Fair, Not Equal Treatment of Players on a Team of Young Adults

John Wooden treated all players fairly, not equally, as he stated in his book They Call Me Coach. Each player is different, he believed, and treating Bill Walton the same as Henry Bibby was unfair to both players, as each was different.

When current Houston Rockets’ Head Coach Jeff Van Gundy coached Latrell Spreewell with the New York Knicks, he never punished Spree when he arrived a couple minutes late to the arena. Players were required to be in the arena two hours before tip-off, and he did not stress Spree over a couple minutes because he knew Spree would always be prepared for the game.

When coaches create team rules and consequences, they must consider their role in academics, attendance and other “outside” actions, as well as basketball issues. And, while establishing consequences is easy, implementing outlined punishments becomes difficult when missing the next game means missing the league championship game and the player is not just a player, but THE player. However, as University of South Carolina Head Coach Steve Spurrier said, “Never threaten a player (team) if you are not prepared to back it up.” Once a coach overlooks a rule for one player, or fails to handout the prescribed punishment, all rules lose their steadfastness and all punishment appears arbitrary.

Personally, I am big on common sense. I tend to believe most players understand what is appropriate and what is not and I think players need to learn to use their own discretion, rather than being handed a laundry list of rules to follow. Once something is prohibited, young adults want to try it; once something is mandated, young adults want to avoid it. In high school, we were required to wear a collared shirt and tie on game days. Since it was mandated by adults and thus “uncool,” we immediately strove to dress as slovenly as possible, wearing sweat pants with our shirt and tie or leaving our shirt un-tucked with our tie loosely around our neck. We looked worse than if we had been left alone to dress ourselves; the mandated dress code backfired because we naturally rebelled against the rule.