“Love Your Players”: Brendan Suhr on Courage, the Three Cs & 50 Years on the Sideline

What does it look like when somebody who coached Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, and Joe Dumars — and won back-to-back titles with the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” — finishes a 50-year career and says the most important thing in coaching is love?

Brendan Suhr joins Coach Greg Brown for Episode 2 of Lessons From The Sidelines. Brendan was Chuck Daly’s right hand on two championship Pistons teams and the 1992 Dream Team, learned under Hubie Brown and Lenny Wilkens, and now runs Coaching U — a global coaching, leadership, and performance company reaching 140+ countries. He’s unfiltered, opinionated, and genuinely funny about what it actually takes to lead — in a locker room, a boardroom, or anywhere else. 

In this episode:

•  Why courage is the #1 leadership trait — and why most people in leadership positions don’t have it

•  The three Cs: Competence, Credibility, Connection — how players (and employees) actually decide to follow you

•  Lead up, lead sideways, lead down — the assistant coach’s framework for leading from any seat

•  Why championship teams keep their staffs small (the Pistons won with three coaches; the modern NBA has fourteen)

•  Define roles, not just systems — what Dennis Rodman and Ben Wallace taught him

•  Why your best people are business partners, not employees

•  The Chuck Daly story about Joe Dumars that he never forgot — and the one lesson he’d give every coach

Whether you’re running a team, building a business, or sitting one chair away from the top, Brendan’s got something for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Often what makes for a great job is location in your office. And I was fortunate to work down the hallway, just down the hallway from a legend. And our next guest on episode two of Lessons from the Sideline is a legend. And it's perfect timing for the NBA finals. Our guest today is Coach Brendan Stirr, with over 25 years as a coach and executive in the NBA, including two championships with the Detroit Pistons, head scout for the 92 Olympic Dream Team, head coach in the CBA, an executive in the CBA, assistant coach collegially, associated head coach collegially, he's brought a ton of experience to what he's now doing. He's brought an entrepreneurial mindset and approach to his coaching, from consulting to coaching you live podcasts to coaching you live events, books. There's some things for everyone. And in today's episode, from coaching to leadership to entrepreneurship, there's some things for each and everyone on this episode. If you like what we're doing and you like this episode, then hopefully don't click like and subscribe. Let's get started with Coach Brainstorm. I appreciate the time. I'm really, really looking forward to the last, Greg. Yeah. So we'll get rolling right here if that's good for you. Awesome. Thank you. All right. I we'll start with uh we'll try to come with a high fastball right here to you, just right off the start. Damn uh yeah, I just now just jump in. Obviously, you your your coaching career is has been phenomenal and the things you've been exposed to, but knowing all that, if you could go back 10 years, what's something that you may have changed your mind on now looking back over this 10-year period?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, I think uh I think as we both know, Greg, uh coaching has totally changed. I started coaching 55 years ago and uh 48 years ago this June in the MBA. And um I'm embarrassed when I was coaching in the NBA how little I knew, you know, and now how much I know compared to what I did then. Um I tell Isaiah, Joe Dumas, guys like that all the time. I I apologize. You never you never got to see the best version of who I am. It's now because I keep learning, I keep growing. Uh I was unconsciously competent. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. You know, and and now I understand that first of all, Greg, coaching is about taking players where they can't take themselves. That is the whole key. Uh it's the same deal, you know, you're a hell of a parent. It's the same deal, man. It's about parenting, you know, when those babies come, they have no chance of making it unless they have parents that can guide them and help them, nurture them. And that's the essence of what coaching is. And so I my thing now is literally every day I don't have a team to coach, but I have thousands of people I coach around the world, which is a freaking enormous responsibility. Coaching 12 players was a I was it was easy. And now my thing is what can I do every day to develop myself so I can keep pouring into people, and what can I do to develop others? That's where I start.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Because you can't pour out till you pour in. I mean, and it's the same thing with you, you have to pour into others so that they can pour out and it just trickles down. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

And and so I think that's that's one of the things. And the the the the lifers, so to speak, the Bob Starkies, uh Gino, uh you know, Sabin, Belichick, Coach K, all these guys that have been doing it, Kim Mulkey, these people that do it for an awful long time, they've learned, and they're not the they're not the version of themselves they were 30 years ago. They wouldn't have lasted. And and and what you learn is you learn to trust other people that work for you. You learn to hire really good people. You know, my you know, uh Bob and I did a pod Starkey at his, you know, uh hopefully your your listeners will get to know Bob by his first name. Starkey, you know, uh he's one of my all-time favorites because he understands better than anyone I've ever been around the assistant coaching position. And I was an assistant for 95% of my career. And and the people that are in assistant coaching positions in men's and women's basketball and in football, they don't understand that your job is to assist the head coach and to make them better. It's not a bench promoting your ass and making yourself look good, which is misunderstood. And I I I think I think that's what Bob really articulates well. And one of the best podcasts we ever did was him defining what it takes to be a really good assistant. And we spent an hour and 10 minutes on that. People either thought it was the best podcast they ever heard or saying, what a waste of time. Uh and I know who the people were that thought it was a waste of time.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Well, and then that will speak for itself there. Uh on that note, leading from the middle, you you've done both, and you've been around phenomenal, phenomenal leaders. Um what are the keys to leading from that middle? Because I've seen it done very well and I've seen it done poorly. With, you know, you've you've heard the stories of an assistant going, well, if I was a head coach, this is how we would do it. I mean, and that's awful. Yeah, the worst. But yeah. What what are some keys out there for those guys that are leading from the middle?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Well, I think what you you really have to learn in coaching is you have to learn how to lead up, you lead sideways, and you lead down. What is the hell does that mean? Uh leading up as an assistant is leading up to my head coach. I I there's many times, very few of the coaches I worked with over the years did we agree on things all the time. And if we did, then I then we weren't a very good coaching staff. So but if I had to convince him of something, it was my job to make the case. And so that was when I was coaching up. And when, you know, I was an assistant or GM in the MBA to a president, and we would have blistering battles, and but I had to figure out how do I take this guy that has this incredible ego and stardom and wealth and and figure out to make it feel like it was his idea. So I have to learn how to coach up. The coaching sideways is coaching with my peers that are other assistants. Nowadays, I got MBA staffs I work with. There's 12 and 14 people on the staff, which is absolutely absurd. Okay. Uh our men's and women's coaching staffs are way too big in college. And the reason, not that I don't want people to have jobs, I do. But what I found is the people that are in the entry level or the lowest level positions, and every position is important, but the lowest level, they are fighting all the time to have their voice heard. And they are trying to always say something to, and and my thing is that very few head coaches, especially the older ones, are not used to managing so many people. So when we won championships with the Pistons, there was myself, Brenda Malone, and my s and Chuck Daly. Okay. Uh, you know, and Brenda Malone is Mike Malone's dad, the coach at North Carolina now. And, you know, and so the three of us in a room, and uh that that that's how we did it. I can't even imagine if Chuck had 14 people in a room and he knew how to manage people, what it would be like then. Because you have too many people, because like I could literally say to Chuck, that's no way that's gonna work, and he would trust me. But now there's some younger guy or gal that's uh say, well, you know, analytics show that you know this could work 14% of the time. I really don't give a shit if it does, okay? But I think sometimes there's too many people, and managing a lot of people brings out another whole men's skill set that most of us aren't equipped to handle. That's why in the corporate world, and that's what I always say, coaching sports, coaching corporate world, same thing. The easiest people for me to coach are people in the business world because they have no idea how to lead. The people in charge. They're president of a company, senior vice president. They have no idea about leadership. They have no idea about building a team.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Where do you start with those people at? Those leaders that are put in a leadership position but may not have been equipped to lead.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

100%. What I do, Greg, is I say the most important thing of being a leader today is courage. It's an almost an immediate disqualifier. Most people that are in leadership positions and sports also, they don't have the courage. And the courage, I mean, is to be able to stand in front of your room and s and call out people, call out the group when they're not doing what they're supposed to do. That doesn't mean berating people, that doesn't mean, but being able to lead people, hold them accountable, and have the courage to do it, knowing it's not going to be popular. And if you don't do that, if you're not gonna lead people, you know, then with courage, then you're really gonna do it. So that's a starting point. Uh and then I I I have to figure out, I have to define roles. And I also think that's a biggest. We have coaches in sports, let's take basketball, that are more concerned now about what offense and defenses we're gonna play, what's our coverage on pick and rolls going to be, rather than defining my role. You know, I have two Hall of Famers that I coached that I never called one play for, ever. One play for them, Dennis Rodman and Ben Wallace. But they were the best in the world at rebounding and defending, and that's what their job was. Their job was not to take three-pointers or to run pick and rolls. We had other players doing that. Their job was to screen effectively, and so so I think nowadays we're scared to hurt players' feelings of saying, you're gonna be a screener, you're gonna be a defender, because oh my god, then I might not get drafted. Well, shit, you're probably not gonna get drafted anyway, you know. NBA and uh and the WMBA, there's only two rounds, you know, and but what's gonna help our team win? And guess what? In the pros, every sport, we want people that can affect winning. And so in the corporate world, I'm trying to get them to understand how do we win as a group? How do we win as a team? I can't have all chiefs. I have to have someone that's gonna make the sales calls, I have to have someone that when they get rejected on sales calls, I have to coach that person and that don't take it personally, that it's just an opportunity that you're gonna get with someone else that wasn't a good fit for them. And not and perseverance, we hear this word, persistence. Yeah, those are the things that young people don't have nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And I think too, what I've seen in coaching and some corporate world is the back to your courage point of being able to have a difficult conversation. It doesn't mean we don't like, it doesn't mean it has to be personal, but it there are sometimes, even with my wife, there's gonna be tough conversations we have to have about situations.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Well, I know I know your wife, and I like your wife better than my wife, and we've only been married 45 years, but I can't have a tough conversation. I can coach, you know, Michael Jordan easier than I can my wife, okay? You know, you know, she's one of those players, it's never wrong. So so, you know, uh so I but you're a hundred percent right. If you got to be able to have those, and and it starts at a respect. You know, I I I have they have to know that I respect them. They don't work for me. I I tell I I now I speak a lot when I go in my tours, which I've done for you, when I go and speak to college coaches and teams. My new thing this year, I wasn't sure how it was gonna work, but I knew they needed it, was how to coach pro players. And they go, What are you talking about? You're coaching pro players, except you didn't you don't know it. And none of you are equipped to do it because you're you're scared they're gonna become free agents at the end of the year, you're gonna lose them. Okay. And what they do is players in the pros respect you on several occasions. One, if you lead with courage, number two, if you have credibility, but more importantly, Greg, competence. You have to be competent at your job. Most of the coaches that I work with in college, they're not that competent at what they do. You know why? Because they don't work on their own personal development. They think a recruiting is the end-all be-all. It's about guys like Saban over the years and Belichick, they and Gino, you know, sure they did the recruiting aspect, but their competence and what they did with the team was off the charts. And so that's what I think you know, you need you get that credibility and then you have to make connection. The whole thing is about relationships. And so, uh, how can I lead a company if I'm not competent? I don't have credibility because all the companies I've ever run have never done crap. Uh, and I I don't connect to the people that work for me. So in the pros, but the thing we do really well, the good teams, is that my players are not my employees. Uh, I was coaching when I first came in the NBA, I had players five years older than me, uh, you know, on my team. Uh so they're my business partners. And I think in college, we needed to establish that. I I just talked to one of my dearest friends I work with on a daily basis, and he just he went to a new job, he got $750,000 as an associate head coach, phenomenal salary. And he just signed a player for three and a half million dollars. It's more than the head coach makes, and their entire coaching staff added up. And I just said, Isn't that something? So you can tell him what to do? He makes more than you. And you know what happens in the NBA when a co players make more than you? You're the guy that's expendable, not the player. I said, so you better, so you have to make them your business partners, and that's a really key to success, I think.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

On that note, how has because you you've obviously coached and now you have an entrepreneurial side to your coaching and your coaching business, how has that um changed the way you evaluate opportunities, the way you um the way you coach with with that entrepreneurial mindset?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah, I think the the biggest thing I I've had to adjust to is I'm I'm a pleaser. I like I want to help everybody, um everyone I like, I want to help. Um it's not about money, but it it becomes about time. And so I can only spend X amount of time during the day. Thank God my office is where you're looking at right now. Uh I work out of my studio office here, doing my podcasts all over the world, which is insane. No, uh I didn't even know how to get when we first met, I barely knew how to get on a damn computer, right? You know, and when one of my people that worked with me said, uh, I'm gonna put you on Twitter, I said, To do what? What are we gonna do? And now when I every time I go into a college now to speak, and I and I love it because I just love the players. And I'll say, Who's got the most Twitter followers, ex-followers here in the room? And there's always one or two kids that has amazing following. And I've only once gone in to speak to a team where I haven't had more followers than them. Okay, uh, and all of a sudden now they go, This old white guy's got more followers than me. Shit. Yeah, because I'm coaching others, I'm trying to help people that are actually coaching you guys. And then the the biggest thing, Greg, is figuring out we've going to become a global business now. Before it was about running some camps or clinics in a part of this country that we lived in. And now the the I'm probably one of the more upset people in this country right now because we were doing a very thriving business in the Middle East. Because there's they're so eager. They really want to get better, they really want to learn. Uh, they're really into sports, they want to use it for tourism. So they were really great customers. So my business is really true. I don't care about oil and gas prices. I need to get on the court. I need safety for my friends over there in the different Gulf states. And so, but we do a ton in Australia, Asia, Europe. Uh, who would have ever thought, you know? And now when we have our events in Vegas every year for the last 12 years, we've done it 18 years. We have co people, coaches from China, Philippines, Japan, all coming to the thing. It's a it's a worldwide thing. The world is now so and the podcast has helped, you know, 140 countries now listen to our podcasts. We've been doing it for so many years. And then uh the other podcast I have that's based in London called Hoop Genius, that is throughout the whole Middle East and all of Europe, it's absolutely incredible. But now it's because we it's all it's an MBA only show, the NBA, uh everyone in the league office listens to it, which I love. You know, they want to say, what the hell is this guy saying about us? Because I don't hold back on the NBA. And it it's really cool because who would have ever thought that you can do stuff like this? Because now we're able to communicate. That's why we with coaching you, we started an app about three years ago, because everyone couldn't come to our event. And now for like $9.99 a month, you can get every clinic we do worldwide on our app. And so we have over 300 co clinics on there that we have. So we're educating people, and and the thing is we have a hundred plus countries represented on the app. That's that's where we're trying to impact the world.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Well, and on that note, because things have changed so much, and Bob and I were talking about the fact that we all grew up working camps. You know, Coach Meyer had the largest camps in the country, and then when I became a high school coach, we worked those camps, and then you would end up at, you know, I would go work majoris's or I would go wherever, and that's where you learn to teach, because you were teaching knucklehead boys in a summer camp, and you know, you had to get the message across, and you learn how to speak in short phrases. So now it's shifted because of compliance issues and people aren't running camps, and just the the it's just different. Do you think that that's the best way that we can impact is the way you're doing now to teach younger coaches how to teach and even older coaches us how to how to teach the game better?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah, no, uh my biggest concern and why we do coaching you is not for money, and uh it's about I'm very scared about the coaching profession in all sports, because a lot of good people have gotten out because of all the BS that's going on with parents at the high school level. You know, all the all the crap that goes on in the colleges because of AAU and now because of the different people, you know, that are involved from a financial standpoint to shoot companies, etc. So that a lot of good people we've lost, frankly, in the game. Uh so I I I am very concerned about that. Uh, you know, I almost I'm gonna say it, but I I really don't want to, but as uh my friends at IMG down in Bradenton, Florida years ago, um we went down there to do some work with them, and literally they had an interest in buying the company because they knew they saw the vision that they could basically certify and license coaches all over the world. And that that that's kind of like that's that's where we're working towards right now. That's that's our mission statement. And we would we'll do that in sport first, you know, because coaching is coaching, no matter what the sport is. And we can actually do you know develop coaching you in volleyball, coaching you in football. It really doesn't matter to sport. Um and train those teaching and communication skills and because there's an art and a science of coaching. So the science of coaching is the technique and stuff like that. But you and I both know the art of coaching is more important, frankly. Your message would Never be heard if you can't communicate it. So I I think that's the most important thing is teach the coaches how to coach people young people. And then the other thing is I think there's a huge opportunity, which everyone is taking advantage of in the corporate world and the entrepreneurial world of coaching coaches, which I do, but coaching people, even individual performers, to perform better. I don't call myself a basketball coach anymore, Greg. I call myself a performance coach. And I do that when I go in and speak. I said, yeah, I used to be a championship basketball coach, but for 50 years, I've never coached basketball. I coach people. And so this is about I can help teams, coaches, and players perform better. That's the whole thing. And that and businesses love that. And that's where I think that's that that's the whole message now is performance. How do you make people perform better? And that is where that's my whole thing. And there's a lot of ways, as you know, Greg, a lot of players, you could just tell them what to do and they would be able to do it. 95% of the players you and I coach, we had to put them on the floor and they had to do it to learn best. My podcast or app won't help the people really do it because unless I can get them and put my hands on them on the floor, they might not get the full experience. But it's better than nothing. That's the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Well, it's it's always fascinating to me. You go to a bookstore and you go to the business section, it's coaches' books, you go to the sports section and it's business books because they're they they can't live without the other, and the skills are so what we term but transferable between those two things. How when you're coaching, we're talking about like coaches need reps on the floor teaching. How are you taking those reps in the corporate world? How do you help them get, as opposed to just talking philosophy, how do you help them get reps in that way?

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, I mean, what you try to do is I've tried to put them through exercises that I have for them in in our seminar, and then tell them to take it back and work on it with their team. And some are really able to and they excel at it, and others they can't. They just don't have the personality. Personality is a huge factor in this, as you know, to lead. To lead. You know, they always say, Oh, so-and-so's a great coach. Why? He has like John Caliper's, I love John. His charisma is off the charts. I really don't care what offense or defense he plays, but his players believe in him unequivocally. And that is a high form of leadership. And he can sell the key thing in coaching in business or sport is can I get my team, my players, to buy into what I'm teaching, right? And the only way they do that is if they believe in you. And so Cal is one of those people, they believe in him. And so guess what? Why do you go to Arkansas? Because I believe in Coach Cal. And that that's a damn good reason, you know, and so but I uh I try to give them some exercises like we do would do in basketball coaching and say, try these things and then do it, and then we got a problem solved out of it. But it's really difficult in that world because as you know, we're really good coaches when I get to practice with my team for six or eight months. Like my friend John Gordon, who makes almost a hundred thousand dollars for fifty minutes of speaking now. I tease them all the time. You know, you're incredibly entertaining, you're giving incredible content and knowledge, but you're not gonna change one person's behavior. Because you can't one practice. When and so we entertain, and hopefully you get to follow up more, but unless the reason we practice and the why the playoffs are at the end of the season, not the beginning, is because now we practice and now we get to show what we can do under pressure. And that's the key thing in business and sport. You have to perform under pressure. Some people can, some can't.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Well, we always know though those sealed training, you know, the seal thing about you rise to the level of your training, you're not gonna, you're not gonna exceed your training ever in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

You will, you will sometimes, you will, and that's when you get extraordinary performances, you know, under the conditions. You know, all of a sudden that's when you see a guy who's played well all year, and then all of a sudden he goes for 30 or 40 points in a particular game, but it's not going to be replicated on an often basis. No, sustainable. Sustainable, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Let me ask you this. You were talking about this hard. What would you look for in hiring a staff? And the reason I ask, I think a lot of times, I mean, I think that's the key to being a head coach right off the bat, that you can start your career in a good way or a bad way based on, and it may not be a bad person, but a bad hire. For example, I think you need someone that can see potholes in front of you. If you're a visionary leader, you're just going and blowing and you're that alpha type, you need someone, I think, that can see that. It either can see it or they've been through it to know, hey, there's a there's a big bump up here ahead of this curve. What's your thoughts on hiring that staff?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, uh Bob Starkey and I agree with everything Bob does. But you know, he actually did a survey when he was doing on assistant coaches from head coaches, and his survey said loyalty is number one factor. That's what we have right now in the White House, loyalty to the president, which I think you must be loyal to the president. But my thing, and I've known Donald Trump J. Trump for 45 years, okay? And unbelievably likable guy with a great personality. When he was 45, uh God, when he was 35 and 40, when I first met him, he just owned every room he walked into. And the thing about that, the difference right now is, and I'm not comparing running the United States to running a sports team by any means. So it's a trying to run this country is a freaking mess to try to do that. So this is not a political speech, but what I do is all the stuff that he has to do every day, there's no one in the world that knows every one of those things. So what you have to do is hire the most competent people that are trustworthy, and their overall mission is not about me, it's about we. It's about a team aspect. And and that and the team is uh USA, right? And so I would with the president's uh communication skills, he should own this country, literally not literally, but he should own it as far as he can he has the power to unite us all together. He can do that. And I I often say that if it was a sports team and you had half of the team disliking you and half of the team liking you, you'd probably get fired as it, you know, uh right, and you know, and uh but I I my my challenge would be to get someone in this country that uh historically that can take 350 million people, not the adults, you know, 200 million adults or whatever, and try to unite us as one, then we do have the most powerful country in the world. Right. Yeah, one team, yeah, one team, exactly. We do that when would the Olympics come up, we do that in different events when that happens, and we're incredible. But I wish we would we do that when we root for our individual sports teams, where our fan bases are maniacal, literally the word loyal, yeah, incredible about that, but I would love that if we did that. But I would hire the most competent assistant coaches. Uh yeah, sure, I want someone that can recruit. But in the NBA where we don't really have recruiting, uh and uh and the player acquisition is a separate department, I'm looking for the best of the best in on offensive and decent defensive sides of the ball. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for competency. I'm looking, I don't want people that all think like me either. I want I want people that can bring something to the table that I don't know. And I think that's what makes coaching partnerships incredible. If you look in football, which I think is the model for sports coaching because it's so many players, etc., is that these head coaches hire an offensive coordinator and they hire a defensive coordinator and they hire someone to do special teams. And I'm saying they trust those people to run their companies, their little mini companies. And sometimes they don't even know what plays they're running. And you know what? That's trust and that's hiring competency. And I think that's what we should be doing, and and every every company out there, because I do work with a lot of uh corporate people, and that's why I try to tell them don't hire someone to do your job, hire someone to run the important task in the thing. Hire the best marketing guy, hire the best salespeople, hire the best customer service people. All those are different skill sets. And just because you're a great salesperson doesn't mean you're gonna be a good sales manager because you might not be able to, you might not be, you're a performer. The ultimate sales performer doesn't mean you're gonna be good to run a sales team.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Different skill set. I mean, that's a great segue into the next part. There's there's that adjustment of moving over, and we've done it from that assistant spot to the head coaching spot. There's a difference between running a program and coaching a team. And no different than going from being a senior vice president to a CEO type deal. What are some keys you think when you make that transition of moving from where you were, obviously, you were a if you're an assistant, you were a very, very good assistant, and you probably had an element scouting or recruiting or postplay that made you elevate it. Now you're moving into a whole different, whole different skill set.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Yeah, my thing is, Greg, just because you were phenomenal in that role doesn't mean you're going to be a good head coach. You've got to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. There's nothing wrong with being the senior VP of Apple. You know, you don't have to go then be the majority owner of a startup company and tech. You know, fit in your role. I have a friend of mine that's coaching one of the best assistant coaches, associate head coach of one of the best MBA teams now, and he's getting head coaching opportunities. Guess what? They're with the worst NBA teams. And I said you could be out of coaching in three years, or you could win three championships in the next three years. So there's a lot to do with uh a fit as long as you know it works for you and your family. But uh also I think your personality are you uh a leader, or sometimes you're just an incredible support guy to the head coach who is the leader. He's he's the face of the program, he's got a great voice. There's certain guys in this league that when they do a press conference, you go, Boy, he's good. God, he's good. Then there's others who go, can't communicate. How could he stand in front of his own team? And and trust me, there's there's there's that thing, and I think a lot of people think that's I have a lot of uh assistant coaches that Jay Billis and I work with at a coaching academy. We run for assistant coaches, and they all want to be head coaches. And I say, Why? They don't even care where, they just want to be a head coach for that reason, and I think it's a mistake.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Well, it goes back to where we started the conversation that the whole purpose of being a coach is to help people get to where they can't get by themselves. You don't have to be a head coach.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

And you probably can, and I make I may be exaggerating, I think it's easier to make an impact one-on-one with a player or a or an employee if you're not the CEO from a sheer time standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

100%. And and you know what? A lot of times when you're the head coach, you can't go one-on-one with a player as often as you want, because uh I remember when I was coaching the Pistons and I love Joe Dumas, just love him to death. He was the epitome of what you wanted in a player. We were a team of bad boys, so to speak. I remember. And I remember one day Chuck Daly said to me, uh, Brendan, don't fall in love. I said, What are you talking about, man? I'm married, have two kids. He said, No. He said, You're in love with Joe Dumas. I said, How could I not be? How could I not be? He's everything you want in a player, he's coachable, he doesn't lead by yapping, he led by example all the time. He was the quietest one in the room, but he was a significant leader because every day he did the right thing. And so to me, but Chuck said, someday, and I said, Why are you telling me this? He said, Someday we might have to trade him. Someday you might not be coaching him and stuff like that. I said, I get it, but guess what? I'm gonna coach the way I want to coach, and you know what? Shame on me if I pick the wrong guy to fall in love with, okay? But I, you know, but I understood what he was saying. But I I think really what he was talking about is more blind spots. Sometimes we love players, but they you know, we have blind spots that they never do anything wrong. That was not the case with Joe D. But yeah, that's that's a great point, Greg. Great point.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Coach, I appreciate it. I'm gonna finish up with one one question right here, and I just wanted to thank you for your your time. I know you've got Coach Summit used to always say that everybody just wants five minutes. And she said, but the problem is when you multiply five minutes times a hundred times, that's 500 minutes, and there's only so many minutes in a day. So I know how valuable these minutes are.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

You're you're a very special guy in my eyes, and so anything you want, you always got.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Well, I appreciate that. But my question would be this if you could give one lesson from the sidelines, which is where we've spent a lot of our life to a coach or a leader, what would you want that to be? Like if you could give them that one lesson as I as I took off.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Yeah, and and this is funny, two men talking to each other is that um love your players. Love your players. Uh, you know, I will have weekly phone calls with Isaiah Thomas, BJ Armstrong, guys that I've coached. And every conversation that I have with a male person that I've coached or worked for, that the last thing, and this also is with my son who's in his early 40s, every conversation organically ends up, I love you. And I think that is one of the most powerful things you can have in coaching is when the player knows that you love him unconditionally and that they love you. That is what you strive for in this business. This is nothing to do other than heart-to-heart love for each other, knowing that that player trusts me. He knows I care about him, and I know the feeling is coming in return. So, love is the most important part that I would teach in coaching. Love first.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Well, I can't say anything any better, and we're going to end it right there with that, coach. Uh, thank you so much. We'll have all your information in the notes and everything. And you know, obviously, if there's anything we can ever do to help you, but we're right here. I'm proud of you, brother, and I'm really excited for you.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

And this podcast is going to be a place to every week to get some great info from. Thanks, Greg. Thanks. Appreciate it, coach.