by Roy Williams
I grabbed him and said, “What in the crap are you doing?”
“I just wanted to let them know we’re going to beat them,” he said.
“Are you crazy?”
At the end of the game, I was on the free-throw line and we were up by four points with 10 seconds to play, and Walt walked up to me and said, “I told you we were going to beat their butts.”
To this day I tell that story to my players and talk to them about having confidence and really believing in something. Walt Stroup absolutely believed we were going to win that game, and that carried over to the rest of us.
EDDIE FOGLER ONCE called me “frighteningly organized.” I do a practice plan every day and have it typed and placed in all of the players’ lockers. I’ll make out a weekly plan. I’ll make out a monthly plan. I make out preseason plans. In my office files, I still have every practice plan I’ve ever written since I coached at Owen High.
All of my practices are organized to the minute:
5:22 Fast-break drills.
5:26 Defensive stations.
5:33 Box outs.
My practices do not run long.
During practices I want to show my team everything that they can possibly be exposed to in a game and what to do against it. I try not to do anything that doesn’t correlate directly to our next opponent. I kid Jerod Haase all the time about how he and his former high school basketball coach used to run basketball camps and start out with a figure-eight drill. I told him, “Why would you practice the figure eight? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t do that in a game, do you?”
In practice I am always evaluating and reevaluating my team. What are we strong at? What are we weak at? I try to improve our weaknesses and really play up our strengths. I ask myself, “What does our next opponent do really well that’s a thorn for us? What could be the most significant factor in us losing?” Then I’ve got to find a way to hide that area and not allow it to cost us the game.
I am very demanding. When I was a young coach I would rant and rave like a lunatic. I would kick a lot of trash cans. Sometimes I would kick all of my players out of practice. At that time, I didn’t have a record that led my players to think, “Hey, I ought to listen to what that guy says.” The fact that I would put them on the endline and run them half to death put some fear in them. I wasn’t really comfortable with that, but it worked and I was going to have to be comfortable with anything that worked. Over the years, my former players have told me that I’ve mellowed. I don’t think I’ve mellowed; I just try to motivate more through sarcasm or appealing to their pride, which I think can be more effective than ranting and raving or running them.
Sometimes when I’m on the verge of blowing up, I think back to the best lesson I ever learned about controlling my temper. One day when I was home from college, I was driving on the highway around Asheville. It was a hot afternoon and I was in a car with no air-conditioning. There was a car in front of me in the passing lane just poking along. Finally, I changed lanes and saw there was a woman driving and a guy sleeping in the passenger seat. I yelled, “Lady, either drive faster or pull that old piece of s — .” The guy woke up and I saw that it was my uncle Gordon. I was yelling at my aunt Bertha. I hid my face, floored the car, and got the heck out of there.
But some parts of my personality I cannot change. The first time I can ever remember being superstitious was during my senior year in high school on the baseball team. Before our first game, I realized I had forgotten my socks, so I borrowed socks from a teammate and we lost the game. The second game I had my socks and we won, but I forgot to wash them. We won our next game, so I didn’t wash the socks. And then we won and we won and we won. We won 13 games in a row, and I became convinced that the unwashed socks were part of the reason. We reached the state playoffs against Holbrook High, whose pitcher, Wilbur Howard, would eventually play for the Houston Astros. He pitched a complete game to beat us. On the ride home I threw the lucky socks out the bus window.
Superstition is part of my college coaching career. During the 1982 Final Four in New Orleans, one of the vendors on Bourbon Street told me I should spit in the Mississippi River for luck. I did it every day we were there and we won the national championship. Now every time I’ve had a team playing a big game along the Mississippi, I spit in the river. Before every home game at Kansas I would go for a jog, stop at Phog Allen’s gravesite, pat the headstone and say, “Doc, we need all the help we can get tonight.” If it was a really big game I’d do that same thing at Dr. Naismith’s grave as well. I never get a haircut on the day of a game and if I wear a tie for the first time and we lose, I’ll never wear it again.
Common sense tells me that the result of a basketball game does not depend on whether or not I got a haircut that day, but it settles my mind to think that I have done something to help us win. As a coach, I feel really limited about how much I can affect the game. I just want to say I’ve done my part.
The other thing I must do before every game is take a nap. Right after our pregame meal, I sleep for 30 to 45 minutes. It’s mandatory. It allows me to relax and have a clearer mind once the game starts. We can be playing Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium on national television and I might not have slept at all the night before, but when I go home for a nap that afternoon I am out as soon as my head hits the pillow.
I try to arrive at the gym for home games an hour and half before the game starts. I check on the complimentary ticket list, and I meet with any prospects who are in town for the game. I go down to the locker room 35 minutes before the tip-off, visit with my assistant coaches, and watch the ticker to see other scores around the country. When all of the players are dressed and seated, a manager knocks on the door and I go in. I’ve seen NBA teams write 40 things up on the board before a game. I’ll write down no more than three because that’s all I think my players can absorb. I might write, Five guys run both ways as fast as you can or Be strong with the ball, nothing casual or The team that wins the battle of the boards wins the game. Once at Kansas, we had beaten Kansas State eight or nine times in a row in their building and I’d seen a lot of stories about them saying that the streak would end that night, so I wrote, Watch them leave early. It was the only thing I wrote. It was cocky, but it worked. At the end of the game, one of my players, Ricky Calloway, was on the free-throw line and he yelled over to me on the bench, “Coach, they’re leeeeeeeaving!”
Another phrase I often write up on the board is Lose yourself in the game. Sometimes kids can choke on a big stage. If you lose yourself in playing the game, you don’t worry about the result.
After that meeting, the players go out to the court for warm-ups and I meet them back in the locker room seven minutes before the game starts. I’ll cover my three points of emphasis again and then we come together, kneel down on the floor, put our hands together, and I say the Lord’s Prayer. I always add three words at the end. I say, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Together please, Lord. Amen.”
Then I tell them, “Play hard, play smart, play together,” and I send them out for a final warm-up.
I usually get out to the court with two minutes left on the clock. Usually. In December 1992 we were playing Michigan in the final of the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii. I sent the team out for the last time, then I went to use the bathroom, and the manager locked me in the locker room. Since that time I’ve made darn sure that a manager always knows I’m still in there.
In the final huddle before a game starts, we go over instructions for the opening tip, and then we put our hands in and chant something my teams have been saying since I was North Carolina’s junior varsity coach: “Hard work!” It’s something I’ve believed in since I was kid shoveling snow off the basketball court so I could practice or selling calendars or going right back out on the recruiting trail after winning a national title. The phrase is a reminder that nobody is going to outwork us. I think it pulls our guys together and gives them strength. It
is what the players chant when they huddle for any timeout or any deadball. It’s a constant reminder. Hard work!
I try not to look at the score in the first half, because I don’t want that to influence my thinking about how we’re playing. Sometimes if a team is taking bad shots and they’re making them, a coach could be fooled into thinking his team is playing better than it really is and that just leads to problems later on. I try to look at the big picture and focus most on our rebounding and our defense.
I have always hoarded timeouts. I’ve said that when I die, I’m going to have more timeouts left than any other coach. I remember one time we were getting destroyed by Tyrese Rice in a game at Boston College and I never called a timeout. What was I going to say? Guard Tyrese? I think our guys knew we needed to guard him better. I will never call a timeout just so people will think I am coaching, because I really don’t give a darn. I think I know a hell of a lot more about basketball than someone who’s going to send a letter to the chancellor complaining that I just sat there and did nothing.
I try to pick my battles about when to argue with an official. After all of my years as a referee in intramurals, I know how hard the job is, so I’ll only protest when I’m sure I’m right. When I do argue, I try to use sarcasm to mask my anger. I remember once when Ed Hightower was officiating a Kansas game and a Missouri guy threw an elbow that coldcocked one of my players. I saw it clear as day, and I jumped up and said, “Ed, didn’t you see that?”
Ed said, “I saw it. There was nothing there.”
I said, “Well, excuse me. I didn’t realize you were God and you could see everything. Excuse me, God.”
When Ed came back down the court the next time, I said to him, “God, in your spare time will you look at that play on tape. If you could do that for me, God, I’d really appreciate it.”
That’s when he almost called a technical foul on me.
A few days later, I got a handwritten note from Ed Hightower saying that he’d checked the tape and he’d missed it.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with a call or how bad my team is playing that I take it out on my sportcoat. I rip it off and throw it behind the bench. It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever lost a game when I took my coat off.
In the second half, I start checking the score once the clock gets down to the eight-minute mark because by that time we have two opponents: the clock and the other team. That’s when I’m usually pretty happy that I have lots of timeouts left to manage the end of the game.
When the game is over, I tell my players they have to beat me to the locker room. I don’t ever want the whole team waiting around for one guy talking to his girlfriend. I usually give them some quick thoughts on the game and no matter how well we played, I can never be totally satisfied. Even after our best games, I’ll say, “Everybody remember the easy one you missed, everybody remember the time you lost your man on defense, everybody remember the time you didn’t box out.” If we lose, I usually apologize to them and tell them it’s my fault and I have to do better.
Then we put our hands in and I say a prayer. I always end that prayer by saying, “We do realize we’re more fortunate than others. Amen.”
I let myself enjoy a win for about 30 seconds before I start thinking about the next game. A loss sticks with me forever. Losing is deadening. For me, the lows are so much lower than the highs are high.
At the end of each season, I hear some of my critics in the media say, “Oh boy, Roy’s going to cry again.” I have done that a lot at the end of a year because I’m sad not to get to coach those kids again. I’m probably too emotional. I went through a stretch at Kansas where I actually tried to talk myself into not crying, but it was not me. I just can’t help it.
When it comes to winning and losing, so many times I’ve had to remind people that it’s not just my team playing out there, that the other team has something to do with the outcome. The tradition and history at North Carolina or Kansas makes fans think we should win all the time, but other programs have some tradition and history as well. And the teams that don’t have it want to beat us even more because we have it. Sometimes when you lose, you just have to step back and say the other team deserved it more.
One of the best lessons I ever learned about sportsmanship occurred after my Kansas team won a game against Oklahoma. After the game, the Sooners coach, Billy Tubbs, gave me a little hand slap instead of shaking my hand. Two days later, Billy phoned me at my office and he said, “Roy, I just needed to call. The way I shook hands with you, that wasn’t right. My wife, Pat, says you’ve said good things about me since you’ve been in the league and nobody else says good things about me, and now she’s mad at me about it. Roy, I just want you to —”
I interrupted Billy and I said, “Coach, I don’t have a problem with it. After a game, everybody’s emotional.”
“No, no. Roy, just understand this. Don’t ever forget that I’m just an ass.”
It was a neat deal, because every coach needs to get humbled once in a while.
I am humbled every time I drive back to Asheville on Interstate 40 and I see the exit sign for Drexel. Every time I see that sign it reminds me that in my first year at Owen High School we won only two games. We beat Drexel twice.
Every time I pass that sign, I think about how I’d like to find out what that Drexel coach is doing these days because I’ve been pretty lucky since then.
WHEN I TOOK the job at Kansas I did not want my players to wear Converse shoes, because North Carolina players wore Converse and I wanted to do something different. I called Nike. They did not return my call. I called them three times and they never returned a single call.
My friend Mickey Bell was working for Converse, and he said, “We want you to wear our shoes. We’re going to make you an offer and I’ll have it to you in a couple of days.”
The offer wasn’t a lot of money, but it was to Converse, and I didn’t have any choice. So I signed the Converse contract. After my fourth season that contract expired and by that time we’d been to the national championship game, we’d won the conference and the conference tournament, and Nike was trying to recruit me.
Nike flew me to their campus in Beaverton, Oregon. A limousine picked me up at the airport, and when we got to the entrance of their headquarters there was a big banner that read, “Nike Family Welcomes Kansas Coach Roy Williams.” They showed me a video of an Olympic long jumper winning a gold medal and then a highlight of me on the sidelines coaching in the national championship game, then a swimmer winning a gold medal, and then me on the sidelines again. I was blown away. Then they took me to the employee store and started loading me up with shirts and shoes, but I told them I didn’t want the gear because I felt like I was taking advantage of them. Later, they sent me the stuff anyway. Nike CEO Phil Knight took me to a seafood restaurant, and it was about the best meal I’d ever had. Nike offered me a contract for more than twice as much money as Converse.
I flew back to Lawrence and called Mickey and we set up a meeting. I told Wanda, “Well, this is going to be hard, but I’m going to tell Mickey that I’m going with Nike.”
She said, “Why?”
“They’re a better company. They’re a bigger company. They’re more solid. The players like the shoes better. I’ve just got to do that.”
That evening, Wanda, Mickey, and I sat down to dinner and Mickey said, “Well, you know I’m with you whatever you decide. It’s not going to change our friendship. I’d love you to be with us, but I know you’ve got to look out for your family.”
I said “Mickey, I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”
“What?”
“I’m going to go back with Converse.”
Wanda said, “What?”
Then I said to Mickey, “I just told Wanda two hours ago that I was going to go with Nike, and the only thing I’ve been able to think about since then is how I preach to our players to show loyalty to people who have helped you by doing what you can to help them. I’ve
got to walk the way I talk.”
AND I REALLY DO try to live by that rule. One day I was in my office in the Smith Center talking to one of my players and my assistant, Jennifer Holbrook, came in and said, “Former President Bush is on the phone for you.”
I didn’t know if it was one of my knucklehead buddies playing a trick on me or not, but I said, “Tell him I’ll have to call him back.”
When I finished with the player, I walked out to Jennifer’s desk and I said, “Was it really President Bush?”
She said, “It really was.”
Coach Smith taught me that your players are always your top priority. If I have a player in my office and the phone rings, I will not answer the phone. I have a Plexiglas paperweight that reads, “Statistics are important, but relationships last a lifetime.”
When it comes to mentoring my players, I look at myself like a teammate. I am playing as hard as I can every day to get them to believe in what I believe in: that there’s a right way to conduct yourself, there’s a right way to answer people, there’s a right way to dress when you go into a restaurant or get on a plane, and there’s a right way to play basketball.
One of the ways I do this is through our “Thought for the Day.” It’s a concept I learned from Coach Smith. I have a file of over 1,000 inspirational phrases that I’ve collected from airline in-flight magazines, NBA scouts, PGA golfers, and lots of fans who have sent them to me in the mail: See the rocks in your path not as obstacles, but as opportunities to climb higher or If you want to leave footprints in the sands of time — you better wear work shoes. On the first day of preseason practice, the Thought for the Day is always the same: It’s amazing how much can be accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit.
Sometimes I’ll spend 20 minutes before a practice picking the thought that I believe best pertains to the mindset of my team at that moment. Then during the first huddle of practice every day we spend a few minutes talking about it. We’ll read the thought and then I’ll ask the players, “How does that relate to basketball?” And then I’ll ask them, “Okay now, how does that relate to life?”