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when i arrived in philadelphia as the business manager of the seventy sixers in
early september of nineteen sixty eight
there were four full-time employees in the league office in new york
how many today i mean i mean they could have had a meeting in the phone booth
and today they're
pushing up
towards a thousand
oh wow all around the world they've got
satellite headquarters on just about every continent in the world
it's become a huge worldwide enterprise just enormous it's big business big big business and getting
bigger all the time
and um... international players they would be an example i mean the thought
thirty four years ago of having a player from china
as the first pick in the draft or one of the high picks in the draft
south america
all across europe
uh... to have ten twelve fourteen foreign players drafted in the first two rounds
unheard of yeah we never would have thought of that never
walter kennedy was the commissioner then
the former mayor of stamford connecticut
and walter i think would occasionally drop a little
line you know that it's gonna be a worldwide sport someday but who could've
envisioned that or who would have believed that
so in many ways diane it is changed
and above all just the
athleticism the
size the
enormity of these players I mean look back to my early years
there's no comparison for example
just of the strength the agility the quickness it's just a
remarkable
group of young athletes that are coming along from all over the world is part of
that change a result of
players engaging in weight training and having nutrition specialists and all the
things that once they didn't have the opportunity to do
and teaching
instructing
listen i remember diane when i was a freshman
at wake forest
uh... there was a professor there named gene hooks doctor gene hooks
and he had just written his doctoral dissertation on weight training
in athletics
it was very very controversial
this was the fall of fifty eight
I mean it was almost like heresy what he was writing
about it ultimately became a book
gene hookks was just
I mean just so far out there
you know there was the whole theory of lifting will make you muscle bound and lifting this
that and the other you know ruin your touch your game completely don't do it I
mean it literally that was
what forty four years ago you don't do this I mean gene hooks argued yes you do
well that was way way
uh... long ago but but now
every team
has around the clock around the year weight training program
we uh... everybody has a strength and conditioning coach an assistant
strength and conditioning coach
I mean it's staggering
now we're building our own facilities we used to
have to go uh... and um...
hang out and maybe get the gym at a college you know to train at or to
practice or the local Y the local Y i remember in chicago
in the early seventies when i was there our players would go work out at the
lawson street y_m_c_a_ downtown with a guy named *** white who would work 'em out
I mean that was that was it
and let alone having facilities no I mean so so just these areas diane how about
airplane travel
listen the new players don't
have any idea
what travel used to be like i mean
once a week almost every team in the league would meet each other going
through o'hare in chicago
you know with those five o'clock wake-up calls to get a seven thirty flight
to get into the next city change planes in atlanta or chicago
that's how we traveled
not today no
so it's uh... it's uh... it's staggering for me
as a spectator
it seems to me that the game in the past twenty years has really changed from a
team oriented game
to almost an individual accomplishment game am I wrong about that
well there's a lot of that diane i think one of the reasons for that is just the
media attention
you know in in my early years this was kind of a cult sport
you know the n_b_a_ had kind of a
limited following who were into it it was like a uh…you know
wrestling fans you were
basketball fans but it was a very small cult-like gathering
but no longer uh... we're all over the place
and i think the players the young players see all this they see the glamour
they see the glitz that goes with it
you know they begin they see this from the time they're small kids
and there's a tendency to
and basketball lends itself you know to individual skills putting on a show
that is the challenge therefore diane of every coach
to convince these young guys that this is the team game the ultimate team game
and that you've gotta
as bob cousy
used to say you've gotta share the sugar you know you've gotta
get everybody involved
and and that's where great coaching comes in to try and battle
this sociological phenomenon of i'm in it for me
to get involved and make it
the ultimate team game that basketball is is that what phil jackson did with
michael jordan did he somehow convince him
to become more of a team player and thus accordingly they won championships i
think that was phil's greatest strength i uh
recently wrote a book about michael jordan diane I did over fifteen hundred
interviews
in researching the book motivational book called how to be like mike
one of the chapters i wrote about was this whole area of teamwork
and i think it was pretty clear in michael's early years
and granted he did not have much around him
and and had to carry the whole load
but as the bulls got better pippen and grant they get better players
but phil jackson arrived in the fall of ninety as the head coach and
sold michael
that he was going to
have to get the other guys more involved
that he was gonna have to
sacrifice some of his own individual stuff
to get them involved that was the only way they were going to win
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