Sometimes old habits die hard. On the other hand, old habits can be brought down a long line of succession from one generation to the next.
Derek Fisher, New York Knicks’ second-year coach, is using a trick he learned during his time as a player in the NBA. He picked up a trick from his old coach, who is now his boss, Knicks President Phil Jackson. Fisher has given some of his players as a summer reading assignments of sorts.
Fisher picked up the old habit from Jackson, who coached famously Fisher for nine years when they were both members of the Los Angeles Lakers. Jackson was known to give books to players during his Hall of Fame career with both the Chicago Bulls and Lakers and now Fisher is following in his footsteps.
Following from Chris Herring of the Wall Street Journal.
…it was little unusual to see Kristaps Porzingis, the Knicks’ 20-year-old Latvian rookie, clutching a bright orange book under his arm as he exited the gym after a summer-league practice a few weeks ago.
“Coach [Derek] Fisher gave it to me. It’s called ‘The Positive Dog.’ Took me maybe three days to finish, and was simple to understand—explained in a childish way,” Porzingis said of the Jon Gordon title, which uses a pair of talking dogs to illustrate the importance of a positive outlook on life.
“Part of [assigning books] is to give them a sense of who their coach is, so they can understand how I view performance, competition and self-improvement,” Fisher said. “Plus, I just like to share information—training secrets, how to recover after practices and games, nutrition. Those are things I like to share to help guys out. And sometimes it’s easiest to share them in the form of a book.”
Besides giving “The Positive Dog” to Porzingis, he gave “Developing the Leader Within You,” by John C. Maxwell, to first-round pick Jerian Grant and Gordon’s “Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else” to Cleanthony Early, the team’s top selection in the 2014 draft.
“It was helpful to read it,” said Early, who read “Training Camp” last season while recovering from a procedure on his right knee. “There was a whole part of the book that spoke to my situation, basically a way of telling me to keep my head up and find ways to mentally improve while I was injured.”
As Herring notes, to this point, Fisher’s reading assignments have been for young, first-year players, and they have focused on cultivating a positive mentality—probably the most sensible subject for a team that went 17-65 last season.
Kristaps Porzingis, Jerian Grant –who were the Knicks selections in this summer’s draft– and Cleanthony Early are three players that can play important roles with this team going forward with their very versatile skillsets. It’s a good move by Fisher to get these guys with the right mindset going into next season.
Why not do this for the young guys? Have them read up and educate themselves while bettering themselves in the process. It’s just something good to try, and at this point, after coming off a horrible season in 2014-15, it couldn’t hurt.
It would be entertaining if the players were told to do book reports and stand in front of their teammates and possibly the media to tell everyone about the book they had to read over the summer. Hopefully they would be full of visuals and a powerpoint presentation.
