The coaching carousel in college basketball has spun to a stop and you're not going to believe this, but every coach is not only going to win at his new place -- he's going to do it the right way. He'll build the right culture with a staff of assistants who are not only good coaches, but better men. Together, they'll get good players and turn them into great ones, building a team of young men who good students, good citizens, good sons and brothers. All of that will lead to a team that wins the right way.
A win acquired the wrong way? No, sir. You can have it back. We turn down wrong-way wins around these parts. We win the right way or we don't win at all.
Just as every football coach loves his recruiting class and builds a tough team -- not only physically tough, but mentally tough as well -- the basketball hiring class of 2021 will win the right way. All 20 coaches shown below will win the right way, as proved by this Jordan Sperber video.
What even is "the right way"? It's an homage to the self-evident traits necessary to win in any sport -- of teamwork, of making smart plays, of sacrificing for the greater good. But how and why is every coach now saying it?
The phrase is attributed to Larry Brown, the Hall of Fame coach of multiple teams and the only coach to win NBA and NCAA titles. If there was a football coach who learned the game directly from Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Vince Lombardi, Brown is that man in basketball form.
And even he doesn't know exactly when or why he began saying it. Take this snippet from a 2005 New York Times piece:
The right way was not born of a single brainstorm or a single coach. Brown is not even sure where the expression came from or how long he has been using it. Based on a Lexis/Nexis search, the handy maxim has been in Brown's repertory for at least 13 years.
"I'm mad," Brown said on Dec. 25, 1992, after a loss by his Los Angeles Clippers. "But that's my responsibility. I've got to get guys to play the right way. But I see a two-on-one break, and we don't make a pass. Defensively, a guy beats us and there's nobody there to help out."
That familiar-sounding lament was four N.B.A. jobs and 553 victories ago.
But it was not until the last two years, with Brown's Pistons in consecutive finals, that the aphorism became so closely associated with him. It quickly grew from coachism to near caricature.
Popovich, speaking about reporters, said: "I think you guys just jumped on it during the championship run, where all of a sudden it was this Larryism. I'll bet everybody I ever worked for said the same thing."
Now the phrase and the coach and the philosophy are all but inseparable.
"I don't know where I got the term, but I always tell the guys, we always write on the board, 'play hard, play together, play smart, have fun and try to guard,' " Brown said.
Got that, everyone? Now go play, but only do it the right way.