Are Coaches Necessary? Centralism vs. Democracy in Competitive Sports

As standardized education spreads at a breakneck pace across the nation to anoint a new generation of robotic workers for the digital age, progressives resist with freedom schools and community campaigns against standardized tests and the gutting of public schools and their budgets. To be sure, these fights to restore creativity, critical thinking, the Socratic method of questioning anything and everything, and, in a word, democracy in education, are integral to redefining education in terms of personal growth and learning through experience and debate. Of course, these fights point to the greater irony of America's critiques of East Asian education models being too rigid, fact-based, and formulaic--petty excuses to mask the fact that Asian students (future workers of China, Japan, South Korea, and India) will soon be at the helm of the global economy, and by extension, that Asian capitalism is the new America. All for the purpose to allow American dreamers to continue dreaming sweetly at night.

Like many political revolutionaries, I myself am schooled by Paulo Friere, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). How one is educated is inherently political, he writes, and in a capitalist or colonial society, schools reflect the political agenda of those in power. Students in these societies are likened to a bank in which teachers deposit facts, ideas, and agendas that inhibit creativity and resistance while fostering complacency to an oppressive status quo. Friere flips the script on this traditional banking model of education and advocates for a dialectical education process where students teach teachers and vice versa. As an example, in the context of at-risk youth, it is key for the young to educate the older teachers who likely come from the outside (if not geographically then generationally), for the goal of education is for the youth to empower themselves, control their community, and overcome the system that produces their state of risk in the first place. This can only be done if teachers are willing to be taught and advise as needed, and if students accept the role of empowerment and are willing to learn through experience and struggle. Democracy in the classroom translates to democracy on the streets. Our public schools preach the rhetoric, but deliver authority figures who choke out creativity and breathe in standardization. I'd say it's ironic or hypocritical, but I think the best adjective to describe such contradictions is simply, it's American. In the words of J. Cole, Look at this nation//that's a crooked smile even braces can't straighten.

So if democratizing a classroom and unshackling it from standardization is the ideal, then what of democracy in competitive sports? What if players on a team mutinied against their coach and declared democracy on the floor? Or perhaps more moderately and in direct application of Friere, what if coaching became a mutual process in which athletes also coached the coach?

This summer, I assisted in coaching a high-level AAU boys' basketball squad. At least one player on my team, our center, will be a future D1 college basketball player, and his dominance in games both inside the key and beyond the arc allowed us to compete with talent above our own. Towards the end of the AAU season, immediately after we defeated another high-level AAU team, our head coach (the same high school varsity coach referred here) pulled me aside and snickered, So Veryl, do you think coaches make a difference? For someone who usually hits hard with words, this question was an unusually passive aggressive way to doubly insult my coaching ability and praise his own. Exactly one week prior, I had lost to the same opponent. Our coach was conspicuously absent that game. Actually, we didn't just lose that game, the opponents imposed their will, crushed our spirits, and made us disbelieve in our ability to play the game. We left the court like it was a funeral service, solemn and silent, doing the walk of shame. Recently deceased, Veryl and his basketball team, 2013-2013. Cries were heard from all over the city. How tragic, they were oh so young.

I want to establish, first and foremost, that coaches in any respectable program are the ultimate authority, the final word. Unlike Kanye's delusional mind, coaches are gods in flesh. What coach says, players execute. Fail to do so once in practice, it's a barrage of insults questioning your intelligence. Fail to do so twice in practice or if another player makes the same mistake, the barrage turns into an onslaught. They are pulled out of the drill, someone else gets subbed in who better get it right. If they fail, then the "midget with glasses", Veryl, gets to play and run with the big boys while those triers and not doers sit out the rest of the drill. The failure to execute a play or perform your hardest during a game is another matter. Coach has no qualms about benching star players for extended periods of time or the entire game if they don't transition back on defense or cut to the basket hard. Winning is NOT an individual effort. It doesn't take star players to win if our team outplays, outhustles, and outruns our opponent. If all five players on the floor commit to locking down the paint, pressuring the ball, playing the middle on defense ready to help stop drives, then our offense will flow from our defensive intensity and win us the game. During the regular high school season, we shut down the star future-D1 players in our conference like Zach Lavine and Tucker Haymond because our five guys on the floor stopped them, had their eye on them at all times, not just the one defender 'assigned' to them. If you think the natural conclusion to draw about winning is that it is a team effort, then either I have understated the point of this paragraph or you've been internalizing one too many cliches from an ESPN color commentator. Make no mistake, coaching is the difference and the key to winning.

If players buy into a coach's philosophy--in our program, effort and attitude at all times--and if the coach keeps players honest by rewarding those who execute this philosophy regardless of talent, then the team will upset teams appraised higher by analysts and statisticians who look solely at individual stats and team personnel to determine the outcome of matches. In contrast to our program, which devalues star players and emphasizes team effort, many other programs live and die by their star players' individual performance. This may work against another team with similar minimalist or non-philosophy, but against a team that plays team defense with integrity and intensity, they will often lose because their star players get shut down. And for those star-power driven teams, since offense runs through their stars, when they are shut down, then team offense stagnates. Just look at the Miami Heat's road to the finals this year, and how the Indiana series was so tough for them because Miami ran the majority of plays through one or two individuals, leaving the rest of the team frozen like statues beyond the arc. More importantly, coaches of these superstars tend to give them a carte blanche to shoot themselves out of a slump or to solely play a one way game and not worry about defense. At the State Tournament this year in the Tacoma Dome, I saw the star-endowed teams of Seattle Prep and Lakeside, whose coaches allowed their superstars total control on the court, lose to teams that were more disciplined and better coached.

A coach's personnel decisions are crucial to the game's outcome. Better coached teams are unafraid to sit out their star players when needed because coaches know it's harder to defend a team of five players who move on the floor, set screens for each other, and patiently look for a good shot. The 3A Champions this year, Rainier Beach, defeated Lakeside not only because they played much more cohesively, but equally as important, their superstar, Louisville-commit Shaqquan Aaron, who has a tendency to play loosely on defense, did not play at all during the second half or overtime. I will be in the minority in saying this, but I truly felt that the Miami Heat upset the San Antonio Spurs during the NBA Finals this year. Up 3 games to 2 in a best of 7 series, San Antonio Coach Popovich made unforgivable personnel decisions that cost them the title. Overplaying superstar Manu Ginobli and rising star Danny Green (who started the series with unbelievable three-point shooting but ended the series completely cold) and underplaying Kawhai Leonard and Boris Diaw, role players who were smart and secure with the basketball, especially during the final stretches of the game. Taking out Tim Duncan in the final seconds of regulation in Game 6 who had the size to potentially get a defensive rebound; instead allowing a second-chance opportunity by Miami that led to an unbelievable game-tying shot by Ray Allen. Taking out Tony Parker in final seconds of Game 7 and allowing Manu Ginobli to not only handle the ball, but drive the ball on his weak side, leading to a turnover and basket at the other end that all but closed out the Spurs. Perhaps in the case of San Antonio, without a coach in Games 6 and 7, the players would've decided to keep Parker and Duncan on the floor, thus winning the championship. But, this hypothetical scenario is an exception to the rule that good coaching involves smart substitutions and no loyalties to superstars. Because of their professional distance to players, coaches are ultimately poised to make the tough decisions to bench a star for the greater good of the team.

The aforementioned aspects of coaching--the philosophy and personnel decisions--come second and third to coaching strategy. Games at the highest level are duels between coaches. Players are pawns in a bigger chess match, and when the pawns do not run the play exactly as the coach called out and envisioned, then they are substituted with another on the bench. Some programs are defined by their strategy. Syracuse's 2-3 Zone. VCU's relentless full-court press. But most coaches have dozens of plays in their arsenal and a few aces up their sleeve for guaranteed buckets. They have thought and rethought how to attack certain defenses, how and where to utilize screens to get their best shooter open, and how to stifle an opponent's offense before they get going. Some coaches change defensive formation in the middle of the opponent's same offensive possession. Others change it up after every made basket. But the key is change and adaptation at a moment's notice. The skill and brains required for the task is extremely difficult and requires immediate decision making by an authoritative voice. Additionally, unlike chess players whose pieces from game to game remain the same, coaches have the challenge of creating, tailoring, and ultimately innovating their strategy to best fit their players from season to season. A "timeless, tried-and-true" response to situations created by the opponent, without regard to your own personnel, is not enough of an adaptation to win the duel. In its purest form, when players are executing a coach's strategy perfectly, coaching is art. Watching Mike Krzyzewski (Duke) duel Tom Izzo (Michigan State) is like watching Mozart duel Salieri, Alexandre Cabanel duel Claude Monet, or Biggie duel Pac.

On the subject of duels and strategy, winning in sports is like winning in war. The few moments that are enshrined in leftist history, where popular democratic militias were created such as in the Paris or Shanghai Communes, do not make good case studies for democracy in wartime since these militias were severely shorthanded in size. Nonetheless, without authority in situations of crisis and the ability to make immediate decisions that are enforced by the militia, parity in army size will not make much of a difference in the outcome. Currently, many progressives, in critique of the hierarchical structure that has plagued traditional revolutionary organizations, are making a big push for horizontalism--the dispersing of knowledge and the fostering of leadership among all members. On a sports team, it's ideal to have players understand why they're doing something (i.e. why they run a particular play against a zone defense) and be able to help teammates out when those teammates are clueless. But in times of crisis, in the heat of the moment, it's far more important to have players doing the right thing and being in the right spots even if they don't understand why they're doing it.

The game of basketball is so counter-intuitive to everything for which a political revolutionary stands. And it's so ironic, or to invoke an earlier phrase, so American, that I love basketball so much. If you ever go to a public court at a park and spectate a pick up game, you'll discover pure chaos. It's so ugly that sometimes I don't even recognize that 'basketball' is the game that is being attempted. Even in glorified pick up games featuring NBA players, such as the summer Pro-Am League in Seattle, there is no sense of urgency, intensity, effort, or defense. Players don't run plays and those who believe that they are heroes play selfish hero ball; the other players implicitly consent to extended conditioning sessions where they run up and down the court without touching the ball.

In basketball, structure and organization is beautiful. Even an unpredictable offensive strategy like a motion offense has rules within it, basket cuts that are imperative after each pass, and reactions players make based on reads on the defense. It's undeniable that the beautiful all starts with centralized leadership, the coach, who makes his players understand and respect the system and in turn, become the best players that they can possibly be. But not everything is counter-intuitive. Like all things with a centralized leadership, too much power can be abused and athletes pick up life lessons and perspectives, and not just the sport, from their coach. Some of these problems will be alleviated as society changes through struggle and newer democratic and liberating values are normalized. But in a competitive culture requiring quick planning and quicker action, coaches are as indispensable as the hoop itself.