Helpless and Alone

I am going to bet that every single coach has experienced this...helplessness.  Probably some more than others and probably some that won't admit to it, but there are games (and moments) that you feel helpless as a coach. 

You have worked all week, you have prepared for just about every single thing that can occur in a game and yet nothing works.  You cannot stop the other team from scoring and you cannot score.  Everything that you have worked on and believed in falls apart.  You try something new, you call timeout, you yell, you console, you pat them on the back, you grab them by their jersey....and nothing works.

To stand in front of 1200 people or more and feel that way can only be compared to dreams you have about showing up to school or some public place in the nude.  That awful feeling I got when I was younger about showing up to school and forgetting to put clothes on is the one thing that I can compare this to.  You are standing there, the supposed knowledge of all basketball, and can't get your team to respond.  At the time you aren't thinking about it, but later you realize that the lack of play by your team is reinforcing some beliefs by some of the people in the stands and some people actually feel bad for you (usually just your family and maybe a few friends).  What is really crazy is usually that feeling occurs because your own team cannot make shots.

Too often coaches are given too much credit or too much blame.  The players have to get it done, but as coach you do shoulder some of the responsibility.  However, in 20 years of coaching basketball, it is amazing how well or not well you played can be gauged on if your team made shots that night...or not.

I often wonder what it would be like if every single person was evaluated by the community once a week on their job either in the classroom, factory, or office.  Those moments when other people have the same helpless feeling, but no one notices except for a few co-workers and then you can go home and forget about it or pretend it didn't happen.  With basketball coaches, we can't do that.  All you have to do is get on the Internet (which I do much, much less now) and read anonymous message boards, or worse, facebook.

So what do you do?  You throw away the game tape, forget about the stats, and get back to work so that the situation doesn't occur again.