Pregame Speech (June 2005)

Thoughts, stories, examples and ideas on challenging your team to perform at their highest level possible.

RESPECT
BY RICK TORBETT, BETTER BASKETBALL

Respect. It’s a lot like money. Everyone wants it, but no one wants to give it.

Learn to give respect and you will get it back, and you’ll get back even more than you gave. Good deal, huh? So, where can you give respect?

1. Respect your opponent.

If you step on the floor to compete against me, I am going to bring everything I got against you, and I might beat you by 50 points! That’s a chance that you and I take. For me to play one whit less than I am capable of is a sign of disrespect towards you. Understand that if I respect you as my opponent, then you are going to get my best game. Nothing less.

However, if you do beat me, then out of respect I am not going to whine or make excuses. I am going to shake your hand, congratulate you, and then go home and work like a maniac to prepare myself to beat you the next time we play. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

When teams get upset, it’s usually because they didn’t respect their opponent. Go into every game, every practice, every play with the goal of playing your best, whether you’re playing your toughest rival or a potential cupcake. If you can learn to always respect your opponent, you’ll be playing your best more often than not.

2. Respect the game

Cheating and sports should be like oil and water. They shouldn’t mix, but unfortunately it happens. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself and maybe others will follow your example. If you have to cheat to win, then forget it. When it comes to cheating, winning isn’t everything. I don’t like trash-talking, I don’t like celebrating before the game is over, I don’t like showing hurt or disappointment while I’m on the floor. Call it “old school” or whatever you want, but I want to show respect for the game that has been so good to me over the years. I just want to win; to win fairly; to win within the rules; to bring my best against yours, and to win. Winning by any other means is like dressing up a pig with a bunch of jewelry – as pretty as you try to make it, it’s still a pig.

Playing A Violin With Three Strings
Jack Riemer

(what a great story to emphasize to your team about never giving up no matter what the odds in a ball game or no matter what happens, i.e. injury, foul trouble, etc.)

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.

He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They
remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.