Steve Kerr: The Mind of a Champion | Grey Matter with Declan Kelly

Steve Kerr has spent a lifetime studying his own mind. As a player, he was an overthinker with a fierce competitive drive who had to learn how to channel those qualities rather than be ruled by them. As a coach, that inner work became the foundation for one of the most successful dynasties in NBA history.

That journey was shaped by years spent inside the cultures of Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, two of the most exceptional leadership minds the game has ever produced.

When he became head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Pete Carroll challenged him to define what he stood for and build an operating system around it. What emerged were four values, creating a culture so clear that it could sustain itself.

In this episode of Grey Matter, Steve sits down with Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to explore what becomes possible when a leader's deepest understanding of themselves becomes the foundation for everything they build.

In this conversation, Steve discusses:

· Why values only take hold when they are genuinely personal and how he arrived at his four

· How growing up in an academic, internationally mobile family shaped the way he thinks and leads

· The role Phil Jackson's mindfulness practices played in his development as both a player and a coach

· What fifteen years as a role player taught him about ego, sacrifice, and what winning teams are actually built on

· How he united twelve of the world's best basketball players around a single goal at the Paris Olympics

· Why listening carefully is the most underrated tool a leader has

About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, Barcelona, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.

About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So after three days, he says, Come to my office, let's talk. And he goes, How are you going to coach your team? And I said, You mean like what offense are we going to run and defense? He goes, No, no, no, that stuff doesn't matter. I was like, oh boy, I got a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to Gray Matter. I'm Declan Kelly, founder, chairman, and CEO of Cancelo. I've spent the last 30 plus years advising the CEOs who are leading the world's top companies. If there's one thing I've learned in that time, the best leaders think differently. That wiring, that gray matter, separates the truly exceptional leaders from everyone else. Understanding it is what allows us at Cancelo to help the best in the world be even better. This podcast exists because the most accomplished leaders agreed to sit down and talk about something they rarely discuss publicly, how their minds actually work. Few people have thought more carefully about how their mind works than nine-time NBA champion Steve Kerr. By his own admission, he was an overthinker with a fierce competitive drive and an inner voice that he spent years fighting against. Before his first season as head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Kerr sat down and did something that leaders don't do enough of. He figured out exactly what he stood for. Since then, he has built one of the greatest dynasties in NBA sporting history and proven that the most powerful operating system that a leader can have is a deep understanding of their own mind. This is Gray Matter. Steve Kerr, welcome to Gray Matter. Thank you, Decla. Thank you for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. I will not be contradicted if I say you're the thinking man's basketball player and basketball coach, and you have dedicated so much of your life to doing things the right way. What I'm interested in in Gray Matter is how people think. Have you always been conscious of the thought processes that make you like that? Or was it organic? What was the background?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

It's a great question. I I don't think they were conscious, um, but I think um they were subconscious. I think they were being ingrained in me as I grew up. Um I grew up in a very academic family. I was very quiet, very shy. Um I imagine I was soaking a lot of things in. But I feel like um being a coach, being a professional athlete has um maybe helped me crystallize a lot of my thoughts and how I look at the world. And some of that comes from my family and um my background. And then some of it comes from all the amazing mentors I've had, coaches, uh, teammates who have helped me along the way.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

You've described yourself as an overthinker in some some of those interviews and in some of those discussions. Yet you have to be an overthinker in order to be able to be successful or to be present. Do you feel like that has been a huge advantage, or do you feel like that's been a learned skill? Like how has that manifested itself in your life?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

I'm not exactly sure. I I definitely overthought things as an athlete. You know, when you're playing, you want to just be fluid and you want to go with the flow. But of course, you have to absorb enormous amounts of information and process things. And and I think finding the balance in those things is really the key for not only any athlete, but any human being, the mind-body connection, being able to be the best version of yourself. It's sort of like can you take all that wisdom and then just let it flow? You know, and that's the trick. Every athlete wants to find what we call the zone. You know, when you see Steph Curry hit eight straight threes, he's in the zone. He's not thinking about anything. But there were decades of uh reps that went into him fight being able to find that zone, both physical reps and and mental ones. And I think that's kind of the beauty of sport and the beauty of getting older and recognizing when you're trying to be great, that it does take this unique sort of mind-body connection in order to reach that to that peak that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

One of the things that resonates is this sense of the calm that descends on you when it matters most. Like, for example, in 97 against Utah, when Jordan passed you the ball and it had to go in, you look unbelievably calm. Even on the inside, you may not have been. I'm not sure. But it just it was never in doubt, right? And you look at that tape, you go, Oh my god, this thing is definitely going in before it left left your hands. What was it like to be you in those moments? And how did you let that calm come into your whole face?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

I was faking it. I'm not kidding. I was so nervous, but I was far enough along in my career where I had learned the value of just let it fly. Let it, you know, you can't overthink anything, you can't think about the repercussions. And and Phil Jackson had been a great mentor for me, uh, teaching our whole team the value of mindfulness and meditation and breathing. He used to take timeouts in crucial situations and just literally lead us in a breathing session. You know, he would just say, everybody, just deep breath, and we'd all take a deep breath. And no other coach was doing that. So I was definitely pretending to be more calm than I was, but I do think that it is part of my personality, something I learned from my dad, um, to listen and uh take everything in and to um at least appear calm and approach things in a in a relatively calm manner. Um and it wasn't an easy thing for me to to do because I I also have a uh competitive rage inside me that for many years I had to uh to fight because I I beat myself up inside. My inner voice was not that kind to me. So I feel like it's been a lifetime of trying to sort through all this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

But still, I I've read about you know the inner game of tennis, yeah, which is your Bible. There is definitely something where you consciously have decided this is the way I'm going to train my mind to behave. Yeah. Right? And that is tremendously difficult to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, I mean, uh the the inner game of tennis was a book that uh a teammate gave me in the middle of my career, or early in my career, and it's really a book about connecting the mind and the body. And it was a tennis teacher named Tim Galloway who wrote the book. And the very opening chapter of the book, he says he's watching a tennis player, and the guy's talking to himself, and he's yelling at himself, what a lousy shot, you know, you idiot. So he said, There must be two selves, right? There's our voice, and then our there's our unconscious or our body and our mind, however you want to describe it. There's two, we all have two selves. And and the book was all about how to blend those two selves to bring uh this beautiful unity, to bring the best out of yourself. And and um, I literally read the book every every season to try to help me understand different ways to blend my mind, mind, and my body. And I used to try different tricks during practice or during games that he had suggested, and they were really helpful. And now I give the book to my players. I have 10 of them in my in my office right now, and I I probably give three of them to uh to players every single year because I think it's such a powerful uh message.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

How much time do you spend with players on that whole mindfulness part? I mean, obviously they're tremendously talented, but how much of it is about the mind versus the talent?

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah. Um, well, we talk to them quite a bit about mindfulness. We bring in a mindfulness trainer, um, probably once every couple of weeks, and he'll come in and lead them through a mindfulness session. Um, I mimic Phil Jackson every once in a while in a timeout and say everybody breathe. And um, and you know, we know so much more today. So we have sports psychologists on staff who help the players, and I don't even know which ones they're helping because we keep everything private, but we have people who are ready to teach our players um all kinds of things to help them get through the pressure of the game. So I think um it's an area of focus, um, but it's something that I know that others are better equipped to teach my players than than I am.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

One of the things I've loved reading about is the coaches who have influenced your life, obviously Pop and Phil, and obviously you've played with Michael Jordan and all the greats, but um the person who had a profound influence on your life in terms of how you think about how you coach was Pete Carroll. And I read about how he made you shape your values. Yeah, yeah. And last night, coincidentally, I was sitting beside Steph at this dinner and he started talking about your values and repeating the four of them back verbatim and talking about how important they were to how he lives his life. Isn't it remarkable that you've managed to put that trail of consciousness together and keep it together over all these years? Tell me about the Pete Carl episode.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, so I I went to visit Pete in Seattle before I started coaching the Warriors. I I had taken the job, but I hadn't uh started yet. And I just was trying to pick the brains of really smart coaches who I admired. I had watched his teams for years. There was this beautiful, competitive joy, and that's what I wanted to achieve. I would watch his teams and I go, that's how I want my team to play. And so I went and watched their practice for like three days, and he was so welcoming. And I mean, he literally had me in the huddle, you know. Um I'm on the sidelines. He's like, Steve, come out here. You know, Russell Wilson's the quarterback, and he's like, Steve, get in the get in the huddle. So I'm like literally with 11 other guys, you know, they're they all have their helmets on, and I'm just listening to the play. Wow. Pete was amazing. And so after three days, he says, Come to my office, let's talk. I said, Okay, and I go in and he goes, How are you gonna coach your team? And I said, You mean like what offense are we gonna run and defense? He goes, No, no, no, that stuff doesn't matter. And I was like, Oh boy, I got a lot of work to do. So he just explained to me that coaching is really about values, and uh, he told me his whole story and how he realized this. And he asked me to start thinking about Pop and Phil and the great teams that I had played for him. He said, When you think about those teams, what do you think about it? And I said, just the vibe, the aura that existed when you walked into the building every day. He goes, exactly. He goes, You need to think about what your team is gonna feel. And then he explained that if your values are really strong and they come through in everything that you do and the way you carry yourself and the way the team practices, and your values take hold and the team culture takes hold. And it's like, oh my God, this is exactly what happened with Phil, exactly what happened with Pop, Lud Olson in college. These were really strong men who were very unique and authentic and had very different values from one another, but they all shared something unique, which was the ability to get a group of men, uh, or boys in Lude Olson's case, to uh connect and to fight for something bigger themselves than themselves. And it really made me think. And um, so Pete told me, go home and think about your your life and your values and what they are, and we kind of went from there. And they are well, he he said, go go find 10 of them. Think of think of your whole life, your parents, your friends. And so I came in with 10 and we narrowed them down to my four, which are competitiveness, joy, mindfulness, and compassion. And I felt like those were the things that really reflected who I was, how I was raised. For for some reason, from the time I was old enough to walk, um, if I lost, it was like a calamity. I mean, I I I can't explain why things matter so much, but I mean, literally the Easter egg hunt at five years old, you know, if I didn't get the golden egg, like I would throw myself on the ground and pound my fist and cry. I mean, my family members thought I was crazy, and I I kind of was. But I can't walk away from that. So competitiveness is part of who I am. And what Pete explained was that these values have to come out in a really authentic manner. And so that means you've got to compete every day in practice, you've got to keep score, you've got to like put stakes um on the uh results, and and um joy is another one. I just felt like I always played my best when I was joyful. And so we have a lot of joy in our in our daily rituals and music and family, and we celebrate milestones, and and so Pete really taught me how to connect these personal values to the way you operate, and that that's you know how you really get a culture going. I think the the best thing that happened to me is that I think Steph Curry really shares the exact values. He's he and I are very similar in in what we think are important and the way we look at life, and the fact that both of us felt strongly about those values, it it helped things come alive quickly.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

I assume that's also carried through to your decision to continue coaching and his decision to keep playing because the two of you are symbiotic.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

I I mean, I'm the luckiest coach alive. This is the finest human being I've ever been around. I mean, I I'm not kidding. I mean, the combination of this incredible talent, not just on the basketball court. I mean, he could do anything he he wanted. Um but with this humility, this genuine authentic uh desire to be a father and a husband and uh and do do good things in the community, and it's also authentic. He's just a brilliant human being, and I I realized there's no way I could give up another couple of years of coaching Steph Curry. And if the team was willing to give me those two years, I was I was willing to do it, and I'm so thankful that that's the way it turned out.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Your parents, both academics and teachers, and all of your siblings uh had academic pursuits. You separated from the herd and decided you were going to do something else. But you know, when you read all about how your life was, the house was full of people having principled intellectual discussions about what was going on in the world. That cultural zeitgeist that you lived in, it had to have an impact on the way you approached everything, including training, how you lived your life. It must have been fascinating for you to walk into a locker room, you know, full of athletes, people, you know, winning at all costs, and yet you come from an environment which is thoughtful, perhaps quieter, calmer, contemplative. And yet you had to take those two things and put them together.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah, I thought I was the black sheep growing up. You know, I didn't really connect with a lot of this stuff, but I realized now I was absorbing all of it. And I realize now that I'm actually in the family business. Coaching is teaching. Right. And so I didn't I didn't realize that. And I think it's been a wonderful revelation to understand this uh full circle. Because when I was playing, I never thought of it that way. I just thought I'm an athlete, I'm trying to make it in the NBA, I'm trying to compete and win. And this is very different from everything my family is doing. And then I it was in the back of my mind that I would want to coach. Um, and once I started coaching, I realized um it was my dream job. Uh, and especially to coach um Steph Curry and the Warriors and in the Bay Area. I mean, I couldn't be luckier, but there's no question that coaching um is in my blood, and that all those things I was learning from my family was um was there all along, even though I wasn't uh quite aware of it.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

And then there's this inner sort of personal resilience, the tragedy of losing your father the way you did, um, and then your mom having to deciding to take the family to Cairo, rebuild the life. You've talked very openly and often about this, and you've also been an advocate against gun violence and everything that you've testified to Congress and all these incredible things that nobody else in sport has ever done. But the resilience that you've had to learn, did that come from within or was it experiential based on what happened to you?

SPEAKER_01 16:46

I'm not sure. Um, I do think that uh growing up uh overseas, three years in Cairo when I was in junior high, high school, a year in France, um living a very international life, um, watching my father uh interact with people from all over the world, these scholars speaking different languages, had to have been part of it. I think I gained a really good perspective on um how lucky I was to live the life I was living. And um, when I lost my dad, I was 18, he was assassinated um by um Hezbollah um in Lebanon. He was the president of the American University. And I got a phone call in my dorm room freshman year and giving me the news, it was you know the most shocking, devastating news of my life. And uh my whole family was just um just crushed. And so we didn't have any training on how to lose someone. Um I do feel like our our togetherness growing up, moving around, learning, seeing literally seeing poverty in third world countries, think seeing how lucky we were to have each other, to live the lives we were. I think that probably built some resilience um without us knowing it. Um and uh we were very lucky to have each other, you know. We really leaned on each other after that happened. I'm very proud of my mom. She's 91 and still going strong and um still working. She teaches a class at UCLA once a week.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Wow, incredible.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, and we have a very strong family, lots of, you know, lots, lots of grandkids. My mom now has great grandkids. I have soon to be three grandkids. So I'm uh extremely lucky and fortunate, and um that that definitely helps build resilience when you know how how lucky you've been.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

You've also talked a bit about how you had to stake out your own position in the teams you've played in. I think there was an episode one time of you and Jordan going at each other, and you said at the end of that that he respected you more because you were willing to stand up. I've often heard you talk about that sometimes in your career, when you were a player, you felt like you were coming off the bench trying to prove your point and you're surrounded by greats. Being willing to play a team sport, but to do different things within the team. That willingness to sort of play these different roles, how critical was that to your success?

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I was a role player my entire career. I had great moments. I had some great moments in in some key situations, but in 15 years, I just uh learned this the other day. Somebody brought it up. I started 20 games, 20 games out of 15 years. I think I played, you know, maybe a thousand games. I started 20 of them. I was always a role player, a bench player. And um, that was just you know, my uh my place was a role player. Um now I did have to find different roles um on different teams, but it was always as a support player. I was never good enough to be a a star player, but I think um it's kind of the beauty of basketball is it really does take a five-man unit working together. Um, the five best players don't necessarily make the best team. And I love that. Um so trying to figure that out as a coach, trying to put the best groups together. Um it's really challenging and and invigorating. And having played for all those different teams and playing with all those uh great players and great coaches, I was able to see everything. Um and it definitely helped me um become, you know, the coach that I am.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

You know, the interesting thing is that I've also heard you talk about and read, read about, you know, the general management role that you had to play and how different that is than being a coach and how you prefer the role of coach to general management. Is it because it required a different type of skill? Is it because you were more suited for one versus the other? Why did general management not appeal to you?

SPEAKER_01 21:05

I like being on the court. I like the being in the fight. Um, you know, that when you're a coach, you're you're literally there for every moment, every practice, every game, every flight. Um, and there's there are relationships that form within that um that are impossible to break. Um like basically being family. And there are moments of pain and moments of friction and you know, joy, and you know, everything in between. And and um there's there's beauty in that. Um I also was not ready to be a general manager. I think I was about uh maybe 42 years old. I had only worked in television since my playing days had ended. Um I was a consultant for the Phoenix Suns for a couple of years and then became the general manager. And I wasn't trained for it, and I made mistakes, but I learned so much. Um From those mistakes that helped me once I became a coach. I also learned that I didn't want to be a general manager. But once I became a coach, I recognized how hard the GM position is and how important the relationship between player, coach, owner, best player. All those key figures had to be in lockstep. And I was there were mistakes that I made as a GM that I was not going to let happen in my relationships, you know, once I became a coach.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

What is it or was it that made that group so special? Not just the talent, but talk a little bit about how you kept it all going the way you did.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Well, the number one thing besides talent, the number one thing you have to have on a winning team is uh a group of players who understand what the game is about. That basketball is is not an individual sport, it's a team sport. And that may not sound profound, but it's much more difficult to make that come alive because players are paid based on individual statistics and numbers, and it's just kind of the way the business works. And so you have to put a group of players together who are really high character players. We had an amazing GM named Bob Myers who put together the rosters, um, you know, along with his group, his front office. So we had really talented groups, but we had high character guys who understood this concept of the game that you had to sacrifice, you had to be part of a group, part of something bigger than yourself. And so when I got to the Warriors and saw all these players who were high character, high IQ players, I knew this was an opportunity like only a few coaches had ever had. And consequently, two of the coaches who had those opportunities were Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich. Great talent, great character. Now you've got to make sure it works. And so I knew I could do it, but I knew it was I had a much easier job than a lot of the coaches in the NBA because we had all the pieces necessary. Um that first year I felt like I had imposter syndrome. You know, I was uh I was pretending like I knew what I was doing early on, but it clicked right away. And we had this dream season, and we won the championship that first year, and there were all sorts of selfless acts by the players. And it was um it was the best year of my life to that point. It was just an absolute um dream to be part of and to see the players on stage celebrating the championship. I'll never forget it. And I think from that moment on, I've become a much better coach, but I've been through a lot more, you know, and we've had a lot of knocks and a lot of difficult moments that make you better, but nothing can ever achieve the nirvana that comes from that first experience and uh seeing it all just kind of happen seamlessly. So it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

It's also interesting though, you build this culture, you get the right characters, and then you also have to run, you know, the the entire madness that comes with the four weeks of being the coach for uh Team USA. And the rock stars weren't performing so well. And in fact, against Serbia, you were down double digits and it looked like you were going to lose. And then all of a sudden, it all clicked and it all happened. How did you manage all of those personalities and how did you put it out of the fire?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Well, it was helpful that I was an assistant coach for Coach Pop and in the Tokyo Olympics in 21. Um, I learned a lot from him just watching how he handled the players. I learned a lot from Coach Kay, um, who was kind enough to share a lot of his wisdom before I started the job. One of the things he told me was um, because I asked him the same question you just asked me, how do I take all these rock stars? And um, there's 12 of them. You know, how many, how many real rock stars can be together in a band? Four, you know, if they're real rock stars? Even the Beatles, like, you know, two of them were really the stars, right? And then, you know, Ringo and George were uh just behind. But, you know, I remember asking Coach Kay, and and uh he's he had a great comment. He said, You ask them, you don't ask them to submerge their egos, you ask them to bring their egos, and uh, but you ask them to do to do so for one goal, and that's to win. And and that was really the message. Um, now it gets harder from there because everyone on the first day says, yeah, we're gonna win the gold medal. Gets a lot harder when you're only playing eight guys and you got four rock stars who maybe don't even play that night. But the the leadership comes from the players within. In our case, LeBron and Steph, it was really their team. Um, and we constructed the team, Sean Ford, Grant Hill, um, USA Basketball is an amazing organization, a lot of wisdom. We constructed the team purposely trying to find the right blend of internal leadership and talent, and we had great internal leadership. Um, we had role players who um probably went unsung for the most part, who contributed so much beyond points and assists, just keeping this thing going, getting everybody to understand we're gonna we're gonna win a gold medal, we're all gonna get celebrated, nobody's gonna care who scored how many points. And it's the only way it can work. And as a coach, you just try to foster all of that each day with the right messaging and the the way you treat the players and hope that they treat each other. And ultimately we had an amazing group.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

In your private moments, do you self-reflect on any of this?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

There's lots of self-reflection. Um, my dad used to have a great line. I think I've told you this before. He said, uh, this was when I was, you know, 14, 15 years old. He'd say, Steve, you you're a modest fellow with plenty to be modest about. You know. I was like, thank thanks. I I think. Um yeah, uh, I wasn't sure what to make of that. Um, my dad was incredibly humble. He was one of the foremost uh scholars, Medeast uh scholars. He was a professor at UCLA. He spoke fluent Arabic, he was the president of the American University in Beirut. I would watch him with literally um people from around the world, heads of state, heads of universities. I'd watch him in conversation. He just would always listen. He would always listen. And um I I probably just observed without really even knowing, and I just I saw him, I saw his humility, and I saw the power in that humility, you know, the power of listening, of um connecting with people, empowering them, making them feel good about themselves, the power of coming up with better ideas because you listen and because you solicit ideas, and all of a sudden there's five, six different people chatting about something that may not have come up, and then you reach this sort of zenith of the conversation where you you get this idea that would not have materialized otherwise. I took all that in without really knowing it, but I think about it now, and that's how we run our coaches' meetings, our team meetings. I want everybody's ideas. Um, I think there's great power in humility. That may sound like an oxymoron because uh, you know, you humility is supposed to be about, you know, not maybe not power, but if you recognize um the strength that can come from it, you realize, no, we we need to do that because we're gonna be better as a result. And I don't know, somewhere in my uh in my upbringing that was ingrained in me. And I think it's uh it's also a matter of playing for 15 years in the NBA and having to guard guys who are way better than me night after night. It was easy to be humble playing in the NBA and feeling overmatched an awful lot. And um, so I don't know. It's uh whatever whatever I uh experienced growing up, it has served me well um in this line of work, and uh and I'm lucky to do what I love and to do maybe what I was meant to do.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

You've just re-signed with the Warriors for another period, and you're about to go out and do it all over again. And you have other mountains to climb. How do you get back up for it again? Where does it come from? Considering you've won nine rings, you've won gold medals, you've got nothing left to prove. To go through it all again, start from the bottom and start again and go back all the way up to the top.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Also, like it's funny you say that we literally call the season, the NBA season, climbing Everest. You know, at the beginning of the season in our coaches' meetings, the first day we go, well, here we go. We're climbing Everest again. That's what it feels like. Not that I've ever done that before, but it is a climb. Um, but I love it. I love what I do. I wake up every morning excited, um, competition and joy. You know, it's hard to find those things at the age of 60. I can find joy um through my grandkids, through my family, but competition and joy and camaraderie and uh compassion, all the things that I stand for, that I believe in, um, those things are so right there when I'm coaching. You know, they're right there. And, you know, we had a lousy season this year. We won 37 games. Um, it was a failure. As soon as I decided I want to coach again, um, I couldn't wait to get back on the horse and think we've got to do this better. We've got to do my mind is starting to run again, and the season's like four months away. But I'm excited because this is what I do, and it brings me um such great stimulation and camaraderie with the group. So why not keep doing it?

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Steve, this part of the show is called the Uncharted Walk. Person who's had the most influence on your life. My dad. Best piece of advice that you ever got. Do what I love. We'll give it to you. My my parents. Something about you that nobody would know or realize, or something about you that you do or like to do that.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

I love to cook, and my perfect night, honestly, is to stay home and cook dinner and have dinner and uh watch a show with my wife.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

When you have played with all these various different players, if you were to pick uh a team that you were going to construct around how you think about the game and how you think about sports, would they be made up of five people that were like you or five people that were all different random individuals that come from all different walks of life?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Oh, five different random individuals, yeah. A team of five of me would be an utter disaster. Everyone would overthink everything.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Two coaches, Pop and Phil. If you were to describe the two of them with one word each, authentic.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Um actually for both.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Is there anything about you that you've decided that you wanted to unlearn? That when you were sort of playing the game and then coaching and you said, you know what, I used to do it that way, but now I do it the other way, and I'm glad I changed my mind.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

I think I've had to unlearn um the tendency to beat myself up after failure. It took me a long, long time. Like literally in the last couple of years, I finally realized I'm going to lose, I'm going to make poor decisions uh that I regret later. But losing sleep over them and beating myself up is not at all productive. Actually, I I shouldn't even say I'm trying to unlearn them. I think I have unlearned them and that's been very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

It's been a great pleasure. Thank you for a great man. Thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate it.