Wright Thompson of ESPN
psychoanalyzes does a profile of Connecticut basketball coach Geno Auriemma. Coach says, "I got issues." But he understands how much work there is in achieving, let alone, maintaining, excellence.
Recently he railed against a player who couldn't or wouldn't box out: What if we need one rebound to win a national title? A memory from the 2012 semifinal against Notre Dame fueled his anger. "The kids look at me," he says his voice rising to a scream. "I go, 'Yeah, you know why I said that? That happened to us. We had to get one f------ rebound. If we do, we win. The kid didn't get it. And we lost.'"
Auriemma has a curious, creative basketball mind but his greatest talent is understanding and preventing self-destruction.
If bringing out the best in people was easy, wouldn't the
formula be common knowledge by now?
He knows his own worst enemy, like his team, has always been himself. Since childhood, he's spent so much time trying to see himself clearly that it's given him deep insight into others. Despite his frequent raging, empathy is his strongest trait; the ability to peer into people's most private, insecure selves and make their weak places strong. His success comes from seeking to fix in others what he longs to fix in himself. The teams are proxies. Nothing as extreme as the Huskies dynasty ever springs from a normal place.
That sounds a lot like
Vince Lombardi. As does this tale.
Sue Bird says one day he hid beneath the bleachers, despondent, refusing to come back out. The team wasn't grasping some simple basketball concept and it broke something in him. He told them that maybe he'd lost the ability to teach, and that he was having a nervous breakdown.
Perhaps that's just acting. Lombardi's line was "I must be a lousy teacher."
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