John Delong is one of our ace sportswriters on a staff with a lot of aces. He knows a lot about basketball and just won an NBA Writers column-writing contest, which is a pretty neat trick considering W-S doesn’t have a pro team. He did what I consider an outstanding job of dissecting the N.C. State basketball program and its coach Herb Sendek today.
What caught my eye was at the bottom, where he talks about one of Sendek’s failings being a poor relationship with the media. At first glance, this looks like a bit of self-aggrandizement. I mean, he’s a basketball coach. He’s paid to a) win games; b) graduate his students. Everything else is gravy. And it speaks to the human tendency to look at things through the prism that is most relevant to US, i.e. the old adage “If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.”
But as John’s column makes clear, that simple world of black and white just doesn’t exist. It would be nice if all of us were measured in performance strictly on objective measures. But we aren’t. For better or worse, important folks get judged by how they do in front of a dozen microphones. Those who do well get the benefit of the doubt. Those who don’t get just the opposite. Does it win games? No, but it sure makes the losses easier to swallow. That goes for basketball, business and politics.
More water bottle madness. Note the water bucket in the right of the photo (click on Sendek above). Gatorade is gone. Somehow dumping a bottle of Dasani on a coach after winning the big game just seems wrong.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from 
Of course situations are gray. But having spent the better part of the morning reading list serve entries that trashed a singer (poet, et al.) for a lackluster performance at a club in Chapel Hill earlier this week, (and stating fully that I am no fan of Duke or Coach K,) I am forced to admit that Krzyzewski spoke the greatest wisdom concerning what to say about Sendek. Coach K’s advice was to “shut up.” (see “Krzyzewski says that criticism of Pack’s Sedek is unwarranted” Winston Salem Journal, May 21, 2006 online at http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137834843112 But then, neither Coach K nor I make a living writing an opinion column concerning sports. Points of view make things grayer all the time!
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