Thoughts on Pat Riley's Coaching Philosophy

From Greg Brown's blog, head coach of University of Central Florida's women's team, some great stuff on Pat Riley's philosophy. I've always been a big fan of Riley's Lakers teams and especially his Knicks teams in the 90s. I definitely agree with the mental toughness being more important than physical toughness. Players who have the right mental head space are the ones that will get you through the big moments.

1. Bump and run on defense. Make that your go to part of the game.
2. Two most important things: REBOUNDING & DEFENSE
3. Defense: Be the most physical in the league. The idea of the game is to take the opponent out physically and mentally.
4. Spend your time getting into your players head individually. There is only so much you can do coaching a team.
5. Make certain that your players understand that if you’re going to be a team it has to be a team defense, team offense, never I always WE.
6. It’s what you get from the games you lose that is extremely important. Did we learn from losing? This is an important part of any team.
7. We want to, as much as possible, try to make our players understand who has strength in what areas. Talk about that a lot, spend time, do the things you need to do to try to make people understand that.
8. In dealing with administration, management, etc., understand that they are extremely interested in only themselves.
9. To have a great basketball team you have to have more mental preparation than physical preparation. Once you’re mentally tough, you can become tough physically. Once you’re tough mentally you can overcome being tired, you can overcome fatigue.
10. Always practice as hard as you can. Go for it even the day of a game.
11. Make certain that your team is mentally prepared. Don’t show them a ton of film. Mentally prepare them with your voice and mouth. Get them tuned into what you want.
12. Game day preparations. Real hard workout the day of the game, go after it that night.