As TigerBlog said yesterday in his piece on the celebration of the life of Pete Carril, he'd be reproducing here the remarks that Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson delivered at the event.
Henderson was the starting point guard on Carril's final team. He was Carril's favorite kind of player — tough, tenacious, team-oriented, great court vision, could play 40 minutes a night without losing a step. As with every player who played for Carril, Henderson has taken with him what he learned as a Princeton men's basketball player. He also is in the unique position of passing on those lessons to the current generation.
Here are his remarks:
A short time after I was hired as head
basketball coach at Princeton in 2011, my former coach handed me an index
card with three words written on it. Think. See. Do.
After
Carril handed me the card, he looked at me for what felt like 30 seconds, staring
me down with that “are you listening?” glare.
Coach was a teacher before he was a coach. He
started out as a history teacher and was clearly heavily influenced by the
teachers he knew throughout his life. He would often say the role of a coach is that of a teacher. And
if one of us didn’t know how to do something on the basketball court — make a
hook shot, throw a left-handed pass to the corner — his job was to teach us how
to do that. We’d repeat the moves, over and over, until we got it right. His
record here proved: he was a master teacher.
He was
always teaching—sometimes by showing us out on the court, sometimes in more
subtle ways. My freshman year (1994-95), Coach would occasionally toss a
stapled packet of box scores our way. It was a gesture that was clear in its
intention. These were box scores of great games from before our time at
Princeton, from teams he had coached that were special. These box scores were a
snapshot of what a TEAM can and should do together. Even if it was highlighting
an individual performance, the emphasis was on how that performance contributed
to a key team win. Or better yet, a League Title-clinching win.
18
rebounds in 1 game. 33 points scored in a game. 10 assists and only 1 turnover!
It was his way of saying ‘You want to know what doing something looks like…? THIS
is what doing something looks like.” He might have also been saying, “You guys
stink!” Even if that wasn’t his point, that’s likely what we heard. We were all
very aware that he was nearing the end of his time at Princeton at this point—the
looming conclusion to a monumental career he’d hint at every now and again,
usually in moments of frustration or anger. The team wanted one of those big title-clinching
wins too—a victory for us but also for him.
The
following year in 1996, we were on the cusp of just such a win. We finished the
season with a share of the Ivy Championship, which meant we were preparing for a
one-game ‘playoff’ against Penn to decide which team would get to go to the
NCAA tournament that season. The game was to be held at Lehigh, not far from
where Coach had grown up in Bethlehem, PA. To make matters worse, we had lost
to Penn several times in a row, including twice already that very season. I
don’t remember our team ever being so nervous in the locker room before any
other game.
But
something clicked that night. We beat our nemesis in overtime, and the team and
all our fans broke out into a massive celebration. It was huge for all of us,
but it felt like something more for Coach. I remember watching Coach entering the
locker room silently. He walked right up to the front of that room without saying
a word and started very slowly writing on the board in chalk: “I am very happy.
I am retiring.” We all started cheering and hugging and clapping. Happy was not
an emotion we expected often from our coach—when he felt it, we were allowed to
feel it too.
Then the
party started. Coach loved to celebrate the big wins, especially on the bus. It
was finally our turn to celebrate a huge win with him. That bus ride back to
Princeton was one of the most fun bus rides we ever had. We all knew he was a
great coach and teacher, but I suspect none of us on that team felt quite as connected
to him as some of his earlier teams and groups. He’d had such a storied career
and coached so many greats—those historic box scores he handed out to us every
season made us feel like we’d never quite match up to our predecessors. But on
that ride, we finally felt like the team Coach expected us to be. We sang songs
with him and the rest of the staff and loudly celebrated our upcoming trip to
the NCAA’s.
***
Anyone who
has ever played for Coach knows how tough a road it was. But I can honestly say
that my relationship with him now is so different than it was when I played for
him. To play for Coach is to see the game like him. And there isn’t much room
for interpretation. He would often ask “What do you see?” If you were dumb
enough to answer, it was at your own peril.
The point was that you were expected to figure it out. You had to figure
out how to “just play” the way he saw the game.
He had patience,
albeit limited, for learning, but zero tolerance if you didn’t try to do your
best. If you did try your absolute very best and maximized your potential, it was
noted. But that level of effort wasn’t deserving of a compliment. That was just
the way it was supposed to be. To get a compliment from Coach as a player, this
was the ultimate gift—it was so rare.
The same has
been true as my relationship with him changed, from player to collaborator and
colleague. Compliments were vanishingly rare, but there was a level of
positivity I’d never experienced before. Whenever he would tell me that the
team was playing well, the words alone, coming from him, were a great reward. Sometimes
it was just a nod, but I read it. The nod meant that what I was doing, in his
eyes, was right. Maybe for that one night, I was thinking, seeing, and doing, just
as Coach had always wanted me to.
I’d
like to share what those three words— think, see, do—mean to me, those words
Coach has been drilling into us all these years.
Think. Think about what the most
important thing to do is, and then do that in practice as often as possible.
Think through carefully how to work through all of the different teaching
points on one side of the court. Then, when it’s time, move to the other side. Keep
thinking—which way does the player you are guarding prefer to go, right or
left? What
play does this coach like to run in this exact scenario? Where is the best
matchup on the floor right now? And
then ask regularly (in Coach’s voice), “YO! What were you thiiiinkiiing?”
See. See everything. Watch what they do
and then ask questions. Observe very carefully how someone does something and
then ask them to do it again. Is it the same this time or different? Why? How?
Don’t always answer right away. Be sure to let your team know that you believe
in change, in growth. What are they
doing to make themselves experts? Then ask, all the time, “YO! What do you
seeeee?”
Do. Be on the floor, be engaged, and
teach them what to do. The ‘Do’ part is the work. The goal is to become a
worker, to overcome something that is in you and push through it to where you
can see change. The “doing” is the moment that stands out.
Craig
Robinson ’83 told me about how at the beginning of his senior year, Coach was
imploring him to work on a reverse one-foot layup. Craig spent time on this
move, and when he made the move and sank the layup in an open gym session that
fall, he heard a familiar voice from high up in the Jadwin Gym bleachers… “YO
CRAIG!” The best kind of “YO!” you could get—one of approval. Coach loved to be
around people that worked to improve on their own. In the fall, in the spring,
down at Jadwin, working hard in an empty gym. He believed “doing” was rare. It
was the sign of strong character.
Of course, then
ask the players all the time: “YO! What are you doooooing?”
When I
became head coach several years ago, he would frequently stop by to watch us
practice. Afterwards, when practice was over, we would often talk. He’d say “I
have some notes for you from practice…” He would pull a piece of paper out of
his pockets, look down at it, and shake his head. “Well, that’s not it. (Long pause) That’s my
recipe for Spanish Rice.”
***
Coach’s
wisdom never faltered. “Be yourself,” Coach told me many times over the years.
He would often drop this one on me after a particularly tough loss. You think
about what you want to do, watch closely, and then you do it. You lose the stuff
that doesn’t work, keep the stuff that does, and above all, do it in your
own way.
There is
so much of Coach in me in—so much of him in Bill Carmody, who coached me at
Princeton after Carril and then hired me at Northwestern—that what comes out of
my mouth should often be footnoted: Passes must be on the money. Snap your
chest pass. Cut hard. Free throws are free points, fellas… We have to get every
one.
It is the
way in which these points are delivered that resonates the most to me now. The longer
I coach, the more I realize the simple elegance of each teaching point being
reiterated regularly.
No one who
knew Coach will ever forget his mantra: The most important thing you are doing
is the thing you are doing right now. Our coach was
practicing ‘Mindfulness’ before anyone even knew what that was.
Coach was also a pioneer in basketball
analytics, way before anyone else was. Which was ironic, given that he never
crunched a single number on any computer. Bill Carmody once said to Time
magazine writer Sean Gregory ’98: “He didn’t
understand computers or the people who used them.”
He was a
singular presence, an unforgettable essence. He was, forever and always, very
much himself. As a player, it was easy get lost in the way Coach would talk to
me. He was unlike any coach or teacher I had ever had; he was so direct, so honest,
and often personal.
Many
former players would come back to games or to Princeton Reunions and tell some
of their favorite Coach Carril stories, some good ones and some bad ones —and
there’s no shortage of these stories. As players, we have all held onto these
stories—we tell them to compare tours of duties, to laugh, to unload, but most
of all, to honor our coach.
Coach would
occasionally admit to me that he wasn’t always right in the way he did things. I’d
watch Coach cringe occasionally as he listened to the stories where he was particularly
harsh on someone. Coach was, in short, brutally honest. But he was less so as
he got older, and he trended towards the positives, towards building relationships
that were about more than just basketball. Of course he enjoyed talking hoops, but
he also loved to drill down on the best Gary Cooper Westerns, or what makes for
a great breakfast sandwich, or to talk about his own kids and grandkids and
what they were up to.
It's not
always easy to be taught well. For Coach, praise was the cheapest form of
reward. When Craig tells that story of Coach giving him a “YO” from the
rafters, he says he felt like he was floating in the air.
***
In 2017, Ben
Cohen came to do a featured story on Coach for the Wall Street Journal and
Carril’s influence
on the NBA. This was a very important piece to Coach – he had it framed and
hanging on the wall of his apartment ever since it was published.
I remember
Bill Carmody telling me a story about how when he was Carril’s assistant, high school
coaches would often call the office in Jadwin looking for notes or plays on how
to run the Princeton Offense. Coach would answer the phone, there’d be silence
for a few seconds, then he’d say, “Figure it out like I did.” And then he’d
hang up. Good spacing and good players that play together. Who are
the X’s and who are the O’s. What are you doing on every possession to make the
guy next to you better? Fellas, I am preparing you to WIN THE GAME. Not
to be close. We must make practices harder than the games. You are what you do
in practice! Basketball as a metaphor for life.
Coach
didn’t like the term Princeton Offense, and he told reporters like Cohen and
anyone else who asked as much. For him, it was about 5 guys playing well
together, thinking together, speaking the same language. Coach believed that
any shot, regardless of distance, in which you aren’t guarded, is easier than
the shot that you are guarded. He constantly asked us: What are you doing on every
possession to make your teammates better? If you commit to that, the ball will
find you.
Coach
wanted his centers to play the game like Bill Russell. He would tell us that
there were lots of players that are better than him, better shooters, or
dribblers, or passers. But no one takes away more things from the other team
than Russell. No one makes you win like Russell.
To celebrate
Coach is to talk about his direct influence on us on the court, on sharing the
ball, on playing together. But playing for one another is just one part of his
legacy. There is a notable influence that Coach has had on the game at every
level—everyone from Steve Kerr to Brad Stevens count Carril as an important
influence on their careers. With so many of us former players and assistants
now coaching, Coach has to have one of the most expansive coaching trees in the
country.
His profound
influence on the game of basketball itself is sometimes hard to fathom. In the
first two years since the advent of the three-point shot, which started in
1987, Coach’s teams shot 30% of its shots from behind the arc. Two years later,
it was 42%. Two more years later, nearly half of Princeton’s shots were threes.
(As a point of comparison, in that same year, 1991, the percentage of shots
taken from beyond the three-point line in the NCAA was near 20%, the NBA below
10%.) Carril, ever the outlier, had those Princeton teams shooting near or
above 45% from beyond the arc, not to mention 50% from the field. His 1991 team
was nationally ranked most of the season.
Coach was
elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997, accepted the very first time he was
eligible.
He got in on
his impact on game of basketball: his impact on the game, on his players, on
the character of the game. Coach understood that he was a dose of reality. He
wasn’t the guy in the three-piece suit, never a self promoter. He stayed true
to who he was. This resonated.
In
that same Wall Street Journal article, Coach was asked if it's easy for him to enjoy watching the NBA's best teams — because the NBA's best teams now play like his old Princeton teams. Coach responded, in trademark fashion, "You'd have to be blind as a bat not to see that."
Thank
you, Coach. Think. See. Do.
We
think about you every day. We see you. And we love you.
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