The Basketball Podcast: EP111 Mike Neighbors on Why?

“I think everything should be challenged and questioned and made into your own . . we go to a clinic and we hear a successful coach . . because of their success, we want to model those things.”

“You go to the clinics . . there’s two curses . . there’s the curse where you try to do everything and then there’s the curse where you just are dismissing a thing saying, ‘No, I can’t do that because of this.’”

“There’s a lot of time somebody [on staff] will have a great idea and I may agree but I may take the contrary side . . just to test how committed they are . . and their thinking behind it . . and how well researched it is.”

“What if we’re doing something wrong and it’s hurting our kids? So I want it to be well thought out, I want it to be researched, I want it to be tested, I want it to be proven, I want there to be evidence of it.”

“I want us to play fast but only if we’re able to function.”

“You read all these things about the way the brain works, the teaching methods, it’s all . . brought together to make sure that your words speak in images.”

“It’s all very intentional . . because our time with our players is so very limited. We can’t waste any of those moments, any teachable moment. So we’ve got to be very intentional. We’ve got to be very specific.”

“The question always is, ‘How can you turn a last place team into a team that’s contending fast?’ . . It’s a bunch of incremental gains in small areas.”

“We try to cut practice . . by five minutes from the previous Monday . . The year that we went to the Final four, we were practicing 35 minutes a day at the end of March.”

“I decided to study about goals . . one of the first books I came across was Josh Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert’s book called ‘Burn Your Goals’ . . they really challenge you that goals can limit you.”

“I said, ‘We’re not going to use goals this year . . instead, we’re going to set some standards that you are willing to hold each other accountable for, ones that our coaching staff is willing to confront you with when you don’t meet . . we’re going to sit around until we come up with what we’re going to call evidence of excellence.”

“There’s not one scenario I’ve ever heard of where properly set standards could not have . . accomplished the exact same thing as a good set of goals . . and you don’t give yourself the chance to be limited.”

“It’s about getting us to the point to where our position and their play meet and intersect to the point that we bring value to each other.”

“The search for truth allows you to be trusted. It allows you to trust people and when you trust people, you don’t have to be perfect anymore.”

“We care about doing what we thing is the best thing we can do offensively as many times as we can do it and then try to do the exact opposite on defense.”

“You’ve got to have some tangible success to go with the believeability and the thinking; that’s what gives you credibility.”

“I love having constructive disagreements with people. There are lots of ways to win at this game and everybody that consistently does it . . it is theirs, it is their way.”