Congratulations to the Yates Lions (Class 4A, HISD) for bringing home a boys’ basketball championship trophy to the Houston area over the weekend.  In both their performances at the Erwin Center, I was focused on the coach, Greg Wise, and came away impressed.

First, I thought Wise was gracious in victory, even after the latest (and it was VERY late) written thumping that he took—this time from ESPN The Magazine columnist Rick Reilly—a couple of days before the tournament.

Reilly’s diatribe was uninformed and a little juvenile, and I thought Wise’s coaching style and methods were vindicated in the way that the Class 4A championship game unfolded against Lancaster.   Trailing with about six minutes to go in the fourth quarter and on the verge of seeing a title, and a perfect season, slip away, the Lions dug down and called on the tenacity that Wise has instilled in them to overcome the deficit and pull away for a 92-73 win.

There’s no way to prove it, but had they been coached to ease up on the weak district competition in the regular season, they may not have had the ‘killer instinct’ to come from behind against a very good opponent like Lancaster.

When our kids are young, we want them to participate in sports but we don’t want to keep score because they might suffer some psychological trauma from losing.  When they turn to teenagers, we want them to participate in high school athletics, but we want them to not be embarrassed or embarrass anyone because they’re ‘just kids’. 

If they move on to play in college, we want them to go easy on lesser opponents and not run up the scores.

But then, if they are talented enough to reach the pros, we suddenly shift our focus and deride them for not having a winner’s mentality or that ‘killer instinct’. 

But that attitude, that mentality, is something that must be engrained into a competitor.  And if it isn’t there by the time that a young adult becomes a professional, I don’t think it will come as readily or naturally.

Beyond that—and this is the sad truth about the world we live in—the players that Wise coaches at Yates primarily come from disadvantaged inner-city backgrounds.  They are without exception African-American males.  Frankly, they will face a lot of challenges in their adult lifetimes—far beyond the basketball arena—that middle-class suburban Anglos will never see. 

If learning to never give up and never let up on the court helps them, even in a small way, learn to never give up and never let up off the court, then Wise deserves our praise that much more for his impact on their lives.

In some ways, I can understand a frustrated opposing coach being a little hot under the collar following a defeat to a team like Yates.  No one WANTS to suffer an embarrassing loss. 

That’s the reason I give Cleve Ryan, the head coach of The Colony (Yates’ state semifinal victim), a pass on his momentary sideline tantrum and lecture of Wise following the Lions’ 30-point victory that earned them a spot in the championship game.

Wise appeared to be caught off-guard and also appeared ready to verbally retaliate before he opted to keep his cool. And later, Ryan came over to presumably apologize to and congratulate Wise on the win.  Still, when that final conversation was over, Ryan’s parting words to Wise revealed the root problem—and where the problem lies.

“Just play nice,” Ryan said as both men turned to walk away from the other.

The problem this season wasn’t really with Yates.  The problem was that everyone else wanted Yates to play nice this year.  The old ‘if-we-can’t-beat-you-at-least-don’t-embarrass-us’ attitude.

Wise just wanted them to play to win a championship—and they did.