Page 217 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Seek Significant Change
fused, in part, because I wanted to bring along someone who 199
accepted—said yes to—my overall system (although I was willing
to consider changes within my system). Coach McMillan’s system
was more deliberate and focused on ball control—totally different
from what I taught, which was a fast and furious attack style of
basketball.
I wanted individuals as assistant coaches who understood and
embraced my system—people such as Eddie Powell, Gary Cun-
ningham, Jerry Norman, and Denny Crum. All of them were as-
tute analysts and unafraid to tell me exactly what they thought.
All those people mentioned were very familiar with the kind of
basketball I taught; they were all former players. In fact, Eddie
Powell had played basketball on the South Bend Central High
School team that I coached back in Indiana and then had been my
assistant at Indiana State Teachers College.
Their input was valuable because they understood my overall
basketball philosophy and were able to see ways to improve it as we
went along.

GOOD EARS ARE PART OF LEADERSHIP
Following the 1962 Final Four appearance and my renewed deter-
mination to review everything I was doing, it happened again—
input from an assistant coach sparked a change that would
positively impact UCLA’s fortunes for the next 13 seasons.
On the plane ride back from the tournament in Louisville, as-
sistant coach Jerry Norman began making his case for us going to
the full-court defense—known as the “Press”—in the upcoming
season and beyond. This system imposed an intensive defense on
the opponent from the moment they attempted to put the ball in
play at their end of the court. (Conventional defensive systems
waited until the opponent reached half-court. In effect, this