Russell Rule #6: Craftsmanship

Russell Rule # 6: Craftsmanship

For Russell, craftsmanship translates into "getting the best results from your work effort":

Sub-rule 1: You never know it all. "The more I learned, the more I knew I had to learn." He describes how, in college, he and K.C. Jones "wanted to understand the game at a level other players....never approached," whether it be how to force a certain shot that would result in a predictable rebound angle or how certain players would act in game situations.

Sub-rule 2: "Craftsmanship is the result of sincere effort, principled intentions, intelligent direction, and skillful execution."

Sub-rule 3: Since players on great teams learn from each other, craftsmanship should be made contagious.

This chapter contains great stuff. Russell extolls the virtues of practice, while admitting he hated practice. I witnessed the final practice of his career, in L.A., before the final and arguably most important game of his life. As coach, he instructed the other players in what to do; and then he personally spent the entire practice shooting two-handed 40-footers and cackling with outrageous laughter when several went in.

But that was at the end of his career. As a freshman at SFU, night after night, he would take up to 500 shots left-handed and 500 right-handed—mainly hook shots that a center of the time would be likely to use. Sure enough, he actually was an excellent hook-shooter in the pros. He says about practice, "If you love what you are doing, the very difficulty of what you need to do (such as learning to shoot with the "off hand") will drive you further, and the sense of accomplishment you gain will mean that much more."

Russ talks of the center position being all about footwork. Because he wanted to be a threat whether or not he shot the ball (the "Invisible Man"), he worked on developing what he called "smart feet" by running
and moving (whenever he could) more like a guard than like a big man.In describing honing one's craft.

Russ offers some insight into his blocking technique. Obviously, Russ left his feet a lot on defense in pursuit of blocked shots. He became very concerned about what to do if he went for a fake and his man then
went up as Russ came down. He discovered that, rather than landing flat-footed as most centers still do, landing with knees flexed usually enabled him to catch the guy just as he was releasing the ball. In addition to preventing a score, this further confused the poor guy who was now wondering just what he had to do to get off a shot.

When he joined the Celtics, craftsmanship for Russ became a matter of determining what he could do to make each person around him better. The rapidity of his outlet passes was key to Cousy, so Russ generally
eschewed all the foot-planting and elbow-thrusting that many big men display upon landing with a rebound.

Russ worked on making a single movement of jumping, grabbing the ball, twisting, and passing; and he made it a point to spot Cousy's white or green jersey in his periphery on his way UP so there'd be no time
needed to locate Cooz after Russell got the ball. Fighting to gain nanoseconds of efficiency was central to Russ's craftsmanship.

Although Cousy was the playmaker, in the halfcourt game, most halfcourt plays went through Russ. For the plays to work, every guy on the floor had to be in motion. (Oh, what a sight that was! My eyes become moist at the recollection.) Russ says everyone had to be ready to become a second, third or fourth shooting option. The craftsmanship part of it was that the movement of one player had to be understood by every other player.

Russ continues with the observation that there are 11 types of passes available to a center. Russ's job was to "to see every move by every player, to coordinate and process it as if my brain were a computer, and then to make the right pass." For example, Satch wore contact lenses and couldn't see well below his waist; so passes to him had to be at least waist-high. A pass to someone who only had an instant of daylight had to be a "dead" pass (with no spin) so he could get off a shot immediately.

Russ closes by reminding us that joy (a word he uses constantly throughout the book) is a leadership quality. "When a leader is obviously passionate and joyful in what he or she does, that is inevitably communicated. It sets a tone, a standard in which winning is not the only thing but is the most natural thing in the world."

Sam