Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hall of Famer: “The wisdom of Coach Wooden had a profound influence on me as an athlete, but an even greater influence on me as a human being. He is responsible, in part, for the person I am today.”

Listen to this story.

It was the moment of victory. UCLA had just won its first national championship. But Coach Wooden was worried about Fred Slaughter, a player who had started every game and had had a brilliant year up until this final, championship game. The game had not been going well, and, as it got worse and worse, Wooden felt a change had to made. So he pulled Fred. The replacement player did a great job, and Wooden left him in until the game was virtually won.

The victory was a peak moment. Not only had they just won their first NCAA title by beating Duke, but they had ended the season with thirty wins and zero losses. Yet Wooden’s concern for Fred dampened his euphoria. As Wooden left the press conference and went to find Fred, he opened the door to the dressing room. Fred was waiting for him. “Coach … I want you to know I understand. You had to leave Doug in there because he played so well, and I didn’t. I wanted to play in the worst way, but I do understand, and if anyone says I was upset, it’s not true. Disappointed, yes, but upset, no. And I was very happy for Doug.”

“There are coaches out there,” Wooden says, “who have won championships with the dictator approach, among them Vince Lombardi and Bobby Knight. I had a different philosophy.… For me, concern, compassion, and consideration were always priorities of the highest order.”

Read the story of Fred Slaughter again and you tell me whether, under the same circumstances, Coach Knight would have rushed to console Daryl Thomas. And would Knight have allowed Thomas to reach down to find his pride, dignity, and generosity in his moment of disappointment?

Which Is the Enemy: Success or Failure?

Pat Summitt is the coach of the Tennessee women’s basketball team, the Lady Vols. She has coached them to six national championships. She didn’t come into the game with Wooden’s philosophical attitude, but was at first more Knight-like in her stance. Every time the team lost, she couldn’t let go of it. She continued to live it, beating it to death and torturing herself and the team with it. Then she graduated to a love–hate relationship with losing. Emotionally, it still makes her feel sick. But she loves what it does. It forces everyone, players and coaches, to develop a more complete game. It is success that has become the enemy.

Wooden calls it being “infected” with success. Pat Riley, former coach of the championship Los Angeles Lakers team, calls it the “disease of me”—thinking you are the success, and chucking the discipline and the work that got you there. Summitt explains, “Success lulls you. It makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy.” As Summitt spoke, Tennessee had won five NCAA Championships, but only once when they were favored to win. “On every other occasion, we were upset. We’ve as many as four or five titles that we were predicted to win.”

After the 1996 championship, the team was complacent. The older players were the national champions, and the new players expected to be swept to victory merely by being at Tennessee. It was a disaster. They began to lose and lose badly. On December 15, they were crushed by Stanford on their own home court. A few games later, they were crushed again. Now they had five losses and everyone had given up on them. The North Carolina coach, meaning to comfort Summitt, told her, “Well, just hang in there ’til next year.” HBO had come to Tennessee to film a documentary, but now the producers were looking for another team. Even her assistants were thinking they wouldn’t make it into the March championship play-offs.

So before the next game, Summitt met with the team for five hours. That night, they played Old Dominion, the second-ranked team in the country. For the first time that season, they gave all. But they lost again. It was devastating. They had invested, gone for it, and still lost. Some were sobbing so hard, they couldn’t speak, or even breathe. “Get your heads up,” Summitt told them. “If you give effort like this all the time, if you fight like this, I’m telling you, I promise you, we’ll be there in March.” Two months later they were the national champions.

Conclusion? Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset: “I won because I have talent. Therefore I will keep winning.” Success can infect a team or it can infect an individual. Alex Rodriguez, one of the best players in baseball, is not infected with success. “You never stay the same,” he says, “You either go one way or the other.”

OUR LEGACY