More on Wayman Tisdale

This article was written by George Irvine of Basketball.org. George was a long-time NBA head coach, executive, and player.

I meant to tell this story about Wayman Tisdale yesterday, and I ended up forgetting.  This story will give a little insight into Wayman and his personality.

About 40 games into his rookie season I called a timeout late in a tied up game to set up a last shot play for Wayman.  I had scouted Wayman while he played at Oklahoma, and saw that about 90 percent of the time they had him posting up on the right block. 

So naturally when we got him, I usually designed plays for him on the right block.  Made sense to me.

Well, as I was designing this play on how to get the ball to Wayman on the right block, he told me he preferred the left block!  I looked at him incredulously and asked him why he hadn’t said something earlier.  He just said that I was the coach and he was just trying to do what I asked.

Of course in a Hollywood ending, he would have made the game winning shot, but he didn’t.  However, we did go on to win in OT.

After the game we sat down and had a long talk to see if there were some other things I should know about him.  It’s not like we hadn’t talked before, but I emphasized to him not to hold back.

Think about this though.  He had only played about 40 games with us when he told me he preferred the left block, and that was with us playing mostly passing game, where he did get to move around.  He was at Oklahoma for three years, posting up on that right block, and never said anything.

I think that attitude, although being coachable, actually held him back some.  Wayman too easily went along with things, and didn’t force himself onto situations enough.  Wayman was an enormous talent and could have been a great player, but ended up being just a solid player.

I think many of the great players are not always so easy to coach.  They usually have strong personalities and strong convictions.  They may clash with their coaches some.  As long as the desire to win is paramount, that’s okay.  As a coach, I would rather have some discord with the player who helps win games, than have smooth sailing with players who lose games.