03 July 2008
What if nobody knows how this gun works?
I just read, a decade after it was published, Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summit's memoir "Reach for the Summit," written with the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in 1998. One of the things I found most interesting is Summit's use of the Predictive Index, a test to determine her players' personality types. She and her coaches use this to help the team play well together and to determine how best to motivate the players.
Summit speaks revealingly about the motivational needs of some of her standout players, and it's possibly a better book now, a decade on, for the reader with the perspective of where those players are now in the pro game (and out of it), and how they measure historically against other players who came after them.
Point guard Michelle Marciniak, now an assistant at South Carolina, and post Abby Conklin, now an assistant at San Francisco, are featured prominently among modern players. Both were significant in national championship years at Tennessee, but neither overachieved as players in the pro game, although Marciniak managed to find a niche in five years between the ABL and WNBA. Summit notes in her book that although Marciniak could be incredibly headstrong and hated to be wrong, the staff never did quite figure out Conklin, who took the Index three times with three different results.
The most interesting case is Chamique Holdsclaw, who graduated in 1998 -- the year of the book's publication -- after leading the Lady Vols to three consecutive NCAA titles. The Tennessee staff advanced its use of the Index once it began administering the test until they were giving it to their most valued recruits even before signing them, just so the staff would know the best way to woo kids they didn't yet know that well.
With Holdsclaw, it was all about challenges -- the higher the stakes, the better. Summit pitched the Tennessee pressure-cooker as the prize: the toughest schedule, the most talented teammates competing for a slot, the most knowledgeable and demanding fans in your face and told Holdsclaw she wasn't sure she could handle it. That was the red flag to the bull in Holdsclaw, and she signed, spending the next four years demanding the ball and accepting the consequences.
I've thought about Holdsclaw's incredible success at Tennessee and the kind of shop they have there, and what that says about her relative lack of success in the WNBA and the kind of organization that the WNBA is and WNBA teams are.
The simple way to explain Holdsclaw's flameout and retirement is that, as a female professional ballplayer, she's ahead of her time. As a motivational study, I think she needs the consistent, directed intensity of Tennessee to succeed. No team like that has ever existed in the WNBA, at least not for more than a couple of years.
I was thinking about the teams she played for, the coaches and the players, and what those teams were like when she was there. The Washington Mystics had one winning season during Holdsclaw's tenure (1999-2004) although she was Rookie of the Year in 1999 and never averaged less than 16.9 ppg. Summit commented during Holdsclaw's tenure at Tennessee that there was a tendency for the rest of the team to stand around and let Chamique do all the work, or would have been if Summit would have allowed it.
On leaving Washington for L.A., Holdsclaw joined a recently-great team in disarray. Dynamic head coach Michael Cooper had left for the NBA and the team was being coached by Joe Bryant. The 2005 team went .500, just making the playoffs, and the 2006 team, while much better, collapsed in the conference final. Holdsclaw walked out a few weeks into the 2007 season and hasn't played since, despite having also played in Euroleague during her last two years in the WNBA, and leading two of the best teams in Europe -- Ros Casares Valencia of Spain and TS Wisla Can-Pack Krakow of Poland.
I would never say Holdsclaw isn't responsible for her own life and her own problems. I'm not even trying to analyze her. What I am working on is the notion that it, say, somebody manufactures an incredible weapon, and somebody else figures out how to refine it, no matter where that weapon goes it will only be effective in the hands of someone smart enough and patient enough to read the manual.
Holdsclaw was a six-time WNBA All-Star -- a fan designation, granted, and not necessarily a reliable measure. However, she was also a two-time Naismith winner, a four-time Kodak All-American and led her Tennessee teams to three NCAA titles. That's a special kind of gun. How does a gun like that not work in the hands of other teams and coaches? The NCAA women's is an old, refined league compared to the WNBA, and Tennessee is run by one of the smartest, most demanding, most detail-oriented coaches in all of sports. Further, Summit is consistent, having been at Tennessee more than 20 years when Holdsclaw arrived.
By contrast, Holdsclaw played under the revolving door at Washington, seeing five head coaches in six years there. L.A. was much the same, with the ill-regarded Bryant holding down two ugly years before Cooper's return.
(more later -- I have to go help cover a festival)
Summit speaks revealingly about the motivational needs of some of her standout players, and it's possibly a better book now, a decade on, for the reader with the perspective of where those players are now in the pro game (and out of it), and how they measure historically against other players who came after them.
Point guard Michelle Marciniak, now an assistant at South Carolina, and post Abby Conklin, now an assistant at San Francisco, are featured prominently among modern players. Both were significant in national championship years at Tennessee, but neither overachieved as players in the pro game, although Marciniak managed to find a niche in five years between the ABL and WNBA. Summit notes in her book that although Marciniak could be incredibly headstrong and hated to be wrong, the staff never did quite figure out Conklin, who took the Index three times with three different results.
The most interesting case is Chamique Holdsclaw, who graduated in 1998 -- the year of the book's publication -- after leading the Lady Vols to three consecutive NCAA titles. The Tennessee staff advanced its use of the Index once it began administering the test until they were giving it to their most valued recruits even before signing them, just so the staff would know the best way to woo kids they didn't yet know that well.
With Holdsclaw, it was all about challenges -- the higher the stakes, the better. Summit pitched the Tennessee pressure-cooker as the prize: the toughest schedule, the most talented teammates competing for a slot, the most knowledgeable and demanding fans in your face and told Holdsclaw she wasn't sure she could handle it. That was the red flag to the bull in Holdsclaw, and she signed, spending the next four years demanding the ball and accepting the consequences.
I've thought about Holdsclaw's incredible success at Tennessee and the kind of shop they have there, and what that says about her relative lack of success in the WNBA and the kind of organization that the WNBA is and WNBA teams are.
The simple way to explain Holdsclaw's flameout and retirement is that, as a female professional ballplayer, she's ahead of her time. As a motivational study, I think she needs the consistent, directed intensity of Tennessee to succeed. No team like that has ever existed in the WNBA, at least not for more than a couple of years.
I was thinking about the teams she played for, the coaches and the players, and what those teams were like when she was there. The Washington Mystics had one winning season during Holdsclaw's tenure (1999-2004) although she was Rookie of the Year in 1999 and never averaged less than 16.9 ppg. Summit commented during Holdsclaw's tenure at Tennessee that there was a tendency for the rest of the team to stand around and let Chamique do all the work, or would have been if Summit would have allowed it.
On leaving Washington for L.A., Holdsclaw joined a recently-great team in disarray. Dynamic head coach Michael Cooper had left for the NBA and the team was being coached by Joe Bryant. The 2005 team went .500, just making the playoffs, and the 2006 team, while much better, collapsed in the conference final. Holdsclaw walked out a few weeks into the 2007 season and hasn't played since, despite having also played in Euroleague during her last two years in the WNBA, and leading two of the best teams in Europe -- Ros Casares Valencia of Spain and TS Wisla Can-Pack Krakow of Poland.
I would never say Holdsclaw isn't responsible for her own life and her own problems. I'm not even trying to analyze her. What I am working on is the notion that it, say, somebody manufactures an incredible weapon, and somebody else figures out how to refine it, no matter where that weapon goes it will only be effective in the hands of someone smart enough and patient enough to read the manual.
Holdsclaw was a six-time WNBA All-Star -- a fan designation, granted, and not necessarily a reliable measure. However, she was also a two-time Naismith winner, a four-time Kodak All-American and led her Tennessee teams to three NCAA titles. That's a special kind of gun. How does a gun like that not work in the hands of other teams and coaches? The NCAA women's is an old, refined league compared to the WNBA, and Tennessee is run by one of the smartest, most demanding, most detail-oriented coaches in all of sports. Further, Summit is consistent, having been at Tennessee more than 20 years when Holdsclaw arrived.
By contrast, Holdsclaw played under the revolving door at Washington, seeing five head coaches in six years there. L.A. was much the same, with the ill-regarded Bryant holding down two ugly years before Cooper's return.
(more later -- I have to go help cover a festival)
