and at times are inspired and at times clichéd. Davis stated that he only intended to highlight PEAK and try to connect those characteristics to Getting To Us. The results are uneven at best, mostly disappointing.
The coaches that came through with their reputations enhanced are Geno Auriemma, Doc Rivers, Brad Stevens, and Dabo Swinney. Stevens and Swinney are relative new to the national spotlight so the portraits are excellent at revealing their stories to us, through the Davis filter. Auriemma and Rivers were revelations to me, their stories were fascinating even though a little short. Rizzo came through unscathed yet also unenhanced.
One thing that Davis did was to give a portrait of these men that are unadorned, he reaffirms the portrait of coaches like Meyer, Krzyzewzki, Harbaugh, and Boeheim as they have been portrayed previously in the press. He does however, go into explaining why they are the way they are, he was not very successful. Urban Meyer came off as somewhat reasonable until the recent troubles at Ohio State with Zach Smith. Ironically, Davis also featured Meyer’s wife Shelley, in this profile. Davis never fully explained Krzyzewzki’s decision to deal with Grayson Allen’s transgressions the way he did, other than repeating his defense. Harbough came off like a petulant child at times, albeit a very successful one. Boeheim reaffirmed his public persona as prickly personality, even though he seems more sympathetic.
If you came to this book as a means to get any insight on Getting to Us, don’t waste your money. If you can to read some quickie portraits of nine successful coaches, I would say go ahead and read this book, although I would also advise you to temper your expectations.… (lisätietoja)

This is a readable book on an interesting subject.

It is funny about time. Larry & Magic's year was 1979, only 5 years after NCSU won the championship with David Thompson. The ACC, SEC, and SWC had just integrated. And already Bird was a great white hope. I don't know if Isaiah Thomas was right -- that Bird wasn't really all that good -- but it is certain that he is very white.

But I don't remember it. Bird was just so good. I saw ISU beat up on Purdue in 1979. And he was awfully good on the Celtics. I remember having a big argument with my mother, about whether the Celtic management was racist or whether they felt they needed white guys because the Boston crowd was racist. I probably tried to say it was both. But it wasn't Bird who was in question, maybe McHale, or Ainge, or even Jerry Sichting.

I saw MSU when they played at Purdue that year, and almost certainly watched the Purdue at MSU game on the TV. In those games Kelser was more impressive than Magic was.… (lisätietoja)