Larry Brown Visits the University Of Kentucky Basketball Team

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. This is where coaches come into play.

This week Larry Brown, a long time friend and mentor of John Calipari, is in Lexington working with the University of Kentucky Basketball team. This can only help Brandon Knight.

Larry Brown, who is the only head basketball coach to win a NCAA national championship and a NBA championship, has molded good point guards into great point guards.

Allen Iverson and Chauncey Billups are the latest success stories. Now the last two stops haven’t been as successful in New York and Charlotte but if you take into account his entire career he is obviously is one of the best coaches in the history of basketball. Specifically for point guards.

Kentucky seems to be missing something this year compared to previous John Calipari teams. Brandon Knight has not been terrible by any means, but he has not had the same effectiveness and impact that Derrick Rose or John Wall had.

Maybe with this great coach something little, maybe even something that is not normally a coaching point, just a conversation triggers something for Brandon that makes him suddenly get it.

It very well may be something Calipari has said before but now from a different voice, and a very respectable voice, it hits home.

Growing up I punted for my high school football team, while also playing soccer as a goalkeeper for my school as well. Punting a soccer ball and punting a football are two completely different techniques.

Soccer you attack the ball at an angle, football you attack it straight on. I always had trouble because my leg would always revert back to kicking a soccer ball even when I was kicking a football.

I would attack the football straight on and my leg would swing around to the left as if to kick a soccer ball instead of going straight up and down to kick a football.

As I was attending a Ray Guy camp he simply pulled me aside and said, “Tyler, when you’re kicking a soccer ball, kick it like a soccer ball. When you’re kicking a football, kick it like a football.”

Ray Guy is the best punter of all time.

This is so obvious, but for whatever reason Ray Guy telling me those words made something click in my head and from then on out I had no issues with kicking a football what so ever.

Some point in the week Larry Brown will say something so obvious but yet so crucial that Brandon Knight will have something click. We won’t know how to articulate it, but it will be obvious to us if it happens.

Larry Brown saying, “If he’s open, give him the ball.” Might be the difference in a Sweet Sixteen run and a Final Four run.