You're Never As Good As You Think, Nor As Bad As You Think

It's ironic that the following article was just posted on Coach Musselman's blog. As you recall, we (Titans) just addressed this topic after our loss to Creighton Prep and the importance of communication and problem solving following a poor performance (game or practice). I shared a Kearney State memory from back in the day when the Lopers lost the first playoff game to Hastings in a best of three series. On the van ride home the team (without the coaches) talked in depth about what needed to be corrected. This impressed me and I was only the ballboy at the time!:) Needless to say, Kearney came back to win the next two games and advance to the National Tournament. Check out the story below and see for yourself how important it is for all teams to "talk their game"!

WHEN YOU'RE BAD, YOU'RE NOT THAT FAR FROM BEING GOOD

When most teams lose, they try to put it behind them as quickly as possible. "Forget it and move on" is a common thought.

Not in Boston.

According to an article in the Boston Globe yesterday, "The Celtics' Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce have been having postgame powwows to go over wins and losses since joining forces last season. When things are good, 'The Big Three' have quick postgame talks. But on the rare occasion when things are bad, like Tuesday, Allen, Garnett, and Pierce are the last three players to leave the locker room."


"That's kind of like the meetings of the minds," Allen said. "When you're frustrated, you have to just find a way to make sure we talk it out. We just try to understand by bouncing [things] off of each other. What are we doing? What's going on? How did we talk? Every game we go in there and sit back and say, 'What do you guys see? What's going on?'"

When you win, you don't even have to talk about the game," Allen said. "You just go in the back and you relax. You're chillin' after spending a hard day's work and having a little something to eat. But when you lose, that's what we do, we sit back and talk it out.

Any time we've lost it's the same because we take losing hard. When we talk about what went wrong, we can talk about the same thing every conversation. Any team that loses, loses the same way. Teams win the same way every time. It's the same stuff.

Experience tells you that you're not as good as you think you are. You're not that far from being bad. But when you're bad, you're not that far from being good. You just have to find a way to improve on the things you've been doing."